Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation 9781787431683, 1787431681, 9781787431676, 1787431673, 9781787431898, 1787431894

Citation preview

OPPRESSION AND RESISTANCE: STRUCTURE, AGENCY, TRANSFORMATION

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION Series Editor: Norman K. Denzin Recent Volumes: Volumes 1 35: Studies in Symbolic Interaction Volume 36:

Blue Ribbon Papers: Interactionism: The Emerging Landscape

Volume 37:

Studies in Symbolic Interaction

Volume 38:

Blue Ribbon Papers: Behind the Professional Mask: The Self-Revelations of Leading Symbolic Interactionists

Volume 39:

Studies in Symbolic Interaction

Volume 40:

40th Anniversary of Studies in Symbolic Interaction

Volume 41:

Radical Interactionism on the Rise

Volume 42:

Revisiting Symbolic Interaction in Music Studies and New Interpretive Works

Volume 43:

Symbolic Interaction and New Social Media

Volume 44:

Contributions from European Symbolic Interactionists: Reflections on Methods

Volume 45:

Contributions from European Symbolic Interactionists: Conflict and Cooperation

Volume 46:

The Astructural Bias Charge: Myth or Reality?

Volume 47:

Symbolic Interactionist Takes on Music

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION VOLUME 48

OPPRESSION AND RESISTANCE: STRUCTURE, AGENCY, TRANSFORMATION EDITED BY

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA

United Kingdom North America India Malaysia China

Japan

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2017 Copyright r 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78743-168-3 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-78743-167-6 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-78743-189-8 (Epub) ISSN: 0163-2396 (Series)

ISOQAR certified Management System, awarded to Emerald for adherence to Environmental standard ISO 14001:2004. Certificate Number 1985 ISO 14001

CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ix

INTRODUCTION

xi

OPPRESSION AND RESISTANCE: A STRUCTURE-AND-AGENCY PERSPECTIVE Gil Richard Musolf

1

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: ORGANIZATIONAL SECRECY, STIGMA, AND SEX ABUSE WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH James A. Vela- McConnell

19

“BLACK MAN/WHITE TOWER ’: A PERFORMATIVE FILM AUTOCRITOGRAPHY Bryant Keith Alexander

51

TRANSFORMING IDENTITIES OF ILLNESS THROUGH AESTHETIC NARRATIVE COLLABORATION Jill Taft-Kaufman

69

POWER, EMERGENCE, AND THE MEANINGS OF RESISTANCE: OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING IN CANADA Taylor Price and Antony Puddephatt

95

COLLECTIVE AND COMMUNITY WORK IN SENEGAL: RESISTING COLONIAL AND NEOLIBERAL MODELS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Laura L. Cochrane V

117

vi

CONTENTS

TIME TO DEFY: THE USE OF TEMPORAL SPACES TO ENACT RESISTANCE Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott

137

DUPE, SCHEMER, MOTHER: NAVIGATING AGENCY AND CONSTRAINT AT WORK Jillian Crocker

157

“THEY EXPECT YOU TO BE BETTER”: MENTORING AS A TOOL OF RESISTANCE AMONG BLACK FRATERNITY MEN Jasmine Armstrong and Brandon A. Jackson

175

PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY AND SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM: PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND WRITING CULTURE WITH A SOUTHERN NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBE Michael Spivey

191

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

211

INDEX

215

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Bryant Keith Alexander

College of Communication and Fine Arts, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Jasmine Armstrong

Department of Sociology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Laura L. Cochrane

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA

Jillian Crocker

Department of Sociology, State University of New York Old Westbury, Old Westbury, NY, USA

Brandon A. Jackson

Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

Gil Richard Musolf

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA

Taylor Price

Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Antony Puddephatt

Department of Sociology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada

Michael Spivey

University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC, USA

Jill Taft-Kaufman

Department of Communication and Dramatic Arts, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA

vii

viii

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott Department of Sociology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada James A. Vela-McConnell Department of Sociology, Augsburg University, Minneapolis, MN, USA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Gil Richard Musolf would like to acknowledge gratitude to Dr. Pamela Gates, Dean, College of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences for a course release for the Fall Semester of 2016, which greatly helped in the completion of this project.

ix

INTRODUCTION Oppression and resistance dialectically envelop everyday life, for both the privileged and the oppressed. The disenfranchised live under regimes in which repression ranges from brutal to institutionally subtle. The privileged socially reproduce their rule through ideology that justifies and policy that institutionalizes subjugation. However, rejecting depression, detachment, and disaffection that emerge from surviving ruling-class regimes, many previously dispirited, instead, choose defiance. They engage in subjectivity struggles by crafting critical consciousness and refusing to be dupes to ideology that represents them as inferior. They undertake social struggles demanding policy that dismantles institutional discrimination and that enhances opportunities for learning and achievement. The exploited, as best as they can in regimes of ruling class and white male supremacy, reconstruct their selves and, it is hoped, transform society. Sociology’s foundational concept, social structure, distinguishes the discipline. Agency, however, cannot be disdained or disregarded. Without a concept of agency, sociologists stammer if called upon to explain how the subjugated transform from being obedient to capitalist culture to resisting cultural hegemony; that is to say, how they become motivated to change the meaning, context, and trajectory of their lives. The arc of history does not bend towards justice by itself, as Martin Luther King’s life and the Civil Rights movement demonstrated. Social forces, such as the labor process and the market, will, if unregulated or left to ruling-class desire, occasion catastrophe in the vulnerable. Social justice compels purposeful and compassionate agents to shape social forces. The qualitative studies that comprise this volume, mostly ethnographies from the symbolic interactionist community, present a structure-and-agency perspective, broadly defined, that constitutes the best sociological lens through which to understand oppression and resistance. The authors’ research in this volume interrogates various aspects of oppression and resistance, from the personal to the institutional. Some authors explore situations in which the structure of oppression was insurmountable while others illustrate cases in which agency was able to transform either individual or group identity. Notable to this collection, three scholars address indigenous peoples’ collective action to resist long-standing state-sponsored subjugation. In organizing the articles, I began with ones in which structures of domination were severe and gradually shifted to ones in which the marginalized succeeded in resisting such structures. James A. Vela-McConnell’s investigation illustrates the overwhelming power of organizational oppression. Drawing on insights from Goffman’s concept of xi

xii

INTRODUCTION

“stigmatization” and “strategic interaction” as well as from the dramaturgical perspective, he examines the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. He reveals how the Church engaged in “information management” to conceal “discrediting information.” Stigmatized organizations act in ways analogous to stigmatized individuals, except that such organizations have “structural resources” far in excess to individuals, allowing them to prevent scandal through secrecy and collaboration. In the process of isolating themselves from the outside word, such organizations become “total institutions,” necessitating herculean efforts to expose the scandal. Bryant Keith Alexander presents a film autocritography and personal narrative that juxtaposes his experiences of oppression as a “teacher, scholar, and administrator” with those of other African Americans portrayed in major films. He recounts discrimination in higher education and a harrowing encounter outside of academia, both of which exemplify white supremacy. Alexander undergoes essentialism, his status and behavior ignored while the color of his skin manifests itself, through oppressors’ eyes, as all-important. Jill Taft-Kaufman’s study illustrates one of the most devastating crucibles the self undergoes, its alteration when afflicted by illness and injury. Such trials come to many of us too soon, as they did to her husband. Eventually they come to all of us. Illness and injury disfigure physicality, diminish strength, reconfigure abilities, and cloud identity. Lives, “rituals,” “routines,” and relationships with friends, change. Taft-Kaufman tackles the problem of patients coming to grips with an unrecoverable identity. Through the use of aesthetic strategies and theatre techniques, especially group narrative work, or storytelling, she demonstrates individuals’ capacity for identity transformation. Particularly helpful in this transformation are new definitions of health as various forms of “well-being” and not the absence of “sickness.” Through storytelling, selves regenerate, building the necessary “autonomy” and “collective strength” to continue on in the “journey that remains.” The author delineates aesthetic narrative collaborations as well as a template for storytelling. Taylor Price and Antony Puddephatt draw on George Herbert Mead’s concept of emergence and Lonnie Athens’s perspective of radical interactionism to portray the structure of domination of “subscription-based journals” in academic publishing. Editors of open access journals are resisting this structure that circumscribes the lives of the creative community in the academy, especially those who have been “marginalized” by “conventional publishing norms.” Based on qualitative interviews, the authors describe the meaning making process within the open access publishing community that centers on resisting “profit motives” and emerging new “structures of power” that dismantle “access barriers” for audiences and contributors. Laura L. Cochrane’s ethnography exemplifies the importance of structure and agency to resistance. The Senegalese have a long history of developing indigenous community-based organizations dedicated to “collective ownership and work.” They resisted cooperatives “imposed” by the French colonial

Introduction

xiii

administration and Senegal’s independent state. Today, as in the past, through epistemological emancipation and a sense of power, the Senegalese articulate their own “faith-based” philosophies and “community-based principles” that help them build community-based organizations to resist neo-liberal models of global development. Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott’s field work focuses on the Inuit of northern Canada’s efforts to resist in “subtle forms” “Western cultural paradigms” of time brought on by “hyper-globalization.” The dominant group imposes the stigma of lazy, for example, on the Inuit’s refusal to submit to Western culture’s nine-to-five work regime. The Inuit, a marginalized group, resist Western culture’s rational time constraints through the agency of developing their own temporal norms in which “doing time differently” signifies to them and to the dominant group that they are the makers of their own group identity and community, social practices, and values. The Inuit, by taking time for themselves, cultivate solidarity and resist one of the iron cages of rationalization instituted by Western cultural hegemony. Jillian Crocker’s ethnography focuses on how nursing assistants, many of them single mothers, confront the oppressive circumstances of status inequality and a degrading workplace culture. Nursing assistants’ “subversions of authority” center on meaning making and enacting power acts that demonstrate that they are neither dupes nor schemers. Through group identity and solidarity, they devise “collaborative” strategies so that they can simultaneously earn a living and negotiate family exigencies. Crocker’s study shows that neither structure nor agency alone, but the interaction between the two, provides the best understanding of oppression and resistance. Jasmine Armstrong and Brandon A. Jackson’s research illustrates the importance of agency to combat epistemological imperialism that is embedded in white supremacy. African American males who join black Greek letter fraternities connect with mentors who provide social capital. Mentors cultivate agency through cultural capital, motivate males to transform their identity from one of inferiority to one of competence, and help males redefine academic achievement. Once African Americans realize that resignation conforms to white supremacy’s efforts to relegate them to lives of negation, learning transforms into an act of defiance. Michael’s Spivey’s study narrates the struggle of the Pee-Dee, a Native American tribe of South Carolina, who since the 1970s, have resisted invisibility and erasure by gaining state recognition as a tribe. The state’s denial of tribal identity has had economic and social consequences for the Pee-Dee tribe. Spivey worked with the tribe beginning in 1994. Through the agency of defining and representing themselves, combined with collective action, the Pee-Dee resisted the state’s efforts to annihilate their tribal identity; in 2006 the Pee-Dee were granted state recognition. Gil Richard Musolf Editor

OPPRESSION AND RESISTANCE: A STRUCTURE-AND-AGENCY PERSPECTIVE Gil Richard Musolf ABSTRACT This study addresses resistance and its potential to achieve social justice. Discussion of oppression begins the essay, clarifying the concepts of structure, agency, and the interaction between the two. Next, class exploitation, white supremacy, male supremacy, and epistemological imperialism illustrate forms of oppression. Epistemological emancipation and resistance elucidate agency. A conclusion summarizes the argument that a structure-and-agency perspective best conceptualizes forms of oppression and resistance. Keywords: Oppression; structure and agency; resistance; social justice; transformation

OPPRESSION The privileged do not necessarily intend to oppress others, and they may be anything but cavalier in their concern for the social circumstances of the disadvantaged. A socially privileged life usually entails an obliviousness of how one’s attitudes and social practices construct and maintain subjugation. Oppression

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 1 18 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048001

1

2

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF

overwhelms existential conditions and lived experience. The oppressed confront everyday life besieged by an institutional, systemic, and socially reproduced unattainability of power. The marginalized suffer from dominants’ unaware privilege. When victims try to make the privileged aware of their persecution, as in the Black Lives Matter movement, some oppressors intellectually awaken, acknowledging their responsibility for structural inequities. Some may even resolve to eradicate personal and institutional discrimination. Unfortunately, many oppressors fail to acknowledge oppression. Instead, they may engage in various forms of backlash. Sometimes the dominant and the subordinated clash in the streets in social protest. Arguments over the nature of oppression, including claims by some that it does not exist, define and shape one’s political perspective. Oppression and privilege institutionalize unearned advantages and disadvantages. Initially, the family divides the world between haves and have-nots. For sociologists, income and wealth inequality, especially as they affect race and gender, command center stage but, in addition, other disparities associated with class, race, and gender absorb sociologists’ attention: infant and child mortality, life expectancy, nurturance, health care, education, opportunities for meaningful work and a secure retirement, and safety from crime-infested and carcinogenic environments. Inherited inequities in every measureable human phenomenon between cradle and grave provoke structural critique as do less calculable forms of privilege such as normative judgments concerning looks, behaviors, emotions, and attitudes. In general, social arrangements that impede opportunity for achievement, education, health, well-being, and specifically ones that affect minorities and women, constitute forms of exploitation. Inequities waste the potential of the oppressed and rob the world of the opportunity to benefit from that potential. In addition, a “superiority delusion” (Musolf, 2012) distorts the subjectivity of both the privileged and the marginalized. Both represent the privileged as meritorious and the disadvantaged as biologically and/or culturally deficient, justifying domination and conquest. The myth of a just world of equal opportunity that advances lives of achieved status prevails. No social forces constrain autonomous agents. Many social scientists concentrate on the denial of human rights, due process, the right to vote, prison incarceration rates, childhood slave labor, and sex trafficking. They work to prevent such crimes and the dispossession of civil rights and liberties many times perpetrated in brutality, terror, and murder. A particular group of social scientists, sociologists, address structures of domination. They scrutinize how race, class, and gender influence the distribution of society’s valued resources a concern of distributive justice. Freeman (2016, p. 33), for example, offers a recent statement on this social problem: [T]he role of principles of distributive justice is to eliminate the socially destructive effects of gross economic inequalities, mitigate the effects of misfortune, guarantee all citizens the worth of their liberties, and insure individuals’ economic independence. Market distributions and large gifts and bequests of wealth are often the product of pure luck or other fortuitous

Oppression and Resistance: A Structure-and-Agency Perspective

3

events such as family lineage, rather than individuals’ efforts or comparable productive contributions.

Distributive justice ignites normative and metanormative debates that are irreconcilable. Some social scientists encourage stratification, hierarchy, democratic elitism, and capital accumulation justified by laissez-faire and neoliberal economic perspectives. They do so by advancing policy that socially reproduces inequities. Inequities alienate social relations, extinguish solidarity, ground exploitation, and precipitate crime and violence. That is why sociologists seek to oppose oppression,1 mitigate misery, and empower agency. Sociologists submit normative arguments rather than solely display dispassionately descriptive metrics. They propose policy to eviscerate inequities from the body politic. Sociologists’ desire for social justice causes many social scientists to criticize sociologists as mongers of envy and class warfare. Sociologists counter that they are concerned with a better life for all the American Dream. I argue that a structure-and-agency perspective presents the best sociological lens to comprehend oppression and resistance. In order to develop that perspective, I first need to clarify my meaning of structure, agency, and the interaction between the two.

STRUCTURE Structure influences social action, and it refers to patterned social relations, rules, and resources. The social relations of production exemplify all three. Michael Schwalbe (2008) demonstrates that with the rise of legal-rational authority and bureaucracy “rule makers, rule interpreters, and rule enforcers” dominate social life. Capital financial, social, cultural, human, and symbolic comprises resources. Structure also refers to the innumerable social facts external to the individual and over which the individual does not have much control (Musolf, 2003). Race, class, sex, ideology, institutions, division of labor, organizations, hierarchy, groups, geographical location, period of history, mode of production, generational cohort, family, culture, norms, and roles characterize social facts. In general, structure influences social arrangements, social relations, and social practices that exert enormous power and constraint over our lives. Structure organizes social positions hierarchically in all institutions so that power emanates from those who control the means of administration and violence to make and enforce policy. Policy constrains everyone. Policy makers, interpreters, and enforcers, whether corporate, legislative, judicial, executive, ecclesiastical, or royal, control rules and resources that shape social relations and can devastate lives.

4

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF

AGENCY Agency engenders humans’ ability to define or interpret a situation and act based on that definition. Knowing a person’s interpretation or definition of a situation and/or symbol (subjectivity) leads to an understanding of his or her symbolic and meaningful social action. Understanding human action (behavior with intent and purpose) is the telos of Verstehen interpretive sociology. Sociologists draw on structure and agency to explain persistence and emergence, stability and change, on both the individual and collective levels (Meltzer & Manis, 1992). Emergence, and even chance, possess an ontological status that cannot be accounted for by structure (Manis & Meltzer, 1994). Sociological comprehension requires a concept of agency.

STRUCTURE AND AGENCY Without a concept of structure, the romantic but ultimately meretricious Enlightenment and bourgeois myth of the sovereign and autonomous individual remains unchallenged. It’s a fatal attraction. Macfarlane (1978, p. 5) has argued that individualism is the view that society is constituted of autonomous, equal, units, namely separate individuals, and that such individuals are more important, ultimately, than any larger constituent group. It is reflected in the concept of individual private property, in the political and legal liberty of the individual, in the idea of the individual’s direct communication with God.

The myth of the autonomous individual also incorporates the free-market notion that the individual solely determines his or her successes and failures in social mobility. If that is true, then people (especially in America, where everyone is supposed to have equality of opportunity) are completely to blame for their own failures and must resign themselves to political passivity. Individualism’s beˆte noire is collectivism, epitomized by the Welfare State. Conservatives argue that the Welfare State creates a “culture of dependency” and that social policies for the needy strip workers of the motivation to work. Sociologists retort that conservatives are blind to the effects and consequences of social structure social circumstances, institutions, the normative order, resources, and patterned social relations, especially the social relations of production. Individuals are socially and culturally constructed, a foundational insight made by Marx stated in his Theses on Feuerbach.2 Individualism clouds and cossets our ostensible autonomy with blithe egocentrism, allowing people to think of themselves, as John Lennon once sang, as “so clever and classless and free” when in fact, at times, they have little or no control over social circumstances, events, rules, and resources. Structure can be experienced as centrifugal forces that decenter agency, that spin our world to the edge of madness,

Oppression and Resistance: A Structure-and-Agency Perspective

5

far from the center of family, lovers, friends, and work. Just ask anyone with a diagnosis of cancer. That diagnosis, and the absence of health care and/or the paucity of access to capital as a resource to combat cancer, or the rules specified in one’s health care policy that determine what kind of medication and care one can and cannot receive, will certainly seem as though social forces beyond one’s control have taken over one’s life. Social relations, rules, and resources comprise social structure, but they do not exist independently of human beings. Human beings make, interpret, and enforce rules, including those governing access to resources or capital. Rules and resources circumscribe the type of social relations one can have, especially one’s relations to production. Giddens (1979, p. 69) has stated that resources are “the ‘bases’ or ‘vehicles’ of power … drawn upon by parties to interaction.” If one has the capital to own the means of production and can purchase the labor power of members of the working class, then one is a capitalist. If one does not own the means of production and has nothing to sell but one’s labor power, then one is a worker. Workers’ choices are limited. Yet humans constantly resist and change rules, especially the rules that center on access to resources. Throughout history, class conflict emerges over the rules and resources governing the social relations of production, which, for the working class, are far different today than when Marx was writing on capitalism. The rules that govern the social relations of production are endlessly contested because, as Schwalbe (2008) has described, the game of capitalism is “rigged” as are the rules that construct gender and race relations. Discriminatory rules intentionally deny access to resources or fail to provide opportunities to gain access to resources. Ideologies justify the process and the consequences. Social relations, rules, and resources set the stage for meaningful social action. Social actors act rather than respond passively. A concept of agency explains action and resistance. Without a concept of agency, disembodied and anthropomorphized social forces appear to animate behavior. As W. I. Thomas stated in the Thomas Axiom, things defined as real are real in their consequences. Sociologists who define social forces as though they are real things independent of the reflection and actions of human beings concoct the sociological fallacy of determinism and reification. If individuals believe and act as though they are autonomous and sovereign, then those individuals obscure the effects of structure. Humans’ definitions of the situation and behavior emerge from the experience of structure, whether acknowledged or not. There is no way to remove the impact of patterned social relations, rules, and resources. Structural constraints, whether individuals are aware or unaware of them, do not shelter individuals from their consequences. We encounter structure, as Marx said, an alien force, or as Weber maintained, an iron cage. Yet the power of social forces does not determine individuals. As long as humans are alive and in possession of their consciousness, agency exists. Sullivan’s (1989) ethnographic research on youth crime demonstrates an understanding of structure and agency. Vastly unequal structural arrangements,

6

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF

such as poverty, overcrowded schools, dilapidated infrastructure, lack of jobs, or any legitimate opportunity, have a major impact on juvenile delinquency in inner cities. If, for argument’s sake, 60% of juveniles in City X end up in some type of trouble with the criminal justice system, then sociologists can ask what about the other 40% of youth in the same physical area who are exposed to the identical corrosive structural factors but who did not end up in the criminal justice system? Sullivan (p. 9) answered that question by observing that structures, such as the local community and culture, affect juveniles’ lives. The community and culture curb options, narrow opportunities, and limit resources. Yet juveniles possess consciousness, intentionality, and meaning, in short, agency. Actors define situations and act even though they are surrounded by structure. Actors’ definitions of the situation will emerge in social interaction with others. The community and its values will influence but not determine behavior. Structural constraints besiege young people in fact, all people but juveniles still ‘“choose’ to go to school, to work, and/or to engage in criminal activities …” (p. 9). Material and cultural barriers circumscribe choices but actors define situations and choose behavior. A structure-and-agency perspective emancipates sociology from the false dichotomy of structure versus agency. For example, the structure of capital financial, cultural, and social expands or constricts opportunity and choices, and compounds advantages or disadvantages. An individual’s access to capital from his or her family, school system, and community influences his or her definition of the situation but does not dictate behavior. Individuals choose from available choices; they make their own history even when embedded in wretched circumstances.

FORMS OF OPPRESSION Sociologists’ commitment to progressive values has signaled to the academic community that controversy about value-free sociology has vanished. Many sociologists see themselves as part of a collection of progressive scholar-citizens who espouse values and policies to eradicate structures of domination and establish social justice. Transforming the sociological imagination into policy is an obsession, an obsession reflected in sociologists’ denunciation of the distinct and compounding nature of class exploitation, racism, and sexism. All three illustrate the effects of structure.

Class Exploitation Social scientists try to avoid vague, meandering discourse on the nature of oppression. A pundit’s polemic or a columnist’s philippic may not get to the

Oppression and Resistance: A Structure-and-Agency Perspective

7

heart of the matter. Instead, social scientists favor concrete, measurable, empirical referents. This is not to say that arguments among social scientists do not arise over the measurement and description of oppression. The expropriation of surplus labor from workers in the production process defines class exploitation. Social scientists frequently measure class exploitation3 by the Gini coefficient/ratio/index.4 The distribution of income that results from a structurally disadvantaged position in the production process can also be depicted in percentages such as quintiles, or other calculations and frequency distributions. One common metric reports what percent of national income/wealth the top 1%, the top 1/10th of 1%, or even the top 1/100th of 1% possesses. According to Piketty (2015, p. 26), chronicling the history of class exploitation began with Simon Kuznets’s work in 1953, Shares of Upper Income Groups in Income and Savings. Piketty (p. 26) asserts that the most academically acclaimed scholar to continue this work has been Anthony B. Atkinson, although Piketty himself now garners global attention. Researchers report that class exploitation “has been growing markedly, by every major statistical measure, for some thirty years” (Gardner & Abraham, 2016, p. 1; emphasis in the original). Piketty (2014) marshals massive data and compelling analysis to show that class exploitation expands exponentially in capitalist societies, that capitalism will continue to accelerate the trend because the return on capital outstrips economic growth, and that inherited wealth and the natural processes of capital accumulation chip away at democracy, rousing plutocracies and oligarchies.5 Class exploitation contributes to poverty. Poverty amplifies misery beyond the negation of a life-sustaining income; it multiplies degrading hardships such as hunger and eviction from one’s home. “Hunger is but one face of poverty; discrimination, poor health, vulnerability, insecurity, and a lack of personal and professional development opportunities are among the many other challenges faced by the poor” (The International Forum for Social Development (IFSD) 2006, p. 1). According to Desmond (2016, p. 299), eviction “is a cause, not just a condition of poverty.” Eviction triggers relentless nightmares: “the loss of your possessions, job, home, and access to government aid” (p. 297). Hunger, eviction, and other abject and avoidable human conditions encapsulate disenfranchisement; conditions made avoidable by structural solutions. The United States has piecemeal policies to help the poor, but they are doomed to fail because capitalism, for many workers, is a poverty-making enterprise (Piketty, 2014). Beyond the national landscape, global capital accumulation has exacerbated worldwide misery, leaving sociologists with numerous questions and policy conundrums. How much oppression is bearable by the poor, within any one nation and around the globe, and how much is movement toward social justice tolerable by an international capitalist class who favors economic freedom and capital accumulation? How strong

8

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF

should the social safety net be? How much should policy redistribute income downward? How much does capitalism redistribute income upward, especially in terms of battening on the surplus value of labor power from worldwide industry? Those questions make the issues and debate over inequities irreconcilable. Currently, as is evident by Brexit, the working-class wants a divorce from global capitalism along with a me´salliance marriage to nativism and xenophobia. Sociologists want social policy that expands the general welfare: opportunity, rights, equality, and solidarity. “For conservatives, any degree of inequality is justifiable” (Freeman, 2016, p. 33). However, even many conservatives feel abject over the tsunami of inequalities that now engulf the working class; they also share liberals’ concern with reconstituting solidarity. As R. R. Reno (2015, p. 1), a Catholic conservative, has argued, “The greatest threat we face is an untethered individualism and an atomized society.” Reno believes capitalism has led to the unraveling of the institutional rituals and moral values that have formed the selvage of society. Class exploitation destroys the sentiment of a national “we.” Society without solidarity drifts toward estrangement, hatred, and violence.

Superiority Delusions Class exploitation exacerbates other degradations. An iconic and in-your-face symbol of omnipresent white supremacy has been the Confederate flag that still flies in the South, nowhere more odiously than over the South Carolina capitol. No such flags symbolize or humiliate solely those who suffer class oppression. The flag over the South Carolina capitol was recently brought down after a national outrage over the murder of nine black parishioners at the Emmanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston. Kimberle´ Crenshaw’s now-famous 1989 conceptualization of intersectionality that white supremacy, male supremacy, class exploitation, homophobia, and other socially constructed miseries simultaneously overlap and compound significantly advanced oppression studies. Superiority delusions, such as white supremacy and male supremacy, amplify class subjugation. Poverty affects all who suffer from it, but rape and genital mutilation afflict mostly women. African Americans, particularly those who are not affluent, sustain disproportionate harm and death by police brutality. Each minority group, particularly minority women, suffer unique and compound affliction. The severity of oppression varies, and many people who are privileged as members of one group are discriminated against as members of other groups. Of all of the varieties of human-made trauma, racism and sexism especially intensify class exploitation.

Oppression and Resistance: A Structure-and-Agency Perspective

9

White Supremacy American culture racializes every social problem. White supremacy, unprosecuted and unrelieved, circumscribes the lived experience of minorities. As an ideology of superiority and inferiority, it both upheld and supplanted slavery. Today, this superiority delusion oppresses all minorities, rich and poor. Although white supremacy has always existed in America, its most virulent forms justified slavery and the genocide of Native Americans. Europe also developed the ideology of white supremacy and had no qualms about genocide in Africa. Isabel Wilkerson (2010, p. 38; emphasis, GRM) has written on how the South rejuvenated white supremacy in America after Reconstruction “creat [ing] a caste system based not on pedigree and title, as in Europe, but solely on race, and which, by law, disallowed any movement of the lowest caste into the mainstream.” That caste system was given intellectual legitimacy by numerous racist social science theorists. It also gained political and legal legitimacy. The post-Reconstruction South institutionalized and the US Supreme Court constitutionalized Jim Crow laws. Even the Great Migration, when from World War I to the 1970s six million black refugees sought asylum in their own country by migrating from the Jim Crow South to the ostensibly less racist North, failed as a strategy to escape persecution. White supremacy still triggers discrimination and death. Whether an African-American is 14-year-old Emmett Till, a teenager from Chicago who travelled to the South in 1955 to visit relatives and was tortured to death or is an even younger 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a preteen from Cleveland who was shot dead by a white police officer in 2014, geography and time change nothing (Wilkerson, 2016). Just as countless black men and boys were lynched in the South, so is there a growing list of unarmed black men and boys being shot by police all over the country today. Wilkerson (2016) discloses that before the Great Migration “a black person was lynched on average every four days” and that today “an African-American is killed by a white police officer roughly every three and a half days.” It does not matter what your social status is, or what you achieve, you are still subject to violence and death solely because of the color of your skin. Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015, p. 9) has eloquently written to his son in Between the World and Me about the relationship between race, police brutality, and murder: And you now know, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction springs from a foolish policy. Sell cigarettes without the proper authority and your body can be destroyed. Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed. Turn into a dark stairwell and your body can be destroyed. The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.

10

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations.

According to Michelle Alexander (2012), this institutional violence against African Americans in the criminal justice system precipitated mass incarceration and the social reproduction of racial caste. Lower-class whites, who themselves suffer from poverty, especially champion white supremacy. Male supremacy intensifies class exploitation and white supremacy. All these entanglements signify that intersectional solutions are needed.

Male Supremacy Androcentric social structure and culture envelops everyday life. Just as poor minority men and women experience atrocities that do not afflict poor white men, oppressions such as honor killing, enforced wearing of burqa, purdah, and witch burning dehumanize and kill women exclusively. Intersectionality compounds brutality. Kristof and WuDunn’s (2010) research on culturally sanctioned murder and rape demonstrate a global war on women. Thousands of honor killings are committed every year in the Muslim world, especially Pakistan, where “many of the executions are disguised as accidents or suicides” (p. 82). Saba Imtiaz (2016) commends the risk taken by filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy who won the 2016 Oscar for best documentary short, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which “depicts the survivor of an attempted honor killing who was forced to publicly forgive her family for trying to murder her.” The misogynous mentality that fueled this public humiliation typifies Pakistani “right-wing parties [that] have protested a new law enacted by legislators in Punjab Province that offers protection to victims of domestic violence” (Imtiaz, 2016). A legislator in Punjab Province, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, “called the law a ‘humiliation of husbands’” and a cleric, Mufti Muhammad Naeem, condemned Obaid-Chinoy as “‘an obscene woman’” (Imtiaz, 2016). Rape as a weapon of war affects untold numbers of women. “[Honor] rapes [are] intended to disgrace the victim or demean her clan. In recent genocides, rape has been used systematically to terrorize certain ethnic groups. Mass rape is as effective as slaughtering people, yet it doesn’t leave corpses that lead to human rights prosecutions” (Kristof & WuDunn, 2010, p. 83). The Janjaweed militias in Darfur and all of the various Congolese militias in the Congo daily gang-rape young girls. ISIS uses religious ideology to justify its capture, rape, enslavement, and selling of women. In the United States, rape is daily committed, notably on college campuses. A recent documentary, The Hunting Ground, for example, makes painfully evident the fact that many college presidents preside over administrations with a dismal record of arresting rapists and prosecuting rape.

Oppression and Resistance: A Structure-and-Agency Perspective

11

Agency needs to complement the above discussion of structures of domination. Epistemological imperialism and emancipation best conceptualize the dialectical process of subjectivity struggle.

Epistemological Imperialism Period of history, mode of production, and intersecting social locations root epistemological standpoints. From the Marxist concept of false consciousness to W. E. B. DuBois’s notion of double consciousness, many sociologists argue that a form of oppression exists in the promulgation of ruling-class ideas intended to malign the self-esteem, identity, motivation, and morale of the marginalized. Such ideas embody ideology, part of a subtle and intricate process of epistemological imperialism (Musolf, 2012) that helps to construct, justify, and socially reproduce inequitable institutions and social arrangements. The insidiousness of ideology destroys empathy, prevents people from acknowledging the humanity of others, and blames victims for not evoking a humane and humanitarian response in us. Ideologies of inferiority, which serve as elaborate justifications for inequality, comprise a major component of epistemological imperialism. White male supremacy typifies one such ideology. The ruling class regards ideology as valuable merchandise for its efficacy in socially reproducing subjugation. Capitalists reward handsomely those who manufacture ideology. Herbert Spencer was well-paid, for example, during his American tour that touted social Darwinism. Some beneficiaries of white privilege who lack empathy, social consciousness, or a sociological understanding of the world dehumanize those they dominate and then sardonically represent the dominated as dehumanized in order to justify inequality. The dominated unwittingly internalize false negative representations just as the privileged claim false positive ones. Individuals are socially constructed by role-taking from the perspectives of others the insight embedded in Cooley’s notion of the looking-glass self. The dominated who role-take from and acquiesce to the perspective of the ruling class validate the ruling class’ superiority delusion and simultaneously form an inferiority delusion in their own mind, creating a false consciousness. If the subjugated submit to the perspective of the ruling class, if they use the language, concepts, epistemology, and ontology of their oppressors, then they will engage in behavior that socially reproduces their exploitation. Oppressors are not only unreliable narrators but also narrators who intend to manufacture consent and passivity, legitimize domination, and mischaracterize and misrepresent the dominated. From the arsenal of the culture industry, the ruling class invariably selects ideologies of inferiority as their social weapon of choice. Qualitative studies show that epistemological imperialism embodies subjects who are obedient to capitalist culture; however, other qualitative research identifies individuals and

12

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF

groups who, through subjectivity struggle, achieve critical consciousness and accomplish resistance (Musolf, 2012).

EPISTEMOLOGICAL EMANCIPATION AND RESISTANCE Narrative can be a social weapon. The first act of resistance is to tell one’s own story and the story of others in similar social circumstances epistemological emancipation (Musolf, 2012). Revolutions are born in solidarity, using language, concepts, epistemology, and ontology in concert with others who share the same pain and desires. Before one can fight one’s way out of oppression one has to think one’s way out of it consciousness-raising that leads to identity transformation. Marx famously stated that, in a world of oppression, the oppressed are not allowed to represent themselves; they must be represented. Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015, p. 120) has eloquently applied that insight to race. “I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” Oppressors have not only rigged rules and deprived the oppressed of resources but they also have destroyed the motivation of the oppressed to excel and achieve in activities that express what Marx called qualities inherent in species-being artistic qualities and practices that empower a process of creative labor. Seymour (2006, p. 304) argues that resistance requires transcending or transgressing epistemological imperialism, “ongoing systems of domination and subordination that shape people’s cultural beliefs and practices so that they become complicit in their own subordination.” Overcoming epistemological imperialism, especially when, as Marx famously stated, the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of society, is not easy. Agency requires critical consciousness, the ability to define the situation so as to unmask ideology, especially the ideologies of inferiority that afflict the disadvantaged. Seymour (p. 304; emphasis in the original) calls for increased attention to subjectivity and agency so that social theorists “address the fundamental issue of how individuals … are motivated to act in given ways that are … contrary to dominant powers and beliefs.” The meaning of resistance and the motivation to resist emerge through social interaction among the oppressed. Those who develop a counterhegemonic definition of the situation begin to craft critical consciousness and the possibility of a manifesto. Such a manifesto inaugurates an alternative epistemology and ontology to the ruling ideas of society. Manifestos call for foundational change in the rules and resources circumscribing social relations. The Manifesto of the Communist Party and Declaration of Sentiments are paragons. Social theory associated with feminism, black feminist thought, Critical Race Theory, Afrocentrism, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and the emerging discourses of many other oppressed groups comprise other examples.

Oppression and Resistance: A Structure-and-Agency Perspective

13

One’s conviction that one can succeed in spite of ideologies of inferiority and traumatizing structural disadvantages exemplifies epistemological emancipation and resistance. It begins with agency. Agency redefines the possibilities for self and society, and reconstructs the self as a meaning maker. Kurt Vonnegut wrote that “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” We can also become what we intend to be and bring about the society we desire. Agency inspires actors to define selves as incompatible with ruling-class representations, and to envision a more socially just society. Actors mischaracterized as essentialist and society enshrined as natural, inevitable, god-given and unchangeable, reproduce regimes. Agency grounds transformations in identity and subjectivity, resulting in epistemological emancipation. Selves who accomplish linguistic resistance may go on to engage in collective action, building equitable social worlds. Sonia Sotomayor, the US Supreme Court Justice, for example, has lived a life that signifies epistemological emancipation and resistance. She grew up in poverty in an area ridden with gang violence, bad schools, and a host of other damaging structural factors. Despite those conditions, she achieved spectacular academic and career success because she had a mother who defined the situation as one in which her daughter was going to study and cultivate her human capital. Her mother’s hard work helped Sotomayor unmask the ideologies of the ruling class and white male supremacy and deconstruct the mythology that being poor, a minority, and a female constitute an indefeasible status of inferiority. Agency and cultural capital made a colossal difference in Sotomayor’s life. Sotomayor’s agency to resist ideologies of inferiority, and the social consequences of doing so, contrasts sharply with the lives of working-class kids who are dupes of ideology. Ostensibly deviant kids, inculcated with narratives of inferiority and an inability to achieve, ironically (and with false consciousness), define resistance as the ability to stay ignorant or define revolt as merely a matter of style (Willis, 1977; Hebdige, 1979). Both Alonso Salazar’s study, Born to Die in Medellin (1990), and Gwendolyn Brooks’s famous poem, “We Real Cool,” depict that mentality. The kids are cool, but they die soon. Capitalists need working-class children to repopulate their factories. Repudiating education, recalcitrants end up working as appendages to the machine, bamboozled and exploited by the authority they despised. Supportive structures such as social and cultural capital and the cultivation of agency motivate people to transform their lives, culture, and society. Resistance achieves social justice, the telos of many sociologists.

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND TRANSFORMATION Bryan Stevenson states that “[t]he opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice” (quoted in Conover, 2014). Social justice inheres in

14

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF

the Preamble to the US Constitution by advancing principles that expand the “general welfare;” it resonates in Marx’s advocacy of a society devoted to eliminating alienation and developing the potential qualities inherent in species-being. It animates sociology and its emergence as a social science (IFSD, 2006, p. 12). Failure to achieve social justice worries sociologists. “From the comprehensive global perspective shaped by the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, neglect of the pursuit of social justice in all its dimensions translates into de facto acceptance of a future marred by violence, repression and chaos” (IFSD, 2006, p. 6). Societies that ignore inequalities and inequities disenfranchise actors of human rights (2006 p. 8). As is shown in those documents, and the IFSD’s 2006 report, Social Justice in an Open World, social justice traditionally extends to distributive justice. Currently, intersectionality predominates the discussion. History illustrates transformative resistance: Chartism, unionism, civil rights, feminism, gay liberation, liberation theology, and many other successes. Yet, resistance is politically risky business and social justice is uncertain. Income inequality perpetually increases. At the same time, however, human rights continue to expand. In addition to the traditional attention on civil and political rights, limited attempts to extend rights to economic, social, and cultural inequities exist. The IFSD reports, however, that for most citizens of the world that latter set of rights “has yet to find general acceptance and to be translated into effective policies” (2006, p. 38). The 2015 US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that made same-sex marriage a constitutional right signifies social justice’s most celebrated moment of recent years. The case also illustrates the precarious nature of that transformation. The decision dealt a severe legal blow to heteronormativity and patriarchy. Unfortunately, the struggle for same-sex marriage equality and, more broadly, LGBTQ rights, continues. Religious opponents to same-sex marriage claim “that people with sincere religious objections to it should not be compelled to participate in any acts that are said to validate or celebrate” it (Cole, 2015, p. 34). That objection, if granted, would drive discriminatory policy against gays and lesbians. The objection is convoluted since religion is not “targeted” or “disfavored” by such a law; consequentially, it suffers no discrimination. As Cole (p. 34) states, “[t]he state violates no constitutionally protected religious liberty by imposing laws of general applicability such as antidiscrimination mandates on the religious and non-religious alike.” Religious objectors argue that because many businesses serve the gay and lesbian community objectors’ denial of services causes no harm. However, equal treatment under the law requires all businesses and institutions to refrain from discrimination. Religious objectors assert that granting them the right to refuse service to gays and lesbians protects their religious freedom. Transformation necessitates vigilance.

Oppression and Resistance: A Structure-and-Agency Perspective

15

CONCLUSION A structure-and-agency perspective provides an understanding of oppression and resistance. Institutions rig the rules reproducing inequality. They bar the marginalized access to various forms of capital, eradicating opportunity. Discrimination diminishes the opportunity the poor have to health, education, and well-being. Forms of subjugation also inhere in epistemological imperialism. The ruling class deploys every conceivable kind of indoctrination and socialization so that the disadvantaged internalize representations of themselves as inferior, blame themselves for their own failure, and resign themselves to lives of alienation, passivity, and nihilism. Individualism repudiates structures of domination. It advances, instead, the ideology that everyone possesses equality of opportunity to achieve the potential qualities inherent in species-being. Robbed of solidarity and agency, the oppressed sink into a post-apocalyptic world: no solace, no creative labor, no jouissance, no love. The disenfranchised, denied everything, feel that their lives signify nothing. Stripped of meaning and purpose, the subjugated succumb to anomie and alienation, to structurally induced joylessness, to despair. Depression, disaffection, and detachment nurture thinking disorders. Unconnected and unmoored, the disengaged withdraw inward, or present a countenance of blank stares. The insane few, vulnerable to demagoguery, resort to violence or mass murder. Some socially deprived, however, resist through meaning making. Refusing to be victims of ideologies of inferiority, the defiant learn to realize their potential, strive to change social arrangements, and protest to build social justice. Critical consciousness and collective action pump, like ventricles, the body politic with transformation. However, a society in which only a gifted few or the fortunate who craft a critical consciousness excel and attain relative mobility, dooms that society to increasing misery. The American Dream promises (mythologizes) that origins do not determine destination.6 Social justice, for everyone’s sanity and safety, requires abolishing inequities and ruling-class ideology. Inattention to inequality forsakes lives to linger in trauma and tragedy. The disenfranchised need capital structure to increase their opportunity. They require agency to acquire critical consciousness. In the struggle to eliminate inequities, structure-centric social policy must take precedence.7 Equality is not attainable solely by agency-centric social change, even though radicalizing one’s definition of the situation, stripping away epistemological imperialism, and developing a discursive manifesto can help groups transform self and society.8 Oppressive social arrangements create dysfunctional cultures. Impaired cultures influence actors to make unhealthy choices. For example, cultures that detest learning will not socialize children who can or care to compete and achieve. Such casualties of culture will not be just “academically adrift” but likely to sink in a regatta of global competition. Not only behavior that solidifies a “learning to labor” mentality but also choices that lead to violence,

16

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF

drugs, and suicide afflict countless, young and old. Repression will not improve the situation. Working on transforming values, attitudes, motivation, and morale at the individual level, while achievable, is precarious, far less effective, systemic, and radical than dismantling social arrangements that cause maladaptive cultures to arise and socially reproduce. Culture, fortunately, is transformable. Social policy that eliminates poverty and oppression possesses the potential to eradicate debilitative cultures and injudicious behavior. Social structure constitutes consciousness and culture. Consciousness and culture change practical activity, meaningful social action, and, eventually, social structure. Structure and agency as well as oppression and resistance dialectically interact. We can and do overcome and transform our selves, our social structure, and our culture.

NOTES 1. Matthew Desmond, after a multiyear ethnography interacting with people who were evicted, writes of his visceral reaction to oppression: “I am frequently asked how I ‘handled’ this research, by which people mean: How did seeing this level of poverty and suffering affect you, personally? …. The honest answer is that the work was heartbreaking and left me depressed for years” (2016, p. 328). 2. I first came across this insight in Gordon Marshall’s definition of Karl Marx in his 1994 edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. 3. Jelani Cobb (2016) suggests using the term “class exploitation” rather than “income inequality.” The latter “phrase lacks rhetorical zing; it’s hard to envision workers on a picket line singing rousing anthems about” it. Income inequality also makes it “possible to think of the condition under discussion as a random social outcome, rather than as the product of deliberate actions taken by specific people.” 4. Sociologists might be unfamiliar with Corrado Gini’s unsavory background as a supporter of fascism. “This is not to say that every expression of conviction issued by [Gini] was fully compatible with the system of thought we will characterize as the ideology of Fascism but is rather a preliminary recognition of the fact that [he] contributed substantial elements to the mature belief system that became the ultimate intellectual charter for the exercise of Fascist authority” (Gregor, 1969: 27). 5. Piketty’s celebrated themes (that inequality is caused by the differences between the return on capital and the return on labor, that those results are political, and that such inequality undermines democracy) have been made before. “As labour has lost ground in relation to capital for the remuneration of the factors of production, the share of capital income in total income has increased, and this capital has been more heavily concentrated in fewer hands rather than more evenly distributed” (IFSD, 2006, p. 32). Therefore, “the position of the ‘haves’ in society has been strengthened by the evolution of tax systems that benefit the owners of capital” (p. 32). 6. Three scholars from different political and disciplinary perspectives argue that the American Dream is long gone: Charles Murray in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (2012, Crown Forum), Robert D. Putnam in Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (2015, Simon and Schuster), and Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014, Belknap Press). Piketty’s argument documents not only a decline in the American Dream but also a loss of analogous dreams of the workingclass everywhere.

Oppression and Resistance: A Structure-and-Agency Perspective

17

7. The next two sentences draw from Musolf (2016), The Astructural Bias Charge: Myth or Reality? Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 46. 8. I have been discussing distributive justice and relative mobility, decreasing the income that goes to the top 1%, the top 1/10th of 1%, the top 1/100th of 1%, and other percentages. Structural changes are also needed to increase absolute mobility. What sociologists have known ever since Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan published The American Occupational Structure in 1963 is that absolute mobility in the United States is almost completely accomplished by transformations in the economy (Lemann, 2015, p. 26).

ACKNOWLEDGMENT Profound gratitude goes to Jill Taft-Kaufman whose thorough critique improved the style and substance of this essay.

REFERENCES Alexander, M. (2012). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York, NY: The New Press. Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the world and me. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau. Cobb, J. (2016). Working-class heroes. The New Yorker, April 25, pp. 33 34. Cole, D. (2015). The angry new frontier: Gay rights vs. religious liberty. The New York Review of Books, 62(8), 34 35. Conover, T. (2014). ‘Just Mercy,’ by Bryan Stevenson. The New York Times, October 17. Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city. New York, NY: Crown. Freeman, S. (2016). The enemies of Roger Scruton. The New York Review of Books, 63(7), 32 34. Gardner, M., & Abraham, D. (2016). Income Inequality. Institute for Policy Studies. Retrieved from http://inequality.org/income-inequality/. Accessed on January 11, 2016 Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Gregor, A. J. (1969). The ideology of fascism. New York, NY: The Free Press. Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: The meaning of style. London: Methuen. Imtiaz, S. (2016). Oscar win shines light on Pakistan efforts to stop ‘Honor Killings’. The New York Times, March 2. Kristof, N. D., & Wudunn, S. (2010). Half the sky: Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide. New York, NY: Viking. Lemann, N. (2015). Unhappy days for America. The New York Review of Books, 62(9), 25 27. Macfarlane, A. (1978). The origins of English individualism. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Manis, J. G., & Meltzer, B. N. (1994). Chance in human affairs. Sociological Theory, 12, 45 56. Meltzer, B. N., & Manis, J. G. (1992). Emergence and human conduct. The Journal of Psychology, 126, 333 342. Musolf, G. R. (2003). Social structure, human agency, and social policy. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 23, 1 12. Musolf, G. R. (2012). The superiority delusion and critical consciousness: The paradox of role-taking refusal in the microfoundations of dehumanization and resistance. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 39, 71 120. Musolf, G. R. (2016). Final assessments. Studies in Symbmolic Interaction, 46, 185 186.

18

GIL RICHARD MUSOLF

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Piketty, T. (2015). A practical vision of a more equal society. The New York Review of Books, 62(11), 26 29. Reno, R. R. (2015). Crisis of Solidarity. Retrieved from http://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/ crisis-of-solidarity Schwalbe, M. (2008). Rigging the game: How inequality is reproduced in everyday life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Seymour, S. (2006). Resistance. Anthropological Theory, 6, 303 321. Sullivan, M. L. (1989). “Getting Paid”: Youth crime and work in the inner city. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. The International Forum for Social Development (2006). Social justice in an open, world: The role of the United Nations. United Nations Document, New York, NY. Wilkerson, I. (2010). The warmth of other suns: The epic story of America’s great migration. New York, NY: Random House. Wilkerson, I. (2016). Emmett Till and Tamir Rice, sons of the Great Migration. The New York Times, February 12. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: ORGANIZATIONAL SECRECY, STIGMA, AND SEX ABUSE WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH James A. Vela-McConnell ABSTRACT This chapter presents an investigation of the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church through the lens of stigmatization for the purpose of elaborating the theory, making it more widely applicable across multiples levels of analysis. Much like individuals, organizations must engage in information management in order to conceal discrediting information that would blemish their reputation. Given the number of people who comprise an organization, such secrecy relies on teamwork in order to contain damaging information. Based on an analysis of investigative journalist accounts of the scandal between 1985 and 2014, I present a typology representing the system of organizational secrecy developed by the Catholic Church. While organizations like the church have more structural resources at their disposal to ensure information control is maintained, their size and the varying levels of commitment to secrecy on the part of individual members of the team ultimately work against them. Keywords: Stigmatization; secrecy; information management; social control; scandal; organizations

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 19 49 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048005

19

20

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

The sex abuse among a minority of Catholic priests and the subsequent coverup by bishops and other members of the church hierarchy highlight what all scandals, by nature, reveal and that is the “dramaturgical dimension of the public sphere” (Adut, 2008, p. 6). It is the highly publicized dimension of such moral transgressions that creates a scandal (Adut, 2005, 2008), bringing the offense to the attention of a widespread audience. Priests were sexually abusing minors over the course of many years and many people knew about it: victims, their immediate families, church officials, and even legal representatives. However, because of concerted efforts to conceal compromising information on the part of church officials, it did not achieve the level of scandal until that secrecy was broken and there was widespread publicity. Some publicity was achieved in 1985 in a story appearing in the National Catholic Reporter (Jenkins, 1995, 1998), though its scope was limited. It was in January of 2002 that the story made national headlines and, until the election of Pope Francis I, it remained a top story in local, national, and international news. While individual priests were stigmatized for their transgressions, so were many church officials for the cover-up; but because scandals provoke public outrage (Jiang et al., 2011), the stigma goes well beyond the offending individuals and applies to the Catholic Church itself. As such, stigmatized organizations interact with their audiences in ways that are parallel to the performances of stigmatized individuals. However, organizations and individuals are quite different in terms of such characteristics as their access to structural resources, and this has implications for their ability to hide discrediting information in both the short and long terms. For this reason, it is important to examine the dynamics of stigmatization, information management, and secrecy as they apply at the organizational level of analysis in order to elaborate upon on Goffman’s (1963) model of stigma. Understanding organizational structure as both the patterning and continuity of interaction among social actors (Giddens, 1979), the following analysis will emphasize the structural elements of the Catholic Church, specifically represented by the clergy, the church leadership, and church policies all of which conspired to exploit the most vulnerable members of the Catholic laity. As such, a culture of clericalism and the Catholic Church’s role as a moral authority coupled with a strong organizational hierarchy allowed it to exert social control over its members and those who served on its behalf through enforced, organizational secrecy; however, the sheer size of the organization and the number of those privy to the secret ultimately worked against the church’s ability to hide discrediting information in the long term despite the immense structural resources available to it.

JUST A FEW “BAD APPLES?” The sex abuse of minors by priests within the Catholic Church dominated news coverage of the church for over a decade beginning in 2002 and is now

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

21

considered a social problem. While sexual abuse by clergy is not limited to the United States (Doyle, Sipe, & Wall, 2006; Krebs, 1998; Sipe, 1998) nor to Catholic priests (Kane, 2006; Shupe, 1995; Zucker, 2005), much of the recent news coverage focuses on this scandal within the context of the Catholic Church alone. As of 2008, 4% of Catholic priests nationwide (a total of 4,392) faced allegations of abuse and 10,667 victims made allegations against a Catholic priest, though an additional 3,000 potential victims did not raise formal complaints with the church. Eighty-one percent of the victims were male and 51% of the victims were between 11 and 14 years of age at the time of the abuse. Of the accused priests, 55.7% had one formal allegation raised against them, while 3.5% had 10 or more formal allegations. Only 3% of accused priests received convictions and 2% were sentenced to prison. This is due in large part to the statute of limitations on accusations of sex abuse. For example, only 10% of victims reported the abuse within one year and 25% reported the abuse within 10 years; the majority of victims reporting sexual abuse came forward 10 or more years later. Instances of sexual abuse by Catholic priests peaked during the 1970s. However, the reporting of abuse peaked between 2000 and 2002 (Terry, 2008; see also Smith, Rengifo, & Vollman, 2008).1 At the same time that clerical sex abuse extends well beyond the Catholic Church, it is also a problem that is not confined to recent decades (Dale & Alpert, 2007; Sipe, 1998). Doyle et al. (2006) review the paper trail of clerical sex abuse within the Catholic Church and identify canonical (church) laws governing the sexual behavior of priests, including the regulation of sexual activity between adult men and young boys, dating as far back as the Council of Elvira held in Spain in 309 CE. Overall, “history shows that in practically every century since the church began, the problem of clerical abuse of minors was not just lurking in the shadows but so open at times that extraordinary means had to be taken to quell it. If there is anything new about the sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy, it is that over the past fifty years a conspiracy of silence has covered it” (2006, p. ix). The first case of clerical sex abuse to produce a scandal since the “conspiracy of silence” was imposed occurred in the Lafayette Diocese in Louisiana in the 1980s and involved a priest by the name of Gilbert Gauthe, who was implicated in acts of sexual abuse with over 100 young boys in four parishes (Dale & Alpert, 2007; Jenkins, 1995; Shupe, 1995). Reporter Jason Berry detailed the story for the National Catholic Reporter in 1985 and revealed that church superiors knew about the sexual abuse for over a decade and had simply moved Gauthe from parish to parish. This story marked the beginning of media coverage on clergy sexual abuse; but it was not until January 2002 that the story achieved the level of international scandal and institutional crisis that continued for over a decade. The investigative staff of The Boston Globe (2002) trying to learn what the Archdiocese of Boston knew about another abusive priest supplied the spark when it successfully gained access to previously sealed personnel records from the Archdiocese.2 It was then revealed that the priest they

22

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

were investigating Father Geoghan had raped and/or fondled 130 children since the 1980s. As in Louisiana, the Archdiocese of Boston knew about the abuse and covered it up, shuttling Geoghan from parish to parish without informing parishioners of his history (2002). It is for this reason that the stigma associated with clerical sexual abuse of minors extends well beyond the individual priests and includes bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and ultimately the Pope and the church itself. Critics argue that the structure of the Catholic Church makes deviant behavior within its ranks possible. Elaborating on this argument (and writing prior to 2002 when secrecy was far more entrenched), Krebs highlights how, “the Church’s international nature, its organizational hierarchy, and its internal polity allow pedophiles to remain anonymous to all but a few within the Church hierarchy and secular society” (1998, p. 16). The complexity of the organizational structure in terms of the network of parishes, dioceses/archdiocese, and provinces also plays a key role. Krebs then builds on the work of sociologist Anson Shupe (1995) and analyzes the sexual abuse by priests within the church as an example of “clergy malfeasance.” Such malfeasance is a version of elite deviance and is understood as “the exploitation and abuse of a religious group’s believers by trusted elites and leaders of that religion” (Shupe, 1998, p. 1). Clergy malfeasance is possible because religious institutions are characterized as (1) hierarchies of unequal power in which (2) those in elite positions (such as priests and bishops) have moral authority over church members who (3) believe in the benevolence and good intentions of the church (which thus has the unique status of a “trusted hierarchy”). These characteristics of religious institutions enhance the opportunity structures available for exploitation and abuse (Shupe, 1995, pp. 27 29). Shupe concludes, saying, “instances of abuse … should not simply be regarded as the occasional outcomes of a few ‘bad apples’ … Rather, the nature of trusted hierarchies systematically provides opportunities and rationales for such deviance and, indeed, makes deviance likely to occur” (1995, p. 30). Shupe goes on to make a number of propositions that emerge from his analysis of religious hierarchical institutions like the Catholic Church. For example, long-term recidivism of abusive behavior is more likely within such an institution though, compared to congregational church structures (in which local congregations are largely autonomous), hierarchical institutions do better at discouraging the normalization of such malfeasance (1995, p. 49). Hierarchical religious structures also facilitate the ability to neutralize or contain the scandal posed by clerical malfeasance. On the other hand, these same institutional structures ultimately allow the church to more effectively address such malfeasance in its internal policies (1995, p. 81). Overall, the extent of the abuse and number of victims clearly point to the fact that this problem of clergy malfeasance was not just about a few “bad apples” but represented the end result of opportunity and organizational structures within the institution of the Catholic Church. In trying to explain this

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

23

scandal, journalists and social researchers alike recognized that the organizational structure of the Catholic Church bore a significant portion of the responsibility. Individual priests and even individual bishops, acting alone, could not possibly create such a widespread problem. For this reason, the stigma extends well beyond the offending individuals, damaging the reputation of the church. As such, this scandal represents an ideal case study for examining the dynamics of organizational secrecy employed to avoid discrediting publicity, the failure of this approach to information management, and the ultimate stigmatization of the church.

STIGMA AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Individuals including the stigmatized endeavor to present their selves in the best possible light and to create the most advantageous image possible. The “self-as-performer,” in seeking to present a positive image, also takes “precautions against embarrassment” (Branaman, 1997, pp. xlvii xlix). For this reason, performance involves, among other techniques, both idealization and misrepresentation. Idealization implies not only presenting one’s self as “living up to ideal standards,” but also “entails a certain amount of concealment of inconsistencies” (1997, p. lii). This is where misrepresentation enters into the performance. For those whose stigma is readily apparent to others, what Goffman (1963) terms the “discredited,” it is very difficult to pass as a “normal.” However, for the discreditable those whose stigma is not obvious and is unknown to others misrepresentation and idealization offer a chance to pass as a non-stigmatized person. The challenge for these individuals is in managing information about themselves information that is discrediting and therefore threatening to their ideal image. Because of the emphasis on secrecy and concealment, the discreditable engage in strategic interaction (Goffman, 1969) with those around them. Misrepresentation and idealization necessarily involve concealing compromising information about one’s self. If the discrediting information comes to light, validation of one’s performance as “normal” and the attendant deference shown is withheld. One will no longer pass as a normal and is stigmatized as a result. Such management of information is central to Goffman’s conceptualization of “expression games.” To sustain a positive self through one’s performances, one must not only possess traits deemed desirable but also have access to structural resources. When an individual loses access to structural resources (Goffman, 1961), it is no longer possible to sustain a positive image and the self changes dramatically as a result. Goffman (1971) discusses such resources in the context of “territories of self,” such as control over one’s personal space and possessional territory. However, in more general terms, structural resources also imply a certain

24

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

amount of status and power. As described by Branaman, structural resources are determined by one’s position within society: “[O]ne’s place in various stratification orders determines where, when, and to what degree one can claim the territorial preserves necessary for sustaining self” (1997, p. lvi). In other words, those with higher social rank have more resources at their disposal resources they may employ to manage and hide discrediting information. Ultimately, failure in concealing discrediting information and the resulting stigmatization “is entirely contingent on access to social, economic, and political power” (Link & Phelan, 2001, p. 367). In the event that discrediting information comes to light, individuals may engage these resources to help challenge or minimize the resulting stigma. In this way, the individual utilizes structural resources to frame the situation in the best possible light (Goffman, 1974). Those with power are better able to frame events in a way that is supportive of their own interests or “combat [negative] interpretive frameworks applied to them” (Branaman, 1997, p. lxxvi). Thus, the stigmatization that arises when discreditable information is revealed may be averted and more easily overcome. Finally, and of most relevance in the case of the organizational secrecy, individuals will often coordinate their performances with others in a team effort. If an entire team is discreditable due to the behavior of one or more group members, the team will then cooperate in order to pass. In other words, a successful performance includes defensive practices, such as “protecting secrets of [the] team” (Branaman, 1997, p. lxvi). In this way, secrecy is an interactive process aimed at the control of information and a “method for handling concealed information” (Bellman, 1981, p. 8). At the same time, in order to maintain the ritual order of society, the members of the audience also cooperate, engaging in practices such as, “voluntarily avoid[ing] the secret areas of the performers,” avoiding the introduction of “contradictions to the performance, and pretend [ing] to ‘not see’ flaws” (Branaman, 1997, p. lxvi). This is particularly true in the case of those with status equal to or higher than those in the audience: in order to avoid embarrassment themselves, the audience unwittingly cooperates with the performer(s), allowing them to pass as “normal” and maintain their discreditable status. Due to its willingness to be fooled in order to preserve the ritual order of society, the audience inadvertently becomes a part of the team. Based on this discussion, it should be apparent that stigmatization is deeply embedded in the presentation of one’s self to others. It plays an important role in the ritual order of society and involves idealization, misinformation, strategic interaction, and expression games among those who are discreditable. In the case of groups and, by implication, organizations, a team will coordinate their performances in such a way as to conceal information to preserve that idealized image. Success or failure in maintaining secrecy is largely determined by access to structural resources, particularly power, wealth, and status. In the event that discreditable information comes to light, such resources allow the stigmatized individual or team to reframe it, effectively challenging or minimizing the damage to their image. While concealment as a coping strategy is well researched

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

25

(Fielden, Chapman, & Cadell, 2011; May, 2000; Nath, 2011; Quinn & Chaudoir, 2009), such information management has not yet been linked with the literature on secrecy and organizational secrecy in particular.

THE STIGMATIZED ORGANIZATION AND THE CONTROL OF DISCREDITING INFORMATION The vast majority of the research into stigmatization and stigma management focuses on the individual level of analysis. This is to be expected given that Goffman’s original formulation focused on how stigmatization occurs as a result of an interactive process between individuals. While it is clear from Branaman’s (1997) work that Goffman was cognizant of macro-level considerations such as one’s position within the larger social structure, his analysis remained at the micro level. The research conducted with this level of analysis is plentiful and robust. However, such a narrow focus on the micro level of analysis prevents much in the way of further development in the conceptual understanding of stigmatization. There is much room for research that moves beyond the purely micro examination of stigmatization and further develops stigma theory by analyzing cases at the meso- and macro levels of analysis. Moreover, such research has the potential to strengthen the theory by expanding its applicability beyond observations of patterned interactions (Vaughan, 1992). Such work is also an important step in addressing the inherently individualistic focus of stigma theory (Link & Phelan, 2001). Building on recent recognition of organizational stigma (see Semadeni, Cannella, Fraser, & Lee, 2008; Wiesenfeld, Wurthmann, & Hambrik, 2008), perhaps the most theoretically driven examination of this topic is offered by Devers et al., who draw distinctions between individual and organizational stigma, noting that they “differ primarily along three dimensions the types of conditions that stigmatize, the prevention and removability of stigma, and the pervasiveness of stigmatizing categories” (2009, p. 158). Devers et al. argue that conduct stigmas are the most common form for organizations. While the prevention or removal of a stigma is difficult for individuals, organizations have a great capacity for information control due to their structural complexity (e.g., multiple substructures, departments, and divisions). Such complexity makes it possible for the organization to credibly distance itself from the offending parts or members. Research and theorizing on stigmatized organizations focuses on multiple levels of analysis, from the dyadic relationship to large organizations to the level of the nation/state. For example, in examining romantic relationships, Conley and Rabinowitz found that it is possible not only for the two individuals to be stigmatized for their behavior but also for the relationship itself to be stigmatized. They argue that “The presence of a dyadic stigma suggests that

26

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

… relationships are perceived as separate entities from individuals” (2009, p. 920) and that “stigma itself can be relationally based” (2009, p. 939). The authors identify three types of stigmatized dyadic relationships: (1) those that are stigmatized as a result of the behavior of one member of the dyad; (2) those that are stigmatized for the joint behavior of the two members involved; and (3) a dyadic relationship that is stigmatized independent of the individuals involved. However, it is possible to speculate about an additional type of relational stigma that applies to organizations larger than two persons. In this case, the organization as a whole may be stigmatized by the behavior of two or more members of the organization, but not necessarily by all or even the majority of members. At the other end of the continuum of organizational size and complexity, Rivera (2008) examined the response of the country of Croatia to stigmatization as it worked to reestablish tourism after the wars of Yugoslav secession. Arguing that Goffman’s work on stigma may be effectively applied to the level of the state when one thinks of the state as a social actor, Rivera points out that there need to be modifications to his original conceptual model. One such modification recognizes that states may respond with strategic self-presentation, what Goffman (1963) would term “passing” or “covering.” Strategic self-presentation “requires control of competing narratives” and can be achieved through “coercive control,” in which the state (or organization) “suppresses alternatives, or monopolizes opportunities for narrative performance” or through “indirect control, when there are no strong competing alternative narratives” (2008, p. 617). Covering through strategic self-presentation is possible in situations in which the state is discreditable in which the stigmatizing behavior is unknown or easily overlooked and/or forgotten by members of the audience. Overall, Rivera’s research highlights the relevance of stigma theory to understanding macro-level cases such as that represented by Croatia, providing empirical evidence for how a state and by implication an organization can be stigmatized and successfully engage in the social control of information as a stigma management technique. Whether one focuses on organizations as small as a dyadic relationship or an entire nation, organizations much like individuals attempting to pass and avoid stigma must work to maintain control of information that, if revealed, could discredit the organization and result in organizational stigma. Thus, secrecy is a standard characteristic of human organizations (Lowry, 1972; Simmel, 1906) and serves a protective function for organizations and individuals alike (Hazelrigg, 1969). As noted by Bail, “secrecy is a powerful yet understudied tool for collective actors or groups who wish to shape shared understandings within society because it facilitates the social construction of reality” (2015, p. 118). In this case, the constructed reality is the ideal image or illusion the organization wishes to maintain in the eyes of the public and its members.

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

27

When examining secrecy within organizations, it is helpful to distinguish between structural secrecy and organizational secrecy. As defined by Vaughan (1996), the former refers to the processes, structures, and transactions that hide relevant information from those within the organization. As such, structural secrecy refers to unintentional consequences of organizational structure and processes, resulting in hiding information from those within the organization. On the other hand, organizational secrecy is intentional and based on the fact that select individuals within the organization possess “special, hidden, and unacknowledged information” (Lowry, 1972, p. 438). Such information grants these select individuals a certain amount of power: what one knows or does not know determines one’s power within the organization. However, because individuals within the organization may use and abuse this information and the power that goes with it (Wilsnack, 1980), organizational secrecy requires “an elaborate social system of rules, rituals, codes and penalties” (Lowry, 1972, p. 438). Groups and organizations will “codify secrecy into rules and procedures to be learned and followed alike by all who have privileged information” (Wilsnack, 1980, p. 472). Even so, not all individuals will follow these rules and procedures, so additional social control processes with well-defined punishments aimed at preventing violations are developed in order to ensure secrecy. Maintaining secrecy requires both social control and strong social bonds. There must be robust incentives among all those “in the know” to maintain the secret (Rigney, 1979). It thus requires teamwork among a network of knowers and social control is used to ensure compliance within that network. Structures and processes are created in order to reduce the likelihood of information leaks. The irony is that such structures and processes are intended to reduce the uncertainty of those “in the know” while maintaining uncertainty among those who must be kept “in the dark” (Redlinger & Johnston, 1980). At the more extreme end of the continuum, organizations with secrets become what Simmel (1906) identifies as “secret societies” characterized by greater reciprocal trust among their members than is true of other organizations (Hazelrigg, 1969). Such secret societies take on the organizational characteristics of a total institution (Goffman, 1961), becoming increasingly hierarchical in order to control a large, subordinate population and isolating itself from the outside world in order to maximize the protective function of secrecy (Hazelrigg, 1969). Overall, this line of research and theorizing into the stigmatized organization and the need for organizations to control discrediting information, while limited, opens the door for much more work in this area. Doing so will address the criticisms raised by Link and Phelan (2001) and Hannem and Bruckert (2012) that the conceptual model of stigmatization is generally micro-sociological in focus and largely ignores both the relational/interactive and larger, structural dynamics involved in stigmatization. After a brief consideration of the research methodology, we will turn to an examination of the clergy sex abuse scandal within Catholic Church as a case study in organizational secrecy and stigmatization.

28

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY The research described here arose out of the desire to expand Goffman’s work on stigmatization beyond the individual level of analysis through a process of theory building and elaboration. Theories are abstractions based on observations or data, but they shouldn’t be limited to specific data. As abstractions, they are intended to apply across a wide array of specific observations. Cohen points out that, unlike specific observations, the best theories “are not tied to any time, place, or historical circumstances” (2003, p. 6). Observations, however, are by necessity tied to specific circumstances. For this reason, “testing [a theory] and application are not distinct activities” (2003, p. 13) and together they strengthen and further develop the theory. Organizational sociologist Diane Vaughan echoes the centrality of “theory development and testing” (1992, p. 181) when she lays out the process of theory elaboration. This is a process of comparative case analysis designed to make theories more generally applicable so that they achieve that ideal of not being tied to specific observations. As such, theory elaboration is one approach to the “theory-building enterprise” that ultimately strengthens social psychological theory (Cohen, 2003, p. 15). As defined by Vaughan (1992), theory elaboration represents a method for refining theory, models, and concepts regarding particular phenomena through a qualitative comparison of cases representing a variety of organizational forms and levels of analysis. Such comparative analyses are done with two purposes in mind. First, it is the goal of the research to achieve greater specificity “in terms of both clarification of theoretical notions and the limits of their applicability” (1992, p. 176). Second, engaging in theory elaboration opens the door to drawing connections between our understanding of behavior “in and of small groups, on the one hand, and complex systems, on the other” (1992, p. 182). Ultimately, the comparative case analysis that is at the heart of theory elaboration opens the door for theoretical insights and discoveries that are not possible when research is limited to a single level of analysis. While stigma theory has not been the focus of formalized theory elaboration, some researchers and theorists have begun to step beyond the exclusive focus on patterned interactions between and among individuals and applied the theory at the organizational level. This work requires a consideration of the structural implications of stigmatization and contexts within which it occurs. As described above, some progress has been made in this regard; however, there is much room for additional work. The sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church provides a rich case study for the purpose of theory elaboration. The scandal has been well documented by journalists around the country and across the globe; such journalistic accounts are one possible source for case comparisons (Vaughan, 1992). The primary sources of data documenting this case for the research presented here comes from the investigative staff of The Boston Globe as published

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

29

in the book Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church (2002) as well as Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse (Doyle et al., 2006). These sources provide rich, descriptive data on the scandal; however, they are necessarily limited in scope given that the scandal in the case of Betrayal extends well beyond the Archdiocese of Boston and, in the case of both sources, continues to develop after their publication. For this reason, these books are the first step in data collection for a much larger research project documenting the unfolding scandal. The data for the larger project supplements these primary sources as needed for additional levels of detail and events occurring after the publication of those books. The additional data is drawn from online news accounts of the scandal from five news sources, three of which are secular and two are Catholic publications. They include The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, National Catholic Reporter, and America: The National Catholic Review. The resulting database includes every story focusing on the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church in these five news sources including all available reader comments between the years 2001 and 2014. These sources have all the strengths of investigative journalism. However, they are still limited in the sense that there is potentially much more information still being withheld by Catholic dioceses throughout the United States and around the world. While the work of these many journalists reveals the secrets of the church, the fact that the story continues to unfold only emphasizes that the church is still an organization with many secrets surrounding sex abuse by its own priests.

SEX ABUSE AND ORGANIZATIONAL SECRECY WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH The organization of the Catholic Church thrived for many years with a strong reputation as a moral authority. It simultaneously maintained what Goffman termed a “discreditable status” by pursuing a policy of organizational secrecy. In the end, however, the church lost control of the secrecy it had maintained for decades as details of more and more cases of sexual abuse by priests came to light. Before long, bishops and the hierarchy of the church were implicated in a widespread cover-up. As a result, the church lost its desired image, moving from a discreditable to a discredited status. Like individuals, all institutions seek to present an idealized image. When the Catholic Church in the United States first began to wrestle with publicity regarding sexual abuse within its own ranks, two priests and an attorney wrote The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible Manner (1985), also known as “The Manual” (Doyle et al., 2006).3 The Manual was written to help bishops

30

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

and was intended to remain confidential. In the report, the authors describe the public relations objective of maintaining the positive image of the church: The first objective … is to maintain, preserve, and seek to enhance the credibility of the church as a Christian community. The church should be presented as a sensitive, caring, and responsible entity that gives unquestioned attention and concern to the victims of misconduct by priests. The church should not be presented as or identified with only the hierarchy or the governing structures of the clergy. (2006, p. 164)

While never adopted by the church, the Manual presents a clear sense of the positive image that the authors and, presumably, members of the church hierarchy would seek to maintain. This positive image, however, has been seriously challenged by the unfolding scandal, clearly representing a case of stigmatization. During the height of the scandal in Boston, 65% of Catholics surveyed thought Cardinal Law of Boston should resign. As a symbol of their disapproval, Catholics also began withholding money from the church. The church soon became the focus of public mockery in everything from editorial cartoons to jokes (shared in venues from small social circles to national television, such as on the Tonight Show) to Halloween costumes (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002). In 2002, a Washington Post poll indicated “fewer than 20% of all Americans and one third of Catholics believed that the church could solve the problem of sexual abuse and restore trust” (White & Terry, 2008, p. 664). Many Catholics became disillusioned with the church. Overall, there was a notable decline in the deference shown to the church by parishioners, prosecutors, judges, politicians, and police (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002). The stigmatization of the Catholic Church arose first as a series of stigmatized acts by individuals within the church: the many incidents of clerical sex abuse themselves; the failure of church officials to remove abusive priests; the tendency to simply reassign such priests without disclosing the past pattern of abusive behavior to the new parishes; and the secrecy of personnel files, often interpreted as a means of sheltering abusive priests and protecting the church at the expense of children. Nevertheless, the fact that these acts are indicative of a much larger social pattern forced much of the public to generalize the stigma beyond the individuals responsible to encompass the church as a whole, its structure and culture. Victim advocacy groups and critics accused the church itself not just individuals within the church of responding with more words and less action. Labels such as “pedophile priests,” “uncomprehending bishops,” “irresponsible hierarchy,” and “secretive church policies” highlight how it is no longer simply the deviant behavior in which these individuals have engaged that is stigmatized, but who they are and the institution they represent that is in question. The very identity of the church has been compromised.

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

31

SECRECY AND THE DISCREDITABLE CHURCH For decades, however, the church successfully avoided scandal by following a policy of secrecy. In other words, it was able to “pass” as a “sensitive, caring, and responsible” institution by withholding information about the pattern of sexual abuse from the general public. Goffman highlights that for the discreditable, the central issue is one of managing information in order to preserve a non-stigmatized status (Goffman, 1963). In this way, institutions have as a primary goal the containment or neutralization of information that threatens the reputation of the organization and secrecy “is an essential element in the damage-control dimension of neutralization” (Shupe, 1995, p. 84; see also Krebs, 1998). Secrecy is actually built into the organizational structure of the Catholic Church. Many people, even non-Catholics know about the secrecy of confession in which the priest may not discuss what is revealed to him, even if it concerns sexual abuse by another priest. What may be less commonly known is the oath of secrecy taken by cardinals: “… never to reveal to anyone whatsoever has been confided to me to keep secret and the revelation of which could cause damage or dishonor to the Holy Church” (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 205). Clearly, the preservation of the reputation of the church through a policy of secrecy is of paramount importance within the upper echelons of the church hierarchy. Papal legislation first imposed secrecy on sexual abuses by priests in 1962. In the decades prior to that time, the church followed a comparatively open process. In 1962, however, a legislative document was sent to all bishops and religious superiors around the world concerning the church’s policies with regard to sexual crimes by clergy.4 [They] were bound by the church’s highest degree of confidentiality the Secret of the Holy Office to maintain total and perpetual secrecy; those who violated this secrecy were automatically excommunicated and the absolution, or lifting, of this excommunication was reserved to the pope himself. Even the accuser and witnesses were obliged to take the oath of secrecy. Although the penalty of automatic excommunication was not attached to the violation of their oath, the official conducting the prosecution could, in individual cases, threaten accusers and witnesses with automatic excommunication for breaking the secret. (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 46)

This degree of secrecy masked the fact that individual, sexually abusive priests fit into a much larger and systemic pattern of abuse and cover-up: “Until recently, a mountain constructed of these small secrets helped dioceses around the country hide the extent of the church’s problem” (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 86). For decades, even those laity involved in individual cases could have no sense of how widespread the abuse and coverup was. As implied by the 1962 policy for dealing with sexual crimes by clergy, the church had to “enlist” the support of many individuals both internal and external to the organization itself in order to maintain its secrets, prevent scandal,

32

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

Table 1.

Typology of Organizational Secrecy. Members

Non-Members

Willing Participation

Complicit Secrecy

Enlisted Secrecy

Unwilling Participation

Coerced Secrecy

Conscripted Secrecy

and preserve its discreditable status. Such a policy, however, is inherently tenuous. So long as even a tiny minority of clergy continued to engage in deviant behavior, the numbers of those who knew about it continued to grow despite becoming a part of the system of secrecy. In addition to the individual priests, bishops, and cardinals, their support staff (many of whom were also priests or nuns), therapists and treatment center personnel, lawyers, judges, jurors (if it reached that point), the victims and their families were all placed in a position of cooperating with the policy of secrecy. All together, these individuals engaged in the teamwork described by Goffman that is used to maintain a desirable image, though some members of the team were unwilling participants in this effort. This system of organizational secrecy may be better understood as a typology in which a distinction is drawn between willing and unwilling participation in the policy of secrecy as well as between those who are internal or external to the organization (see Table 1). Complicit secrecy represents those who are members of the organization who are also willing participants in the policy of secrecy, such as the bishops and support staff who are aware of the allegations made against individual priests. For example, the abusive behavior of Rev. Rosenkranz was allowed to continue even after his monsignor discovered him red-handed: Much like his peers were accustomed to doing, Monsignor William McCarthy pretended not to notice Pollard [a sixteen-year-old altar boy] and Rosenkranz. And very much like the bishops and cardinals who have long known about the unchecked sexual yearnings of some of their priests, McCarthy side-stepped the opportunity to put a stop to it. As the Catholic Church had done for so long, McCarthy turned his back on the victim. “Could you put out the light when you are finished?” Monsignor McCarthy asked nonchalantly as he turned and walked away …. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 78)

Note that the way in which this story is told places the responsibility for the cover-up not only on Monsignor McCarthy but also on the church hierarchy as represented by bishops and cardinals, all of whom were complicit in the system of organizational secrecy. As another example, a woman who was raped by a priest when she was only nine years old describes a situation in which a nun is complicit in the secrecy of the church and encourages her to maintain that secret: The archdiocesan nun who handled her case told her that her molester had left the priesthood to marry in the late 1960s, and now had a family and three children. “You wouldn’t want to report him, because it would hurt his life,” she said she was told. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 86)

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

33

In this way, the nun was complicit in maintaining organizational secrecy. By attempting to convince the victim to maintain secrecy as well, the nun was exerting coercive influence. Coerced secrecy represents a situation in which members of the organization become unwilling participants in the system of secrecy. For example, Tom Blanchette, who was first sexually abused at the age of eleven, tells of when he spoke to Cardinal Law of Boston of the abuse he suffered: At one point, Blanchette said Law asked for permission to pray for him. “He laid his hands on my head for two or three minutes. And then he said this: ‘I bind you by the power of the confessional never to speak about this to anyone else.’ And that just burned me big time …. I didn’t ask him to hear my confession. I went there to inform him”. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 96)5

The authority to bind a lay person by the power of the confessional is “purely fictional and has no basis in any canon law or theology” (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 225). A lay person may choose to divulge what was said in confession. In this way, Cardinal Law was exploiting his status and position in order to intimidate a lay person into maintaining secrecy. Enlisted secrecy represents a situation in which individuals who are not a part of the organization itself such as therapists, judges, and lawyers representing the church become willing participants in maintaining the secret. For example, Between 1992 and 1996, … a group of judges sitting in Boston chose to impound all the records in five lawsuits involving three priests who molested children, because they reasoned that, as one judge put it, “the particulars of the controversy” ought to be kept from the public. In one case, a judge impounded all the records even though the victim testified that he only wanted his identity kept from public view. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 125)

Even the military court system has been influenced by the church to maintain secrecy by avoiding a court martial in the case of Fr. Peeples a military chaplain (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 195). Lawmakers and civic leaders have also been enlisted into this system of secrecy (2006, p. 56). For example, in Massachusetts, lawmakers failed to include clergy in a 1983 law requiring “police officers, teachers, doctors, social workers and other caregivers to report suspected child abuse.” The exemption given to clergy was due in part to pressure from the Catholic Church. “As late as August 2001, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Boston archdiocese, was arguing that any bill that would include clergy as mandatory reporters of abuse would destroy the relationship between priest and parishioner” (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 134). Enlisted secrecy extended to the ranks of therapists who worked to treat sexually abusive priests. In the mid-1990s, Minneapolis psychologist Gary R. Schoener was asked by the Archbishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis to review the records they had received from several clerical treatment centers. He faulted treatment

34

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

centers “for accepting the church’s investigations at face value. They failed to contact victims. They left responsibility for follow-up to the priest’s diocese. In short, the psychiatrists saw the church as their boss” (2002, p. 175). Such enlisted secrecy arises out of the deference shown by those engaging in roles (such as judge, lawmaker, or psychiatrist) outside of the church. As noted by The Boston Globe, many in this position were actually Catholic themselves; but this was certainly not true of all those enlisted into the system of secrecy. Finally, individuals who are not members of the organization may be unwillingly conscripted into the system of organizational secrecy. Lawyers representing the victims and their families would be one case in point, as would any members of a grand jury. And while some police, politicians, judges, prosecutors, and so on were willing participants in the secrecy of the church, many others were not (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002). Overall, in order to maintain such a widespread and ongoing secret, the church had to rely on the complicity of its members and, when it could not, would actually coerce its members to maintain the secret. Outsiders were enlisted or conscripted into the same pattern of information control. This system of organizational secrecy established a team whose coordinated efforts ensured the preservation of the church’s credibility and its reputation as a moral authority. However, the fact that some members of the team were unwilling participants in the system of secrecy ultimately weakened the team effort and its long-term efficacy.

THE ROLE OF THE BISHOP AND CANON LAW This system of secrecy was supported by an organizational culture of handling its own “internal affairs.” While priests must concern themselves with caring for and responding to the needs of their parishioners, symbolically represented as their “flock,” bishops have a flock of their own. While many perceive the Catholic laity within the entire diocese to be the flock of the bishop, the bishop is called to care for the diocese itself as well, including all those who work for the diocese; and so they must also focus on the pastoral care of their priests. Bishop Thomas Daily, who served in Boston in the early 1980s as the first cases involving Father John Geoghan came to the attention of his superiors, was clearly concerned for his care and well-being. To Daily, Geoghan was not a criminal or a rapist he was a lost sheep. “I am a pastor who has to go after the Lord’s sheep and find them and bring them back into the fold and give them the kind of guidance and discipline them in such a way that they will come back,” Daily said. “I’m not a detective”. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 105)

Due to the organizational structure of the church, bishops are removed or socially distant (Vela-McConnell, 1999) from the victims and their behavior

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

35

betrayed a lack of concern, a theme that emerged repeatedly in publications regarding the scandal. And this is true of all members of the church hierarchy, right up to the pope himself. Many have noted the “indifference expressed by the Holy Father toward the child victims … In the closed, sealed, male cultish world of the Vatican, the Pope’s ‘children’ are his priests” (Scheper-Hughes & Devine, 2003, p. 33). In effect, the role of church leaders is one that involves protecting the institutional church, including its reputation (Shupe, 1995). In the case of the sex-abuse scandal, this meant protecting the church through a system of organizational secrecy at the expense of some of its most vulnerable members. This internal focus is supported by canon law, the internal legal system of the church, and one that the church feels takes precedence over any secular legal system. In general, canon law favors reconciliation, which works to the advantage of the institutional church (Shupe, 1995, p. 92; see also Kane, 2006) and so it is in the interests of the church to give it precedence in cases involving child sexual abuse. As an example, child psychologist Carolyn Newberger was among a group of experts in the field of child sexual abuse that Cardinal Law of Boston called together in 1993 for a working lunch. Recounting the meeting later, she said, “The cardinal said canon law had to be considered. We just looked at one another. Whatever we had just told him didn’t seem to be registering,” Newberger said. “Canon law was irrelevant to us. Children were being abused. Sexual predators were being protected. Canon law should have nothing to do with it. But they were determined to keep this problem, and their response to it, within their culture”. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 153)

In a similar vein, Shupe describes the kind of advice that the church’s lawyers typically provided in cases of child sexual abuse: “Some Catholic dioceses have even been advised to fall back on First Amendment freedoms that purportedly exempt them from having to cooperate with civil authorities” (Shupe, 1995, p. 99; see also Burkett & Bruni, 1993, p. 161). And while the church relied on this artificial exemption from the secular legal system, it actually used canon law incorrectly in order to cover up and hide more than canon law allows. [T]he 1917 Code of Canon Law had a canon (Canon 2209) that explicitly forbade anyone using his ecclesiastical office to actively or tacitly condone the commission of a crime. The same legislation is contained in Canon 1329.2 of the 1983 code. Hence, a bishop who knows about the sexual abuse of a minor by a priest is bound by canon law to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the abuse is not repeated. (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 225)

Despite these specific church laws, canon lawyers have published articles suggesting that bishops need not turn over any records regarding allegations of sexual abuse to civil authorities. Moreover, bishops were told that accused priests should have their reputations protected, which included reassigning them without disclosure of their history of abuse. Finally, the bishop was not to be considered culpable for the abusive behavior of priests, even when

36

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

knowing about a priest’s abusive pattern of behavior (Scheper-Hughes & Devine, 2003, p. 17). For years, the church was successful at protecting itself and abusive priests from legal prosecution in this way, though a number of court cases have subsequently removed this privileged status and imposed adherence to the secular legal system.

STRUCTURAL RESOURCES AND THE MAINTENANCE OF SECRECY Asserting the primacy of canon over secular law, even if it is being misinterpreted in a way that works to the advantage of the church, highlights the fact that the church has considerable structural resources it can bring to bear in order to maintain this system of secrecy. As noted by Goffman, access to structural resources is key to maintaining a positive identity (Branaman, 1997; Goffman, 1961, 1971) because they may be employed in order to challenge or minimize discrediting information. In the case of the Catholic Church, the organization was able to draw upon its “access to social, economic, and political power” (Link & Phelan, 2001, p. 367) in order to maintain secrecy for as long as it did. As described above, religious institutions represent hierarchies of unequal power (Shupe, 1995). Such power is held by all the clerical members of the church from priests to bishops to the pope and was brought to bear in order to protect the institution. Abusive priests were able to use this power to their advantage when victimizing children, including when asking for secrecy. Victims accepted advances by a priest with total incomprehension that a priest could do evil. As the abuse developed, many priest perpetrators continued to use their power by convincing their victims to believe that no one would believe them if they disclosed what was happening. (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 230)

As evident in this analysis, such power goes far beyond influence and includes coercion, whether by individual priests or by higher church officials. This assertion of power is perhaps most evident in the confidentiality agreements that victims were required to sign prior to reaching a settlement with the church. [S]cores of victims … signed confidentiality agreements or gag orders as a condition of receiving their settlement payments. In fact virtually all those who went to the church with claims of sexual misconduct by priests received settlements before they filed suit, an arrangement that left no public record of the crime committed by the abusing priests. And the confidentiality agreements signed by the victims said the church could get back its settlement payments if details of the abuse were ever divulged further protection for abusive priests. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 47)

Priests, bishops and their legal representatives did not hesitate to use their power to enforce secrecy and most cases involved settlements without a suit

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

37

ever being filed. For example, it is estimated that, by 1992, the church paid approximately $406.2 million in settlements, legal expenses, and treatment for both clergy and victims (Berry, 1992, pp. 371 373; see also Shupe, 1995). In 1998, the church settled numerous lawsuits in the case of Fr. Geoghan alone totaling as much as $10 million (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 53). In other words, the church was able to draw upon its wealth as another important structural resource and used it to provide “hush money” in countless cases of abuse. In addition to drawing upon its power and wealth, the church was able to rely on (1) its status as a moral authority (Shupe, 1995) and (2) a culture of clericalism to preserve the system of secrecy. As recounted by The Boston Globe, Essex County district attorney Kevin Burke describes the deep-seated deference shown to the church and clergy, saying, “We’re dealing with a medieval organization, an organization that represented authority to my grandparents and other immigrants. It was an organization that was respected because it educated them, it gave them a place in the New World, it gave them an identity” (2002, p. 140). Given the status of the church, unwitting parents welcomed the Roman-collared predators into their families and gave them access to the children, often out of a reflexive Catholic conviction that there could be no better role model for them, especially the boys. In many Catholic homes, children were brought up to idolize priests. “God’s men on Earth,” their parents taught them. (2002, p. 88)

And when parents found out about abusive behavior, they typically went to the priest’s superiors and not the police, highlighting how well socialized they were into the church’s hierarchical structure and to have trust in that organization the “trusted hierarchy” described by Shupe (1995). In this way, the audience in this case, devout members of the laity inadvertently cooperated with the deceptive performance of the church. As a form of social control, the culture of clericalism demanded its members avoid acknowledging any abuse by priests and blinded them to the contradictions and flaws within the organizational performance. This culture functioned to preserve the ritual order within the church in this case, maintaining peace between the laity and the hierarchy. Overall, the church was able to employ its vast structural resources in order to maintain its secret as long as it did. However, the sheer size of the organization and the number of people brought into the system of secrecy ultimately served to undermine the maintenance of its discreditable status. The more people “in the know,” the less control the institutional church had over maintaining the secret; the more people who were enlisted, conscripted, or coerced into secrecy, the more tenuous that system became. Ultimately, the church faced a global scandal that changed its status from discreditable to discredited and the church was stigmatized as a result.

38

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

LOSING CONTROL OF THE SECRET It is inevitable that people will talk. The child coerced into secrecy by his abuser eventually tells his parents or siblings. Parents talk to each other. Friends compare notes. It may start as whispers behind closed doors, but over time the accumulation of whispers becomes a shout. The process leading to the erosion of deference and redefinition of the abusive behavior was one of escalation in terms of (1) victims talking and later publicly coming forward and (2) media coverage of the emerging scandal. Ultimately, the church faced a loss in status evident in the erosion of deference shown to the church as cases of abuse were increasingly redefined as criminal rather than simply sinful. Due to the complexity of maintaining organizational secrecy over an extended period of time, word began to spread regarding the abusive behavior, though this was initially in hushed tones within the course of everyday conversation. For example, Patrick McSorley was abused by Fr. Geoghan at the age of 12, two years after Cardinal Law of Boston knew of Geoghan’s history and reassigned him to another parish. Twelve years later, and only after his sister happened to bring up another case, did he reveal the abuse to others for the first time: McSorley made the connection between his depression and his experience with Geoghan during a 1999 dinner with his girlfriend, his sister, and her husband. During the dinner, his sister mentioned that a priest she had known in parochial school was being sued for molesting boys. “Things started to click right then, when she mentioned Father Geoghan,” McSorley said. “I think I got up for a minute and had to go outside and get a breath of fresh air.” When he returned to the table, he told the others what Geoghan had done to him. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 83)

It was the fact that news was traveling by word of mouth that prompted McSorley to make the connection between the abuse he suffered and his ongoing battle with depression. Once he made the connection, he then told his story and added to the emerging discourse regarding incidents of clerical abuse. Tom Blanchette, whose story of having a conversation with Cardinal Law “bound by the power of the confessional” was described above, first revealed the abuse he suffered at the hands of Fr. Birmingham as a result of a conversation with his friends, who had all suffered similar abuse: [I]n 1971, when home from the army, he was tossing back fifty-cent beers with some old buddies when Birmingham’s name came up. “He queered me,” one of Blanchett’s boyhood friends declared. Blanchette was stunned. He told his friends that he too had been assaulted by Birmingham. And then, one by one, every young man at the table described abuse at the hands of their former parish priest. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 93)

That very evening, he called a meeting with his family and revealed what had happened to them. During the family meeting, four of his brothers revealed that they had been abused by Birmingham as well. It was in conversations like these and that the “word got out,” spreading from there and further contributing to the erosion of organizational secrecy.

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

39

When the case of Father Gauthe of Louisiana first appeared in print in a special issue of the National Catholic Reporter in 1985 (Jenkins, 1995, 1998), the stage was set; but it would take more than 15 years of news coverage before the scandal broke within the secular press and reached a national and international audience. As described by Doyle, Sipe, and Wall, it was with this case that evidence that a bishop had prior knowledge of sexual impropriety by a priest escaped the secret system and entered the public domain. Prior to 1985, there had been criminal prosecutions and lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct with minors by priests and religious, but evidence of prior knowledge by their superiors did not leave that secret system. (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 76)

Even at this point, the mainstream news media was reluctant to expose clergy malfeasance. In 1992, the Father Porter case came to light in Boston and received more attention. “Then for the first time, other victims of abuse by priests, realizing they were not alone, came forward to discuss publicly their own experiences” (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 77). Not surprisingly, the Catholic Church in the United States tried to resist mounting pressure and maintain the status quo of secrecy in order to avoid more embarrassment. Boston became the focal point of the emerging scandal after The Boston Globe challenged a judge’s confidentiality order in the Geoghan case and successfully forced the Archdiocese to unseal the relevant documents. On December 17, 2001, Wilson D. Rogers Jr., the cardinal’s lawyer, sent the Globe a letter threatening to seek legal sanctions against the newspaper and its law firm if the Globe published anything gleaned from confidential records in the suits. He warned that he would seek court-imposed sanctions if reporters even asked questions of clergy involved in the case. (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. ix)

The files revealed the fact that the Archdiocese had known about Geoghan’s abusive behavior for decades. A tipping point was reached with the January 2002 disclosures regarding this case, unleashing a flood of victims telling their stories and subsequent media coverage. What had been a gradual escalation of talk among friends and family members reached the level of a public scandal, unleashing more than a decade of intense media coverage. The inevitable talk among victims and their families and later, their publicly coming forward coupled with increasing news coverage, became mutually reinforcing, resulting in an increasingly stigmatizing escalation in negative public opinion that ultimately resulted in scandal. The church that kept the secret for decades transitioned from a discreditable to a discredited status and in the process lost the deference that its members, the public, and the legal system showed it. “As the facts of sexual abuse by clergy unfolded in the media and in the courts, trust and respect for bishops eroded and the traditional acceptance of the status of the episcopacy within the church faltered” (Doyle et al., 2006, p. 286). The church and the church hierarchy in particular lost the “trust and

40

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

respect” of the people. The Boston Globe noted that this was particularly notable among those in positions of authority and able to take action: The deference that politicians, police, and prosecutors showed the Catholic Church (to which most of them belonged) mirrored a deference shown in the wider society. But the extent of the sexual abuse that spilled out after the Geoghan case, especially the Church’s efforts to buy the silence of the victims, shook to the core even the most devout Catholics in law enforcement and politics. A culture of deference that had taken more than a century to evolve seemed to erode in a matter of weeks. (2002, p. 120)

As noted by Goffman (1967), the granting or withholding of deference reflects one’s status vis a vis others and reinforces the ritual order of society. When deference is withheld, one’s performance as “normal” or “non-stigmatized” is invalidated (Goffman, 1963). Withholding deference signaled both the stigmatization of and the loss in status faced by the Catholic Church. Withholding deference meant the loss in the church’s power to define the situation in its own favor. For many years, the church framed abusive priests as simply “lost sheep,” sinful persons or sick persons needing treatment. Such a position allowed the church to avoid any questioning of the structural dimensions of the problem. But with the revelation that the problem involved the hierarchy itself and not just individual priests, it was no longer possible to prevent others from raising questions about the church structure and policies. Authorities outside the church now had the power to assert a different definition of the situation, one that highlighted the fact that abusive priests were criminals and rapists and that the church itself was criminal in the coverup of these abuses. For example, in May of 2002, the acting governor of Massachusetts signed a bill “requiring clergy to report any suspected cases of child abuse” (The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, 2002, p. 134), thus closing the gap politicians had left in the legal code at a time when they showed deference to the church. In April of 2011, a federal judge in Oregon opened the door to sue the Vatican (Hagerty, 2011a). In October of that same year, a grand jury indicted the bishop of Kansas City for his role in covering up the sex abuse, the first indictment of its kind in the scandal (Hagerty, 2011b). Less than a year later, a monsignor in Philadelphia was found guilty of endangerment in the cover-up of abuse and later sentenced to three to six years in prison (Peralta, 2012a, 2012b). Clearly, the church had lost its power to define the situation in a way that worked to its own benefit and outside authorities began to exert their newfound power.

RUMORS AND EMPOWERMENT: A DISCUSSION OF ORGANIZATIONAL SECRECY AND STIGMA Simmel’s work on secret societies emphasized the role of “positive” or “rewarding” secrets (Hazelrigg, 1969) rather than punishing or damning secrets that

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

41

can result in stigmatization. While the Catholic Church is not a “secret society” in the sense described by Simmel (1906), it is a society with secrets. In this case, these secrets served a protective function for the church in terms of preserving its reputation. That reputation was not the secret. In fact, quite the opposite: the church wanted that positive reputation widely known and accepted. Instead, secrecy was used to maintain that positive reputation by protecting the organization from a damning secret. As described in Goffman’s work on impression management and stigma, the church much like an individual sought to present an idealized image as a credible and strong moral leader to the public, consisting of both the faithful within the church and the larger public outside of the church. When confronted with the sexually abusive behavior of individual priests, authorities within the church handled the problem internally, often requiring offending priests to undergo therapeutic treatment and later reassigning them to new parish positions without revealing their pattern of abusive behavior, placing even more children in danger of sexual abuse. This process was one of information management, misrepresentation, and secrecy: employing strategic interaction to control information that would jeopardize the credibility and reputation of the church and prevent its subsequent stigmatization. The end result was to preserve a system in which the most vulnerable were subject to ongoing sexual abuse. Ultimately, they and their families were threatened with excommunication if they revealed this secret to others. One can imagine this process unfolding in a decision sequence much like that described by Vaughan (1996) in her description of the factors contributing to structural secrecy.6 Vaughan notes that the first decision made in response to a given situation in this case, an instance of sexual abuse by a priest establishes a precedent that subsequent decisions emulate. That first decision is evaluated in terms of its outcomes and, once validated, there is increasing commitment to this line of action over time. The cumulative effect of such decision sequences is to constrain decision-makers from altering the established course of action. By implication it is apparent that, in the early history of handling sex abuse cases, a policy of secrecy worked in terms of preserving the reputation of the church setting a precedent and church leaders became increasingly committed to that course of action as more cases of sexual abuse came to their attention. Thus, the “use of secrecy enhances the continuation of prevailing policy with minimum criticism” (Lowry, 1972, p. 449). The system of sexual abuse was effectively preserved and perpetuated as a result of the policy of secrecy within the Catholic Church. In this way, the strategic interaction employed by the church ultimately represents a form of social oppression. While Goffman’s work on managing information through strategic interaction assumes a sympathetic understanding of the individual working valiantly to cope with the discrediting impact of stigma, this analysis illuminates the oppressive potential of strategic interaction when employed by the powerful in pursuit of self or team interest at the expense of others.

42

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

While policies of secrecy may become indispensable for an organization, the literature on organizational secrecy repeatedly emphasizes the point that such systems “contain the seeds of their own destruction” (Lowry, 1972, p. 437; Rigney, 1979; Wilsnack, 1980). In the first place, there is a tendency for a policy of secrecy to expand illogically. As observed by Wilsnack (1980), it is easier for the use of secrecy to expand than to contract. As a result, information control efforts themselves tend to get out of control. In the case of the Catholic Church, the pursuit of secrecy ultimately required not only complicit secrecy within their own leadership, but also the enlisted and conscripted secrecy of non-church members and the coerced secrecy of their own members through the use of confidentiality agreements and the threat of excommunication. The complicit and coerced secrecy of unwilling participants highlights a second problem with such efforts. Information control processes are inherently unstable, have a tendency to break down (Wilsnack, 1980), and ultimately function to undermine themselves (Lowry, 1972). When there is more interaction involving secrets, there are more opportunities to both reveal and conceal them (Redlinger & Johnston, 1980). Given the value placed on concealed information, “secrecy may encourage its own violation” (Wilsnack, 1980, p. 473). Rumors are a case in point, being endemic to a context in which secrecy plays an important role. Lowry (1972) observes that such rumors may be used by the organization as a form of social control; but what about rumors that undermine the social control of the organization? In the case of the Catholic Church, the spread of rumors and eventual public revelation of previously secret information robbed the organization of its power to define its own reputation and transferred that power to or empowered those conscripted and coerced into secrecy and ultimately those outside of the secrecy system entirely, such as the investigative staff of The Boston Globe and the media in general. As noted, effective information control and secrecy requires teamwork. However, such a team “is only as strong as its weakest member” (Rigney, 1979, p. 52). The mistake made by authorities within the Catholic Church was the assumption that everyone privy to the secret was on the same team. Those complicit in the secret the abusive priests, their bishops, etc. were the core of this team. Those enlisted from the outside, such as representatives of the criminal justice system, were also willing participants. In contrast, those who were unwilling participants in the policy of secrecy conscripted and coerced into participation were far less committed to the teamwork required to maintain the secret. Rigney observes that “the mechanics of secrecy are all the more complex as the numbers of insiders grows larger, for it is axiomatic that, other things equal, the probability of disclosure increases with every increase in the number of secret sharers” (Rigney, 1979, p. 52). This was certainly the case with the Catholic Church and is especially true of those less committed to the team effort to maintain secrecy. With each new instance of sexual abuse by priests brought to the attention of the church hierarchy, the number of those

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

43

conscripted and coerced into the secret grew and, despite the confidentiality agreements they may have signed, they still spoke to each other, their families and friends, even if in whispers and through rumors. Eventually, these rumors reached the ears of those willing to investigate and who refused to uphold the system of secrecy. In this way, the exposure of organizational secrets provided those less committed to the team effort and those outside the system altogether with the opportunity to undermine the existing social order for “actors to challenge the status quo” (Bail, 2015, p. 103). Again, the spread of a secret ultimately robs the organization of power and empowers those outside of the secrecy structure. In this case, the Catholic Church lost control of its desired image its reputation and faced unprecedented organizational stigma as the scandal unfolded in the media. It is clear from this analysis of the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church that applying the conceptual model of stigmatization to such a large organization reveals additional layers of complexity as compared to the stigmatization of an individual. Because of the size and intricacy of the church, a theory of organizational stigma and information management must take into account (a) how organizations must attend to both an internal and an external audience, (b) the fact that organizations have more structural resources available to them than most individuals, and (c) the fact that organizations are less nimble in responding to the stigmatization process than individuals. Goffman’s work on stigmatization demonstrates much resilience when applied to a case of organizational stigma, though some refinements are necessary. As observed, this process of stigmatization had a dramatic impact on the public image of the church as well as the perception of its own members, indicating that unlike an individual who is stigmatized an organization must attend to both its internal and external audiences when managing information to avoid being stigmatized. So long as the damaging information remains unknown and the organization has a discreditable status, coping with stigma through secrecy and information management withholding information and “passing” as non-stigmatized is directed both internally and externally. Parishes were not told about the sexually abusive patterns of behavior in newly transferred priests, confidentiality agreements were standard practice, and the church fought those who would force them to release personnel files. The typology of organizational secrecy reflects this attention to both the internal and external audiences. Ensuring that the internal organizational audience maintains the secret through complicit or coerced secrecy allows the organization to manage information among its own members. This also prevents leaks to the external audience. Enlisted and conscripted secrecy represent organizational information management with its immediate external audience, preventing information leaks to a wider external audience such as the media as well as to naı¨ ve members of the internal audience.7 The size of the organization also has consequences for its ability to maintain secrecy and successfully manage information. Both individuals and organizations

44

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

attempt to neutralize a stigma before it can fully damage their public image. However, organizations typically have far more structural resources available to them to sustain their positive image. As described, the church drew upon its structural resources of power, wealth, and status in order to manage information and maintain its discreditable status for decades, even among unwilling participants as represented by the coerced and conscripted types of organizational secrecy. On the other hand, the size of the organization makes it far more complicated to sustain information management over time. The sheer number of people who knew at least part of what was going on the victims, their families, perpetrators, other priests, bishops and their staff members, lawyers, judges, and grand juries made it impossible to keep the organizational secret despite the church’s efforts to exert its moral authority, ability to exert social control and coerce its own members, and propensity to “throw money” at the problem. Moreover, the size of the organization makes it necessarily slow to respond when facing stigmatization. Individuals caught in a stigmatizing act immediately attempt to save face by providing an account for their behavior. Those with a stigmatized identity quickly assess the responses of others and decide whether to withdraw or confront the stigma directly within moments. In the case of organizations, no single representative person responds on behalf of the entire organization “in the moment.” In the case of the church, not even the pope responds so quickly. The details of a case may hit the front pages of a national newspaper before the pope is even aware of what happened. Effective organizational responses require changes in policy and organizational culture at the same time that it is fighting to restore its image in the eyes of both the internal and external audiences. Such efforts cannot be done unilaterally because the numerous organizational leaders must agree on the necessary changes and approaches to dealing with the damaged reputation of the organization. Meanwhile, the scandal continues to unfold, individual members of the organization are asked to respond and their words and actions reflect back on the organization as a whole. This slowness to respond only exacerbates the stigma and the negative attitudes of both the internal and external audience members frustrated by what appears to be a lack of response by the organization. Given the scope of the scandal, the audience perceives the incremental steps within the long process of formulating an effective organizational response as wholly inadequate. Overall, while organizations have more structural resources available to maintain secrecy, preserve a positive self-image, and maintain a discreditable status suggesting the relationship between access to structural resources and the ability to keep a secret depicted in Fig. 1 their size works against them in terms of (a) managing a secret when many people already know about it suggesting the relationship between organizational size or unit of analysis and the ability to keep a secret as depicted in Fig. 2 and (b) responding to their discredited status in a timely manner suggesting the relationship between organizational size or unit of analysis and the speed of

45

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

Ability to Keep a Secret

High

Low Low

High Structural resources

Fig. 1. The Impact of Structural Resources on the Ability to Keep an

Organizational Secret in the Short Term.

Ability to Keep a Secret

High

Low Individual

Group

Organization

Unit of Analysis

Fig. 2.

The Relationship between the Unit of Analysis and the Ability to Keep a Secret in the Long Term.

response to a stigmatizing situation as depicted in Fig. 3. While the Catholic Church’s reputation as a moral authority, a resilient culture of clericalism, and a strong organizational hierarchy allowed it to pursue a policy of secrecy when handling cases of sexual abuse by priests, this response was based on the use

46

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

Speed of Response

High

Low Individual

Group

Organization

Unit of Analysis

Fig. 3.

The Relationship between the Unit of Analysis and the Speed in Responding to a Stigmatizing Situation.

of social control over its own members, those who served on its behalf, and even those outside of the organization itself a tenuous system at best. In the end, despite the tremendous structural resources at its disposal, the number of people privy to the secret and the sheer size of the organization undermined the long-term effectiveness of this system of organizational secrecy and church’s ability to respond in a timely manner as the scandal unfolded.

NOTES 1. The figures presented in these studies should be considered conservative since the research was funded by and done with the cooperation of the Catholic Church and involved self-report data from dioceses within the United States. Many view these numbers with skepticism given the history of the church hiding information on sex abuse by priests. 2. The story behind The Boston Globe investigation was recently dramatized in the Academy Award-winning movie Spotlight (2015) directed by Tom McCarthy and produced by Faust, Golin, Rocklin, and Sugar. 3. Sent to each bishop in the United States and intended to be presented to the NCCB (National Conference of Catholic Bishops), that body never acknowledged its existence. 4. It was largely unknown outside of the Catholic hierarchy until the document was referenced in another letter sent by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in 2001 (Doyle, Sipe, & Wall, 2006). 5. Note that it is only the priest who hears a confession who is bound by secrecy.

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

47

6. As noted, the concealment of sexual abuse by priests was intentional and represents an example of organizational secrecy rather than structural secrecy, which is by nature unintentional though built into the structure of the organization. Even so, the decision sequence Vaughan describes regarding structural secrecy is potentially quite relevant for our consideration of organizational secrecy. 7. While one may argue that, like organizations, individuals must also attend to their internal audience (in the sense that we, as individuals, are witness to even our own most private performances), wrestling with that internal audience represents a psychological process (Benoit, 1995). For organizations, there is a fundamental separation between the internal and external audiences and addressing each is an inherently social process. Due to the size of organizations, it is possible in fact, likely that not all members are involved in the stigmatizing behavior; nor are all members aware of such behavior. Thus, the organization must attend to its own membership in the case of organizational stigma, not just its external audience.

REFERENCES Adut, A. (2005). A theory of scandal: Victorians, homosexuality, and the fall of Oscar Wilde. American Journal of Sociology, 111(1), 213 248. Adut, A. (2008). On scandal: Moral disturbances in society, politics, and art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bail, C. A. (2015). The public life of secrets: Deception, disclosure, and discursive framing in the policy process. Sociological Theory, 33(2), 97 124. Bellman, B. L. (1981). The paradox of secrecy. Human Studies, 4(1), 1 24. Benoit, W. L. (1995). Accounts, excuses, and apologies: A theory of image restoration strategies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Berry, J. (1992). Lead us not into temptation: Catholic priests and the sexual abuse of children. New York, NY: Doubleday. Branaman, A. (1997). Goffman’s social theory. In C. Lemert & A. Branaman (Eds.), The Goffman Reader (pp. xlv lxxxii). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc. Burkett, E., & Bruni, F. (1993). A gospel of shame: Children, sexual abuse, and the Catholic Church. New York, NY: Viking Press. Cohen, B. P. (2003). Creating, testing, and applying social psychological theories. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(1), 5 16. Conley, T. D., & Rabinowitz, J. L. (2009). The devaluation of relationships (not individuals): The case of dyadic relationship stigmatization. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39(4), 918 944. Dale, K. A., & Alpert, J. L. (2007). Hiding behind the cloth: Child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 16(3), 59 74. Devers, C. E., Dewett, T., Mishina, Y., & Belsito, C. A. (2009). A general theory of organizational stigma. Organization Science, 20(1), 154 171. Doyle, T. P., Sipe, A. W. R., & Wall, P. (2006). Sex, priests, and secret codes: The Catholic Church’s 2000-year paper trail of sexual abuse. Los Angeles, CA: Volt Press. Faust, B. P., Golin, S., Rocklin, N., Sugar, M. (Producers), & McCarthy, T. (Director). (2015). Spotlight [Motion Picture]. United States: Open Road Films. Fielden, S. J., Chapman, G. E., & Cadell, S. (2011). Managing stigma in adolescent HIV: Silence, secrets and sanctioned spaces. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 13(3), 267 281. Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

48

JAMES A. VELA-MCCONNELL

Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York, NY: Simon & Shuster, Inc. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York, NY: Pantheon. Goffman, E. (1969). Strategic interaction: An analysis of doubt and calculation in face-to-face, day-today dealings with one another. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York, NY: Basic Books. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers. Hagerty, B. B. (2011a, April 23). Ore. Suit forces Vatican to finally open records. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2011/04/23/135655535/ore-suit-forces-vatican-to-finally-open-records. Accessed on August 19, 2014. Hagerty, B. B. (2011b, October 14). Bishop indicted for not reporting suspected abuse. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2011/10/14/141365244/bishop-indicted-for-not-reporting-suspectedabuse. Accessed on August 19, 2014. Hannem, S., & Bruckert, C. (2012). Stigma revisited: Implications of the mark. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press. Hazelrigg, L. E. (1969). A reexamination of Simmel’s “The Secret and the Secret Society”: Nine propositions. Social Forces, 47(3), 323 330. doi:10.2307/2575031. Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe, The. (2002). Betrayal: The crisis in the Catholic Church. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Jenkins, P. (1995). Clergy sexual abuse: The symbolic politics of a social problem. In Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems (pp. 105 130). New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Jenkins, P. (1998). Creating a culture of clergy deviance. In A. Shupe (Ed.), Wolves within the fold: Religious leadership and abuses of power (pp. 118 132). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Jiang, J., Kou, Y., Wang, F., Wu, Y., Li, Y.-M., Li, Y., Yang, Y., Cao, H., Wu, Q., & Wang, X. (2011). Emotional reactions to scandals: When does moral character make a difference. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 14(3), 207 216. Kane, M. N. (2006). Research note: Sexual misconduct, non-sexual touch, and dual relationships: Risks for priests in light of the Code of Pastoral Conduct. Review of Religious Research, 48(1), 105 110. Krebs, T. (1998). Church structures that facilitate pedophilia among Roman Catholic clergy. In A. Shupe (Ed.), Wolves within the fold: Religious leadership and abuses of power (pp. 15 32). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Link, B. G., & Phelan, J. C. (2001). Conceptualizing stigma. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 363. Lowry, R. P. (1972). Toward a sociology of secrecy and security systems. Social Problems, 19(4), 437 450. May, H. (2000). “Murderers’ Relatives”: Managing stigma, negotiating identity. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 29(2), 198 221. Nath, V. (2011). Aesthetic and emotional labour through stigma: National identity management and racial abuse in offshored Indian call centres. Work, Employment & Society, 25(4), 709 725. Peralta, E. (2012a, June 22). Jury finds Philadelphia Monsignor guilty of endangerment in abuse coverup. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/06/22/155584122/juryfinds-philadelphia-monsignor-guilty-of-endangerment-in-child-abuse-coverup. Accessed on August 19, 2014. Peralta, E. (2012b, July 24). Pennsylvania monsignor sentenced to 3 to 6 years in prison. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/07/24/157288542/pennsylvania-monsignorsentenced-to-3-to-6-years-in-prison. Accessed on August 19, 2014.

Secrecy, Stigma, and Sex Abuse within the Catholic Church

49

Quinn, D. M., & Chaudoir, S. R. (2009). Living with a concealable stigmatized identity: The impact of anticipated stigma, centrality, salience, and cultural stigma on psychological distress and health. Journal of Personality Social Psychology, 97(4), 634 651. Redlinger, L. J., & Johnston, S. (1980). Introduction: Secrecy, informational uncertainty, and social control. Urban Life, 8(4), 387 397. Rigney, D. (1979). Secrecy and social cohesion. Society, 16(4), 52 55. Rivera, L. A. (2008). Managing “Spoiled” national identity: War, tourism, and memory in Croatia. American Sociological Review, 73(4), 613 634. Scheper-Hughes, N., & Devine, J. (2003). Priestly celibacy and child sexual abuse. Sexualities, 6(1), 15 40. Semadeni, M., Cannella, J. A., Fraser, D. R., & Lee, S. (2008). Fight or flight: Managing stigma in executive careers. Strategic Management Journal, 29(5). Shupe, A. (1995). In the name of all that’s holy: A theory of clergy malfeasance. Westport, CT: Praeger. Shupe, A. (Ed.). (1998). Wolves within the fold: Religious leadership and abuses of power. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Simmel, G. (1906). The sociology of secrecy and of secret societies. American Journal of Sociology, 11(4), 441 498. Sipe, A. W. R. (1998). Clergy abuse in Ireland. In A. Shupe (Ed.), Wolves within the fold: Religious leadership and abuses of power (pp. 133 151). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Smith, M. L., Rengifo, A. F., & Vollman, B. K. (2008). Trajectories of abuse and disclosure: Child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 35(5), 570 582. Terry, K. J. (2008). Stained glass: The nature and scope of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 35(5), 549 569. Vaughan, D. (1992). Theory elaboration: The heuristics of case analysis. In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry (pp. 173 202). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vaughan, D. (1996). The Challenger launch decision: Risky technology, culture, and deviance at NASA. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Vela-McConnell, J. A. (1999). Who is my neighbor? Social affinity in a modern world. New York, NY: State University of New York Press. White, M. D., & Terry, K. J. (2008). Child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church: Revisiting the rotten apples explanation. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 35(5), 658 678. Wiesenfeld, B. M., Wurthmann, K., & Hambrik, D. C. (2008). The stigmatization and devaluation of elites associated with corporate failures: A process model. Academic Management Review, 33(1), 231 251. Wilsnack, R. W. (1980). Information control: A conceptual framework for sociological analysis. Urban Life, 8(4), 467 499. Zucker, D. (2005). A betrayal of their sacred trust: Rabbis, cantors, and chaplains who violate sexual boundaries. Journal of Religion & Abuse, 7(2), 77 89.

“BLACK MAN/WHITE TOWER”: A PERFORMATIVE FILM AUTOCRITOGRAPHY Bryant Keith Alexander ABSTRACT This piece is a performative keynote address delivered at the 2016 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.1 The keynote showed clips from films on education that triggered critical memories of the author’s own educational experience as teacher/scholar/administrator. The keynote was thus a performative film autocritography. The title “Black Man/White Tower” serves as a trope of tensiveness and transgression at the nexus of thick intersectionalities in higher education. Keywords: Autocritography; thick intersectionalities; critical reflexivity; films on education; politics of higher education

(In the performance, Tami Spry introduced Alexander. Alexander thanked Spry and the audience for the welcome, then showed a part of Scene 2: From “To Sir With Love” showing the character Mark Thackeray, played by Sidney Poitier in the film, arriving at school for the first time. Then speaking to the audience

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 51 68 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048006

51

52

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

with reference to the still shot of Sidney Poitier on the screen, the performer begins:)

“TO SIR WITH LOVE” I begin with a confession. My first real man-crush was on Sidney Poitier in the 1967 movie To Sir, With Love. For the longest time I wasn’t sure if my crush was on the actor, or the teacher character, Mark Thackeray, he played. Maybe this was because while I understood the nature of acting, the presence of Sidney Poitier’s Black male body and the virtuosity of his performance made real the character he was playing. I was attracted to a performance of Black masculinity that mediated a balance between power and aggression that is often associated with Black men. It was a performance of Black male teacher that offered intellect and swagger, with a humility and humanity of engagement making the full self present, but not debilitating to the possibilities of transformation for self and others The storyline of the film follows an encounter between the new Black male teacher and his mostly White lower-class students and White colleagues. It chronicled a confrontation of a common humanity across and between racial and class divides. ****** In this chapter I am engaging what Michael Awkward would call a form of autocritography; “a critical reflexive writing process that serves as an account of individual, social, and institutional conditions that help produce a teacherscholar.”2 Hence the title of this short excerpt today, “Black Man/White Tower“ particularizes me in the spaces of academic and social engagement. While I offer only snippets, of a larger project, I hope they will invoke and maybe provoke your sense of how my embodied presence often plays across borders of formal and informal academic settings and how I begin to make sense of experience through what Gust Yep might call thick intersectionalities in higher education “associated with race, class, gender, and sexuality … [at] the interplay between individual subjectivity, personal agency, systemic arrangements, and structural forces.”3 ******* In many ways, I enter the Ivory Tower almost in the same way that Mark Thackeray entered his first encounter with a new colleague: In Scene 1: “The

“Black Man/White Tower”

53

New Lamb for the Slaughter, or Should I Say, Black Sheep?” from “To Sir With Love” the first new White colleague that Mark Thackerey meets describes him as “The new lamb to slaughter or a ‘Black sheep.’” Mark Thackeray calmly corrects his new colleague by shifting the descriptor of “black sheep” to “just teacher.” The subtlety and necessity of this move is not lost on me. When I am sometimes referred to as not only as “The Dean” of my college, but “The Black Dean” a particularity that is not only a distinction, as opposed to the White Deans, but something to be marked and maybe sold as both a good and a commodity of diversity

SELLING THE BLACK DEAN I want to revisit a diary entry as a critically reflexive act that reminds me why I intentionally put myself on the auction block everyday as a Black man who serves as an academic dean in a still predominately White Catholic university. The original entry, scribbled on the back of one of my business cards in the bathroom after I had excused myself during a dinner with a donor, was simple. It stated: “Oh shit, I think that I am being sold.” The thought first came as a feeling throughout the meal. I allowed myself to say it under my breath only in the bathroom. “I think that I being sold.” And then I wrote it down, like one writes down a mantra or a missive or a memorandum of understanding with the self. During the meal, my development officer kept saying things like, “Well, Bryant is a scholar.” “Well, Bryant has a lot of teaching and administrative experience.” “Well, Bryant has experience in all the disciplines of the college.” “Well, Bryant comes from a large Catholic family.” “Well, all of the students just love Bryant.” And while each utterance was true, and to some degree served as an element of an introduction, it felt like they all were also arguments, justifications, and defenses of my hire and why they, the donors, should buy into the hire with their continued or new support of the college. [I find out later that some of the donors were actually consulted in the job search relative to whether I could be committed to/and perform the mission of the university which separate from the notion of catholicity, has a social justice component.] Oh shit, I think that I am being auctioned. And while it would be easy to critique just the White establishment, or the bureaucratic and corporatized university, or the politics of higher education, or even the ubiquitous nature of -isms that are never void of intersectional politics, what is it that forces me to ask myself the question,

54

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

“I think that I be being auctioned?” and yet still come back each day? Maybe the answers lie in the desire to subvert the felt experience of the auction block. The auction block is a powerful trope with material consequences on the Black body under the surveillance of the White gaze for pleasure, approval, and purchase. The auction block as a site of determination of Black servitude and surveillance is really a location to avoid, but what happens if the positionality is subverted? In some ways, while my figuratively denuded body, with an explication of my compelling features and potentials, was on the block being examined, I believe that the efforts and actions of my development officer were designed to particularize my being in relation to my doing the job in a way worthy of their support, in which case, “selling” is really about “promoting,” though each is complicated in a racial economy. I am reminded of my father’s words, when he said, “You will have to be twice as good in the work place,” because the suspicion of an affirmative action hire cloaks the visibility of credibility. Hence, in my father’s terms, selling the Black dean is also about pitching and convincing others of my basic competency. And then, to what degree am I selling myself? (My father, the original model for my Black masculinity reappears throughout this project with some answers.) (In the actual performance I projected the image of the promotional cover of the film “Dangerous Minds” starring Michelle Pfeiffer.”)

“DANGEROUS MINDS” When I first encountered the 1995 movie Dangerous Minds starring Michelle Pfeiffer, I had a flashback moment to my own childhood. When we were younger, my brothers and I often made our own toys one of my favorites as some of you might know was making bow-and-arrows. We made the bow-and-arrows by first breaking off long branches from the mulberry trees in our yard. We would shave off the leaves and then remove the hardened, somewhat scaly outer bark to reveal a slick and smooth under skin of the branch. We would make small vertical slits in the ends of the branch and then on one end, thread a piece of twine, then wrap it around the edge of the branch, finishing in a knot. Then we would bend the branch to create the bend that would become the bow, reducing the length of the twine and repeating the threading and tying on the other end, creating a taut line that finished the bow. For the arrow, we took another branch, similarly prepared by removing the skin, and placed one end over the upside of a bottle cap you know, the old metal caps from a bottle of Coca-Cola, with sharp scalloped edges. Then, using a large rock or my dad’s hammer, we would smash the bottle cap,

“Black Man/White Tower”

55

folding it across the end of the branch. To our kid sensibilities the result looked like an authentic Indian arrowhead (but with “Coca-Cola” written on it). If we were really being fancy, we would glue feathers at the end of the arrow. Sometimes I would see my mother watching us preparing the tools for our play battles. Commenting on our ingenuity in play, I remember that my mother would say that we had “dangerous minds.” She often said that when we created something from nothing, or when we were able to tell fantastical stories, sometimes bordering on lies, or when I excelled in school, or when we were able to read the cultural happenings of our neighborhood and make informed choices, some of which were better than others. And based on the choices made, brilliant or brash, my mother would say, “You have a dangerous mind.” But she very seldom unpacked or explained what she meant in the moment, always leaving room for interpretation relative to her expressed joy or disappointment, which we became most accustomed to differentiating. So when I encountered the 1995 movie Dangerous Minds starring Michelle Pfeiffer, I wondered what was the interpretation of that phrase, “dangerous minds,” as it related to a White, middle-class, ex-Marine, female teacher engaging a low-income, racialized (Black and Latino), inner-city student population. Was the reference to the students, who prove to be critical in their engagement and analysis of poetry, a rigor assumed to be beyond their capacity? Or was the reference to the White female teacher, whose described ingenuity and feistiness, subverted the educational model to intellectually engage the low-income, racialized and the presumed uneducable inner-city student population through karate, bribes, and poetry? Here I want to describe what might appear to be a minor scene in the film, but one that for me is pivotal and complicated. Black actor, Courtney B. Vance played the high school principal, Mr. Grandey, and he presents a lesson for LouAnne Johnson, the new White teacher, that becomes the pivot point of a symbolic relational truism of both resistance and subversion. In Scene 4: “New Strategy” a frustrated LouAnne Johnson uses a new pedagogical strategy to teach her mostly Black and Hispanic students, and thus diverts from using the prescribe curriculum of the course. The strategy, which engages a reference to students choosing to die, is observed through the door by the Assistant Principal, who then shares the concern with the principal, who then invites the new teacher to his office. While the principal is on the phone, LouAnne walks into the office. What transpires is first an admonishment by the Black principal to the new White teacher, about entering the room without knocking, then a reinforcement of the required curriculum. The White teacher, LouAnne Johnson, defends her diversion from the curriculum with a critique of the assigned reading, and the curriculum as well as the necessity of following rules is reinforced by the Black principal.

56

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

A Principle of Color The politics of the film, with the restaged performance of resistance by Ms. Johnson and the institutional performance of Mr. Grandey, set up the viewer to compare the passion of the White female teacher with what is depicted as the particular coldness of the Black male principal. There develops what I want to reference here as a principle of color in the film. A “principle of color” a slight play on language is about the standards or the presumptions of race and culture that play out in the educational paradigm and how this film (true story or not) seeks to flip the script showing the White female teacher as more sensitive to the needs of her Black and Brown students than the Black male principal. The principle of color in this case is also in the decentralizing of care in particular persons and not in the pedagogical enterprise itself. The shift from Black administrator to White teacher merely foregrounds the politics of care linked with race, but still places the White teacher in a position of privilege to claim the authority to control the politics of pedagogy. Such a privileged presence is certainly based in the fact that it is “the true story” of LouAnne Johnson that is being told, but it is also about the “protective pillows” of whiteness that give her permission to disrespect the Black principal relative to her own inexperience as a new teacher.4 It is also about the sanctioned position of being White that allows her to walk through the film with a protective shield around her (e.g., in the classroom, in the principal’s office, in late-night visits in the ’hood, in her home with a distressed Latino male student, etc.) and authorizes her presumption to rewrite the curriculum. Hence, she does become the “White savior.” This occurs in a problematic educational system where even the raced other on both ends of the spectrum administrators and students need the progressive liberation of the White woman teacher to save them all. Courtney B. Vance as a Black actor playing the role of Principal George Grandey is somewhat of a stretch for me. I have always liked Courtney B. Vance, for many of the same reasons I like and love Sidney Poitier. Both have had distinguished careers with strong conviction as actors and activists, choosing to play roles of integrity that promote social justice and present empowering and human images of Black masculinity. So my critique of the character George Grandey is not a critique of Vance. In stating that defense, I am reminded of the many ways in which I have received criticisms of my demeanor as the Black male dean, which is the correlate in this case to the role that Vance plays as the Black male principal. And I find that these descriptions are always linked with a dispositive position of the White person leveling the critique. Even at times when I may in fact be mirroring their own behaviors; which when they perform them are

57

“Black Man/White Tower”

considered direct, definitive, assertive, and confident and when I perform the same it is interpreted as mean, scolding, aggressive and intimidating. I am reminded of the White male professor who entered my office with a head full of steam, practically yelling at me to get his way. And when I calmly called him to attend to his behavior he noted that I was making him feel uncomfortable. Or the older White female department chair with a consistently aggressive manner who, after I requested that she tends to her tone and manner requested from HR that she could not have private meetings with me anymore because she felt unsafe being alone with me. And thus needed to have someone else present during our regularly scheduled administrative one-on-one meetings. I recount these incidents to reinforce the nature of the continued suspicion of the Black male presence, and in the case of George Grandey, the high school principal in Dangerous Minds, the disregard and disrespect of the Black male body, even in light of a differential of power and authority. But I also share these scenarios to once again make reference to the performance of whiteness, asserting one’s will as a sanctioned power over racialized others, which is what occurs in the cases of LouAnne Johnson and the unnamed White faculty in my own story. While I don’t want to defend the character of George Grandey, as principal, I also don’t want to further demonize him, as a Black man, because I understand what may be his own lived condition of the surveillance under whiteness, which may be embedded in his dictate to LouAnne Johnson to “simply follow the curriculum dictated by the board of education” of which he is both proxy and pawn. So, where as Principle Grandey may be seen as somewhat ineffectual and maybe representative of the restrictive educational system dependent on a can curriculum that is as incapable of emancipatory pedagogy, in the next film, “Lean on Me” Joe Clark is a take no prisoners overly assertive, militant, and maybe angry Black man who is hired, for just those reasons, to turnaround a failing school.

“LEAN ON ME” (In the performance the moment begins with the image of the promotional cover of the film “Lean on Me” starring Morgan Freeman followed). In Scene 5: “My Word is Law,” the new Black male principal in the film Lean on Me, Joe Clark, played by Morgan Freeman, collectively meets his faculty and staff for the first time. While the existing White Male Assistant Principal attempts to welcome and offer a report of the school status, Joe Clark interrupts him and begins to berate the status of the school, indicating his charge as an outside hire to turn the school around and increase test scores

58

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

under a limited timeframe. In the process, he makes reassignment of positions and responsibilities of faculty and staff. He ultimately establishes his assertive leadership style and overtly describes himself as the HNIC. Upon query by the White Male Assistant Principal to the Black Female Assistant Principal, the acronym of HNIC is explained as head nigger in charge.

“So you’re the head nigger in charge?” That was the actual question I was asked by a Black male student when he was required to come to the associate dean’s office when I served in that capacity on a different campus. He came to my office because he was a serial offender to multiple professors who had shared notes and wanted something to be done about him, because he was disrupting classes and they were beginning to be afraid of him. Either his behavior was escalating, or their tolerance of the behavior was decreasing. I summoned him via multiple methods with an invitation to meet with me to discuss his academic performance after a lack of response I then sent him a message that if he did not come on his own accord that I would have campus public safety escort him to my office from the classroom. He showed up. And upon his arrival for the scheduled meeting he said to me, “So you’re the head nigger in charge?” Of course, that was neither a real question nor an acknowledgment; it was a critique. My response was, “I am Dr. Alexander. Come in.” I knew that the HNIC comment placed us in a very particular moment and relational designation with me as the Head Nigger in charge to control the other niggers (which is a part of the history of that construction during slavery). I began the conversation by bypassing the HNIC comment and moving directly to the purpose of the meeting: to address his in-class behaviors. The student kept coming back to the issues of race my race in relation to his and then he asked, “Why would a brother threaten to remove another brother from class by police guard? Do you know what that says about me? Do you know what that says about you?” In that moment, I had to go there with the student. I said something like, “Yes, I have a very clear sense of what that says about you. It might say that you are engaged in behaviors that appear threatening to your teachers and fellow students. It might say that you are disturbing the class and squandering what might be your intellect and your talents. It might say that those factors of disrupting the class might be attributed to racist constructions of you being a Black male. And without other evidence to go against such determinations, your teachers could be right. Not about all Black males, but about the particular experience that they seem to be having with you.”

“Black Man/White Tower”

59

“And to respond to your other question, what might that say about me? Well, it might say to the casual observer that I am a conscientious administrator who has made several serious attempts to connect with a student about an issue that impacts not only him but also the teaching and educational experiences of others. It might say that I had to resort to threats from the most extreme poles of my authority just to get your attention. It might say, to those who know that I have had a campus public safety officer meet other students at their classes, that if I did not threaten the same with you that might be seen as me showing a level of racial bias towards you because you are a Black male and I am a Black male. And finally, it might say a lot of things that place both you and me under a magnifying glass simply because we are Black men in this still White ivory tower, and not because of our character, charisma, or the care that we could be showing each other right now. But in this moment, I am glad that you came on your own accord and I not have to have you escorted here. And we have the opportunity to address whatever issues are impacting your behavior or the perception of your behavior in those classes. What’s going on man? There was a long pause in the conversation. The student was silent, and he refused to talk any further. I wasn’t sure if the silence was a performance of resistance, or embarrassment, or a host of other things that he would not share and I did not want to imagine. I offered the student a variation of the following: “If you don’t want to talk to me about the issues, there are a wide range of services on campus that are available to you, anything from tutoring to counseling, “I will continue to make myself available to you, but some things need to change. I can speak to each of your professors and seek a reprieve, and request opportunities for you to catch up on your work. But that can only happen if you are willing to address the issues, and as appropriate, an apology might be order. Not to me, but to your professors. Are you willing to do that?” He nodded, but avoided eye contact with me. I handed him a sheet with a list of campus services. Then I addressed him by his first name and said something to the effect of, “When you walked into this office you asked if I was the head nigger in charge, and even if I didn’t show it, you got the appropriate rise out of me. From those deep places where histories of slavery reside in all Black men, and also on the surface where someone in my position has his intellect and loyalties questioned every day because I am a Black male administrator. But in my official position as the associate dean, in my status as a professor, and in my nature as a very particular Black man, I am still reaching out to you across histories that were designed to pit us against each other. I am reaching out to you with

60

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

an open hand in this moment because I want to see you succeed. I need for you to succeed.” And he reached to shake my hand. And he said, “Thank you. I am sorry.” And I said, “Okay, come back if you need to talk.” He didn’t. But I also did not get any further reports about him. The last time I saw him was crossing to get his diploma. And as I went to shake his hand, he came in for what is variously called a “bro-hug” that modified handshake and one-armed hug that shows care between men while mediating masculinity. And that was good. (In the performance images of the promotional covers of the films “Stand and Deliver” starring Edward James Olmos as Jamie Escalante and “The Great Debaters,” starring Denzel Washington as Melvin B. Tolson and Forest Whitaker as James Farmer Sr. were projected.)

“STAND AND DELIVER” AND “THE GREAT DEBATERS” I want to take a moment to juxtapose, as it were, two movies Stand and Delivery and The Great Debaters. Stand and Deliver tells the true story of Jaime Escalante, a math teacher at East Los Angeles’ Garfield High who refuses to write off his inner-city students as losers as they defy the odds to pass the National Advanced Placement Calculus Exam with high scores only to have the scores challenged: In Scene 26: “Confronting the ETS.” Jaime Escalante confronts two representatives from the Education Testing Service, in which Escalante invokes racial bias in the accusation that his students cheated on the examination. The representatives from ETS are a Latino Man and Black Man. The scene is filled with the fury of Escalante with a defensive posturing to the two ETS representatives who defend both the policies and procedures of the ETS, as well as their positionality as raced-men to whom the sensitivity of racial accusation directed to them is offensive. The scene is a tensive encounter with accusations of racial bias that is seemingly about both the testing and retesting process and the men who encounter themselves in the negotiation of the process. And now a scene from “The Great Debaters” that chronicles the journey of Professor Melvin Tolson (Denzel Washington), who shapes a group of underdog students from a small African American college (Wiley College) into a historically elite debate team. BUT this scene is not a focus on the slightly over exposed Denzel Washington, but on the more nuanced acting of Forest Whitaker who plays the role of Dr. James Farmer Sr., a distinguished minister and professor who also taught at Wiley College, whose son, James Farmer Jr.

“Black Man/White Tower”

61

was on the debate team in a tensive scene called the Pig Farmer. The film takes place in 1935. In Scene 5: “The Pig Farmer” Professor James Farmer Sr. (a Black man) is driving on a rural road with his Black family. Farmer Sr. hits something in the road. Not knowing at first what he hit, he instructs his family to stay in the car while he investigates. As there were White children playing on the side of the road, Farmer is relieved that what he hit was a pig. But then two White Males arrive on the scene, presumably one them is the owner of the pig. The other carries a gun. The exchange is filled with racial description by the White male farmers of the Black male professor, suggesting that the education of the Black male makes him high and mighty, and demands payment for the dead pig. But the scene is more about power, in the moment the power of the White men with a gun over the Black male professor who accidently hit the pig. As the White men demean the Black male professor his family watches from the car. And the Black children in the car, including James Farmer Jr. who is a college student come into a tense-filled stare with the White children who look on the scene of racial power, control and vulnerability; whiteness over blackness. After getting a sense of these two clips, allow me this moment to tell you two stories:

Story # 1: A Lesson on Juxtapositions One day when I was a freshman in college I was sitting at the kitchen table in my parents’ home completing a school project, and my father walked into the house with a gift. My father, with his fourth grade education, worked as a garbage man in Louisiana where I grew up, and he developed relationships with many of the White families on his route.5 He would do specials favor for many of the families by bringing their garbage cans to the street for them in the morning. For doing that he received tips, payments, and gifts. This particular day, I am not sure what he had in his pocket, but his gift was a word that he carried in his mouth. After our usual greeting “Hey Daddee.” “How’re you doing, my baby? Come and help Daddee with his boots” he did what he often did, he sat across from me at the opposite end of the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee, and just watched me do my homework. At one point I looked at him smiling back at me. After a moment of pause he said, “Do you know the word ‘juxtaposition?’” And before I could answer he said in a rather rehearsed manner something like, “It means two things being seen or placed close together for comparison or contrast.” And I smiled.

62

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

But even before I could complete the curl of my lip he went on to say, “It’s like ‘the best of times and the worst of times.’” And then I became tickled. He went on to say that when he casually asked Mrs. Boudreaux, one of the White ladies on his route (a former schoolteacher) how she was doing, she said, “Oh Joe, it’s like ‘the best of times and the worst of times,’” and she then went on to talk about the joy and turmoil in her life. He understood from her example what she was talking about, but assuming that he did not understand her literary allusion to Charles Dickens, she offered a definition of the word “juxtaposition” to explain her meaning. My father told me that he liked the word; not only what it meant as a comparison and contrast, but he liked, as he said it, “how it works my tongue, my ear, and my mind.” And then he said the word out loud a couple of times “juxtaposition, juxtaposition” as if ruminating on its sound and function. Then he asked me what that word looked like. I wrote the word out on a blank sheet of paper in large block letters and showed him. Seeing it, made the word, real. This happening with my father was really a teachable moment. It bled the borders between academic and cultural learning, between campus and community, across borders of education and class, actually juxtapositioning who was learning and who was teaching the lesson and for what purpose; the White lady, former teacher, Mrs. Boudreaux to Joe Alexander the garbage man; my father with his fourth grade education teaching the word meaning to his college boy son forcing me as college student then, and as an academic now, to recognize that my father’s wisdom was not in teaching me the word juxtaposition, but the ability to learn in any given situation and then to pass that knowledge on to others as a gift.

Story #2: Walking the Dog/Being the Dog Throughout my life, my father told me stories about living in the Jim Crow South. Many of these stories hinged on a strained performance of servitude under the lingering privileges of whiteness and the dangers of blackness. My father told “back of the bus” stories and “back door” stories. He told Ku Klux Klan stories and lynching stories. He told, “Don’t look at White women stories” and “Don’t look the White man in the eye stories.” And, like my father, my mother told “daughter of a sharecropper” stories. She told “being a Black female domestic” stories.” And she told “having to care for White babies when her own babies had to go without” stories. The stories they told were not told as entertainment or as fanciful tales of days gone by. These were

“Black Man/White Tower”

63

pained stories that my Black parents told me as lessons, not of their hardship or sacrifice, but of their strategies of survival. I currently live in a neighborhood adjacent to the private university campus where I work. Some might describe the neighborhood as upscale. There are several faculty members from the university who live nearby, including several from the college that I serve as the academic dean. In the dailyness of my excursion back and forth between campus and home, I see few other Black folks. But more importantly to this story, the White folks who see me see very few other Black folks in their neighborhood. One day I was walking my dog, a thirteen-year-old Cocker Spaniel named PepperAnne (Peppy for short), wearing my hoddie and a knit cap. (Maybe I looked like Travyon Martin.) We walk every morning and see some of the same people, people walking their dogs and people leaving their homes in the morning to begin their day. Peppy and I are a friendly duo, so we say good morning as we cross paths with others during our morning ritual. Often we pause as she, the dog, meets and greets her friends. It is an interesting thing to walk a dog, because I probably would not have much to talk about with many of these people, other than to exchange greetings, but the dogs seem to find a conversation of engagement that forces the humans to perform sociality. On this particular morning I see a White woman whom I have seen before walking her dog. I recognize her coming towards me from a distance on the sidewalk. She is slight of build, and her dog is bigger and maybe a little sturdier than Peppy. The difference today is that she continues moving in my direction as I move in her direction; usually she crosses the street before we encounter each other. This is a person on whom the niceties of morning greetings are usually lost. While I might wave or say “Good morning,” or Peppy might bark she never responds. This morning she is walking towards me and not crossing. We get about 20 feet apart from each other and she begins to scream, “Stay away from me! Stay away from me, and my dog! I am warning you!” She is really screaming! And at that point her dog becomes unruly and she becomes entangled in his leash. I am not fully aware of what’s going on in the moment, or whether the dog is in attack mode to protect his owner because of her screaming, or whether the attack mode is the true nature of the dog and she is trying to protect us (or herself). I only know that she began to scream before the dog became unruly. Because there are cars parked on the side of the road to my right, my only option to avoid her is to walk into the yard to my left, to walk the distance through the yard to pass the spectacle of which I am not a part. Peppy leads the way because she is scared and she wants to get away from both the barking dog and the screaming White woman. In that moment, the screaming attracts the attention of other good White folks. Several of them pause, standing outside their cars, looking to see what is happening. I see a few faces looking through windows. The man whose yard I am crossing is now standing on his front porch with his hands on his hips. It

64

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

is a fucking 360° cinematic moment with me at the center point pivoting to see multiple pairs of White eyes staring at the scene, staring at me. In that moment I am vulnerable to this historical legacy of relational dynamics a White woman screaming in a White neighborhood at to what appears to be a Black man encroaching upon her, and other White people seemingly coming to her rescue. And I am one of their neighbors to. And I walk this path every morning. And I have a Ph.D. dam it! And I am an academic dean at the private Catholic (Jesuit) University that is a block away. But I am a Black man first, and none of the other traits offer me protection in the moment. I offer the onlookers a befuddled look, as if to say, “I am confused, to.” “I don’t know what is going on.” Or as if to say, “I am innocent.” But I actually say nothing and keep walking. Quickly. And I don’t turn fully around but take only side-glances to ensure that no one is following me. That morning, Peppy and I take an alternate route back home. While the scene I have described could have been about the White woman warning me of her aggressive dog (Note: I only include this speculation to appease the good White people in the audience who demand that I give the White woman in the story the benefit of the doubt. This unlike the actuality of the story that I am telling.); there are missing pieces in her public performance that go unresolved. Like maybe the actual evidence of threat, other than my Black male presence; or Like maybe the specter of my snarling vicious cocker spaniel threatening an attack, Or maybe even an apology. ******** My father liked the word “juxtaposition.” The films Stand and Deliver and The Great Debaters serve that same function for me. They remind me that pedagogies of resistance are intellectual and embodied. They remind me that my father’s life as a garbage man is in juxtaposition with my own as Dr. Alexander, in both the contrasts and the comparisons, and that our lives are more the same than not.

“Black Man/White Tower”

65

When I remember that my dad said he liked how the word “juxtaposition” worked his tongue, his ear, and his mind. I am reminded that any critical pedagogy, any lesson taught or teachable moment should do just that work the tongue as a rehearsal of articulating knowledge, work the ear as a lesson not just in hearing but also in listening, and work the mind, ruminating on the possibility of an enacted transformation. I see it in Jamie Escalante’s critical teaching and defense of his students and how in the film they must retake the exam under surveillance of agents from the Educational Testing Service. Their witnessing of the retesting made real for them, the intellect and character of the students of which Escalante already knew. I see it in James Farmer Sr. both in The Pig Farmer scene and in a later scene with the White Sheriff in town, in which he uses his academic training as strategic tool to/and against a threatening Black mob son witnesses both performances of a Black masculine intellect as contingent performances in everyday life. In Closing I want to return to the film “To Sir With Love.” (In the performance the image of the promotional cover of the film “To Sir With Love” was projected.) At the end of the movie, “To Sir with Love” after tumultuous exchanges and challenges with his students, and after the empowering aspects of information, formation and transformation instilled with a critical love of teacher Mark Thackeray, the now graduating students give their teacher a gift, a gift that was partially delivered through the mouth of the character, Barbara Pegg (English pop singer, Lulu), who sang the now-classic theme song “To Sir With Love.” (In performance the performer also sings the lyrics.) But then also a tangible token delivered by one of the shyest of the students in the class. Partially, the sentiments of the song and the gift makes him question his decision to leave the school to accept an engineering job. When asked by his students to say a few words (“Speech, Speech”) he stammers his emotional states then retreats to his classroom. In the following Scene 28: “Next Term’s Class” Mark Thackeray sits at his desk in his empty classroom holding the now opened gift, what appears to be a pewter mug, along with an unraveled handwritten and signed note from his students. He seems distraught in his emotions. Shortly after, two underclassmen, students, a boy and a girl, rush into the classroom. In their irreverence, they approach his desk and handle the gift. Having a sense of who Mark Thackeray is the male student verbally notes that he will be having Thackeray in the following semester. The announcement seems almost like a threat or a challenge. After the utterance, the two students run of the classroom laughing. With some conviction, Thackeray rises and walks in front of his desk. In a dramatic gesture, he reaches into his pocket and tares what is presumed

66

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

to be his contract for the new engineering job; the gesture suggestive of his staying on as a teacher.

Reasons to Stay As Mark Thackeray tares his contract for the new job as an engineer, I think about all the reasons he decides to stay. I think about him as I think about myself, and why I choose to return every day to my role as a Black/gay/male dean at a predominately White Catholic (Jesuit) University. [For now] I return each day to my role as the Black dean, not to be sold and resold as a commodity in continual replay of history’s legacy or a fetish of difference, but as an act of subversion that looks purchase and circumstance in the eye as a moment of disidentification. I return each day to subvert the systems of engagement in higher education where the image of the dean, or any administrator in the predominately White university, is still White. And the mere materiality of my presence engages a visualicity of race-work in the politics of what is visible and not visible, linked with stereotypes, erasure, and mischaracterization of the race/ethnicity binary.6 I return every day because I enjoy the work, not the daily challenge. I enjoy being an academic thought leader in the college and the university. I enjoy being a dean, and while I don’t particularly like being called “the Black dean,” I also come to understand that I really could be any other type of dean and that’s not a reference to race, but a particular form of resistance to the politics of the Ivory Tower. I return for the reason I believe Mark Thackeray stays because I know, I can make a difference. ******** Every time I watch “To Sir With Love,” I come to learn something about the performance of race, resistance, and resiliency in the classroom. And like Mark Thackeray, I too expect the respect and dignity of being called “Sir.” But I want to leave you with what is maybe my favorite scene (Scene 25: “Ladies Choice”) at the closing senior dance, there is a ladies’ choice dance and his, student (Pamela Dare) seeks him out to dance. This scene actually precedes the last scene described, but this is the image that lingers in my head at the end of the movie. During the announcement of the “lady’s choice” dance the White female student signals Mark Thackeray. He is not surprised because the request to dance with her was made in a previous scene. The actual dance is signal with a song that begins slowly with a methodical contemporary minuet type movement by the two dancers, with Mark Thackeray following and mimicking the steps of his students. The tempo of the music suddenly increases and the dance movement of the student becomes more animated and activated by a pony-like dance that moves

67

“Black Man/White Tower”

about the space. Mark Thackeray’s initial response to the tempo shift is shock, then after a brief moment of pause, he marks the new he follows suit. The image of Sidney Poitier (Mark Thackeray) dancing is ticklish it is a masculine and playful engagement, a dance in which he follows the lead of his student as she offers a reciprocate pedagogy of care. As the dance becomes the center of attention, all of the students and teachers stand and watch. It is a teachable moment; one from which I consistently learn, as I try to dance through the dailyness of my life as a teacher-scholar-administrator. (At the close of the performance the performer invited Tami Spry, who had introduced him, to dance.)

NOTES 1. At the same conference, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in Champaign-Urbana, IL. (May 21, 2016), Bryant Keith Alexander was also the recipient of the inaugural, H.L. “Bud” Goodall, Jr. and Nick “Gory” Trujillo “It’s a Way of Life” Award in Narrative Ethnography (Best Article/Alternative Text) for an essay that “exemplifies excellence in storytelling informed by scholarship and intended for both scholarly and public audiences.” The article, “Memory, Mourning, and Miracles: A Triple-Autoethnographic Performance Script” coauthored by Bryant Keith Alexander, Claudio Moreira, and Hari Stephen Kumar, published in the International Review of Qualitative Research, 8. 2, Summer 2015, pp. 229 255. The piece was first performed live at the 11th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (2015) and is drawn from Alexander’s forthcoming book Storying the Educational Self: Autocritography, Critical Film Pedagogy and the Imagined Classroom. 2. Awkward (1999). 3. Yep (2016). 4. Fine (2004). 5. I initially explore my relationship with my father as a garbage man in Alexander (2000). 6. Shields (2004).

REFERENCES Alexander, B. K. (2000). Skin flint (or The garbage man’s kid): A generative autobiographical performance. Text and Performance Quarterly, 20, 97 114. Awkward, M. (1999). Scenes of instruction: A Memoir (p. 7). Durham: Duke University Press. Fine, M. (2004). Witnessing whiteness/gathering intelligence. In M. Fine, L. Weis, L. P. Pruitt, & A. Burns (Eds.), Off white: Readings on power, privilege, and resistance (p. 246). New York, NY: Routledge. Shields, R. (2004). Visualicity On urban visibility and invisibility. Visual Culture in Britain, 5(1), 23 36. Yep, G A. (2016). Toward thick(er) intersectionalities: Theorizing, researching, and activating the complexities of communication and identities. In K. Sorrells & S. Sekimoto (Eds.). Globalizing intercultural communication: A reader (p. 89). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

68

BRYANT KEITH ALEXANDER

FILMS Dangerous Minds, Dir. John N. Smith, Perf. Michelle Pfeiffer, George Dzundza, Courtney B.Vance. Hollywood Pictures, 1995, DVD. Lean on Me, Dir. John G. Avildsen. Perf. Morgan Freeman, Beverly Toddy, Robert Guillaume.1989, Warner Bros. DVD. Stand and Deliver, Dir. Ramon Menendez, Perf. Edward James Olmos, Estelle Harris, MarkPhelan. Warner Brothers, 1988, DVD. The Great Debaters. Dir. Denzel Washington. Perf. Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, JohnHeard, Kimberly Elise. Harpo Films, 2007. DVD. To Sir With Love, Dir. James Clavell, Perf. Sidney Poitier, Judy Geeson, Christian Roberts. Columbia Pictures, 1967, DVD.

TRANSFORMING IDENTITIES OF ILLNESS THROUGH AESTHETIC NARRATIVE COLLABORATION Jill Taft-Kaufman ABSTRACT This study focuses upon the importance of group narrative work by ill and injured individuals who are participants/listeners/viewers in the reciprocity of testifying and witnessing one another’s stories. Their creative collaboration addresses a transformation of self that is engendered by illness and injury. An emphasis on narrative within a group setting offers tools to validate individual autonomy, build collective strength, and assist those in the group to gather momentum for the journeys that await each of them. The rationale and exercises described serve to complement and enhance traditional modes of healing. Keywords: Narrative medicine; theatre; collaborative storytelling; transformation during illness/injury

UNCHARTED TERRITORY In the bloom time of our marriage, my young husband fell ill. As I escorted him through the labyrinthine structure of the Mayo Clinic for tests to try to determine the cause of the grand mal-seizures that had suddenly taken up

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 69 94 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048007

69

70

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

residence in his 33-year-old body, I sat in waiting rooms hearing people around me telling why and how they, too, were there. Shaken to our foundations, the accounts we heard from others of the human body going awry placed our own fears in perspective. This strange group of companions on a journey that none of us had wanted to take oddly anchored us amid the tectonic plates that were shaking the lives of all who waited to hear medical stories that they feared. We left the Mayo Clinic without an accurate diagnosis. This was in the formative days of MRI, and the tests that would ultimately diagnose my husband’s brain tumor remained in our future, a future that we could no longer anticipate. Ultimately, we would wait through four more years of seizures before doctors in Michigan would diagnose the cause and predict a year and a half to live. Being a university theatre director, I turned to the intersection of art and real life to construct and direct productions of true experiences voiced in the narratives and poetry of people surviving worlds in chaos. I sought, scripted, and directed stories about people who persevered through days and nights of unrelenting turmoil. Most of the stories I chose, while affecting individuals, had strong bases in social contexts, many of which were causes of the turmoil, such as war, homelessness, or histories from the illegal abortion era. Somehow, for me, knowing that others suffered and continued to do so in broad contexts across history and landscape helped me feel inspired and less alone. At the heart of my explorations lay my search for an authentication that theatre work compellingly demonstrates the live human body experiencing permutations. In this essay, I shall discuss the power and potential that I have discovered in a relatively unused arena of aesthetic strategies that may serve to explore illness the process which transforms the human body so that we are strangers to ourselves. Use of theatre techniques for training professionals within the fields that are considered STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, can deepen the understanding of emerging practitioners in those fields, particularly the health professions. In recognizing theatrical/narrative practices as a way to supplement a toolkit of traditional approaches that are currently used, we may add to the work that is already being done by innovative doctors and medical sociologists to transform the way medicine is practiced in this country. Medicine in this country kept my husband alive longer than was predicted. For fifteen years after diagnosis, aided by good insurance and the skill of medical practitioners who intervened within the arc of a terrifying disease, my husband lived with, and despite, a brain tumor. Over more years than we anticipated, the medical system enmeshed him in multiple craniotomies, radiation, and chemotherapy. Although we tried to keep our lives somewhat the same, they changed drastically. New patterns replaced old ones; new rituals replaced past routines. My husband began to think of trips for an MRI and a subsequent good report, if he received one, as his new birth day. We came to recognize from the people who entered and left our lives unexpectedly, that

Transforming Identities of Illness

71

wellness and disease are part of a more complex provenance than biology alone. It was not surprising for us then, to learn that the World Health Organization’s definition of health was one we understood on many levels as: the state of “physical, mental, socioeconomic, and spiritual well-being, not the absence of sickness” (Ludmerer, 1999, p. xix). Susan Sontag has called attention to how definitions of health and illness create historical, social, and personal consequences. Such consequences, she asserts, are framed by the language we use to describe, diagnose, and treat illness in this country and throughout the world. Her groundbreaking study, Illness as Metaphor (1978), explores those who are ill, those who treat them, and the larger culture in which patients have attempted to exercise personal agency. This broadened perspective from which health and illness are perceived has elicited the contributions of people in the arts, as Sontag was, and also the voices and research of numerous contributors from within the social sciences. Investigation of social spheres and the psychological consequences of illness draw upon the work of medical sociologists, anthropologists, and psychiatrists. The “biopsychosocial approach” of psychiatrist George Engel (1977) and the theories of anthropologist and social psychiatrist, Arthur Kleinman (1988), for example, have, like Sontag’s study, underscored the influence of social, cultural, and psychological factors that patients and their families learn all too well from experience. The “narrow biological terms of the biomedical model” Kleinman tells us, captures only part of the story of illness (5 6). Sayantani DasGupta and Marsha Hurst (2007) summarize the other part of the story when they acknowledge the importance of Kleinman’s perspective. Illness, they say, “represents the individual’s personal reaction to the disease or discomfort. Illness is shaped by subjective perceptions, symbolic meanings, and value judgments that arise from an individual’s culture, identity and environment” (p. xii).

NARRATIVE AS A TOOL FOR PATIENTS With growing awareness of broadened context, cause, and consequence of illness, the medical community has been developing perspectives on and processes for diagnosis and treatment that embrace multidimensional aspects of the human being. In particular, doctors, nurses, wellness coaches, and therapists are increasingly recognizing the power of narrative as a tool for insight into diagnosis and treatment by honoring the stories of their patients. When patients are asked to develop their perceptions through choosing words, images, metaphors, and sequential arrangement in telling their story, they not only offer insights to the professional who will help them, but they also demonstrate possibilities for helping themselves.

72

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

The model of storytelling that I wish to present in this essay offers health care professionals strategies to help patients discover sources of power within themselves. I propose a design of collaborative narrative tactics for those who are hoping to start complementary projects to strengthen patient care during the limbo of illness. My goal in the pages that follow is to provide an approach for the trained medical professional, such as a nurse, social worker, or therapist, to step into the breach of treatment and its aftermath and help strengthen patients who have been catapulted into upheaval and disruption by worlds spinning out of control (Musolf, 2017). The intended result is for the patient to discover a “new normalcy” wrought from their own efficacy. A tool kit for exploring, building, and orchestrating a particular form of narrative theatre presents opportunities for ill individuals to call forth their own emerging stories of illness and injury as they come together with other patients who have similar accounts to tell. The objective of this process is to inspire a creative collective voice that ultimately recognizes and embraces the volatility of the human condition. The narrative that arises among individuals who suddenly find themselves thrust into the social world of disease, disability, and, possibly, the inevitability of death is one that few individuals who are not in that world want to hear. Such a story reminds all of us about the fragility of existence. For ill and injured individuals, the development of that story begins the moment they learn the diagnosis predicting a limited horizon for their lives. As my husband’s partner and guide through years of traversing a medical miasma for accurate diagnosis, we searched for signposts of how to live in the uncharted territory that became our home once we knew the harrowing destination of our journey. Along the way, we were the beneficiaries of great knowledge, superb dedication, and excellent technology. There were, however, gaps and crevices without aid for the human heart. In guiding patients past the avalanche that has fallen over their trajectory of life, the health professional offers tools to validate individual autonomy, build collective strength, and assist those in the group to gather momentum together for the journey that remains. Illness threatens all we think we know of ourselves. We spend our lives before becoming ill trying to shape, define, and bring together some sort of integral version of body, mind, and spirit upon which we rely. We know we are dynamic selves, different with different individuals in different places and times, but serious illness can impose a monolithic sense of self onto us and onto others’ perceptions of the ill individual whose layered identity from a life before illness has suddenly dissolved. Many patients report that as illness enters their lives, any sense of a former self or selves is toppled. After the onset of idiopathic adult onset seizure disorder, for example, Jan Feldman (2009, p. 88), reifies the unmooring of her foundations by stating that the diagnosis “rattled my settled life like an earthquake. Everything shifted and some structures built on prior reality were tossed around and shattered … impregnability was breached, control lost.”

Transforming Identities of Illness

73

In the midst of upheaval, after diagnosis and during and after treatment, the act of constructing a story of illness provides a type of respite from chaos. The potential for gaining emotional distance through constructing a narrative about what is happening offers an odd kind of self-autonomy, an implicit choice about how to be a suffering self (Frank, 2009, pp. 166 167). Creating an account helps to shape a newly emerging self or selves with a sense of personal agency and responsibility. Choosing how to present oneself as a persona, a narrator, and a character within one’s story of dissonance and dislocation helps a patient feel less crazy and less alone by sharing similar narratives with others going through comparable situations. Taking control over one’s emerging reality telling one’s own perceptions through selecting, arranging, and choosing language for the telling offers a kind of antidote to the quiet normalization and compliance one is implicitly asked to adopt during what may be horrific treatment and isolation. Storytelling that is witnessed by trained health professionals in the development of illness narratives, can weave patients and dedicated nurses, physicians, therapists, and counselors into a reciprocal web of humanity as each performs a crucial moral duty conveying and witnessing attempts of the suffering self to maintain balance within the confines of the living and the healthy. Storyteller and listener are bound together in the age old act of communicating pain, grief, hope, and acceptance of the human condition while building emotional support, evoking voice instead of silence and solidarity instead of isolation.

NARRATIVE THEATRE STRATEGIES FOR THE PATIENT AND HEALTH PROFESSIONAL Storytelling is practiced by all of us. We shape the phenomena of our lives into narrative as part of a natural inclination to order and find meaning in our worlds. We tell stories to others wherever or whenever we experience something we want to share in order to understand, explore, entertain, communicate, teach, and develop ourselves and others. This practice of informal storytelling can be a solo endeavor, presented by a single storyteller who holds the floor before a group who becomes implicitly defined as an audience. The mere act of having an audience, whether it be one other person or several, can inspire us to perform in a heightened fashion through language choice, vocal inflection, appropriate pauses, and involvement of the body. Such sharing of a narrative can invite transformation of the teller and the told simply when we are with others who want to listen. When, however, those others implicitly acknowledge they are there to actively respond, contribute, build ideas, form relationships, and affirm us, the act of storytelling gains resonance and potential for validation of the self (Langellier & Peterson, 2004).

74

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

Narrative theatre is a form of art that draws upon collective storytelling by a group who all share in the telling, and possibly showing, of narrative for an audience. Narrative theatre is not a fixed form; nor does it have a set definition. It has been called various terms: readers theatre, chamber theatre, group performance of literature, and the one that I use: narrative theatre. The definitions and practices of these narrative ensemble presentations reflect common heritages with and distinctions from better known forms of theatre, storytelling, rhetoric, or literary study (Coger & White, 1982; Taft-Kaufman, 1985). This presentational group mode can be featured in bold theatrical formats, such as in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Nicholas Nickleby. Or it can be developed within academic spheres in a kind of literary “chamber theatre,” a form originated at Northwestern University by Robert Breen (1978), in which point of view is explored in experimental fashion and narrators may be bifurcated or played by several performers. Some playwrights/practitioners view narrative theatre as a style in which to present oral histories (Zeder, 1986), canonical literary classics, or stories for audiences who enjoy imaginative participation (Sills & Spolin, 2000), in a “once upon a time” mode. Others stress narrative theatre’s value in theatrically engaging adult audiences who can contemplate contemporary issues drawn from the lens of history, politics, and social life (Taft-Kaufman, 2000). In the last few decades, with the study of narrative flourishing among scholars and practitioners who consider it the fundamental mode through which humans communicate their worlds, the performances of personal narratives have become important material to be explored, shaped, and experienced within the process of narrative theatre. Such exploration of the self has also made the leap into commercial theatre with projects such as the Chicago Goodman Theatre’s PlayBuild Youth Intensive, a program for teenagers that is designed to validate the voices of its participants and to activate their imaginations through storytelling techniques. Group performances are developed around central metaphors that inspire individual narratives, building a collective reaction to issues of our times. No matter how practitioners choose to define, conceptualize, and shape narrative theatre, all forms emphasize narrative as part, if not all, of the material that is being presented. Whether it is fictive or non-fictive, stands alone as a story or is integrated with more poetic forms, it is featured in a kind of collective story sharing through presentational group performance for an audience. In narrative theatre, performers deliver this mode directly to an audience who is acknowledged as a vital part of the dynamic rather than treated as invisible. Their role is recognized by performers to be observers, listeners, and witnesses to what unfolds. As these witnesses, the audience reciprocally absorbs and shares the tale that is told to them. If the story is about social, ideological, relevant ideas, the audience may be invited to implicitly respond, to engage imaginatively in a kind of dialectic about the ideas in the story. Sometimes, the audience is overtly invited to a “talkback” after the performance so that they

Transforming Identities of Illness

75

may publically offer ideas, thoughts, and beliefs about what they saw, heard, and felt.

AUDIENCE AS SPECT-ACTOR An audience who listens to stories of illness and also plays roles in constructing those stories is a compelling community for expressing, investigating, and transforming the personal and social consequences that serious illness engenders. When an audience is comprised of the same people who perform the story that unfolds, they are no longer solely an audience. They become activated in the process of formation in a special way. The audience role that I am suggesting for a collective of patients and health professionals developing and observing a collaborative story is a role of witnesses and storytellers simultaneously. The audience does not occupy an imaginary “fourth wall” of the stage, as in a traditional theatre production, demarcating a silent presence that passively watches from a safe distance. Instead, they are the building blocks of an emerging, dynamic construction. The process of fluid, malleable formation in which such an audience of storytellers engages is inspired for me by a major facet within the strategies of Augusto Boal. Boal, a Brazilian theatre practitioner, educator, and social reformer, conceived of this role as a “spect-actor.” Boal articulates the premise behind this concept simply and eloquently: “Theatre is the capacity possessed by human beings to observe themselves in action. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!). They are SpectActors” (Boal, 1992, p. xxx). A spect-actor, then, is an individual who participates as both actor and viewer. Forum Theatre, one of the modes that Boal developed to address social oppression, invited people to be both spectator and actor simultaneously, to watch and also to get up and construct what they perceived to be going on in the world around them and how they might change it. Spect-actors would move back and forth, as actor and spectator, between watching and trying on the story, sculpting the ideas as they processed them in concert with others refining, defining, and synthesizing the story of their lives, a collective brain-storming to ultimately transform and enhance those lives. While Boal has numerous games that may be helpful within a storytelling collective, I extract primarily the concept of the spect-actor for this project. The twofold perspective of taking on a dual role of audience and actor affords empathy with others, develops authority for the individual voice, sharpens critical skills within a supportive environment, and provides motivation to participate in a search for a newly emerging self while serving as a reference point for others who are on a similar quest. Collective storytelling promotes confidence, strength, and agency through narrative transference between and among individuals. When one listens to the

76

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

telling of illness stories, there is an “interplay of mutual presences; the listener must be present as a potentially suffering body to receive the testimony that is the suffering body of the teller” (Frank, 1995, p. 144). Everyone becomes tellers and all are witnesses to what is told, offering solidarity of authentication, and dissipation of the isolation and loneliness that illness produces. Witnessing and testifying to one another’s stories help to create what Arthur Frank calls narrative ethics. Those ethics take place, he states, in “telling and listening. There is no such thing as a self-story if that term is taken literally; only selfother-stories. The stories we call ‘ours’ are already bits and pieces we have gathered from others’ stories, and we exist no less in their ‘self’-stories. Ultimately narrative ethics is about recognizing how much we as fellow-humans have to do with each other” (1995, p. 163). Helping patients discover opportunities and processes to recognize and grow strong from shared experience is the role of the facilitator of the narrative collective. The health professional lays scaffolding for patients to share and exchange reciprocal stories of illness in an ongoing embodied spirit of exploration of the self and the other in transformation. The training and background of the facilitator may vary. Facilitators may include nurses, physician’s assistants, therapists, social workers, wellness coaches, physicians, and others. The primary requisites for effective facilitating are fundamental skills of good listening, acceptance, lack of judgment, empathy, an ability to stay in the present, patience, warmth, and a genuine desire to help explore and illuminate the challenges of patients who are struggling with how to get through the present and the future that may await them. These enlightened and empathetic witnesses can present the exercises that follow without theatre training. The exercises have been led effectively, for example, by a psychiatric social worker within a hospital setting in the D.C area. They have been vetted by a physician from the Duke Medical Center, and they are being considered as part of the work for training students studying for medical careers within the university at which I teach.

DISCOVERING METAPHORS OF SELF THROUGH CREATIVE COLLABORATION WITH OTHERS Most of us know the world through empirical evidence of the body doing, acting, and being in various manifestations. The infant gains independence as he begins to crawl; the toddler develops a distinctive gait as she waddles unevenly into the newly emerging environment. “What do you do?” The question frequently frames our interactions with new people whom we are trying to get to know. An awareness of a physical self, often taken for granted when we are able-bodied, connects us with feeling “whole.” The body working normally shapes connecting links between our inner worlds and the world around us.

Transforming Identities of Illness

77

In doing so, the healthy body helps us to implicitly perceive ourselves as “grounded,” “centered,” “balanced,” and “integral.” Corporeal metaphors to convey inner landscapes of being are epistemological. While all thinking is now acknowledged as a form of metaphorical awareness, the thinking we do through our physical presence is of a special sort. Corporeal presence helps us define and know the world by assessing the way the body maneuvers within it. Part of the function of metaphor in language is to try to articulate and understand inner and outer worlds by juxtaposing configurations of human activity with things, ideas, and phenomena we perceive through our physical actions. As we move in the world, we perform implicit and explicit narratives about who we are in reference to what we can do. The corporeal self seeks, interrogates, develops, and loses worlds as our bodies experience illness, injury, and age. The self, transformed by illness and injury, resides within a body altered, sometimes irrevocably. When illness or injury disrupt the regular flow of a life, the potential for self-definition is curtailed drastically. The ill individual discovers quickly that stories of illness, wounds, age, and disability are, at base, stories of the body transformed. They are also stories of the interconnected mind, emotions, imagination, and spirit transformed. When we engage in narrative, we select, arrange, and control the broad and random experience life has hurtled at us. As we narrate, we balance the weight of the immutable that accompanies serious diagnosis. During exploratory rehearsals with narrative theatre, I design a process that offers compressed, intense, simple exercises for discovering how to create stories about the body, imagination, and spirit through use of metaphor. A storytelling collective can probe the significance of how action, atrophy, and disintegration define and transform possibilities of who we feel ourselves to be. Using visceral metaphors to literally embody changes, truncations, and loss, a unit of story tellers who are feeling out of touch with their bodies, for example, might investigate together what it means to feel: off balance, weighted down, pushed, pulled, fragmented, torn, closed, vulnerable, diminished, or supported. A collective that knows intimately the problems involved in a particular kind of illness, treatment, or injury, can help an individual examine both physical manifestations and emotional consequences of these diagnoses through collaboration and corroboration. With a recognition that the body offers potent metaphors for expressing the world inside and out, I often encourage performers in narrative theatre to leave literal action to the imagination of the audience. When a person loses physical abilities upon which they have previously relied, metaphorical work may offer discovery and “voice” to the ineffable. Using a simple gesture or symbolic movement emphasizes a world of depth within. Not only is such movement physically easier for patients recovering from treatment to perform, but it may also underpin the words of the story and bring forth the fundamental aspects of the humanity the story expresses the longing, hope, fear, and sorrow that are within accounts of pain and illness. A storyteller clasping her hand over her

78

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

abdomen, for example, may register pain with an economy of movement that speaks expressively of what she is holding inside. Conveying a suggestion of what lies underneath action may also invite those listening and watching to participate more fully in interpreting what they do not see and hear by using their imaginations to fill in the rest of the metaphor. Corporeal metaphors are understood by us all for the communicative link they implicitly offer to profound human states. The narrative theatre exercises that follow are created, selected, and arranged to help individuals who are ill or injured explore a new territory of self-identity that has been forged by diagnosis, treatment, and encounters with the world outside of the medical sphere. These configurations allow participants opportunity to try on, adjust, and alter them in experimental fashion, investigating and engendering self-awareness. While experiencing the activities as an ensemble, one’s individual goal is to develop a sense of self-agency. In this process, the facilitator sets in motion investigative planks or points for viewing the landscape of self and others through which one is now traversing. There is no product or unanimous understanding toward which all work. There is, at the heart of the project, a process that may, like life, afford insights to be embraced or abandoned, depending upon how the journey develops. The keepsake for one to carry when one leaves the hospital is the awareness that others perceive and embrace the “you” of today with whom they share a story of regeneration and re-invention.

BEGINNING THE JOURNEY In the first sessions for building a program of patient care using collaborative narrative strategies, individuals will try on simple exercises that meld them as separate storytellers into a cohesive unit. Agreeing to be part of such a unit elicits commitment, risk, mutual respect, generosity, and trust. Decisions about whether this agreement is to be undertaken through oral or written contract between health professional and patient, and the manner in which the institution participates in it, formally or informally, I will leave to the thought and planning of those who adopt the project as part of their complementary healing programs. I also defer to health practitioners as to how many sessions they think they will need in order to best fulfill one of the primary goals of the project: the development and enhancement of social/emotional support for seriously ill or injured individuals. Those practitioners may adjust the number of sessions according to how many patients there are in each group and the way that each particular group’s composition embraces the improvisatory frontiers of group work. Some groups will be more proactive, supplementing and adjusting the strategies along the way. Others may wait to follow solely the outlines suggested by the group leader. The exercises I describe below are

Transforming Identities of Illness

79

designed to build a collaborative unit of creativity, exploration, and support for the individual within group work. They are developed to elicit an awareness of the distinctive qualities of each member of the group as well to recognize commonalities that individuals share with the others. The exercises I suggest are extended warm-ups to lay the foundation for what ultimately becomes an improvisational process of storytelling. There is ample room within the exercises and the contributions they engender to amplify and adjust the narrative journeys that are set in motion.

DEVELOPING SENSORY SCULPTURES OF THE SELF THROUGH FOUND MATERIALS The first endeavor upon which I ask each member to embark is the creation of a sculpture that captures how they perceive themselves at this moment in their lives. For most, it is a moment of seismic transformation from wellness to illness and an unknown future. Each individual is struggling with who they have been, who they currently are, and who they might become. That amorphous status is precisely why I ask them to create this work. The idea of a “sculpture” is loosely named. The structure is not built out of materials that one would normally think of as artistic. I ask individuals to use found materials, things that they see outside or in their house or around them and can obtain without buying. The emphasis is to be upon perceiving color, shape, line, flow, texture, smell, sound and movement existing in the everyday world to express what is inside of the individual who is ill. The way they put together the materials does not have to be artistic. The arrangement need only speak on a visceral level of how they currently perceive themselves. They will be explaining the sculpture as the group observes it. The selection of materials and the way the individual feels about his or her amalgam becomes the focus. “Everything that has happened to our bodies is with us still scars, infarcts, stenoses, adhesions,” Rita Charon (2006) asserts, “Our bodies are texts … clerking the records of what we have been through, hoarding evidence of past hurts, remembering as only bodies can the corporeal stabilities that keep us alive” (p. 122). A sculpture translates this corporeal evidence through a process of self-discovery. Piecing together assorted shapes, textures, colors, and lines serves as a process for investigation and revelation of the self to the self and to others. For example, one individual may fill a pink balloon with warm water and pass it around, asking each person to hold it and feel its texture, note its color and shape, gently move their hand in which it rests, and relate to its temperature. Those in the group will gain a strong sensory impression of this individual’s focus for who she is at the moment, her vulnerability and identification with the organic shape and the culturally symbolic color of identification with being female and having breast cancer.

80

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

They will remember the tactile sensations of delicacy as they wait to hear more of her transformation. Introductory sculptures offer a way for group members to try on varied sensory elements to speak for their bodies and their feelings about those bodies.

EXPLORING VISUAL AWARENESS OF SELF AND OTHER IN THE MIRROR SEQUENCE Feeling comfortable with one another in order to produce stories is the aim of building an ensemble. One of the major goals with the group movement exercise, “The Mirror,” is for participants to move as others move and stay with the flow of the rest of the group. The Mirror is the second exercise in which I ask participants to engage, in order to align themselves with others. Through this series of investigations, participants discover time and opportunity for taking the lead and for leading others communally. The Mirror sequence offers the coalescence of disparate individuals through a practice that leads to unity. Unlike the other exercises I introduce here, which are of my own creation, The Mirror is widely known and used in acting classes. It teaches awareness, visual empathy, and a sense of timing in interaction with others. It is credited with viscerally encouraging recognition of commonality between and among people. For those who have undergone diagnosis of severe illness or the sudden occurrence of injury, the simple sequence of movements used in this process helps to create physical empathy. The exercise emphasizes fitting into the overall flow of movement, sound, and rhythm of first one partner and then others. Ultimately it may conclude with the entire group working together as one. The common experience of looking into a mirror makes this endeavor feel almost archetypal in its familiarity. The concept of a mirror usually reflects what we believe to be “the truth” of how we appear to others. Poet Sylvia Plath (1981) conveys the significance we accord to mirrors when she writes from the perspective of one: “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions./ Whatever I see I swallow immediately/Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. /I am not cruel, only truthful ” (p. 173). In reality, outside the world of Plath’s poem, we are all aware of the role that mirrors play in assessing self-esteem, body image, and perceived health. The two-way nature of reflection, to the self and to others, establishes a compelling metaphor for patients who are attempting to deal with transformation. In The Mirror exercise, participants are guided through four steps of a sequence that begins by finding a partner and choosing who will be the “real” person and who will be the mirror image. The real person is asked to improvise and initiate simple actions. Their partner, the mirror image, attempts to follow their every move. I ask duos engaged in this exercise to look into each other’s eyes as a way to stay with their partner, ultimately working as a single unit.

Transforming Identities of Illness

81

I tell the duos that at some point in their mirroring, I will ask them to instantaneously switch so that the real person becomes the mirror and the mirror the real person. I tell them that I will call the guideline to “Switch” and encourage that they simply change roles without any fanfare, keeping the action going smoothly. I tell them to feel free to repeat movements as many times as they want, stressing that staying together and observing another person carefully does not require originality or creativity. Simplicity, repetition, and looking into each other’s eyes are keys to effectively accomplishing the exercise. Movement may be restricted greatly due to injury, illness, and treatment. Solely looking into each other’s eyes and breathing at the same time may be used in a streamlined version of this exercise. In the third part of the sequence, I ask the duos to continue to stay together but to try to move as a unit without anyone officially taking the dominant role as real person or the follower role as mirror. The goal of ensemble movement is accomplished simply by each person anticipating the way that an opening movement might be extended, developed, and completed. Such anticipation is due to the fact that the partners are watching each other carefully and attentively noting each other’s energy, basic kinetic patterns, faces, and breathing patterns. In other words, I ask them to key into each other on a fundamental level as human beings equipped with similar physical make-up, observant of the way that simple movement as a person can be accomplished if one has all one’s integral parts working. The duo, watching each other in a kind of neutral state of readiness, are acting upon the human affinity they both have to take on the other’s action and extend or complete it. The last part of the exercise is to ask each aligned duo to join with another duo to try to synchronize the movement of four individuals. This is a more complex challenge. Watching another set of partners requires twice the attentiveness. As I observe their work, based upon their levels of success, I sometimes ask them to align with yet other groups of four. If the size of the group is not unmanageable or the duos have been operating on high levels of awareness and cooperation, I ask all smaller groups to try to align into one. Participants often naturally accomplish this merging by reducing all movement to simple moves of hands and arms. Sometimes the patterns that emerge from this convergence of smaller groupings resembles a ritual, with people joining hands or bringing arms into the center and then backing away, all concentrating on looking in the same directions. There is almost always a move from bodies being far away to bodies being close at the end. After the exercise, I give participants the opportunity to talk with their first partners and then to gradually collect feedback from each other unit that they joined. Finally, everyone comes together to discuss the overall exercise. The time frame for having gone through all phases of the sequence varies. The entire process can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. The final effect is noteworthy. Individuals seem to feel empowered as individuals and as

82

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

a group. They appear to have a strong momentum for achieving whatever they are asked to do, and they seem confident that they are the ultimate arbiters of how to accomplish whatever is asked or to adjust along the way with the help of others in the group.

EXPERIMENTING WITH TEMPOS OF SELF-AWARENESS THROUGH RHYTHMIC PATTERNS OF FLOW AND DISRUPTION The idea of “seeing” into the self and observing others is one of the most dominant sensory metaphors for interpretation of who we are. Yet sight is not the only sense that helps us decipher the world around and within us. Diane Ackerman’s (1990) description of human perception through the realm of the senses reifies the importance of each sense to help us discriminate and experience inner and outer worlds. She calls our attention, for example, to the comforting dynamic of sound that surrounds us even before we emerge into the world: “Nothing was as perfect as the sojourns in the womb,” she writes, “when like little madmen we lay in our padded cells, free of want, free of time. A newborn, nursing at its mother’s breast, or just being held close, hears that steady womb-beat, and life feels continuous and livable. Our own heartbeat reassures us that we are well” (p. 179). A third exercise for building group cohesiveness and storytelling power involves the metaphoric and evocative potential of sound, which is for us, if fortunate, one of the last of our sense impressions to stay with us until we die. As part of the creation of stories of illness through group improvisatory exploration, I suggest that the group develop a soundscape of rhythmic intensity and velocity that reflects life before diagnosis and after. In order to delve into this possibility, I ask participants to make themselves comfortable on chairs or cubes or the floor in a circle unless they would rather stand or lie down. The goal is to free one’s body, unencumbered for whatever may emerge naturally from the exercise. Each participant takes her/his turn, creating percussive sounds punctuated by pauses and silences to express what their lives felt like in the days before their mortality rushed to the foreground. Any acoustic body part may be used to develop this percussive sense of living while under the illusion of limitless horizons until disease or injury rips it away. Participants often start off clapping a rhythm and then expand the use of hands to include snapping of fingers, slapping laps, pounding chests, stamping feet on the floor, brushing arms, face, and head. Some individuals move over into making sounds with their mouths such as hissing, laughing, clicking, whistling, crying, and “who, whooing.” Eyes may be open or closed during creation and listening. Improvisation and the body are the guides. It is a group of fundamental individual life rhythms, bordering on the mundane, finding overlap as participants play and hear themselves and each other.

Transforming Identities of Illness

83

The percussive pulse that echoes from person to person expresses a communal impulse that links the separate identities as everyone “voices” their vulnerabilities, frailties, and courage by using the simplicity of playing the human body as expressive instrument. Often times an individual “story of sound” inspires aural replies and reactions. A kind of call and response interaction evolves amid the sudden stops and shifts from the percussion and tempo. The narrative rhythm repeats, echoes, overlaps, crescendos, and diminishes. Eventually a larger rhythmic movement may develop to testify to the “forces beyond one’s control” with which one must grapple (Musolf, 2017). One can hear clearly the predictable cadences of pre-established life, when all is well or at least part of a pleasant routine. One can recognize acute peaks of accident, incident, and alarm. One has no trouble identifying fragmented, scattered, erratic and frantic searches for a rhythmic pattern to add order to the cacophony, dissonance and broken extremes caused by illness and injury. While the design of this exercise is simple, the results can be astonishing. People learn entire swaths of information about themselves and the human condition without saying anything except for calling out a word or two here and there if they’re motivated to articulate in spoken language. The language of sound alone in tandem with the natural percussive feel of the body creating and responding to rhythmic tempos, breaks, and shifts speak of being alive, damaged but alive, and expanding limits of the existing self through discovering unity.

HONORING THE SOURCE OF ENERGY WITHIN THE SELF The voice that emerges in oral story creation features the teller’s choice of words, evocation of imagery, selection of metaphors, and shaping of sound. On another more fundamental level, all of these elements issue from the most vital aspect of our being breathing. In oral collective composing and transmission of stories, verbal communication with the world outside of us is controlled by the breath we take in and the way we expel it back out into the world. Thus, the program I am suggesting offers time for participants to explore the sounds of their own breathing as a way to recognize a crucial aspect of our own agency, through which we are intimately connected with others. Breathing is the vital process that maintains life, forming and reflecting our time on this earth. The way we inhale, use air within our bodies, and exhale, is shaped by our experiences from moment to moment, during good times and bad. Breath in good times may be evident to us during buoyant excitement, moments of intimacy, and rigors of exercise. If our days are filled with patterns of normalcy, the sounds of our breathing are often quiet to us. Conversely, inhalations and exhalations of breath entering and leaving our bodies during anxiety, fear, pain, and duress communicate states of primal response to the

84

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

world outside, about our world inside. Audible intakes and letting out of breath gasps, cries, sobs, sighs, yawns, pants, grunts, expulsions of air all tell a fundamental story of being alive. If the group works solely with sounds, forming a kind of collective radio drama with no words while sitting closely in a circle in a darkened room, they will create and hear aspects of grief, survival, and the damage control of their journeys in an essential manner. Awareness of how breathing manifests itself during the roiling of life in extremes adds visceral texture to the stories that emerge together.

BIFURCATING THE PERFORMING SELF TO EXPLORE LAYERS WITHIN Embarking upon development of an ensemble through creating sculptures, engaging in the mirror exercise, and pursuing varied tempos in soundscapes and breathing together prepares the group for working cohesively with two artistic conventions of narrative theatre. The first convention I wish to discuss is “bifurcation.” Bifurcation is a strategy during which two or more performers portray myriad levels of a single individual. Bifurcation, or division of something into two parts, is a concept that addresses the dislocation that sunders the psyche during times of serious injury and illness. Divisions and polarities lay at the center of an individual’s quest for who they were, are, and might become. Anxiety over the state of one’s future self or annihilation of the self altogether looms; stability of past ways of being becomes indeterminate. Awareness of what the sick or injured person once was able to do, in contrast to current disability, often becomes the foreground of self-perception. These kinds of divisions linger for me compellingly from my own experience with my husband’s illness. In the last month of his life, he told me: “There is another person out there who looks a lot like me; only he can do things that I can’t. I have to find him. I have to find my other self.” The wrenching contours of wholeness versus fragmentation, lived within intimate enclosure of an individual or a family, are palpably rendered through dramatic bifurcation when conveying the significance of the layered self to others. The attempt to address the dichotomies and splintering of healthy from ill self may be rendered within narrative theatre through individuals trying on divergence of the self into selves. It is a technique that is apt for conveying layered dimensionality, fragmentation, and a kind of atomization of the self. It is a technique ripe for work with illness, rearrangement, dislocation, and exploration. One way to enable individuals within a storytelling collective to get comfortable with the idea of bifurcation is to have two people pair off and get

Transforming Identities of Illness

85

into a position where they must stay connected in some fashion, such as back to back or sitting opposite each other in chairs with knees touching and eyes closed. In this incarnation of a bifurcated story, the two people are responsible for creating the entire story between the two of them, as though it were the voice of a solo storyteller. They both use the pronoun “I” and either interrupt each other to take over the story or develop a signal for when they want the other person to move into the lead, such as pausing mid-sentence to provide opportunity for their partner to complete a thought or a sentence or repeating a line as a cue for their partner to repeat the line a third time and then take over. If they listen carefully to each other they can make the narrative content and style seem like the voice of one individual. Ideally they should strive to align the narrative word choice, imagery, metaphors, and “voice” to sound seamless as though it were the same person. When using bifurcation within collective storytelling, the entire group listens carefully to one another. They strive to hear within an individual’s story, patterns emerging in the word choice, imagery used, the attitudes conveyed, and the ideas expressed. These patterns of sameness and variation in an individual’s narrative reveal consistency and change within the storyteller’s sense of self in the past, present, and future. The story told by each member of the group may then be performed by others within the collective who take on differing aspects of their companion. In this manner, the individual provides the group with her story, and they translate it back for her in a process that captures the multidimensional levels of that single individual. Collaboratively, she explores her self by watching and listening to her selves framed for her by others. Let us say, for example, that a woman describes the transformation that has been going on in her life since being diagnosed with lung cancer. We can note by the metaphors she uses, the perceptions she distributes to the past, present, and future as she says: “I feel as though I’m rattling around in what appears like exposed bald patches of a garden that held tomatoes, squash, and full round pumpkins, but the ripeness and color have been visited by frost. You can see the way the greenery used to look at another time. But now the ground has been altered by layers of film that I know will continue to ice over as the weather gets colder.” As delivered in traditional storytelling style, in which one person conveys a story, those lines would be said entirely by a single narrator. If we were, instead, to bifurcate the speech to emphasize the sense of past versus present and the narrator’s awareness of her days being leeched of their vibrant substance and replaced with icy foreshadowing of dormancy, we might divide the passage according to shifts in time and imagery of the ripe garden versus the impending death of it. Delivered by two performers, the brief speech might accentuate the different perceptions. Performer 1 delivers the lines that recognize the eclipse of the growing season of her life, and Performer 2 holds on in a slender fashion to the sense of what used to be. I have divided this brief speech

86

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

to show how such a division might emphasize the dual awareness that illness brings as an individual attempts to reconcile the present with the past: Performer 1: I feel as though I’m rattling around in what appears like exposed bald patches Performer 2: of a garden that held tomatoes and squash and full round pumpkins, but the ripeness and color Performer 1: has been visited by a major frost. Performer 2: You can see the way the greenery used to look Performer 1&2: at another time, Performer 1: but now the ground has been altered by layers of film that you know will continue to ice over as the weather gets colder. Bifurcation, trifurcation, and further divisions do not always necessarily enhance narratives or make them more powerful. This passage, for example, might be more poignant if delivered realistically by a single narrator. Division of a narrator into several performers, however, can be an expressive way of seeking and defining the transforming contours of inner terrain. I present it here as part of a toolkit for group construction of experience that shatters people and sends them looking to collect pieces of themselves. It is not possible to step back over the line of awareness that serious illness and injury demarcate. New boundary lines for a life are drawn by the immediacy of our vulnerability, of our awareness of our mortality. Bifurcation of performers telling similar or overlapping stories gains power by the accumulation of narrators who can relate to a universal explosion of their previously settled lives. A loss of connection to one’s past forces one into a churning emptiness that can be filled by charting a physical, emotional, and psychological map for claiming a new self by hearing the voices of other selves connected with you. In tandem with bifurcating lines and listening to the effect of others performing different strains of thought collectively, the original narrator as director or the group leader might encourage storytellers in the exercise to try on manifestations of how one part of a self physically affects other parts. If, for example, one aspect of the self, such as doubt, is being led by another aspect, such as anxiety, the group leader could ask the individuals performing those parts to try on that movement. Doubt would be asked to lead anxiety in some fashion. Perhaps an aspect of the self we call grief subsumes all other parts. The narrator or group leader might ask the person taking the lines that capture grief’s presence to take a position of dominance over the other two storytellers representing doubt and anxiety. My inclination would be to let the performers improvise simple movements, positioning their bodies in relation to one another either as they try on some lines of narrative or possibly silently move first and then add lines of dialogue or move in reference to lines performed by the narrator. Sometimes a simple trial of how one aspect of a thought or emotion affects

Transforming Identities of Illness

87

another, such as blocking, supporting, tangling, weighing upon, is most effectively illustrated through bodies trying on these poses in combination with one, two, or even three partners who help embody contradictions, confirmations, tension, and dissonance. In such a way, group storytellers playing the roles of various layers of the narrator help her or him investigate and adjust the inner terrain set in motion by the illness or injury with which their group member struggles. These companions of circumstance help to play back and transform the depths of uncharted territory through which they, too, are moving.

CREATING CHORIC VOICES: THE SELF WITHIN A SOCIAL WORLD A second convention of narrative theatre and a strong building block of storydevelopment, in addition to bifurcation, exists in creation of a chorus. A “chorus” in this situation is not a singing chorus but one that uses spoken vocal strategies to emphasize the kinds of reactions that an ill individual hears from others. The creation of this vocal collectivity is used to suggest attitudes, judgments, and reactions to an individual’s illness from people on the outside, those who are not ill or injured. I call these voices “outsiders” to distinguish them not only from those who struggle with illness but also from the health professional who guides the group. They represent an inability to empathize that may not be for lack of trying but because necessity and situation offer differing experiential lessons. They obviously do not yet know appropriate ways to respond. Group construction of a chorus featuring outside voices is designed to take control over thoughtless remarks made by others, part of the experience that Gil Richard Musolf (2007), asserts individuals experience when “centrifugal forces … decenter agency” and “spin our world to the edge of madness” (p. 4). These are the statements often calcified in the minds of people within the maelstrom. They are generated by friends, family, acquaintances, and workplace colleagues as well as by strangers one encounters in non-medical settings. The din they put forth issues from frequent sayings tossed off insensitively such as “There’s a reason for everything”; “God never gives us more than we can handle”; or “I don’t know how you do it!” They represent the robotic consensus and coded denial of outsiders implicitly agreeing not to speak of one’s mortality, the inequities of fate, or more helpful ways that one might act in the face of an individual who is feeling overwhelmed by life, pain, and the possibility of imminent death. They convey an onslaught of reflexive sound and fury that is part of the social stigma to which one is subjected. The choral narrative strategies that I introduce to collective storytellers are vocal impressions created by group members who put forth and react to sounds, words, sentences or ideas culled from their experience in the world since diagnosis. In improvisatory fashion, participants weave, craft, and explore

88

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

the meaningfulness of these offerings through the vocal techniques of (1) repeating; (2) counterpointing; and/or (3) overlapping. The narrative designs that emerge become part of the content and style of the story. The oral composition they demonstrate can be complemented by using simple variations in: volume, speed, pitch, pause, and vocal quality (whispers, guttural, silky, nasal, etc.). Such vocal tools add emphasis, contrast, resonance, and multipoint perspective to the creation of the narrative. They can be spontaneously orchestrated into volume crescendos or diminuendos, vocal quality adjustments such as whispers, grunts, and cries and numerous vocal effects that give a feeling of texture to the story through a sub-textual undercurrent of sound complementing the narrative as it unfolds through words and bodies. Description of these vocal aspects on paper may seem abstract. They are, however, simple components of our natural equipment for speaking. We use them effortlessly every time we open our mouths to say something. Once we become aware of them as tools, we can make choices about how to use them expressively to communicate our thoughts and feelings. A simple exercise can illustrate the potential for the communicative power and natural force they create. Participants sit close together in a circle and close their eyes. The room should be dark enough to encourage people to use their hearing rather than their sight. Ask the group to keep their eyes closed for the duration of this exercise. One person begins a story about some part of their experience of illness, such as diagnosis, treatment, surgery, the return of a tumor, company visiting, or whatever they would like to explore. As they tell the story, they allow time for others in the group to repeat a line, counterpoint it, or overlap the same line by starting and finishing the line at a different time. The story should be told slowly enough so that anyone who wants to augment it spontaneously with their contributions has time to do so. Once people catch onto the informality and focus of the process for orally composing, they can try repeating a line, word, phrase, or sound with varied tones, differing intensities, permutations of phrasing, volume, or tempo. With eyes closed, listening, the emphasis is on augmenting and deepening the unfolding story of illness or injury from varied participants’ experience. The group leader may want to make time for discussion afterwards of what and how the group gained additional understanding or developed differing viewpoints during this group work.

MAPPING A NARRATIVE JOURNEY: POINTERS FOR THE GUIDE The narrative workshops I have conceived extend a lifeline over the chasm that opens post diagnosis and treatment for injury and disease. A group of similarly injured or ill individuals who work for a period of six or seven weeks after treatment could afford each other a potentially comforting space of discovery

Transforming Identities of Illness

89

within which to physically heal and adjust to lives altered by injury and illness. To be human is to be a storyteller. To be a human who is injured or ill may mean being silenced by those who do not understand, who would prefer not to hear these stories. Coming together and creating mutually reinforcing narratives with those who do understand provides safety and a framework for turning one’s wounds and scars into tools for self-discovery and muscular selfdevelopment. The emphasis of this journey does not involve creating artistic expression for others. It is solely process oriented for the participants. The goals are to develop and employ theatrical narrative strategies for investigating, supplementing, and enhancing the efficacy of standard medical practice. The aims encourage sharing and building of narratives through an expanded awareness of how the body talks within and through metaphorical interpretation and by trying on group exercises and games that re-shape awareness of who the individual might be during and after treatment for illness and injury.

DESTINATIONS There is no set manner in which a health professional must guide the journey that I have described. I offer here, instead, a summary of features or what might be called “alignments” to serve as longitudes and latitudes for navigation in this exploration. • • • • • • • • •

a process orientation group cohesiveness a safe environment creative collaboration spontaneity and improvisation simultaneously performing and observing physical work connecting to self-perception shaping voice and breathing to convey inner and outer worlds investigation of how metaphors shape our perceptions

EXPLORATIONS Tools used to construct collaboration while exploring and developing creative storytelling about oneself include the following: • serving as spect-actor, observing and performing simultaneously • creating a sensory sculpture of the self • engaging in the mirror sequence exercise for alignment with others

90

• • • •

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

exploring rhythmic patterns of flow and disruption through a tempo exercise recognizing breathing patterns to build texture into verbal narrative bifurcating the self to explore layers within creating a vocal chorus to represent the outer social world with which one contends

A POSSIBLE ITINERARY Session 1 • Introductions of each individual and the group leader • Explanations of the broad definition of narrative as a story for ordering one’s life • Introduction of the idea and function of “spect-actors” • Brief discussion of each session ahead. Description of upcoming sculpture assignment for next session • Questions and concerns of participants • Concluding exercises, guided by health professional. A brief few minutes of breathing, stretching, looking in one another’s eyes, and standing together quietly as a group in a circle with arms around each other

Session 2 • Warm-up guided by health professional. A brief few minutes of breathing, stretching, looking in one another’s eyes, and standing together quietly as a group in a circle with arms around each other • Sculptures: Each person shows their constructions and explains it. Others ask questions and respond to each person’s presentation

Session 3 • Warm-up guided by health professional. A brief few minutes of breathing, stretching, looking in one another’s eyes, and standing together quietly as a group in a circle with arms around each other • Mirror exercise • Post-exercise discussion

91

Transforming Identities of Illness

Session 4 • Warm-up guided by health professional. A brief few minutes of breathing, stretching, looking in one another’s eyes, and standing together quietly as a group in a circle with arms around each other • Rhythmic patterns of flow and disruption • Breath work • Choric voices of a social world • Stories in the dark, possibly perceived as radio shows

Session 5 • Warm-up guided by health professional. A brief few minutes of breathing, stretching, looking in one another’s eyes, and standing together quietly as a group in a circle with arms around each other • Body metaphors: exploration of varying cliche´s of body-self misalignments such as “I’m all over the place,” “I can’t find myself anymore,” “I’m not my old self,” and “I’m feeling fragmented, dislocated.” • Bifurcation warm-up translated through metaphors: Each individual, working with another person or two or three, assign other individuals a role to play as part of your many selves and sculpt their bodies as they move through (1) a search for a part of yourself you think you may have lost or has become weak, (2) polarity, representation of two opposing sides of yourself and their interaction with each other, and (3) interrogation of some part of who or what you were or have become. • Construction of bifurcation stories

Session 6 • Warm-up guided by health professional. A brief few minutes of breathing, stretching, looking in one another’s eyes, and standing together quietly as a group in a circle with arms around each other • Possible themes for story constructions: something’s wrong; seeking a reason; waiting to hear; diagnosis; treatment; institutional help; between visits; the tests I can’t study for; simple pleasures; when I rule the world; my biggest discovery; a secret I’m now ready to tell; what I never knew before; my dream therapy …. • First lines for story constructions: “If anyone had told me,” “when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I think is;” “The entire time I was in treatment I wanted to say … ;” “The words I would have said to me if I were my physician are … ;”

92

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

• Have participants create their own first lines.

Session 7 • Warm-up guided by health professional. A brief few minutes of breathing, stretching, looking in one another’s eyes, and standing together quietly as a group in a circle with arms around each other • Feedback on entire program, strengths, problems, omissions, suggestions for enhancement, discussion of the communal “ethos” or emergent “voice” that emerged. Did each contributor share equally in the creation of the structure, tone, and emphasis of the gestalt of the entire group of narrators?

AFTER-MATH How does one travel in a landscape of loss before greater loss? This essay has focused upon the importance of group narrative work by ill and injured individuals who become participants/listeners/viewers in the reciprocity of testifying and witnessing one another’s stories. The creative collaboration in which they engage offers tools to address the transformation of self which illness and injury engender. Narratives about the body and spirit gone awry demonstrate that “you can be sick and remain not just in love with yourself but in love with the humanity that shares sickness as its most fundamental commonality” (Frank, 1995, p. 39). Alternative forms of practice acknowledge the importance for the health professional of using the arts, humanities, and social sciences for diagnosis and treatment of the entire human being. As inspiration for developing thoughtful divergent plans for patient care, geneticist/medical historian, Kenneth Ludmerer (1999), laments the growing illness of the medical system itself due to an emphasis on volume, numbers, and productivity and urges those who envision different ways of addressing health care in this country not to give up their advocacy for change. “For those who wish to do so, opportunities to influence medical education in a more constructive direction are still present.” “The lesson of history,” he tells us, “is that the future is not predetermined and that individuals can make a difference” (xxi xxii). Individuals are at the heart of the narrative project put forth here individuals coming together as a group to help themselves and each other renew the use of one of humanity’s most ancient tools for survival. In our age of technological wonders and advanced scientific knowledge, telling stories reminds us of “the oldest, most enduring strategy by which we humans live with all that is incompatible with life (Frank, 2009, p. 164).” Stories help us discover possibilities for addressing our feelings of powerlessness, acknowledging the

93

Transforming Identities of Illness

fragility of our lives, and continuing on through catastrophic circumstances. Narratives of illness told by storytellers adrift in the struggle for survival provide a safe port in which to connect with the support of others and ultimately, to discover a crucial love of oneself. Such embrace of self and personal agency does not exclude others nor repress the awareness of the fact that we will all die. Instead, it allows us to embrace what makes us human.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Sue Ann Martin, Caroline Kramer, Karen Gordon, and Ron Primeau for their thoughtful critiques on an earlier version of this chapter. I thank Tammy Griffin for dialogues on health and wellness and am especially appreciative of Gil Richard Musolf’s careful reading of this revision.

REFERENCES Ackerman, D. (1990). A natural history of the senses. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Boal, A. (1992). Preface to Games for Actors and Non-Actors (A. Jackson, Trans.). London: Routledge. Breen, R. S. (1978). Chamber theatre. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Charon, R. (2006). Narrative medicine: Honoring the stories of illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coger, L. I., & White, M. R. (1982). Readers theatre handbook. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company. DasGupta, S., & Hurst, M. (2007). Stories of illness and healing: Women write their bodies (pp. 67 73). Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. Engel, G. (1977). The need for a new medical model: A challenge for biomedicine. Science, 196, 129 136. Feldman, J. (2009). I’ll take care of it. In Y. Gunaratnam & D. Oliviere (Eds.), Narrative and stories in health care: Illness, dying, and bereavement (pp. 88 89). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frank, A. W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Frank, A. W. (2009). The necessity and dangers of illness narratives, especially at the end of life. In Y. Gunaratnam & D. Oliviere (Eds.), Narrative and stories in health care: Illness, dying, and bereavement (p. 161 175). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing, and the human condition. New York, NY: Basic Books. Langellier, K. M., & Peterson, E. E. (2004). Storytelling in daily life: Performing narrative. Philadelphia. Ludmerer, K. M. (1999). Introduction to time to heal: American medical education from the turn of the century to the era of managed care. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Musolf, G. R. (2017). Oppression and Resistance: A structure-and-agency perspective. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 48, 1 18. Plath, S. (1981). T. Hughes (Ed.), Collected poems. London: Faber & Faber. Sills, P., & Spolin, V. (2000). Story theatre: Four shows. New York, NY: Applause Books.

94

JILL TAFT-KAUFMAN

Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as metaphor (Rev. ed.). Reprint, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988. Taft-Kaufman, J. (1985). Oral interpretation: Twentieth century theory and practice. In T. W. Benson (Ed.), Speech communication in the 20th century (pp. 157 183). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Taft-Kaufman, J. (2000). How to tell a true war story: The dramaturgy and staging of narrative theatre. Theatre Topics, 10, 17 38. Zeder, S. (1986). Mother Hicks. Anchorage, KY: Anchorage Press Plays.

POWER, EMERGENCE, AND THE MEANINGS OF RESISTANCE: OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING IN CANADA Taylor Price and Antony Puddephatt ABSTRACT Open access publishing is an increasingly popular trend in the dissemination of academic work, allowing journals to print articles electronically and without the burden of subscription paywalls, enabling much wider access for audiences. Yet subscription-based journals remain the most dominant in the social sciences and humanities, and it is often a struggle for newer open access publications to compete, in terms of economic, cultural, and symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 2004). Our study explores the meanings of resistance held by the editors of open access journals in the social sciences and humanities in Canada, as well as the views of university librarians. To make sense of these meanings, we draw on Lonnie Athens’ (2015) radical interactionist account of power, and expand on this by incorporating George Herbert Mead’s (1932, 1938) theory of emergence, arguing that open access is characteristic of an “extended rationality” (Chang, 2004) for those involved. Drawing on our open-ended interview data, we find that open access is experienced as a form of resistance in at least four ways. These include resistance to (1) profit

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 95 115 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048008

95

96

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

motives in academic publishing; (2) access barriers for audiences; (3) access barriers for contributors; and (4) traditional publishing conventions. Keywords: Open access publishing; radical interactionism; power; emergence; resistance

INTRODUCTION Open access publishing is a social movement that attempts to overcome price and permission barriers to academic work by providing articles free of charge to any who are interested in accessing them (Suber, 2012; Willinsky, 2009). Yet open access has only emerged recently as an alternative form of publishing, leaving many to launch initiatives themselves by relying on volunteers and using newly developed software platforms. Such work is time consuming, and does not generate the type of revenue for the journal that for-profit subscription models enable. Further, new upstart journals have difficulty vying for the prestige enjoyed by more well-established subscription-based journals. Given these issues, what motivates editors to work against the grain and put in countless hours of volunteer time to realize their open access initiatives? How does the concept of resistance play into their motivations and inspire them to continue in their uphill struggles for success? In this chapter, we draw on interactionist theories of power to better understand the meanings of resistance in relation to open access scholarly publishing, in the context of the social sciences and humanities in Canada. We rely on interview data from editors of nonprofit open access journals across Canada, with various levels of establishment in terms of impact and prestige. We supplement these with interviews with Canadian university librarians who also have strong opinions on the possibilities of the open access movement. To begin, we provide a brief overview of the treatment of power in symbolic interactionism, and then turn to Lonnie Athens’ (2015) “radical interactionism” to help situate and contextualize our study. Building from this, we suggest that George Herbert Mead’s (1932, 1938) concept of emergence provides a useful theoretical extension to understand how new forms and structures of power can be generated and then begin to take hold. Indeed, through the interaction of a number of disparate historical forces, open access was able to emerge and take shape, challenging conventional publishing norms and allowing for different aspects of “extended rationality” (Chang, 2004). This enables those who are traditionally marginalized in academia to more creatively strategize and compete in the sphere of academic publishing. In short, actors now have the cultural and practical tools to resist norms of academic publishing in ways that were previously unimaginable. With this background context in place, utilizing

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

97

an interactionist perspective and method enables us to acquire rich descriptions from our respondents about the multiple ways that open access as “resistance” is perceived and acted upon. We find that the open access advocates we interviewed perceived open access as a form of resistance against: (1) profit motives; (2) access barriers for audiences; (3) access barriers for contributors; and (4) traditional conventions of scholarly publishing. After describing how these forms of resistance have been understood and realized in practice, we discuss the concept of emergence as a possible generic extension to radical interactionist theory.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTION, POWER, AND EMERGENCE Symbolic interactionism has long been criticized for an alleged a-structural bias, ignoring important issues of power and inequality as they permeate social life on a number of levels.1 Critics from outside the tradition (Smith, 1987; Wacquant, 2002; Zeitlin, 1973) argued that interactionists too often implicitly support the status quo through their “value-neutral” stances to research, and need to start asking more pertinent questions about the role of structural hierarchies, and how qualities of difference often serve as forms of oppression in social life. Internal critics called for a creative expansion of symbolic interaction by connecting it with more critical traditions like cultural studies, where power is considered more centrally. For example, Musolf (1992) argued that interactionists would do well to shed more light on the ways in which power relationships in the everyday have strong roots in master institutions such as the economy and media. Denzin (1992) called on interactionists to interrogate the relevance of variables like race, class, and gender, more seriously considering how these patterns of inequality are reflected in our ethnographic data. Other interactionists maintain that traditional Blumerian interactionism need not fuse itself to other traditions, since it has all the tools necessary for a robust consideration of power. Robert Prus (1999) argues that power is best studied by doubling down on interactionist assumptions of human group life, and carefully attending to the meaning and terms of the people implicated in power relations in particular social contexts. Rather than attributing power to social situations in a top-down way, we should be attuned to how actors actually experience power in their own lives (see also Dennis & Martin, 2005). Other interactionists agree that Blumer (1969, 1990) always had the tools to study power and structural issues (Hall, 1985, 1997; Maines, 1998). For example, Hall (1997, p. 398) introduced the interactionist concept of “meta-power,” defined as “the creation and control of distal social conditions and situations.” This creates rules that dictate the ways in which individuals, or social groups, interact with one another, as well as the consequences in place if they break them. Maines (2001) argued that interactionists are especially well suited to

98

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

uncover how social structures are actually experienced by people on the ground, since a Blumerian methodology leads scholars to gain an “intimate familiarity” with actors, to better understand how organizational structures are actually experienced at the “concrete contact points” where people and policy structures meet. The main emphasis though, for traditional interactionists, is to “demystify” power by attending closely to how actors actually perceive and experience it in concrete terms (Prus, 1999). Lonnie Athens (2015) has since developed a new paradigm of “radical interactionism,” which aims to reconstruct some of the basic assumptions of traditional symbolic interactionism, such that it can more adequately handle issues of power and domination. The main gripe that Athens has with traditional interactionist approaches is that they share the error of linguistic phenomenalism. That is, interactionists erroneously deem power to be present only to the extent that it is defined by the actors at hand. Yet power can be present when it is not understood at all, when it is only in partial view, or if it is present but only unconsciously or habitually. When power is not explicitly defined by actors, as in the above instances, interactionists are too complicit in the assumption that it is not there at all. Mead (1934) and Blumer (1969) are both considered to be guilty of wearing “rose-colored glasses” in this way, seeing domination as only one possible instance, rather than a crucial and ever present element of all social interactions. To solve these difficulties, Athens makes two major changes at the core of interactionist theory. First, he redefines Mead’s base unit of social life, the social act, as being one in which there is always a super- and sub-ordinate relationship involved, whether social actors are aware of this or not (Athens, 2002). While power may not be explicitly defined, it is always present at an implicit level as part of the social act, avoiding the error of linguistic phenomenalism. By assuming superand sub-ordinate roles in each and every social act, he awakens us to the power-laden features of all social acts, and hence, all complex social institutions that grow out of these base units of analysis (Athens, 2005). Second, he turns away from Mead as the exclusive intellectual forerunner to interactionist thought, and makes use of the lesser-used concepts from Robert Park’s ecological theory. In thinking about social and community development, Park always conceived of institutional arrangements as being formulated from different phases of conflict and domination (Athens, 2010). This provides interactionists with the tools to think about institutional and organizational processes, and how conflict, domination, and subjugation play out within them, and importantly, who benefits most from the arrangements that exist. Athens (2015, p. 220) makes the important point that domination is always “problematic” and can never be considered a “fait accompli,” because “a dominative encounter can always potentially erupt during a collective act, no matter how stable the group or the larger community.” Related to this point, Athens (2010) earlier argued “an important complicating factor is that groups or individuals can bring different kinds of force to the table” and that “domination of

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

99

social action is replete with vagaries that open the door to the unexpected.” Since power can be derived from many heterogeneous sources, which may be more or less relevant at different times, it is very difficult to presume the outcome of dominance based on initial conditions alone. Invisible and otherwise un-forecasted events may well come into play, disrupting the existing arrangements of power, and dynamically changing the terrain to enable those in subordinate positions a chance to rise. It is the unexpected qualities of how dominance orders and encounters take shape and play out that we believe requires more attention. Here, we consider Mead’s theory of emergence (Chang, 2004; Mead, 1932, 1934, 1936, 1938; Meltzer & Manis, 1992), and its relevance in understanding domination and the distribution of power. In explaining the concept of emergence, Mead (1938, p. 641) wrote that “when things get together, something arises that was not there before.” Emergence is thus the key to novelty, innovation, and change, in the physical world as well as the social world of human actors. In Darwin’s theory of evolution, new forms arise as a result of interactions that occur out of prior conditions and forces. Yet predicting the constitution of these new forms is impossible without the benefit of hindsight. The same issue arises in the emergence of scientific and academic theories; one cannot predict future knowledge from past conditions. Popper (1960) argued that this is what makes the sociology of knowledge always a historical project, and never a predictive one. Chang (2004) explains that Mead’s “emergent objects” are always dependent on two things: (1) the past conditions that make the emergent event possible; and (2) the interaction that takes place and brings the particular emergent into being. In the case of human social interaction, for example, Blumer (1969) emphasizes the “formative” character of interaction, in that the outcome of a dialogue is always greater than the individual component parts each actor brings to it. The interaction adds value and determines what types of new objects will form from the initial conditions, often in novel, unexpected ways. Meltzer and Manis (1992) contend that emergence is not an afterthought or addition to otherwise deterministic social patterns, but represents an ever present and universal feature of human interaction. Following Blumer, they conceive of emergence largely within the bounds of human society and our individual (and collective) capacities for agency. Yet Mead (1936, p. 116) saw many layers of reality being connected through creative action; inorganic, organic, human, and social systems would all be seen as connected and mutually impacting, playing an important role in shaping emergent events. Indeed, Chang (2004) argues that Mead’s theory of emergence is thus capable of transcending many of the dualisms that plague contemporary sociology. Interactionists, for example, have been guilty of privileging agency over structure, the micro over the macro, and subjectivism over objectivism. A theory of emergence unites inorganic, organic, and human systems into one mutually dependent web of action, and is capable of uniting initial conditions (structural or otherwise) with human creativity to envision and pursue better futures.

100

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

Emergence thus unites notions of teleology (human purpose) with mechanism (causal conditions), and recognizes how each of these are necessary to the other. Patterns of interaction do not happen in a vacuum but are continually constructed through changing sets of initial conditions as both the actors’ perspectives and the environment they act within are mutually reshaped. Since emergence underlines the change that can happen at the physical, individual, and social level, and that such change is always somewhat unpredictable, it has important repercussions for the distribution of power in the social and political order. Chang (2004, p. 419) writes: “And a larger environment means a larger space for agency, more challenge, more stimulation, more facilitating conditions for response, a greater likelihood of formulating sophisticated, novel courses of action, and more possibilities of success.” Following from this, power, as Athens (2015) defines it, is heterogeneous and comes in many forms; it is impossible to tell what types of resources, ideas, or other forms of capital will be most important in the (re)establishment of a particular dominance order. Power is thus unstable at times, and is dependent on the happenstance of contingent change through the interaction of disparate and often unknown forces. Chang (2004) highlights that creative and interested human actors can often take advantage of these periods of unforeseen change and opportunity, striving to turn the tables on previous relationships of power. As Mead (1936) taught us long ago, emergence allows for the realization of new creative potentialities not previously imagined. Again, such changes in the organization and distribution of power are not constrained within the interplay of human systems alone. For example, technical systems, such as the Internet, can also come to have a significant impact on institutional systems in unexpected ways, reshaping social life through the “unintended consequences of action” (Merton, 1936). Indeed, technology provides an interesting category for analyzing the process of emergence through technological development and adaptation. Technology is shaped by human interactions and norms but also structures human interaction and has effects upon social organization (Van Den Scott, Sanders, & Puddephatt, 2017). New technologies can affect social organization and practices in unpredictable ways, thus enabling new forms of resistance in the social world that challenge taken for granted values or practices, what Chang (2004, pp. 418 420) terms aspects of conventional rationality. New social or technical innovations can enable more diverse forms of thought and practice, what Chang terms extended rationality. As the case of open access publishing will show, domination and resistance are just as important in academic settings as in other political contexts (Puddephatt, 2013). Pierre Bourdieu (2004) conceptualized knowledge fields as sites where self-interested actors struggle for status and recognition. Actors vie for high-status positions in fields of knowledge, and then use these positions to strategically remap and reconstitute the field according to their own interests. Hence, knowledge becomes not only an accumulation of information and

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

101

theory but also a form of cultural and symbolic capital, leading to the social reproduction of power. Indeed, dominant forms of knowledge production maintained with high-prestige institutional networks often marginalize academics who are not considered mainstream (Collins, 1998; McLaughlin, 2001; Merton, 1973). In this sense, well-established knowledge clusters can be seen as oppressive to those actors who are left out. Part of this domination is maintained through the existing institutional parameters of scholarly publishing, which is monopolized by a few major publishing companies, and centralized in major university centers, with financial linkages to major scholarly societies. As such, dominant systems of publishing are an important aspect of mainstream academic clusters. The following section introduces a brief history of how open access publishing has emerged, enabling scholars to challenge these traditional systems in new ways.

OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING: A BRIEF HISTORY OF EMERGENT EVENTS Open access scholarly journals publish peer-reviewed articles online so that they are freely accessible to anyone with a computer and the Internet. This has become a movement largely in opposition to profit-seeking motives in peerreviewed scientific and academic publishing.2 The movement embodies virtues in line with ideal norms of science (Merton, 1973, pp. 273 275; Willinsky, 2009, pp. 41 42), claiming that wider access to knowledge on the part of academics and publics will only spur innovation (Suber, 2012, pp. 43 48). The various levels of social organization which work to make this movement possible are not easily disentangled, but the theory of emergence enables us to reach a detailed and contextualized understanding of the development and social impact of open access publishing. In the following, we will introduce the reader to the fairly recent phenomena of open access publishing and use Mead’s (1938) theory of emergence to understand its rise and development up to the present day. Open access has its roots in the late 1980s during the introduction of personal computing technology and the development of computer networks. The first digital peer-reviewed journal was published in 1987, five years before the World Wide Web went live. According to Suber’s (2009) timeline of open access publishing, there were a total of seven early online journals before the existence of the World Wide Web. As scientists and intellectuals came to understand these Internet technologies as a means for habitually corresponding with large groups of people dispersed across the globe (Rainie & Wellman, 2014), they took action by experimenting with digital publishing and developing an electronic communicative infrastructure. These early experiments laid the foundation for the open access movement, but would be unable to take off until the

102

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

Internet became popular, and there was a pressing need to disseminate academic work at a lower cost due to increasing library subscription costs. Into the 1990s, the Internet became increasingly popularized and used for academic purposes. At the same time, for-profit corporations in charge of most academic publishing continued to develop monopolies and stretch library budgets by steadily increasing subscription fees. This state of affairs in academic publishing has been defined as the “serials crisis,” referencing the hyperinflationary practices of for-profit peer-reviewed journals which, from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, rose more than 2.5 times faster than inflation (Suber, 2012, p. 181, n. 2). Even Harvard University was struggling to keep up with rising subscription costs and had to cancel some of their journal subscriptions. These effects were obviously felt even more strongly in marginal institutions across North America and Europe, not to mention Universities in the global South and the developing world. There was now the interaction of early models of sharing, the capacities of the digital Internet for free publishing, and a growing crisis of profiteering over and above the goal of wide scientific dissemination. Yet open access has also been part of a general free culture movement (Eve, 2014, pp. 16 21), advocating for the freedom to access and reuse relevant cultural materials, be they material or ideological (Suber, 2012, p. 4). These critical and anti-capitalist value orientations, combined with the aforementioned serials crisis, culminated in three major meetings, leading to formal policy statements that defined open access publishing explicitly for the first time to the world. These statements, known as The Budapest Initiative (2002), The Bethesda Statement (2003), and the Berlin Declaration (2003), problematized the relationship of scientific publishing to profit-driven companies, offering open access as an alternative model. From the emergence of early experimental models, the rise of the Internet, and the problem of the serials crisis, an “extended rationality” toward possibilities for academic publishing was not only possible but inevitable. This figured into the “tipping point of consensus reached in 2013” poising open access as an inherent public good (Eve, 2014, p. 7). Since 2013, all major funding agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States have implemented policies urging scientists and intellectuals to publish their publically funded research findings in an openly accessible format, forcing dominant scientific and academic publishers to respond. At this point, the die was cast traditional subscription publishing was no longer the exclusive approach to academic knowledge dissemination. New opportunities and policy requirements for open access publishing were apparent. Again, Mead’s concept of emergence comes into play, as creative actors responded in a number of different ways to these new possibilities. First, major publishing companies like Elsevier and Sage began rolling out “open access” policies of their own, charging author processing fees as high as US$3000 to open an article to the public (Solomon and Bjork, 2012). This was often understood as “double-dipping” since the journal still charged subscription fees for

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

103

journals, and increased revenue by opening up selected articles with these newly introduced fees. These major publishers were trying to co-opt the mantle of open access so as to profit even more so. Meanwhile, universities and scholarly societies opted to develop “green” repositories, reprinting versions of articles for free in open databases, post-publication. On the other side, new “predatory” journals also began to emerge, often mimicking legitimate journals (Beall, 2016; Xia et al., 2014). These journals publish almost anything for a fee, and ignore scientific peer-review entirely so as to provide a venue for, and make money from, weak academics, all with deleterious effects for the reputation of more legitimate open access journals. Some open access journals attempt to maintain a scholarly, peer-reviewed system of publishing, minimizing or eliminating author charges, and providing all of the content free to anyone with the Internet. It is this group of journals whom we interviewed for our research project. These journal editors must try to compete in a field where traditional publishing companies continue to monopolize the top journals in the field, and where the very existence of predatory journals challenge their credibility by giving open access a bad reputation. Thus, Mead’s (1938) interpretive lens of emergence shows that open access publishing came about through the unexpected interaction of a number of disparate social, institutional, economic, and technical forces. This includes the rise of the Internet, the serials crisis, wider value orientations around free access, social movement and policy developments, and eventually, government action. Yet these interactions, and their resultant potential for open access, reveal ever more indeterminate possibilities. What strategies emerge? Ever more corporate concentration over scientific journals with an open access mantle? Predatory journals, which threaten the very point and value of science? Or, will the ideals of green and gold open access be heroically realized? Certainly, new forms of publishing, peer-review, copyright, journal business models, and even styles of knowledge production seem to be emerging continuously. It is within this shifting landscape that we interview the most interested stakeholders: editors of open access journals, as well as university librarians, each who have a vested interest in the realization of open access that is in the service of knowledge rather than private profit. This provides a fascinating context to explore the “extended rationality” (Chang, 2004) of open access as a resistant form of institutional practice is realized, perceived, and acted upon.

METHODS AND DATA Our research focuses on interviews with the editors of open access scholarly journals in the social sciences and humanities in Canada, as well as university librarians. We drew on the perspective of “radical interactionism” (Athens, 2015; Puddephatt, 2013) in developing themes to explore with the editors and

104

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

librarians, how we conducted our interviews, and how we coded the results. That is, we had a continual focus on how actors’ viewpoints and experiences were partly a result of their place in fields of power (Bourdieu, 2004). Yet, rather than relying on a purely structural analysis, we were interested in the multiple ways that actors perceived, strategized, and acted toward open access initiatives. The goal was to use radical interactionism as a perspective that is both attuned to power but, in line with traditional symbolic interactionism, also interested in rich, detailed descriptions of life experience, gaining an “intimate familiarity” with the other (Blumer, 1969; Prus, 1996; Puddephatt, Shaffir, & Kleinknecht, 2009). This research was also informed centrally by the methodological approach of constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), which assisted us in theoretical sampling, interview construction, and coding procedures. We began our research by inviting all Canadian editors of journals for the social sciences and humanities, who were listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), by e-mail. Of the 50 editors invited, 10 accepted our request and provided an interview. We were also able to get two interviews with journals that are not currently listed on the DOAJ. The majority of the journals covered were new or somewhat marginal as compared to the more mainstream journals in their respective fields. All of the journals were nonprofit, and had different degrees of professionalism and establishment. We supplemented these interviews with seven interviews with Canadian librarians who had an interest in discussing open access.3 This gave us a total sample of 19 respondents. Randomly generated pseudonyms were used to name the respondents in this chapter. Due to the location of respondents across Canada, we conducted our interviews via skype, e-mail, or telephone as preferred by our participants. Each of these interview mediums had their advantages and disadvantages (see Price & Puddephatt, forthcoming). The interviews were completed between January 2015 and February 2016. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, some by us, and some through a Toronto-based transcription company. Once collected, we coded and analyzed our data by using NVivo 9 qualitative analysis software. The interview schedule was designed around key questions about the basic structure of the journal, the everyday practices of those who are affiliated with it, as well as the challenges and successes that these journal editors have experienced. In the case of librarians, there was much more focus on the economics of journal acquisitions, and how open access is creating new opportunities in this regard. We generated a number of themes out of the interviews. For the purposes of this chapter, the themes of resistance were initiated by our interests, but were also built up organically from the respondents’ narratives, sometimes in unexpected ways. All themes were coded manually by reading through the transcripts, and there was no automatic search and retrieve coding performed. While our sample is somewhat limited to Canadian open access journal editors and librarians, we believe there were enough cases to achieve theoretical

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

105

saturation surrounding the major “meanings of resistance” among those we interviewed and provide insight into the typical struggles and motivations of those involved with open access on the front lines.

RESEARCH FINDINGS: OPEN ACCESS AS RESISTANCE Open access editors define the meanings of resistance in a number of ways, but all manners of resistance seem to reflect a recognition of open access as a new and emergent possibility not previously open to them (Mead, 1938). This plays into Chang’s (2004) notion of “extended rationality” as well, since new possibilities and ideas arise from the new freedoms granted through open access. In a wider sense, they believe that open access “brings democracy to the scientific world” (Daniela). The ideals they espouse attempt to secure privileges related to knowledge production and consumption to groups of people who have been systematically excluded, while resisting corporate profiteering, as well as challenging traditional scholarly norms of knowledge production. The type of resistance that is apparent across cases in our sample speaks to new possibilities enabled by novel communication platforms and the extended benefits that these new and emergent social forms of production can provide. Open access as an extended form of rationality is understood as being a new and exciting institutional form that is likely to be increasingly accepted over time: I really think this is the explosion of open access publishing and I think at the end of our academic careers and lifetimes and all that stuff, we’ll hopefully see open access become the golden standard. Right now, we’re at the beginning of a new wave. (Richard)

A librarian in our sample had a similar future vision: Yeah, that’s going to be the next interesting thing for open access in general too, like we truly do not need all these publishers. I totally believe that, we could set up a parallel system within universities across North America or the world to host these journals. If we looked at that being as prestigious as an Elsevier journal, as a Nature journal and that just flipped around, if the universities on whole agreed on it then we wouldn’t need them and it can be done for a lot cheaper, we don’t need to be paying them the money we do and seeing the millions of dollars of profit every year. (Dudley)

As a new and emergent form of publishing academic work, open access allows a number of ways for editors and librarians to conceive of resistance against various aspects of the scholarly enterprise, particularly in relation to how work is published and disseminated. The benefits of utilizing an interactionist approach are we can see a number of interesting and unforeseen directions in which these meanings of resistance are defined, and the ways that our respondents see open access as a tool for resistance. The following sections will describe each form of resistance as it was presented to us. These include

106

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

(1) resisting capitalist profit motives; (2) resisting access barriers to audiences; (3) resisting access barriers to contributors; and (4) resisting academic norms and traditionalism.

Resisting Capitalist Profit Motives All of the open access editors we interviewed took a critical-ethical stance in regard to those seeking to derive profit from academic labor, as these practices were seen as counterproductive to an article’s wider distribution to potential audiences. As one of our respondents stated in reference to corporate publishers, they “are there to maximize profit and I don’t think that should be the model for research. [Publishers] should be there to, basically, to make research available to the widest possible number of people” (Christopher). A librarian in our sample echoed concerns about profits getting in the way of distribution, challenging budgets: So Springer and Elsevier, the fees are high. Yeah and I think it’s not justified, no, it’s not, bottom line, I don’t know we can justify billions of dollars in profit, which is why I go back to the system needing to change and that comes from the Academy itself saying there’s something wrong here, this is we produced this work, we do everything to the work, we peer-review the work … we may be able to be more modest in our systems and not worry about profits and turn the whole scholarly publishing enterprise around for way less money. (Craig)

This attitude was apparent across all of the cases in our sample, though at varying degrees of intensity. Typically, editors of experimental or critical journals had the most aggressive anticorporate philosophy. For example, one of our respondents who edits a journal that privileges critical pieces told us that: We talk about hegemony and we talk about resistance. And that we want to resist the corporatization of knowledge, we want to resist- we want to make sure that knowledge is freely available … So I just have so many ethical problems with what an individual has to pay, what a library has to pay. (Laurie)

Their openly critical approach to publishing may cause difficulties gaining widespread acceptance and support, but also makes them “attractive to a group of people who also are trying to push back against, sort of, the neo-liberal publishing model” (Laurie). Less radical open access journals also define their operations in contrast to corporate publishers. One editor compares the current state of affairs in academic publishing to a “knowledge racket.” In his words: “one imagines ‘Pauly’ explaining to ‘Tony’ [The Sopranos] about this racket where we start a journal, government tax-dollars pay for the research, we publish the papers and charge people to see them even though they’ve already paid for it!” (John). So the moral vision underpinning the actions of open access editors can be said

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

107

to actively resist capitalist interests from influencing how their journal operates and disseminates information: We have [had] a couple of offer[s] about selling our journal but then at the end of the day we don’t want to do that […] because we don’t want to lose the control.… I know for example Elsevier […] has certain kind of right over the journals [making cage with fingers]. And that, for example, says ‘okay reduce the lead time, okay.’ Twelve weeks is too long make it eight weeks or six, and then what can an editor do? (Daniela)

Another editor echoes this concern: At almost every single big conference I’m at, you know, one of the reps [from a dominant corporate publisher are] often saying “So, you know, do you want to come and join us?” Cause they want to, sort of, corner the market [in her discipline]. And we’re just not interested. (Laurie)

Therefore, both of these editors encounter opportunities to partner with corporate publishers and benefit from having the financial support they are able to offer. However, they also perceive this partnership to be corrupting. They forecast that academic concerns will no longer be the top priority of the journal; they also think they will be forced to prioritize the interests of their corporatecapitalist partner, pushing profits over and above creative ideas. A librarian was also quite critical of this possibility: I’m not just about open access, I’m about scholar-led publishing, so it’s a concern for me to have more and more commercial involvement in scholar publishing and more of it that’s being driven by things like profit margins and not how do we get at the truth of things, how do we best serve the public. (Frank)

By eschewing profit motives, many in the open access movement believe they retain greater intellectual autonomy, lessening the chances that free ideas are undermined by the logic of profit. For example, we as authors have experienced difficulties in publishing work that is critical of mainstream publishers, since the editors who rely on them are unlikely to want to bite the hand that feeds, and publish explicit criticisms of their practices. Open access journals that avoid corporate agreements have more freedom in this regard as a result, and have a greater capacity to resist and challenge corporate entities.

Resisting Access Barriers to Audiences Open access editors continually resist barriers to accessibility. They do this by publishing their issues online for free, breaking down price barriers to knowledge. For many of our respondents, the benefit of this is that people of lower income levels, marginalized populations, relevant nonprofit organizations, and simply those who might be interested can access the work and benefit from it. Many editors placed a considerable emphasis upon improving access to

108

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

peer-reviewed journals to the public, the under-privileged, and researchers for nonprofit organizations: Our philosophy is we believe that everyone should have access to this information and it should be accessible to people of lower income levels. And I think sometimes with journals like that it’s a barrier. It’s a barrier to and even for example, not-for-profit organizations want to do research and want to have that research back up their causes and find more funding and things like that. I think charging those processing fees could be a barrier to those organizations. (Tina)

This emphasis on the priority of enabling access to nonprofit organizations who may not be able to afford access was repeated by a number of other respondents as well. For example: We realized that there would be people from non-profit organizations that would likely want to be exposed to the material and uh, as you know from most academic journals, unless you’re a university student or something like that it can be very expensive or impossible to actually get hold of the information. (Edwin)

As mentioned earlier, there are multitudes of people who can benefit from accessible peer-reviewed research articles. This was particularly salient for the editor of a journal that focuses on indigenous peoples’ issues: In the world of indigenous people you’re talking about lots of people who don’t have access through mainstream channels. And there’s a lot of work that’s happening at the grassroots and so we felt that it was really important that the work that was published in the journal was accessible sort of at all levels, to academics, to government policy makers as well as to communities, and community leaders. And that was why we decided it should be open access. (Priscilla)

Therefore, these editors format their journals so that they may have a public impact when the research they publish is suitable to their interests. Another way editors strive to improve the accessibility of their articles is by attending to the level of writing that is used in their journal. Some editors believe that overly technical and jargon-filled articles cannot be read by everybody, working against the goal of reaching large audiences: We want to meet a standard academic level but yes we do want to make sure that readers from other backgrounds have enough contextualization of the issue and the background information … so that people who aren’t from academia can read it and understand the bulk of what’s in there. (Priscilla)

An editor from an interdisciplinary journal rationalizes their use of simple language: “there is a serious accessibility vision in the whole, like, aspect of it, because we just want everybody to be able to read it because it’s not aimed at one discipline” (Ruth). Many of the editors we spoke to want their journals to have a general impact upon their society, not just academic impact. On the whole, the editors and librarians we interviewed recognized the importance of enabling access to the greatest number of people possible, particularly those who are most disadvantaged. Resisting profit motives of dominant

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

109

publishing companies thus goes hand in hand with resisting access barriers. Open access is a way for these editors and librarians to resist these access barriers. For example, when librarians start “green-access” repository projects, they are able to provide faculty research to any with an Internet connection, making it available to disadvantaged and marginalized populations, not only in North America but beyond in the Global South and the developing world.

Resisting Access Barriers to Contributors Sometimes open access journal editors go further than just expanding their readership, but also try to include new kinds of authors. This expands the very definition of “access,” allowing for new people to have a voice in the scholarly literature where they did not before. There are three ways in which open access journals have expanded the parameters of authorship from our sample of respondents, which include: (1) graduate and undergraduate authors, (2) authors from developing countries, and (3) community members or social activists. One directive we encountered in some of the journals was to give graduate and undergraduate students a voice in the academic literature. Three journals from our sample were considered graduate or undergraduate journals. These journals are typically conceptualized as “teaching journals,” enculturating young scholars into the craft of academic publishing. The mandates of these journals were similar across cases. As explained by one editor: I mean, yeah, it’s like there’s two mandates [—], basically, so like one is that we’re giving undergrads the venue to get the experience that they might require after graduation, right, like if they’re going to continue in academia, become a doctor or whatever they’re going to do, they might have to publish a paper someday, right. So basically it’s just giving them that good knowledge and the, you know, the wherewithal to go through that in the future. (Ruth)

As such, they often try and mimic the top journals in their field, and try to publish only quality research papers, but more for the purpose of education: Our M.O is to teach graduate students the culture of publication while giving them a forum to publish their work in an understanding teaching environment that has some sort of legitimacy and quality to it. Rather than just a “hey everyone submit and you’ll get a publication no matter what” the idea is to mimic and to emulate as much as possible the top journals in our field keeping in mind that this is first steps for many of the authors. So no we’re not looking for the big fish; we’re looking for good work but from graduate students. (Richard)

However, starting up and maintaining a journal that challenges academic norms about who ought to be publishing faces resistance from those in dominant positions: I mean in terms of the graduate aspect we got actual push back when we initially brought the idea to the department we got pushback from the faculty. It was very minimal and they changed their tune very quickly … The initial response was why bother publishing in a graduate journal? If you have quality work you should take that work to [—], the best

110

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

journal in the field and try there. You aren’t going to get interest … It might not be generalizable to all open access journals. Again a graduate journal thing. (Richard)

Therefore, the editors of graduate and undergraduate journals attempt to extend benefits of publishing in a peer-reviewed journal to individuals who had very little chance of succeeding before these journals were implemented. To do so they must confront and resist conceptions of undergraduate work as “of lower repute” (Ruth). Publishing in a journal that specifically hosts graduate and undergraduate work can provide benefits to the young authors that are able to publish there. They may gain experience as an academic author and peer-reviewer, distinguishing them from their peers with novel advantages for their career development. More than anything, these initiatives seem to liberate students to “try their hand” at publishing, and generate a great deal of enthusiasm, energy, and pride. Some open access publications are explicit in their mission to give more sympathetic consideration to researchers from developing countries. This editor perceives her actions as a form of resistance to what she sees as common practices of dominant international publications: I know several journals for example that pay clear attention to these specific countries. I don’t need to name them here. But when they get a paper from that country or several of those countries they say oh you have to be careful. If it’s possible do desk rejection … (Daniela)

Instead of holding a predisposition toward rejecting international work, this editor sees her journal as a site to encourage and support international scholars: [We want] to really help the people who have the same struggle that we had… I always give the opportunity to people from [developing] countries too, because I’m at the end of the day struggling when I submit a paper to the top journals. (Daniela)

This editor conceptualized the open access platform to provide benefits for researchers who were struggling to find a place to host their research and have a voice in the literature. This editor does discuss difficulties in appealing to researchers from developing countries, particularly considerable levels of plagiarized submissions. However, her goal is one inspired by promoting the wellbeing of those who have been traditionally excluded from academic networks. This is a way to actively resist trends of discrimination toward authors of the developing world. Other open access journal editors make explicit calls for authors who are not professional academics, nor even researchers at all. Rather, they are people who are usually excluded from partaking in intellectual and scholarly discussions, but whose voices nevertheless matter greatly for particular issues at stake, as a result of their life experiences. Rather than merely being represented by an academic who is in place to narrate their cause, the idea is to give the people on the ground a direct forum. The flexibility of open access allows for these types

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

111

of initiatives to take place freely. One editor stood out as being particularly willing and interested in reaching out to wider populations for possible contributions to the journal: We are honouring the different perspectives of people. So not only researchers but also of community members. We try to get submissions in different languages. And actually, one of the most unique things about our journal is that we’ve invited children to participate. One of our editions was a special edition by children and youth, and so we invited submissions from across the country and it was actually peer reviewed by other children…. I mean people think children and youth are not capable of doing those kinds of things, but we totally don’t agree and think that children and youth have really strong voices and opinions and are able to think for themselves and be active citizens. So we’re hoping to do more editions like that one. (Tina)

Therefore, open access journals provide opportunities for people to disseminate knowledge that would not have otherwise been possible. “Access” is defined beyond the usual need to disseminate findings to wider audiences, as scholars creatively reimagine how younger, novice, marginal, communitybased, and international voices might be encouraged to contribute. For these editors, access is important to provide for audiences and also for contributors.

Challenging Academic Publication Norms Open access publishing, as an emergent institutional form, has allowed for the type of extended rationality for actors to imagine new ways of resisting traditional academic publishing. It has enabled a vision for overcoming the problems of profit motives, and opening access to wider sets of potential audiences and contributors. Another striking way in which open access provides for extended rationality is the freedom to innovate in terms of academic style as well. Willie explains how the “do it yourself” independence that open access models allow encouraged more creativity in terms of the type of work they take on: I think the fact that it’s a small scale kind of a shoestring adventure has allowed us to grow and adapt, you know, into things it’s allowed us to be unconventional in a way. You know we’re not a part of the scholarly publishing orthodoxy - I think the open access environment affords a lot of autonomy and a lot of creativity when it comes to how you understand your journal. (Willie)

Many of the journal editors felt like the open access form enabled them to innovate within their discipline. For example, the above editor publishes interviews with prominent academics and an informal blog on the journal’s website, alongside original peer-reviewed research articles. Another journal challenges typical academic representational boundaries by publishing research guided by disciplinary questions but using experimental methodologies and striving to push representational boundaries. “We’re seen as on the cutting edge because we’ve published epic poetry where somebody represented their research in a giant epic poem. Like we’re willing to take those sorts of risks” (Laurie).

112

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

New open access journals also have the opportunity to revise typical policies related to peer-review and copyrights. All of the journals in our sample complete normal double-blind peer-review. However, being an online journal makes it possible for articles to be published immediately upon completion of the peer-review process. We get back to people within 2 months. And then I think the longest an article has ever spent in our system between being accepted and actually being published I think is 6 months, but usually we’re less than that. Usually we’re more like 3 or 4. And that just that everything happens so much faster. Like as soon as I get the peer review reports in I can give it to the author the same day. The incremental publishing is nice because people aren’t waiting on a whole issue to be ready before seeing it in print. We publish it as soon as we have it copy edited and ready to go. So that also speeds things up. (Priscilla)

The final way in which these journals can creatively resist academic traditions relates to the copyright on an author’s work. Many of these journals expressed distaste for those who attempt to claim copyright. One editor states: We don’t want our articles being used for commercial purposes because that’s against the access-ethics sort of thing. But we did want to allow them to be republished elsewhere if that’s what the author wanted to do.… [Including] republishing [the article] in its original form or in a slightly adapted form in a book chapter. (Priscilla)

These journals are challenging the parameters of what constitutes acceptable content for a periodical, and they often cite the advantages of the digital medium they use as spurring these sorts of experiments along. It seems that the emergent possibilities of digital publishing systems can have effects on the social institutions of publishing as well, shaping new possibilities and spurring on creative ideas.

CONCLUSION We have seen that open access enables a form of extended rationality for editors, providing benefits for marginalized individuals and groups. These editors accomplish a multilevel form of resistance against dominant corporate-academic trends, trying to rid academic publishing of capitalist influences. All barriers that limit the potential influence and reach of journal articles are to be challenged. They do so by taking advantage of new “cultural tool kits” (Swidler, 1986) made available by the open access movement, and the wider potential of the digital Internet. Using these cultural resources, they gain a larger awareness of their institutional environment than is conventional in their field (Chang, 2004, p. 419). This provides new opportunities to challenge these conventions. In the case of open access publishing, proponents of the movement challenged the connections between academia and private business profits, access barriers to audiences and contributors, and finally, imagined new exciting possibilities for academic work.

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

113

The perspective of radical interactionism (Athens, 2015) helps attune us to the fact that open access editors experience asymmetric relations of power in their scholarly fields. Such fields favor those who adhere to traditional publication routes and, especially, those who control the major mainstream publications. Open access editors experience these fields of power in a very direct way, and orient their actions accordingly. They attempt to bring justice to fields of academic publishing by making use of a publically accessible medium, according to emergent norms surrounding open access that continue to evolve. What is considered possible and desirable is itself undergoing a process of negotiation and flux, just what we would expect from emergent processes. The battles narrated in this chapter are happening within a wider institutional and governmental context, in which the rules requiring open access, and the amount libraries will continue to pay for subscriptions, is far from settled. Clearly, power is an important part of this story, and a radical interactionist approach helps focus our attention to the meanings of resistance in relation to the external forces of power that actors on the ground envision and actively strategize against. Yet we believe that resistance as a sociological concept also requires the notion of emergence (Chang, 2004; Mead, 1938). Without the continual and creative reassembly of human and nonhuman worlds, and technological and social systems (Latour, 2005), new forms of resistance could not be generated in the first place, nor would the extended forms of rationality they make possible. By carefully considering how the unexpected interaction of emergent social forms provides new opportunities for resistance in particular sites of struggle, interactionist studies of power may yield even greater insights into the dynamics of oppression and resistance.

NOTES 1. For a good review, see Reynolds (1993). 2. Of course, this does not preclude the very real pattern of for-profit companies and predatory journals using the mantle of open access for this exact purpose, collecting revenues from “author processing charges” rather than subscription fees. 3. We thank our colleague, Kyle Siler, for collecting this data and sharing it with us.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT We thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for supporting this research through an insight development grant. We also thank Irene Pugliese, Kyle Siler, and John Willinsky for their helpful comments on previous drafts, and Gil Musolf for his editorial guidance and support along the way.

114

TAYLOR PRICE AND ANTONY PUDDEPHATT

REFERENCES Athens, L. (2002). Domination: The blind spot in Mead’s analysis of the social act. Journal of Classical Sociology, 2(1), 25 42. Athens, L. (2005). Mead’s lost conception of society. Symbolic Interaction, 28(3), 305 325. Athens, L. (2010). Human subordination from a radical interactionist’s perspective. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 39(3), 339 369. Athens, L. (2015). Domination and subjugation in everyday life. New Brunswick: Transaction. Beall, J. (2016). Beall’s list. Retrieved from http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. (2003). Retrieved from http://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing. (2003). Retrieved from http://legacy.earlham.edu/ ~peters/fos/bethesda.htm Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Berkley, CA: University of California Press. Blumer, H. (1990). Industrialization as an agent of social change: A critical analysis. New York, NY: A. de Gruyter. Bourdieu, P. (2004). Science of science and reflexivity. Chicago, IL: UP. Budapest Open Access Initiative. (2002). Retrieved from http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative. org/read Chang, J. H. Y. (2004). Mead’s theory of emergence as a framework for multilevel sociological inquiry. Symbolic Interaction, 27(3), 405 427. Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Collins, R. (1998). The sociology of philosophies. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Dennis, A., & Martin, P. (2005). Symbolic interactionism and the concept of power. The British Journal of Sociology, 56(2), 191 210. Denzin, N. (1992). Symbolic interactionism and cultural studies: The politics of interpretation. Malden, MA: Blackwell Press. Eve, M. P. (2014). Open access and the humanities: Contexts, controversies and the future. Cambridge: UP. Hall, P. (1985). Asymmetric relationships and processes of power. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 1, 309 344. Hall, P. (1997). Meta-power, social organization, and the shaping of social action. Symbolic Interaction, 20(4), 397 418. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maines, D. (1998). Myth, text, and interactionist complicity in the neglect of Blumer’s macrosociology. Symbolic Interaction, 11(1), 43 57. Maines, D. (2001). The faultline of consciousness: A view of interactionism in sociology. New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. McLaughlin, N. (2001). Optimal marginality: Innovation and orthodoxy in Fromm’s revision of psychoanalysis. The Sociological Quarterly, 42(2), 271 288. Mead, G. H. (1932). Philosophy of the present. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mead, G. H. (1936). Movements of thought in the 19th century. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mead, G. H. (1938). The philosophy of the act. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Meltzer, B., & Manis, J. (1992). Emergence and human conduct. The Journal of Psychology, 126(4), 333 342. Merton, R. (1936). The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action. American Sociological Review, 1(6), 894 904.

Power, Emergence, and the Meanings of Resistance

115

Merton, R. (1973). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Musolf, G. (1992). Structures, institutions, power and ideology: New directions within symbolic interactionism. The Sociological Quarterly, 33(2), 171 189. Popper, K. (1960). Poverty of historicism. London: Routledge. Price, T., & Puddephatt, A. (forthcoming). Opening access to open access editors: Theoretical reflections on long-distance interviewing. In S. Kleinknecht, L. J. Van den Scott, & C. Sanders (Eds.), The craft of qualitative inquiry. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Prus, R. (1996). Symbolic interaction and ethnographic research. New York, NY: SUNY Press. Prus, R. (1999). Beyond the power mystique: Power as intersubjective accomplishment. New York, NY: SUNY Press. Puddephatt, A. (2013). Toward a radical interactionist account of science. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 41, 53 82. Puddephatt, A., Shaffir, W., & Kleinknecht, S. (2009). Ethnographies revisited: Constructing theory in the field. London: Routledge. Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2014). Networked: The new social operating system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reynolds, L. (1993). Symbolic interactionism: Exposition and critique. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Solomon, D., & Bjo¨rk, B. C. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(8), 1485 1495. Suber, P. (2009). Timeline of the open access movement. Retrieved from http://legacy.earlham.edu/ ~peters/fos/timeline.htm Suber, P. (2012). Open Access. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51, 273 286. Van den Scott, L. J., Sanders, C., & Puddephatt, A. (2017). Reconceptualizing users by enriching ethnography. In U. Felt, R. Fouche´, C. Miler, & L. Smith-Doerr (Eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (4th ed., pp. 501 527). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wacquant, L. (2002). Scrutinizing the street: Poverty, morality, and the pitfalls of urban ethnography. American Journal of Sociology, 107(6), 1468 1532. Willinsky, J. (2009). The access principle: The case for open access to research and scholarship. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Xia, J., Harmon, J., Connolly, K., Donnelly, R., Anderson, M., & Howard, H. (2014). Who publishes in “predatory” journals?. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(7), 1406 1417. Zeitlin, I. (1973). Rethinking sociology: A critique of contemporary theory. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

COLLECTIVE AND COMMUNITY WORK IN SENEGAL: RESISTING COLONIAL AND NEOLIBERAL MODELS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Laura L. Cochrane ABSTRACT Senegal’s history since the nineteenth century has favored collective ownership and work, whether state-run cooperatives or community-based organizations (CBOs). This chapter first examines the history of resistance to cooperatives imposed by the French colonial administration and Senegal’s independent state until 1980. The primary separate community organizations were, and are, within daaras: communities based on Islamic spiritual principles. The chapter then explores today’s CBOs, many of which are faith-based, that resist neoliberal approaches to development, again, through community-based principles. CBOs have grown within the space that state control once occupied, and have as much do with indigenous structures and faith-based principles as they do with globally recognized models of development. These foundational philosophies shape the ways people organize themselves, choose their shared goals, and elect their leaders. To discuss contemporary trends in community organization, the chapter uses ethnographic examples from two present-day communities, one a faith-based daara and the other a five-village CBO. This history and contemporary

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 117
135 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048009

117

118

LAURA L. COCHRANE

examples show that locally grown organizations resist easy definitions of colonial, state, or neoliberal development, and take control over the ways they organize their communities. Keywords: Senegal; development; community; neoliberalism; agency

INTRODUCTION Senegal’s history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries combines both political upheavals and community resistance. As French colonial occupation started in the mid-nineteenth century, kingdoms and aristocracies found their authority diminished. Resistance to this occupation played out in multiple ways, including creating pacifist communities and, in other cases, engaging in guerilla-style fighting. Independence in 1960 brought a stable secular democracy that has struggled to deal with the challenges of drought, climate change, and global financial crises. Within these political, environmental, and economic changes, local communities have worked to either revitalize themselves or maintain their viability, often by resisting colonial, state, and neoliberal definitions of economic development. This chapter traces the recent history of collective community work in Senegal, starting with state-imposed colonial cooperatives and ending with two examples of present-day grass-roots community organizations. I argue that communities have resisted prevailing forms of development (colonial, state, neoliberal) by forming separate local structures that serve local needs and mediate relationships with these global forces, not by forming revolutions against them. To create spaces for self-determination, localities use indigenous strengths to organize themselves and meet their own needs. Indigenous organizations or indigenous social structures are of the area. “Indigenous” denotes not only local ways of doing things but also historically grounded beliefs and practices that people adapt to their contemporary needs. By using indigenous strengths such as kinship or religious networks, or agricultural and artisanal trades, communities draw on their strengths to meet present-day challenges. Indigenous organizational models are “alternative” only when taking the perspective that state or neoliberal development goals are the norm. From a local perspective, this strategy has resonance: relying on already-strong social networks and trades to involve more people, and deploying these networks with new technologies and knowledges. They are resistance to and in relationship with external interests that are at odds with, or imperil, local development goals. Their success has been mixed for a variety of internal and external reasons. I define resistance in relation to power. I draw on Foucault’s classic definition of power (1982, pp. 778
782): power cannot be owned but it can be

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

119

used via relationships, whether between people or between institutions. Each person or entity involved must understand how to use it for power to be effective. Resistance, continuing with Foucault’s ideas, is to point out the relationships of power. It is a struggle to define what community is, who the individual is, and to point out the threats to both. Is the individual a subject of power, and if so, which specific relationships of power create this subjugation? In a second definition of subject, is the individual a subject in that he or she has a selfidentity and self-knowledge? Which specific relationships of power create the opportunity for such self-knowledge? Resistance involves understanding both subjectivities. That is, resistance and power are active, not reactive. They involve consciously understanding one’s self and community and the different relationships of power that affect one’s self and community. Resistance is employing that knowledge in self-aware decision-making that engages with those specific relationships of power. In other words, subjects
people
are part of power as much as those who wish to subjugate them. Actions of resistance are actions of power, whether those actions are military revolts or creating a religious community. People’s agency, the ability to create and define one’s actions and one’s self, is also relative to relationships of power. How people define and organize their own communities has to do with their knowledge and use of the structures in which they live, such as the limitations imposed by a colonial government, or the difficulties of revitalizing a local economy during a global recession. I am not arguing for determinism
these structures do not force people to think or act in a certain way. Instead, I argue that people use these relationships of power in a creative way. Mahmood (2012, pp. 10
15) explains that what may look, to outsiders, like a passive response to oppression can be an act of agency. Choosing how to resist power is understanding the relationships of power in which one lives, and creatively using those relationships. Agency is thus not in opposition to structure, but can only be understood within cultural and historical contexts. This chapter focuses on localities, with larger historical changes as a backdrop, to emphasize how communities play a part in resisting first colonial impositions, then working with or resisting state and global development processes, depending on the situation. Community self-determination and local priorities are themes that run throughout this history and these present-day examples. Senegal’s history since the nineteenth century has favored collective ownership and work, whether state-run cooperatives or community-based organizations (CBOs). The French colonial administration and Senegal’s independent state until 1980 imposed cooperatives that were organized by the state, not localities. Among the primary community organizations were daaras: communities based on Islamic spiritual principles. Two present-day CBOs, one secular and one a faith-based daara, show how local communities resist neoliberal approaches to development through community-based principles. The methods that inform this chapter combine historical and current accounts, including social histories and journalism that rely on archival and

120

LAURA L. COCHRANE

oral histories, and ethnography for discussions of present-day communities. The ethnographic methods I use are semi-structured in-depth interviewing, allowing the interviewee to be a full partner in (and often lead) the conversation; and participant observation, in which I periodically live and work with the communities I study, returning to do so over time. This kind of research is ethically transparent, so that the communities are aware of the methods, goals, and audiences of the research. This aligns well with community-based studies, as interviewees become more and more collaborative over time, pointing out the insights I need to fully comprehend the topic at hand.

COLONIAL OCCUPATION AND RESISTANCE Collective organizations have diverse origins in Senegal, with a history that includes powerful kingdoms and their casted social orders, the emergence of influential Sufi orders, French colonialism, and the independent Senegalese state. Each of these factors continues to mark Senegalese social life today, and influences the diverse ways people choose to organize their communities. This brief history shows the complex relationships between these factors, and also the legacies they left on the region and its governance. A recurring theme is that communities created their own structures and relationships when their larger contexts worked against them. Social life in Senegal, from the sixteenth century on, revolved around state powers (including kingdoms), kinship and lineage-based castes, Sufi orders, and village or town organizations. Wolof castes had been established by 1500, and consisted of rankings, but also hereditary trade groups including aristocrats, warriors, tradespeople (e.g., weavers, blacksmiths, and orators), the free-born, and slaves (Diop, 1981, p. 34; Tamari, 1991, p. 223). While castes were somewhat flexible, they were socially influential and endogamous. By the mid-nineteenth century, Wolof and Sereer kingdoms dominated the western third of what is today Senegal. Along with ethnicity, the practicable differences between them were religious (Wolof populations were predominantly Muslim, while the Sereer were mostly practitioners of indigenous religions) and regional (Wolof regions were coastal and interior, focusing on clearcutting agriculture, and Sereer regions were coastal and forested, focusing on fishing and smaller scale agriculture). Nineteenth century clashes between them started when military jihadists (as opposed to personal spiritual jihads, focusing on reforming one’s soul) called a holy war on the Sereer indigenous (i.e., “pagan”) leaders in order to establish an Islamic state; this was a goal that they did not achieve. In addition, not all Sufi leaders agreed with military jihadism, another source of religious diversity of the era (Babou, 2007, p. 41; Robinson, 1985; Searing, 2002, p. 47).

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

121

French traders, missionaries, military, and political administrators had a presence in Senegal since the 1600s. They started establishing a permanent presence by the eighteenth century, and made inroads (literally, by building a railway) by the mid-nineteenth century. They were interested in economic gain from the territory and started exporting groundnuts in the 1840s. The French focus on the Peanut Basin, the central regions suited for peanut growing, led to both agricultural and economic decline that have left their mark on the region. The French insistence on this single cash crop stripped the land of nutrients, forced farmers to replace subsistence crops with peanuts, and depleted resources for other regions not within the Peanut Basin (Adams & So, 1996, p. 34). One of the lasting effects of this cash cropping was colonial and then national land mismanagement. The stripped soil compounded the effects of severe drought to devastate agricultural production throughout the twentieth century. Today, people say that the French exported their soil along with peanuts. Because the French built up their presence over time, the military jihadists did not at first attack the new French outposts and commercial warehouses, but they soon became military targets (Clark, 1999, p. 153). Along with conflicts between Sereer and Wolof kingdoms, internal conflicts grew in the Wolof kingdoms. Internal tensions between the military and clerical leaders of the Wolof kingdom of Kajoor, and then French political intrusions were two primary causes of the Wolof authority’s collapse and French colonial takeover. Internal deceptions among Wolof leaders, as some collaborated with the French while others fought against the railroad, created chaos among the leadership and therefore a weakened state. Scholars such as Robinson (2004) and Searing (2002, p. 60) argue that the Wolof king Lat Joor Joob’s death in 1886, related to this chaos, is one of the primary historical events that serve as a starting point for official French colonialism. His image sitting on a rearing horse is familiar in depictions of Wolof military resistance against the French. The field where he died is also in collective memory: on a recent drive during a visit to Senegal, one person pointed out the field, which started a conversation about these historical events in the car. Alongside this growing colonial occupation, the emergence of powerful Sufi leaders in the mid- to late-nineteenth century created a space for communities and settlements that stood apart from the Wolof aristocracy, yet took advantage of the colonial economy. While Sufism had started as a spiritual practice of the educated elite in West Africa, by the late eighteenth century, it had become open to anyone who sought it, no matter the disciple’s inherited social standing or achieved education level (Brenner, 2000, p. 148). This democratization attracted more and more people to Sufi leaders and the communities they built. The Tijaani and Murid Sufi Orders in particular gained strength during this time because people saw them as alternatives to both Wolof aristocratic and French colonial powers.

122

LAURA L. COCHRANE

Daaras are independent associations that gained the most strength in the early twentieth century. A daara is a spiritual community that organizes itself around a marabout, a North and West African name for a Sufi religious leader. The group of disciples run the daara as a community devoted to spiritual education, guided by this religious teacher, whether the marabout is in residence or not. A daara also needs an economic foundation; the most lucrative financial enterprise under French colonial rule was peanut agriculture. That is, daara communities exhibited the kind of self-knowledge necessary for resistance. First, marabouts and their disciples clearly defined themselves in relation to one another, creating the subject identity that was at the foundation of daaras. This kind of voluntary subjectivity made
and makes
daaras functional. Second, marabouts’ understanding of the colonial economy and how their daaras could be in relationship with it used relationships of power while at the same time resisting them. One prominent example of a leader who gained strength during this time was Shaykh Amadu Bamba, founder of the Muridiyya. He created a daara that funded itself through a peanut plantation that tapped into the income from cash crops (Buggenhagen, 2001, p. 380). One telling fact about both the popularity of daaras and the French colonial single-minded economic focus was that Bamba was able to financially support his daara via this cash crop. French administrations suspected Bamba of forming insurrections against their authority because more and more people came to study under him and participate in this alternative to Wolof social hierarchies. Bamba was a pacifist, though, and therefore their suspicions were false. Even when the French perceived him as a threat, their colonial economy supported him. Sufi leaders managed their agricultural settlements via discipleship and devotion to both spiritual tenets and themselves, the marabouts. They also, significantly, maintained social structures such as kinship and casted professions such as blacksmithing and weaving, if not the casted hierarchies (Glover, 2009, pp. 79
80). These indigenous ways of organizing their communities were both effective and flexible as their populations expanded tremendously. Daaras continued to grow throughout the twentieth century. Their urban counterparts, study circles, also grew in popularity as places for spiritual education for both men and women. A number of Sufi leaders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century emphasized this education as a priority for the growth of their orders. These organizations continue to be spiritual communities guided by a marabout, whether in rural or urban areas. One of the present-day examples below, the Ndem daara, is a thriving community that not only supports the 15 villages surrounding it via economic enterprises but has also started two additional daaras elsewhere. The French colonial government also needed a way to manage their agricultural enterprises. They did not have the indigenous authorities of kinship or religious leadership, however, and they did not come from or live within the

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

123

farms that they enforced. To manage their agricultural demands, and also to guard against environmental fluctuations, the administration started Socie´te´ Indige`ne de Prevoyance or Provident Indigenous Societies (SIPs) in 1907. The French SIPs funneled control from a central colonial administration through local appointed managers, as opposed to British colonial administrations, which first worked through local initiatives and leaders to gain control of the population. The French use of the word “indigenous” here is thus misleading. The idea for the SIPs came from French socialist ideologies in the nineteenth century, and also the French movement at the time to have state-controlled peasant cooperatives to protect them against the fluctuations of capitalist markets (Tignor, 1987, pp. 50
51). These cooperatives were not always popular even in France, however. As Gellar (2002, p. 3) notes, Tocqueville pointed out in his 1835 Democracy in America the danger of such state-imposed French associations, quashing independent civic groups and the development of leadership skills. The benefits of the Senegalese SIPs for France, similar to those they imposed on other colonies, were to sidestep local merchants, extract taxes efficiently, and maximize their own profits from the groundnut cash crop. In other words, these were not grass-roots organizations that grew organically from local needs and locally respected authorities, but colonial administration-run groups, just imposed on localities (Tignor, 1987, pp. 50
51). The French administration prohibited Senegalese trade unions until 1920. Once allowed to unionize and resist, the 1930s brought a series of worker strikes, forcibly stopped by French authorities. People in urban areas formed voluntary groups around sporting and other recreation, but rural residents were not free to do so, instead being restricted to SIP membership (Gellar, 2002, pp. 5
6). Through the difficulties of the 1930s economic depression and World War II, the SIPs became financially unstable, even though they were an established part of Senegalese society by that time. Colonial cash cropping and imposed collectives controlled Senegalese political and economic life throughout the French occupation. Resistance to these imposed structures came from indigenous structures, including kinshipbased authorities, which were strengths of Senegalese life before and during the occupation. Military resistors to the French also put the French on the defensive and continue to be recognized as strong leaders of the past. Sufi orders emerged during this time as strong communities separate from both aristocratic and colonial structures. Their rural daaras became more and more popular as communities in which casted hierarchies were redefined and one could obtain spiritual education. While not utopian, as they were farming communities in a difficult arid environment, the choice to live and work with a group of like-minded people stands in direct contrast to the French-imposed collectives.

124

LAURA L. COCHRANE

INDEPENDENCE, ECONOMIC SHIFTS, AND NEW COMMUNITY ROLES The mid-twentieth century brought broad shifts to Senegal’s economy and political structures. Global relationships of power crumbled after World War II, as old colonial occupations ended. Newly independent states gained their footing in not only global markets but also rebuilding their infrastructure after the devastating effects of colonial occupations. While this chapter is specific to Senegal, the narrative here has resonance with other newly independent states. They were creating networks of power within their state as well as with external partners. When these networks did not serve everyone, localities created their own structures out of necessity to meet their own needs. Again, this is resistance: not revolution, but understanding and using relationships of power in service of community. Starting in the 1930s, the anti-colonial movement gained strength. Resistance leaders such as the poet-politician Le´opold Se´dar Senghor, who became Senegal’s first president, actively trained a younger generation in administrative and leadership skills they would need to lead the new state. Along with these nationalist plans and revolutionary movements were local and regional reforms. In the 1950s and 1960s, people sought to change the old SIP structure with truly grass-roots and populist cooperatives with elected leaders. In the first years of independence (1960), Senegal’s new government, under President Senghor’s administration (1960
1980), encouraged agricultural cooperatives and funded technical and financial institutions to support them. This project was led by Mamadou Dia, Senegal’s first Prime Minister (Bouchier, 1971, p. 21; Tignor, 1987, p. 49). Dia’s initiative thus continued state-controlled agriculture. Cooperatives worked through local representatives in order to build the new national economy (Diouf, 1992, p. 118). Just as the imposition of SIPs curbed truly grassroots CBOs (Tignor, 1987, p. 50
51), so the newly independent state’s control weakened private businesses, merchants, and agriculturalists (Boone, 1995; Cruise O’Brien, 1971; Leichtman, 2015, p. 67; Patterson, 1999; Schmidt, 2009; Thioub, Diop, & Boone, 1998). That is, state and local representatives created a patron-client relationship in which resources only flowed to certain people, and only to state projects. Without access to those resources, small-scale and innovative enterprises often were not able to even start, let alone grow. Dia was deposed in 1962, in large part because of the failure and corruption of these cooperatives. Senghor, now the sole head of state, sought to end this corruption. His reforms, however, only served to return power to the state. Peasants still had no control over their work, instead becoming subjects of the state (Leichtman, 2015, p. 67). Farmers and their rural communities also suffered because of droughts that swept through the entire Sahel region (the arid region on the southern border

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

125

of the Sahara Desert). These intermittent droughts started in 1905. The severe lack of rainfall added to the already-degraded land that was the result of colonial cash cropping and then state continuations of the same practices. The independent state re-evaluated and started curtailing these practices starting in the 1970s. Meanwhile, the drought spanning 1968
1974 resulted in 100,000
250,000 human deaths in Senegal alone. In addition, rural areas experienced a loss of 90% of their livestock (Cruise O’Brien, 1975, p. 1; Rogers, 1977, p. 282). A drought in 1982
1984 soon followed, compounding the devastation. While the 1970s drought further weakened the state cooperatives, the structure of the organizations themselves were flawed, mirroring some of the leadership challenges that the SIPs faced (Tignor, 1987, p. 60). The state’s tight control over local economic organizations lessened in the 1980s, with the International Monetary Fund’s and World Bank’s imposed structural adjustments. A number of newly independent states depended on the World Bank, for reasons similar to Senegal’s. The Senegalese state, just as it was rebuilding its economy post-colonialism, had suffered a historic drought. As a new state, it also had continued to accumulate foreign debt from loans it needed to start its new economy and build its infrastructure (Boone, 1990, p. 343; Thioub et al., 1998, p. 69). In 1984, President Abdou Diouf’s administration (1980
2000) thus accepted the World Bank’s new terms of the loans, which required the state to make structural adjustments. These new terms came, in large part, because of the global economic recession in the 1970s that affected donor nations to the World Bank along with the nations that received the loans. In other words, the World Bank’s power exists in the relationships between donor nations and the nations to which it awards loans. It was created in 1944, along with the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The World Bank’s original intent was to alleviate financial poverty globally, yet like all relationships of power, its actions often had unforeseen consequences. The new terms of the World Bank loans included shifting from state-controlled to locally controlled agriculture, agreeing to reduce funding for state extension services and subsidies on which farmers relied, and lessening state loans to small businesses (Durufle´, 1995, p. 74; Lecomte, 1992, p. 88). Another World Bank term was to open the agricultural economy to the global market. The resulting deregulated price controls meant that local produce had to compete with cheaper imports. These imports could be cheaper, as they came from wealthier nations (often donors to the World Bank) that could afford agricultural subsidies. One benefit of the structural adjustments was privatized trade for the first time since the advent of the French colonial SIPs. This meant new opportunities for not only farmers, but also local merchants, business-owners, and private business associations (Perry, 2000, p. 462; Thioub et al., 1998, p. 66). Weekly markets replaced the disbanded SIPs as the centers of rural economic activity (Perry, 2000, p. 462).

126

LAURA L. COCHRANE

Political decentralization followed these significant economic changes. Decentralization of state governance, formalized in 1996, means that there are now 11 regional governments that have elected councils, but state-appointed governors. Further divisions, eventually at the local level, have elected leaders and councils. The appointed governors and the state-set budgets for the regions make them only partly decentralized from the state, reliant on not their own generated revenue but state budgets and international donors. At the same time, local governments are responsible for social services, including education and health care; this arrangement leaves them an obligation without sure or adequate funding for these needed services (Dickovick, 2005, pp. 186
188, 192
193). The state maintained this partial control over electoral politics and regional affairs while the informal sector, described above, grew (Thioub et al., 1998, p. 70). Businesses were not alone in their reorganization and growth during this time. Many communities started to reorganize themselves in the 1980s as a necessary option to economic failure. Understanding that the state’s economy and its capacity to deliver social services were weakening, they created new relationships of power. CBOs have grown and gained authority within the space that state control once occupied. They often provide the social services once taken on by states such as health care, support of small businesses, and local infrastructure. A number of scholars and development practitioners have criticized this trend, as it excuses the state from its obligations. Acknowledging this concern, this chapter is more interested in how CBOs have understood this trend, reorganized themselves, and created new relationships of power. While some localities turned to neoliberal models of development (below), other CBOs are founded on indigenous authorities (including marabouts and kinship-based leaders) and indigenous institutions (daaras, and agriculture and other trades historically linked to the area). Neoliberalism is a contrast to these indigenous institutions. It became popular in international development discourses following widespread structural adjustments in the 1980s. Economic liberalism had existed for centuries: it is the idea that corporations should not be regulated by national or global strictures. When the 1930s Depression showed that a complete lack of regulation did not work, a number of global and national financial regulations were put in place. Neoliberalism, a renewal of these ideas, encourages deregulation of commercial enterprises, and participation in global markets instead of relying on state subsidies. This was the philosophy behind economic structural adjustments in the 1980s and 1990s, and was the deregulation that led, in part, to the global economic recession of 2008
2013. To access markets, neoliberalism favors private property over communally held territory, and private commercial businesses over public services or community collectivities. Commodifying people’s work as a way to access these global markets is an integral part of neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005, pp. 70
72).

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

127

Neoliberalism stands in direct contrast to both faith-based and secular CBOs that Senegalese communities started in the 1980s as a way to meet their needs. These CBOs, whether faith-based or secular, are based the involvement of entire communities and on collective decision-making, or at least a free selection of a religious leader who then makes decisions on behalf of the community. Most importantly, they are based on indigenous networks, whether kin, religious, or village relationships. The CBOs emphasize communal labor. When there are private or individual enterprises, the CBOs tend toward communal discussion about how these work in tandem
or at least not in conflict
with each other. While not egalitarian
they still rely on hierarchical relationships inherent in kinship and religious discipleship
they are consistently different than neoliberal philosophies, and often the goals and structures of state development projects and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The foundational philosophies of CBOs shape the ways people organize themselves, choose their shared goals, and elect their leaders. The Senegalese state and international donors continue to be important players in funding and development goals and strategies. This history and the below ethnographic examples show, though, that locally grown organizations resist the easy definitions of colonial, state, or neoliberal development, and take control over the ways they organize their communities. Lac Rose, a tourism and salt-producing site north of Dakar, has an elected commission representing five villages’ interests and needs. Ndem, a daara in the former Peanut Basin, has an artisanal center, health dispensary, and agricultural projects that serve the surrounding 15 villages. While the two are different in their organization, they are both founded on indigenous structures in the service of local economic development. They have full knowledge of the global relationships of power that directly affect them. Using this knowledge and tapping into state and international relationships when appropriate, they have created local relationships of power that serve their needs.

LAC ROSE Lac Rose (Pink Lake) is a lake separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a short distance and sand dunes. The lake itself is the result of drought
tributaries from the ocean have dried up, leaving deposits that drive the local salt production. The lake is not much more than a deposit itself, measuring three square kilometers (as of 2005) and three meters deep. Even at this small size, it continues to shrink: in 1990, the lake was four square kilometers. The name Pink Lake comes from the Dunaliella salina bacteria that produce red pigment to attract sunlight; this, combined with the sun’s reflection off the sand dunes, gives the lake its pink or orange hue. About 5,000 people, both men and women, work in the salt and tourism and related industries (Sow & Marmer,

128

LAURA L. COCHRANE

2013). Salt production began in the 1970s, corresponding with the worst of the twentieth-century droughts in the Sahel. Because of drought and economic restructuring enforced by the World Bank and national policies, it is no coincidence that new ways of organizing communities emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. The salt extractors were often agriculturalists who sought viable employment, as opposed to the decimated rural agriculture that they experienced in their home villages. Today, the international salt exports to West African and European nations make the salt extraction labor financially worthwhile (Yasukawa, 2014), and the lucrative tourist industry gives hotels, campements, and tradespeople income from a steady supply of international and local visitors. Lac Rose’s location, near the ocean and the lake, within a short distance of Dakar and its international airport, makes the site ideal for tourism. The local tourist and salt industries, however, are locally, not nationally or commercially, managed: an elected council from the five surrounding villages makes sure that these enterprises benefit the local community. The council that manages all of Lac Rose’s enterprises started in 1994. This Management Commission is made up of elected representation from the five surrounding villages. It is now a Groupement d’Inte´reˆt Economique or Group of Economic Interest (GIE), a designation that is roughly equivalent to a local nonprofit organization in the United States. It meets every three months to assess Lac Rose’s current salt digging and commercial activities and make any decisions on issues that have come up since their last meeting. This group also advocates for workers’ rights and makes sure the salt workers are aware of those rights. They partner with international NGOs such as the World Food Program and national ministries of health and commerce. The decisions they make, however, are autonomous and focused on local needs (Sow & Marmer, 2013). One of the constant conflicts that salt workers face is the lack of regulations in the salt trade. The workers are mostly migrants from elsewhere in West Africa or interior rural regions of Senegal. International salt buyers do not provide paper contracts for the workers, and workers often lose wages because of these informal contracts. The national and local governments do not address these issues of workers’ rights, so the Management Commission seeks to address them through education: making sure workers know their rights. This self-knowledge is an important step in making sure workers are subjects of group identities more than exploited subjects of an international salt trade. The Management Commission also set up a fund for workers when they need it. The fund comes from taxes on salt buyers and traders, and serves as workers’ insurance to step in where social services do not (Sow & Marmer, 2013). Members of the Commission also receive a stipend. The yearly excess income goes back to the five participating villages in ways that will meet communal needs, including building and maintaining a mosque, schools, and hospitals (Sow, 2012, p. 16).

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

129

The same autonomy that leads to the lack of regulation over industry and a lack of social services, however, has allowed for local organizations such as Lac Rose’s Management Commission. The state’s decentralization in the early 1980s means that while the state collects taxes on hotels and tourism enterprises, businesses such as those in the salt trade are recognized but not regulated by the state. This is the deregulation favored by neoliberalism, with results unfavorable to the local economy. Workers’ rights have suffered, but a lack of oversight also led to local overbuilding, threatening Lac Rose’s alreadytenuous ecosystem. The Management Commission is responding to these issues in a local way, planting a green zone of trees around the lake to stabilize the dunes, in cooperation with the Senegalese state (Sow, 2012, p. 18; Sow & Marmer, 2013). In addition, during my 2015 visit to Lac Rose, a number of people talked about new initiatives (over the past decade) in small-scale organic agriculture; this is a growing trend throughout Senegal. The environment and land in this coastal region (outside of the degraded former Peanut Basin) has the capacity to support fruit trees and a number of vegetables. These are crops that more arid regions in Senegal (such as the region around Ndem) can grow only with intensive effort. Sow argues that Lac Rose’s organization is an example of the “revitalization of indigenous initiatives for local development and therefore resisting any kind of privatization” (2012, p. 7). Because the Management Commission is representative of the whole (an elected body from the five surrounding villages) and acts on behalf of the whole (defending workers’ rights and acting on behalf of environmental concerns), it is more beneficial to the whole than a private company or individualized private ownership would be. People own land and seek individual employment and start private enterprises, but adhere to the Management Commission’s decisions that form a collective union. Privatization, Sow notes (p. 22), impedes this collectivity: private companies build hotels that stress the ecosystem; private landowners do not face enforced environmental regulations; and international salt traders take advantage of migrant workers. These private interests show the limitations of a local collectivity’s authority, even with widespread local participation. If Lac Rose’s Management Commission and the relationships it has set up is resistance to neoliberalism and direct state control, their continued challenges also show the limitations of such resistance.

NDEM’S DAARA Ndem’s daara, in the arid interior Diourbel Region, is another example of a local community building itself in ways that will serve the whole. It has different challenges than Lac Rose, and also a different kind of organization. The marabout Se¨rin˜ Babacar Mbow and his wife, Soxna Aı¨ ssa Cisse´, founded the daara in the 1980s in an almost-abandoned village. Their goal, and today

130

LAURA L. COCHRANE

the daara’s goal, is to revitalize the area decimated by drought and subsequent rural to urban migration. The daara is within the village of Ndem, with residents who are the disciples of Se¨rin˜ Babacar. Soxna Aı¨ ssa, Se¨rin˜ Babacar, and his disciples are Baay Fall, a suborder of the Murid Sufi order. They pay particular attention to the history of Shaykh Amadu Bamba’s rural agricultural daara that was not far from today’s Ndem, and the goals of Bamba’s daara: to revitalize the environment as well as focus on religious education, and thus build a spiritual community (Cochrane, 2012, pp. 7
9). Ndem’s daara’s enterprises started in 1990 with the artisan center. Today, these diverse artisan workshops gain commissions from European and West African boutiques, and employ 300 people from the surrounding 15 villages. Other social services followed: the health dispensary, which was started with proceeds from the artisan center; the garden, a site for experimental agriculture, to test out ideas of building up soil and growing produce organically in degraded land; and many other projects including schools from kindergarten through secondary school, two solar-powered water towers, and small businesses. The daara’s organizing principles are based on both religion and kinship. The Baay Fall suborder follows the model of Shaykh Ibra Fall, one of Shaykh Amadu Bamba’s prominent disciples. Fall attracted attention and criticism because he devoted himself to laboring for Bamba, and considered physical labor an act of spiritual devotion on par with intellectual spiritual study and prayer. In his pursuit of physical labor to support Bamba and his nascent community, Fall is often portrayed as the balance to Bamba’s intellectual spirituality, even though Fall was well-educated and the author of a number of writings himself. Today’s Baay Falls (baay is Wolof for father) follow Fall’s example by considering work a form of prayer. To be in a Baay Fall community is to experience a community with an unflagging enthusiasm for work in service of the daara’s maintenance and goals. Ndem’s daara, similar to many daaras, turns this religious teaching about work into support for economic development goals. Related to that is devotion to a marabout. This devotion is not worship, but means that a disciple carefully chooses this spiritual guide, then follows the marabout’s guidance on his or her spiritual path. Se¨rin˜ Babacar has directed his group of disciples in projects that have, over time, built up their daara to be a model of local economic development. Another organizing principle is kinship and casted trades. Similar to Bamba’s daara at the turn of the twentieth century, casted trades continue to be an important form of inherited identity and earned role in a functioning daara. The manager of the weaving workshop at Ndem’s artisan center talks about the familial weaving lineages of both his mother and father. He learned to weave from his uncle, and a number of his extended family work at the artisan center as well (Cochrane, 2013, p. 106). The respect he needs as a manager comes from his lineage as well as his skill in his craft and in management. Without this familial status, the respect would not follow. In another example, a family’s history lends respect. Fallou and Khady Fall have lived in the Ndem

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

131

daara the longest, after Se¨rin˜ Babacar and Soxna Aı¨ ssa; Khady grew up in the village of Ndem. Because of this longevity, residents of the daara give them respect and often turn to them for advice or help with coordinating projects. Fallou is the manager of the daara itself, helping to direct the activities of the residential area. The challenges that Ndem’s daara face are similar to the challenges all CBOs, including Lac Rose, must confront, and they are often outside forces. Continued uncertainty over rainfall and shifting seasons because of climate fluctuations have been difficult for all agricultural regions of the Sahel. Lac Rose has seen a shrinking lake, threatening their salt trade and tourism. Sahelian agricultural communities such as Ndem deal with unpredictable rainfall during the three-month rainy season; the harvest during this growing season often determines the level of nutrition they will enjoy the rest of the year. A short rainfall during one year’s rainy season means the staple crop of millet is lost for that year, leading to widespread malnourishment. In 2014, 2015, and 2016, the rainy season shifted almost two months ahead, bringing rain in not the anticipated late June, but in August. The 2015 rainy season was not only late, but it brought so much rain that some varieties of millet did not grow, and communities dealt with severe flooding. Farmers can adjust to some of these changes; others are beyond their control. The global economic crisis also affected tourism in many coastal communities throughout Senegal, as European visitors seeking a beach vacation dwindled. For Ndem, the 2008
2013 global economic recession severely diminished commissions for their artisanal products, including fashions, household goods, woven baskets, and small toys (Cochrane, 2015, p. 256). A 2011 national crisis over national electrical brownouts shorted their water pump (and therefore severely limited access to potable water) before they could replace the energy source with solar panels in 2012. Another local effect of these financial difficulties is a lack of income to pay workers on time. This affects families dependent on this income to send their children to school, pay their bills, and eat. Each of these local effects of global and regional crises has the potential to create conflict: relying on the leaders of the organizational structure is important to manage these conflicts. For Lac Rose, conflict management and dealing with the commercial enterprises that threaten the Lake is the job of the Management Commission. For Ndem’s daara, conflict management rests with the managers of the daara and the artisan center, and with the marabout, Se¨rin˜ Babacar.

COMMUNITY STRUCTURES AS RESISTANCE Lac Rose’s and Ndem’s commonalities are that their organizational models are based on indigenous and local definitions of community. They seek to use these

132

LAURA L. COCHRANE

definitions to not only organize themselves but also work toward changes that their communities need. Sometimes, the changes they identify are at odds with external pressures, or the process they choose to make these changes are at odds with external interests. Their chosen organizational structures sometimes have aligned with, yet in many ways have been opposed to, colonial, national, or global development models and goals. Lac Rose’s Management Commission is elected from each of the surrounding five villages, so that their voices will have equal representation on decisions that affect them. The important distinction between colonial cooperatives and this group is that it is not a top-down state appointment, but each village’s choice of people who in turn determine local priorities. They may partner with the state for mutually beneficial projects, such as planting the green zone of trees to protect the area, described above. This is an agreement and partnership, however, not an imposition. The Management Commission is also sometimes at odds with neoliberal goals, in that it seeks communal decision-making, not independent private autonomy. It works with private businesses such as hotels, salt miners, and salt traders, yet privileges community interests over those of private corporations. It also seeks to be a mediator for problems that private corporations introduce, such as violations of workers’ rights. While this remains a severe problem for the salt diggers, the important factor for this discussion is the local response to it. Ndem’s organizational structure is based on religious and kinship relationships. People choose whether to live in a daara or not, and they choose a spiritual leader. In this way, daaras are also locally organized with chosen
if not elected
leadership. Historically, they were important alternative spaces for people dissatisfied with colonial and aristocratic social structures. Living in a daara became pacifist resistance to powerful entities, open to people of all classes and education levels. Present-day daaras vary wildly in their goals. Ndem’s daara exists as a way to develop a drought-stricken area in strategic ways that align with indigenous social structures and religious principles. Sometimes the daara’s goals correspond with development agencies and state projects, sometimes they do not. Challenges to local organizations are not always external, and indigenous does not always mean completely representational. The leadership in both Lac Rose and Ndem are chosen, yet also gendered. A majority of marabouts are men, and those who have status in their families are often men. Lac Rose’s Management Commission is all men, though Sow (2012, p. 15) notes that they have welcomed women who present issues during meetings. While women often gain respect for their community leadership in Senegal, including in daaras, inequalities persist, including roles that men and women play in leadership, in work, and in the household. These roles are slowly changing, as some women gain higher education and choose marriage partners who agree that they should achieve their own goals and, in turn, better their communities. The ability to make these choices, however, rest on unequal opportunities that are particularly

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

133

stark in rural areas. In other words, while organizational structures that are based on indigenous definitions of community and local agency work more effectively for their own communities, the inequalities that come with these structures can threaten to undermine them as much as outside pressures. In this context, agency might mean women creating a space for their own voices and using relationships of power to make sure their interests are addressed, even when they don’t have authoritative positions within those power structures. While these are internal structural inequalities, economic and political changes imposed by outsiders have been primary challenges across Senegal’s communities. Senegal’s decentralization and privatization were based on neoliberal principles that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund enforced, and national political restructuring that was, in part, a response to budget shortfalls. These changes, while damaging to both national and local economies, have allowed for strategically grown local organizations. At the same time, the long-standing criticism of decentralization processes is that states rely too much on CBOs and NGOs to fill in the gaps for services that they cannot financially address or refuse to prioritize. My argument here, though, is that these organizations resist top-down state or international NGO projects that often do not take local contexts and priorities into account. They create relationships of power that resist making communities and individuals subjects of exploitative global relationships. Instead, they set up structures through which they can use these relationships of power, as opposed to being subject to them. The Senegalese state and international donors continue to be important players in funding and development goals and strategies. A number of positive examples show the effectiveness of partnerships between these entities and local CBOs. The examples of the Lac Rose Management Commission and the Ndem daara show that locally grown organizations resist the easy definitions of neoliberal development. They also show that local organizations can control how much influence funders have in their local projects. In other words, these local initiatives are collective, and as independent as possible as they still work within and rely on interconnected financial markets. Outsiders may point to inequalities that still limit these local initiatives. The Lac Rose Management Commission has not been able to completely protect workers’ rights and improve conditions for Lac Rose salt workers; both Ndem’s daara and Lac Rose’s Management Commission struggle with gender inequalities. Both communities continue to deal with drought and economic inequalities. These challenges are not unique to these two organizations and indeed are evident throughout Senegal and elsewhere in the Sahel. These inequalities do not mean a lack of agency, however, for salt workers, women, or the communities of Lac Rose and Ndem. The agency they wield to create and define themselves and their communities must be understood in their cultural contexts. Using specific relationships of power to create social change, however incremental, is creative agency, and it is resistance.

134

LAURA L. COCHRANE

This chapter focuses on collectives that have grown within the space that state control once occupied. While in part a result of the 1980s global neoliberal policies, they have more to do with indigenous structures and faith-based principles than with neoliberal guidelines. These foundational motivations shape the ways they organize themselves, choose their shared goals, and elect their leaders. While not perfect or even idealistic, they are spaces in which local communities define both their goals and their challenges, and decide how they will engage with both. This is resistance not in a protest or sign-waving demonstration sense. Instead, it is an everyday persistence in using indigenous models of organization and development in slow, deliberate ways.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author thanks the residents of Lac Rose and Ndem for their hospitality and insights; Central Michigan University, which has supported this ongoing research financially and via a 2016 sabbatical; and Gil Musolf, who created the space for this topic.

REFERENCES Adams, A., & So, J. (1996). A claim to land by the river: A household in Senegal 1720-1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Babou, C. A. (2007). Fighting the greater jihad: Amadu Bamba and the founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Boone, C. (1990). State power and economic crisis in Senegal. Comparative Politics, 22(3), 341
357. Boone, C. (1995). Rural interests and the making of modern African states. African Economic History, 23, 1
36. Bouchier, J. (1971). Enqueˆte sur le mouvement coope´ratif dans un arrondissement se´ne´galais. Civilisations, 21(1), 19
37. Brenner, L. (2000). Histories of religion in Africa. Journal of Religion in Africa, 30(2), 143
167. Buggenhagen, B. A. (2001). Prophets and profits: Gendered and generational visions of wealth and value in Senegalese Murid households. Journal of Religion in Africa, 31(4), 373
401. Clark, A. F. (1999). Imperialism, independence and Islam in Senegal and Mali. Africa Today, 46(3
4), 146
167. Cochrane, L. L. (2012). Religious motivations for local economic development in Senegal. Africa Today, 58(4). Cochrane, L. L. (2013). Weaving through Islam in Senegal. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Cochrane, L. L. (2015). Addressing global economic inequalities in local ways in Senegal’s artisanal workshops. Economic Anthropology, 2, 250
263. Cruise O’Brien, D. (1971). Co-operators and bureaucrats: Class formation in a Senegalese peasant society. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 41(4), 263
278. Cruise O’Brien, D. (1975). Saints and politicians: Essays in the organisation of a Senegalese peasant society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dickovick, J. T. (2005). The measure and mismeasure of decentralisation: Subnational autonomy in Senegal and South Africa. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 43(2), 183
210.

Collective and Community Work in Senegal

135

Diop, A.
B. (1981). La Socie´te´ Wolof, Tradition et Changement: Les Syste`mes d’Ine´galite´ et de Domination. Paris: E´ditions Karthala. Diouf, M. (1992). State formation and legitimation crisis in Senegal. Review of African Political Economy, 54, 117
125. Durufle´, G. (1995). Bilan de la Nouvelle Politique Agricole au Se´ne´gal. Review of African Political Economy, 22(63), 73
84. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777
796. Gellar, S. (2002). The art of association in Senegal: Tocquevillian analytics in an African setting. Presented at the Institutional Analysis and Development mini-conference and TransCoop meeting. Indiana University, December 13
16, 2002, Bloomington, Indiana. Retrieved from http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/9311/Gellar.pdf?sequence¼1 Glover, J. (2009). Murid modernity: Historical perceptions of Islamic reform, Sufism, and colonization. In M. Diouf & M. Leichtman (Eds.), New perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, migration, wealth, power, and femininity (pp. 71
90). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lecomte, B. (1992). Senegal: The young farmers of Walo and the new agricultural policy. Review of African Political Economy, 55, 87
95. Leichtman, M. (2015). Shi’i cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese migration and religious conversion in Senegal. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Mahmood, S. (2012). Politics of Piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Patterson, A. S. (1999). The dynamic nature of citizenship and participation: Lessons from three rural Senegalese case studies. Africa Today, 46(1), 3
27. Perry, D. (2000). Rural weekly markets and the dynamics of time, space and community in Senegal. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 38(3), 461
486. Robinson, D. (1985). The holy war of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the nineteenth century. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Robinson, D. (2004). Muslim Societies in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rogers, C. L. (1977). Desertification. Science News, 112(18), 282, 283, 285. Schmidt, E. (2009). Anti-colonial nationalism in French West Africa: What made Guinea unique?. African Studies Review, 52(2), 1
34. Searing, J. F. (2002). “God Alone is King”: Islam and emancipation in Senegal. The Wolof kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859-1914. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Sow, P. (2012). Uncertainties and conflicting environmental adaptation strategies in the Region of the Pink Lake, Senegal. ZEF Working Paper Series, Department of Political and Cultural Change Center for Development Research, University of Bonn. Sow, P., & Marmer, E. (2013). Salt and trade at the Pink Lake: Community subsistence in Senegal. In D. Bollier & S. Helfrich (Eds.), The wealth of the commons: A world beyond market and state. Retrieved from http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/salt-and-trade-pink-lake-community-subsistence-senegal. Accessed on March 11, 2016. Tamari, T. (1991). The development of caste systems in West Africa. Journal of African History, 32(2), 221
250. Thioub, I., Diop, M.-C., & Boone, C. (1998). Economic liberalization in Senegal: Shifting politics of indigenous business interests. African Studies Review, 41(2), 63
89. Tignor, R. (1987). Senegal’s cooperative experience, 1907-1960. J. Waterbury (Ed.), The Political economy of risk and change in Senegal (pp. 90
122). London: Routledge. Yasukawa, O. (2014). Senegal’s ‘Dead Sea’: Salt harvesting in the Strawberry-Pink Lake. June 27, CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/27/world/africa/senegals-dead-sea-lakeretba/. Accessed on March 11, 2016.

TIME TO DEFY: THE USE OF TEMPORAL SPACES TO ENACT RESISTANCE Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott ABSTRACT Rational time accompanies the onslaught of hyper-globalization. The Inuit of Arviat, Nunavut, paradoxically use rational time to resist rational time, setting aside temporal zones to protect Western cultural paradigms from impinging on their lives all of the time. Additionally, because temporal norms indicate membership in a group, doing time differently is one of the most effective ways in which to say “I’m not a part of your group!” While resisting rational clock-time, for example by walking off the job each day promptly at 4:59 pm, the Inuit of Arviat nevertheless have a myriad of clocks in their homes. This chapter explores their temporal resistance and the riddle of “why so many clocks in Arviat?” Keywords: Temporal resistance; rational time; clock-time; Inuit time; Inuit

While resistance can often feel futile against a backdrop of encroaching cultural paradigms, still we know at some level it is never truly futile and we resist

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 137 155 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048010

137

138

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

in myriad ways. For marginalized groups, such as the Inuit of northern Canada, this resistance takes many subtle forms, including temporal. Rational time accompanies the onslaught of hyper-globalization. The Inuit of Arviat, Nunavut, paradoxically use rational time to resist rational time, setting aside temporal zones to protect rational time from impinging on their lives all of the time. It is easy to take time, and our experience thereof, as somehow aside from our analysis of structures, and yet how we engage with our thought communities (Zerubavel, 1997) involves temporal ramifications. Temporal resistance manifests deep-rooted expressions of belonging (or not), boundaries, and identity. Temporal participation shows membership in a thought community. It, therefore, makes a particularly effective arena for resistance. From a child dragging her or his heels while getting ready for school in the morning, to France’s adoption of the French Republican Calendar in 1793 (Zerubavel, 1977), time is a powerful and overlooked medium of expression. Because temporal norms indicate membership in a group, doing time differently is one of the most effective ways in which to say “I’m not a part of your group!” In Arviat, Nunavut, located on the West coast of the Hudson Bay and the site of my field work, temporal resistance primarily takes the form of conflict between rational time, perceived as part of Western colonization, and “Inuit time.” The Inuit experience the invasion of rational time as an institutional assault (Goehring & Stager, 1991). Through creative manipulation of rational time, however, Ariviammiut (the people of Arviat) manage to assert their cultural temporal norms into certain times and spaces. For example, by accepting the conceptual ideal imposed by their colonizers of the 9 5 job, they essentially walk off the job every day at 4:59 no matter what and turn this ideal back on the system to protect the rest of their time to practice Inuit time and ways of being, supposedly unaware and unaffected by time. Younger groups and those who are unemployed often resist structural norms by living on “backwards” time (Stern, 2003), staying up all night and sleeping all day (this is facilitated as well by the 24-hour darkness or light). In this chapter, I discuss the importance of temporal practices to group membership and, consequentially, the oppressive nature of time regimes introduced by those seeking to control in a discussion of rational time and natural time. I then discuss the case study of Arviat, delineating the ways in which they engage in temporal resistance, as well as the contradictory presence of a plethora of clocks in their homes.

THOUGHT COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP Participation in a temporal group is participation in a social group. For people in marginalized groups who must perform boundary work at a group level and identity work at an individual level, temporal participation represents these forms of work. Membership is deeply rooted in temporal practices. Those who

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

139

do not share a community of time cannot interact this would extend linearly as well, to ancestors and those to come (Geertz, 1973). On a micro-level, we see how people who use their own time, that is, who operate outside of the community-defined temporal practices, are considered mentally ill and essentially confined to their inner world (Zerubavel, 1997, p. 103). Not having the correct time risks “social incompetence” (Lewis & Weigert, 1981, p. 439). On a more macrolevel, we see how participation in a standardized time-reckoning framework allows trade and coordination among nations. This is one of the reasons that the French Republican calendar failed; it disrupted the ability of the French to temporally coordinate with other countries (Zerubavel, 1977, p. 868). Temporal practices and time-reckoning frameworks are first social constructs. As such, they reflect our ideologies and social organization (Beidelman, 1963, pp. 19 20). Calendars also hold our collective memory and shape our sense of history (Davis, 1984). In fact, calendars serve a number of functions beyond temporal coordination among groups. They carry with them an ideology, for example the calendar which the French Republic introduced carried the ideologies of secularism, naturalism, and rationalism (Zerubavel, 1977) while the Russian five-day work week calendar carried an ideology of efficiency and secularism (Zerubavel, 1985). One of the main functions of the calendar, however, is “temporal segregation” (Engel-Frisch, 1943). Calendars reveal, establish, and reinforce group boundaries. While increasing in-group solidarity, defining who is an insider, they also define who are outsiders (Zerubavel, 1982a, p. 284). Thus, calendrical contrasts accentuate social contrasts (Zerubavel, 1982a, p. 288; 1985, p. 22). This extends to temporal practices as well. Temporal segregation, arrived at through differing temporal practices, determines who is “your kind” (Zerubavel, 1979a), be that by religion, nationality, or social class. Many different “temporal groups” become isolated. Sometimes these are long-term isolations, and sometimes short-term. Children who behave badly may experience short-term isolation when they are given a “time out.” Those suffering from illness may also experience isolation through temporal segregation (Charmaz, 1991; Davis, 1956). In these cases, a modified temporal routine is the first and fundamental stage in the social isolation that occurs. The isolated individual, however, may well be able to return to the “temporal group” upon recovery. Cottrell’s (1939) railroaders illustrate long-term temporal isolation. The railroader is utterly confined by the temporal demands of his job. This limits “all forms of social participation” (Cottrell, 1939, p. 190). Engel-Frisch stresses the likelihood that temporal segregation may lead to spatial segregation (1943, p. 46). Ideology is a part of temporal segregation. Within the organization of hospitals, the ideology surrounding the work of nurses and doctors determines their temporal schedules (Zerubavel, 1979a). Nurses have rigid schedules and are considered more interchangeable, while doctors are considered individually important and thus have more flexible schedules and are required to be available more readily than an individual nurse (Zerubavel, 1979c). Similarly,

140

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

different levels of remove, or public and private time, are expected from those at different social distances from us, and at different heights of power. Lead time is a symbolic sign of respect, for example, but it is also too formal for interactions among immediate family members (Zerubavel, 1979b). Thus, there are temporal aspects to social accessibility (Zerubavel, 1979b). Ideology can lead to less temporal segregation as well. For example, coming back to the calendar specifically, the commitment to “civil religion” today leads to the increasing attempts to make Christmas and Hanukkah seem like the same holiday (Zerubavel, 1982a). Now, 30 years into this trend, it is easy to find “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” cards. The ideological nature of temporal constructs and practices is part of what makes temporal domains powerful arenas in which to exert subversive resistance. Some groups are in positions of “temporal dominance” (Engel-Frisch, 1943), such as those who have the “ideal” nine-to-five jobs. Melbin finds that “time, like space, is part of the ecological niche occupied by a species” (1978, p. 5). Groups and people are, therefore, segregated by time. We also learn, from both Melbin and Zerubavel’s work, that activities are time-segregated as well. The night is a new frontier because night is “the right time” for sleeping. Sleep has a specific temporality associated with it which protects the sleepers from the awake (Schwartz, 1970). Activities are both concentrated in time, such as with working hours, and segregated in time (Moore, 1963, p. 7). We have such a firm understanding of the “normal” working hours as being nine-to-five (Zerubavel, 1979a, p. 115), a` la Dolly Parton, that we would rather implement daylight savings than have the work day be from eight to four for part of the year. Shift work is an accepted deviation from the nine-to-five paradigm, although shift work’s position as a deviation is reinforced by the general acknowledgment that nine-to-five work is more desirable and by the higher pay grade generally involved. Zerubavel (1979a) points out that different jobs in a hospital are temporally separate and scheduled according to the ideology associated with each job. As mentioned above, nurses are considered more interchangeable. They are also paid less than doctors and enjoy less status. Only those within the same temporal grouping can coordinate with each other and solidarity is reinforced among the temporal groupings (Zerubavel, 1979a). Solidarities can be felt across other social distinctions when people find themselves in the same temporal grouping, such as night workers (Zerubavel, 1979a, p. 82). So, not only are activities separated in time, but there is a temporal division of labor which is closely associated to status (Zerubavel, 1979a) and which highlights in-group and outsider status. Those who work in the hours not normally designated for work form a temporal out-group from the mainstream. We find a “time ghetto” (Melbin, 1978) in which membership in the out-group affects morale (Engel-Frisch, 1943). Stern (2003) finds that among the Inuit, the nine-to-five construct disciplines local activities and discourages engaging in traditional activities.

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

141

Temporal practices determine insider-outsider status, as well as reflect ideologies and group values. Differing practices implicate hierarchies of status among groups according to dominant normative practices such that alternative temporal behaviors can be judged and individuals or groups engaged in such practices can be segregated and even disparaged on moral grounds. Those who cannot adhere to a strict start time at work, for example, can be categorized as lazy according to mainstream practices, with little regard for their groups’ temporal ideologies and norms. The nine-to-five construct is Western in nature and, when imposed upon mnemonic communities with alternate temporal practices, becomes an oppressive time regime. Control over the normative temporal practices amount to control over a people. Calendars serve a symbolic function and, as such, are a central component of social control (Zerubavel, 1977, 1981), but this extends to other temporal and social practices which are shaped in and through the calendar and Western time-reckoning frameworks (Zerubavel, 2004). Gaining control over the calendar is an opportunity to introduce a different ideology, and political regime changes are often accompanied by time-reckoning changes (Zerubavel, 1985, p. 27). The French, for example, changed their calendar just for the sake of change, to mark the difference between theirs and the previous calendar as they strove for a “total symbolic transformation” (Zerubavel, 1977, pp. 870 871). The calendar also controls collective memory (Davis, 1984; Zerubavel, 1982a). The collective memory within calendars helps to form and bolster collective narratives (Davis, 1984, p. 21). Each new religion, for example, is marked by a new calendar. Control over the calendar is directly linked to social control (Zerubavel, 1981, p. 45). There are risks which come with defying current mainstream Western temporal ideologies. Temporal segregation, in practice and in ideology, is the locus of conflict between Western and non-Western groups. The Navajo, for example, believe that the past and the present can coexist in their circular conception of time (Griffin-Pierce, 1992). This places them outside mainstream beliefs and while this maintains boundaries around their identity as Navajo, it can also threaten their acceptance by the mainstream. The expression of temporal resistance to the mainstream comes with risks. For the Inuit, they cannot practice Inuit time all the time or they would be unable to participate in the world as citizens, something which they want. The solution is to resist by defining certain times as reserved for the practice of Inuit time.

RATIONAL TIME So, temporal practices determine group membership, therefore the Inuit can perform Inuitness by enacting these practices, which connect to their ideologies and values. The resistance to participation in mainstream, Western temporal

142

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

practices include, then, a strong resentment of encroaching rational time. While it is true that Western culture has extensively rationalized time (Adam, 1995; Simmel, 1950; Weber, [1905] 1998; Zerubavel, 1982a, 1985), an over-emphasis in the literature of the rationalized, mathematical, time-reckoning system used in the West hides the presence of other, less rationalized forms of reckoning time still present (Hallowell, 1937). For the Inuit, however, rational time becomes symbolic of, and a synecdoche for, their entire relationship with their colonizers. There has been a move in Western civilization away from natural time toward rational time (Zerubavel, 1982b, p. 19) which is also a move away from natural control to social control (Zerubavel, 1981, p. 44). Abstract rational systems absorb more space (Maines, 1989, p. 117) and carry with them a utilitarian philosophy of time (Zerubavel, 1981, p. 54). Goehring and Stager (1991) examine rational time by looking at its introduction to the Inuit and highlight the shift from what they call polychromatic time (P-time), nonlinear, unregulated time, to monochromatic time (M-time), which is linear, rational, measured time. They see the Inuit as having borne an institutional assault of M-time. Linear time is in line with the Western definition of the temporal situation. Cyclical time, however, is also present. Mondays come and go and come again. Bliss asserts that the cyclical nature of the week “protects you from the frightening truth” that time is indeed linear and marches ever forward (1982, p. 11). Private cycles also bring comfort, however, as they stave off linearity, such as doing the laundry regularly, following a daily or weekly routine of showering and eating, and other regularly cycled activities. Zerubavel (1985) paints a rather pendulum view of cyclical time which exists on a linear continuum. Each moment is a time in the day, a day of the week, a day of the month, and a day of the year. These embedded circles surround each point, but each point is arrayed linearly from past to present to future (Zerubavel, 1985, p. 84). Thus, we experience time both cyclically and linearly. Through the experience of linear and cyclical time, rhythm is established and experienced. Periodic patterns in our behavior are what establish the rhythm of our lives (Zerubavel, 1979a). Units of time become fixed by collective rhythms (Sorokin & Merton, 1937) and are expressions of those collective rhythms, as Durkheim points out with respect to calendars ([1912] 1995). These rhythms are often originally based on natural or bodily rhythms, but technology has the ability to influence these rhythms as well (Flaherty & SeippWilliams, 2005). In the case of the Inuit, their houses mediate their experience of rhythms in two ways. First, the houses encourage a deterioration in traditional rhythms by mitigating the rhythm of activities imposed by nature. The houses mediate the relationship with nature, including the weather and, as a result, nature holds far less influence over daily patterns. Second, houses come as part of the rationalization of time and space introduced by Western cultural paradigms. As

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

143

such, they support the movement toward more rational temporal constructs as binding on the time of the Inuit. Once a social rhythm has established a calendar, timetable, or other unit of measurement, those social constructions then shape our behavior. Rhythm guides our expectations as well. “Sociotemporal rhythms” (Flaherty & SeippWilliams, 2005), as we see, exist in our daily interactions, in our expectations, in our work-lives, and in our institutions. We can work at creating specific rhythms, as the island residents in British Columbia do (Hodson & Vannini, 2007), and we can be shaped by rhythms, as Flaherty and Seipp-Williams found in their study of e-mail activity (2005). Zerubavel has also found that each day of the week carries with it a particular feeling which becomes part of the familiar rhythm of the week (Zerubavel, 1985). We all know what Monday is supposed to feel like. As more and more groups are involved in temporal coordination, time-reckoning systems move away from a basis of natural phenomena to a basis of social phenomena. Scheduling, in general, is a move away from nature (Wax, 1960; Zerubavel, 1981). Hunter gatherers, who had little contact with other groups and very little interdependence, lived in rhythms based on environmental (natural) conditions (Moore, 1963, pp. 25 26), or P-time (Goehring & Stager, 1991). Through its constant reification, the week begins to feel “natural” and is thus established with a sense of perceived inevitability, reinforced by religious support (Zerubavel, 1985, p. 140). The week is also circular, which promotes rigidity of routines, lending regularity and predictability to everyday life (Zerubavel, 1985, p. 83, 86). Out of the “sociotemporal order” comes “temporal rigidification” (Zerubavel, 1981, p. 2). Because we structure our daily lives around the week, the week may be more salient in our everyday experience than the month or year (Zerubavel, 1985, p. 2). By looking around us, we can usually tell the hour and the day of the week by what is going on, using our knowledge of local “temporal maps” (Zerubavel, 1981, 1985). Zerubavel (1985) writes about the seven-day week as having its own “pulse.” He stresses that the week is a cycle which alternates, or pulses, between a set of on days and a set of off days, between ordinary days and extraordinary days (1985, p. 117). The drudgery of the work week is followed by the elation of the weekend. But modern work patterns are artificial in their regularity (Zerubavel, 1985, pp. 86 87), and the week is the epitome of a totally artificial break with nature (Zerubavel, 1985, p. 4). Added to the nine-to-five structure imposed as normative, the week, and more specifically the work week, becomes the ideal target for resistance.

SETTING AND METHODOLOGY Arviat, Nunavut, is a remote Inuit hamlet located on the West coast of the Hudson Bay in the far North of Canada. This community of roughly 2,400

144

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

Arviammiut (people of Arviat) is accessible only by airplane. In the winter, it experiences near 24-hour darkness due to its latitude, and in the summer near 24-light. Of all the Inuit communities in Nunavut, Arviat was colonized the most quickly, with regular contact only established through a Hudson Bay trading post in the 1920s. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Canadian government engaged in an aggressive housing program, as part of the colonization process, which settled the up-to-then nomadic population into the hamlet known today as Arviat. Education programs were implemented and as the population became more rooted in town, the concept of the nine-to-five job, particularly government jobs, emerged as the primary source of resources. Arviammiut have worked hard to bring their culture indoors and they work agentically within the new constraints to assert their identity onto a social landscape increasingly dominated by Western influences. Thomas and Thompson (1972), in a critique of the 1960s housing projects, argue that “rapid cultural change through imposition of a ‘crash’ program has been attempted.” Certainly the culture crash which Arviammiut experienced has been extreme, with sedimentization affecting all facets of life-as-it-was. As Arviammiut establish new norms for community living, boundary work around what it means to be Inuk (the singular of Inuit) is a focal point. Living life within houses means living life within Western spaces. Through processes of subversive and overt resistance, Arviammiut work to establish their contemporary identities as of-the-world, while not consumed by-the-world. I lived in Arviat for five years and returned for two research trips after I moved away from the community. I learned Inuktitut and took part in community life. I was privy to conversations among imported Western workers about Inuit work practices from the outside perspective, as well as conversations among Inuit workers (and nonworkers) about their Western-style workplaces and their overall temporal practices. During my research trips, I conducted, in addition to continued ethnography, 50 formal in-depth interviews and photographed most of the homes in which I conducted interviews. The data for this chapter are based on my field notes and memos from my time in Arviat, formal interviews, as well as the photographs I took following each interview. All names herein are pseudonymous. My formal interviews were structured around their wall-artifacts, beginning with a tour of the walls, continuing on with questions about how they move through their daily lives.

TEMPORAL PRACTICES I started thinking about temporal resistance because the Inuit perform lateness almost aggressively and constantly point out that using humor in which they refer to “Inuit time.” Sometimes this manifests in what is interpreted as unreliability.

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

145

Next we go to the Elders’ Centre. We go in and I ask if Abigail is working. She is not. They point me to the room where the manager is … [She is] a qablunaaq [Western, usually white but not always], I would have guessed not quite 30 to early 30s. Short spunky hair, dirty blond … She tells me that Abigail will be in at 4. I say we will come back then, but we get chatting. She tells me … that they need to hire many support staff because many don’t show up reliably, especially if it is bingo night or something. (Field Notes)

Other qablunaaqs in managerial positions, such as school principals, complained of this unreliability. Teachers would often show up for work right on the dot when school started, which was considered late by some standards. The lateness (or extreme on-timeness) is a performance directed at the rational, clock-world of encroaching globalization and Western cultural paradigms, and yet when I photographed their homes, in the first round of interviews there were almost 100 clocks in the public areas alone of the first 24 homes I photographed. There were simple round clocks, fancy ornate clocks, stove clocks (which I only counted if they were set to the right time), clocks with family photographs integrated into them, small clocks, big clocks, old clocks, and new clocks. This lateness was not accidental and time is not meaningless for Arviammiut. The performance of unreliability is an agentic way to control participation in Western practices and with qablunaaqs. Jill calls to say she is ready to be interviewed. I head over. I am relieved and impressed. When she had not been home the first few times she said she would be, I assumed she was dodging me. Several who have not been able to say no to being interviewed get out of it by making scheduling virtually impossible, despite my flexibility of being free anytime at all. One did say flat out that she was busy all week. I am fine with this because I know that it is hard to say no here and it is important for them to have these ways to get out of something they don’t want to do. After I try a couple of times to set up an interview, I usually give up not because I am not tenacious, but because I know how hard it is to say no for them and I need to respect that this might be their way of communicating that (or at least effectively getting out of it). I am glad Jill genuinely had other things come up and I head over there. (Field Notes)

Because Inuit culture dictates that people learn by making mistakes, one does not say no to someone else, but rather lets them make the mistake. This cultural background means that saying no, even to outsiders, can be very difficult. Arviammiut are able to use the Western notion of setting meeting times to agentically evade qablunaaqs by asking them to do things they do not want to do, such as participating in interviews with sociologists. By practicing agency in this way, Arviammiut empower themselves to say no in a manner which is culturally appropriate for them and which uses temporal practices as a form of resistance turning clock-time against those using clock-time as the dominant way to plan. Clock-time, however, is not only a tool, it also indicates a value system in contradiction with Inuit values. During an informal conversation, Oliver tells me about a trip he took to Winnipeg. He conveys his confusion and frustration over homelessness in cities.

146

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

Oliver talked at length about how shocking it was to him that people are just walking by, looking and not helping, not stopping, not caring. Their boss is - and he taps his wrist to indicate the clock. (Field Notes)

In this instance, Oliver indicates that clock-time has taken precedence in city culture over humanity and compassion. He links this to Western ways of being and by indicating clock-time as a synecdoche for the Western value system, he demarcates Inuit values as delinked from clock-time. Many youth work on “backward” time, staying up all night and sleeping all day. In her interview, Jasmine, whose adult daughter is present, jokes about her daughter getting a job and says, “sometimes she’s still like that. Stay up all night, sleep all day. But she got up 12 o’clock today.” Although not only young adults practice this, my contact with those who did talk about it was primarily with young women. They routinely joke about it with me, laughing at themselves. But their joking also serves as a vehicle for them to point out to me that they have alternative temporal practices which serve to remove them from the community of qablunaaqs. These youth, as in other places in the North, get “turned-around or ‘backwards’ in their temporal orientation” (Stern, 2003, p. 147), which continues to distance them from qablunaaq ways of being. Those with children practice loose time. Jill is a mother, not long out of school, who is establishing her family’s space and practices. She seems supremely happy and confident in her role …. The chores and work is something that is just part of life, gives purpose to her movements and makes her feel important and needed (which she is). Meanwhile, she does not feel the need to wrangle her child into a set sleeping pattern, or eating pattern, which takes away the idea of sleepless nights, when you can sleep anytime. The idea of worrying when your child does not eat or sleep. The constant battles over bedtimes and foods one may or may not like are non-existent. (Field Notes)

I noted this loose temporal regime for children frequently in my field notes. [The toddler] seems to be in a better mood than yesterday, despite the coughing … In terms of sleeping, he has no bedtime. He falls asleep when he is tired. This works very well and indeed he does not continue to push and get overtired, but just falls asleep when he needs to. Sleep has not become a fight for him. (Field Notes)

These are typical of my field notes upon my return from visiting and my time staying with families. There is a class component to this as well, where those who struggle on the socioeconomic stratum are more likely to have adults engaging in loose time as well. This loose time can come into conflict with Western rational time frameworks. My above field notes continue: At the same time, I can see how challenging the school regime will be for him, as for others here. To be there at a specific time means keeping a sleeping schedule, which he does not and his family only partly does. They sleep eventually at night, but mostly crash when they are tired, whatever time of day. (Field Notes)

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

147

Punctuality does have its place, even in Inuit time, but in ways that are agentic uses of punctuality. Toward the end of my time there, I was reflecting on my ethnographic experiences in Arviat: The community is pretty dedicated to the 9-5 idea, using it to ensure that there are temporal boundaries considered valid in the South which limit the ability of Southern things to encroach on their time/lives. The few exceptions are water and sewage trucks which do run after 5, but not all night, and the grocery stores, which are open to about 7. Government jobs, however, teaching, desk jobs, janitors, secretaries, everything else vacate their post at 5 on the dot. They are free of a sense of pressing urgency when it comes to paperwork once 5 hits. That’s it, they are done. They can be part way through an e-mail and they will just stand and leave. An admirable quality and a clever use of the temporal construct suggested by the South as a way to give boundaries to Southern cultural encroachment. (Memo)

By leaving work promptly at five, Arviammiut work to protect large blocks of time wherein they can practice Inuit time. By using the strict nine-to-five rational clock-time model in a manner similar to work-to-rule, Western temporal practices become bound within themselves, locked into the constraints of the work week. As Stern (2003) frames similar observations in work practices in the North, time trumps work output. It is this reasoning that allows temporal resistance to work. Bingo is an outlier in that bingo times are strictly adhered to. Three times a week, at the time of my last visit (Field Notes), people can purchase bingo cards from the radio station and then sit at home in the evening and play radio bingo. Winners call in and check their numbers on air, later bringing their winning cards to the station to collect their winnings. Bingo is extremely popular and one should not plan on visiting during bingo hours. Any plans inadvertently made during bingo are put on hold until the games are completed and winners announced. We go in and take our boots off in the warm porch … I see someone sitting at a table which is front of the window smoking a cigarette and playing bingo. I had forgotten it was bingo night. They happen so often now. We head in and I ask if Serena is here. Her daughter goes to check and says she is in her room. I ask if I should go back. She says to do what I want and motions that I can go back … Serena sees me and hand her dabber to her husband and, with some effort as her legs have been bad, gets up and comes to hug me. I tell her she does not have to get up, gesturing to her legs, but she does. Her husband dabs her card while she is up. She tells me to make myself at home … She says she will call me and I can call her after bingo if I am not there … We exchange a few more words, but she is back into the bingo and clearly wants to only be doing that … [About 20 minutes later] Serena came out, shuffling on her bad legs. I look at the clock, 8pm, and realize this must be the break. I ask Serena how long the break is, she says 10 minutes …. We do not talk much longer before I hear the music on the radio switch to the humming quiet background that will soon be interrupted by the caller’s voice. I ask if bingo is back and they raise their eyebrows [indicating “yes”] and head back to their room. (Field Notes)

In this sequence of events, Serena and her family offer hospitality and encourage me to stick around and be comfortable, but they do not suspend play. This was consistent both with my experiences inadvertently visiting during bingo,

148

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

and my observations of others attempting the same thing. Even those most dedicated to a performance of lateness will adhere to bingo times religiously. I have also had interviews put on hold. As we get started, the 50/50 bingo starts, for which she has two cards. She asks if I want to daub one and hands it to me. We do the 50/50 and hold off on the interview for those 10 minutes or so and then get started. (Field Notes)

The hospitality never wavers but the temporal performance does. Bingo has been adopted as part of Arviammiutness, but it relies on a community coordination around rational time. Most often clocks are not used to determine if it is bingo time yet (other than for the bingo callers at the radio station), it is the announcers on air and the observation of movement (or lack thereof) among the community. So why all the clocks?

CLOCKING TIME A question which immediately presented itself from my data was; why so many clocks in the houses when Arviammiut were emphatic in their disavowal of living by the clock? My first interview indicated that some clocks were merely there to keep the walls from being empty. When I asked Nadia about clocks she merely stated, “first time when I went here, it was empty, so I wanna put something. Pictures, or anything.” These responses were elicited while participants were taking me on a tour of their wall-artifacts. Melissa states that she put a clock on the wall because it was a big space and Amber responsed to my prompt about a clock on a shelf by saying, “We wanted to put something in the empty shelf.” Sophie tells me that Arviammiut are “just the habit of hanging a clock.” Sophie strikes upon the interesting question of “why clocks?” When confronted with large, empty walls, Arviammiut often feel an impetus to put something on them to fill some of that space and more often than not, they turn to clocks. It is certain that the overall feeling in town is that people should absolutely have clocks. LJ: Do you think there’s anything that every house should have on the wall? Jill: Their clock. And the calendar. Yup. And one picture of their family. [laughter] Yes. LJ: … anything that you think every house should have this on their wall, whatever, something on their wall.? Bethany: Clock. [laughter] And maybe pictures of their family.

At the conclusion of interviews about how participants decorate their walls (which did not focus on time or clocks), responses along the above vein were common, clocks emerging as salient for them.

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

149

Other participants emphasized that when they moved into their homes, clocks were the first things that went up. Ellen bought her clock “maybe couple weeks after I moved in here. Yeah. Cause I didn’t have anything back then when I got here.” Heidi’s first house did not have a clock and so her mother gave her one of her favorite clocks. Nadia encapsulates the impetus behind this by saying, “So we had to know what today is, we had to put some calendar or some people make picture frames now. So we had to decorate our house, like that [author’s emphasis]” There is a feeling that, with the advent of Western houses in the last 50 years, they have to adopt certain decorative practices. The walls call for something to be done with them. Kim illustrates the assumption that clocks are an intrinsic component of walls when she says, “I have an aunt that has nothing on her wall. Just a clock.” The clock has a certain elevated status as compulsory, but in becoming a basic and constant component its presence is equated to nothingness. Because Arviammiut consider clocks to be fundamentally important in a home, they are often given as gifts. He points to one of his clocks and tells me that was his mother’s (or was it mother-in-law? no, it was mother) and that he likes to see it there. (Field Notes) LJ: I notice Arviat has a lot of clocks. Kathy: Yeah. … Most of them are probably gifts. [laughter] LJ: So maybe starting with the clocks over here. Phoebe: There’s lots. LJ: 1, 2, 3, Phoebe: 4 LJ: 5, 6, 7, 8 Phoebe: 9 LJ: 9 Phoebe: My daughter and my niece were here the other day and they were counting and they lost count. LJ: So how come so many clocks? Phoebe: [laughter] some of them are gifts and some of them she liked and that’s how, that’s why there are so many clock. LJ: Which is your favorite clock? Phoebe: That one? LJ: Hoq? [Why?] Phoebe: It was a gift from me, to my mother, long time ago.

Mothers, daughters, and mothers-in-law are the most frequent relations to gift clocks, but participants report friends, brothers, employers, and pastors as

150

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

also gifting clocks. The rare occasion when participants had bought their own clocks was usually in moves when they needed to get a clock up quickly, and as momentos from trips. Gift-giving establishes material reminders of relationships, something highly valued in Inuit culture. They also are a means by which families can establish symbolically connected interior spaces. By aiding in decorating the walls of their families through gift-giving, which extends to many other wall-artifacts beyond clocks, family members establish a presence and link this space to their own home space. This is facilitated by return gifts by the receiver. Ultimately, it helps a mother or daughter, for example, feel more at home in the reciprocal space. But again we return to, “why clocks?”

WHY CLOCKS? There are two entwined answers that respond to this question. First is status, and second is the need to feel temporally located, particularly within the anomie caused by colonization dismantling entirely previous cycles and rhythms through which the Inuit experienced time. Several participants referred to clocks with chimes and other typically antique forms of clocks. Kathy looked specifically for a clock with chimes and brought it North at great expense for the nostalgia she felt when looking at it. That is, it took me a few years to find. I wanted the Big Ben chime. My mother had one when we were growing up, a Big Ben chime. It was so familiar, I grew up listening to that so I wanted that in my house. So that’s the clock I found with Big Ben on it. (Kathy)

When asked what she looks at most on her walls, she refers to another clock she has with chimes: What I look at the most. [pause] I think it’s probably the clock. Yeah. Cause it’s always been the familiar from growing up, I still have that. Not the clock itself, but the chimes. Yeah. Something I brought over from my mom, from my mom’s house to my own house. (Kathy)

Lauren also feels nostalgic about an old-fashioned clock. Uh, that mantel clock over there, I never wind. It’s an antique that I got from my mother for Christmas years ago. She had it fixed, when I was younger I used to love winding it. One time I wound it too much and it broke, so after my mom got it fixed she gave it to me and everyone knows that they’re not supposed to touch it. (Lauren)

It is no accident that the clocks about which Arviammiut feel most nostalgic are clocks with chimes and which need to be wound. Arviammiut have only been around clocks for 50 years and in the early years only those of higher status had clocks. Kathy and Lauren, along with a handful of others who have these old-fashioned clocks, are all in their late 40s to early 60s and well-placed in socioeconomic terms. They are members of families which were hired as

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

151

helpers, guides, and labor in the first years of colonization. They would have spent more time around teachers, missionaries, and other workers. These women, as children, would have understood these clocks as symbolic of their family’s status. Today, that nostalgia is more complex than harkening back to childhood it is a harkening back to a privileged childhood. Samuel, a young elder who spends a great deal of time reflecting on his culture to support qablunaaq advisors in government jobs is able to articulate his experience of clocks in the community. Samuel: When we were kids and stuff, hardly anybody had a clock. Right. But every working person or associated with the Hudson’s Bay, or RCMP, or the Ministry, or the Church, the government, they always had clocks. And I think it’s just a fact. They, not, you wouldn’t just, it was probably not easy to get a clock. So I think there’s part of that fascination for clocks is just cause it used, it was rare. Right?

Gemma (Samuel’s wife): Especially with the grandfather clocks that have chimes. Samuel: With those old clocks too, the ones that you wind, they have the chain going down. Even those ones where they weren’t, they sorta had that British, very British clock. So I think in some ways, it’s a, what do you call it, nostalgic kind of thing, eh … And some of the teachers that used to come up here were very European, right, and they would always have very European, fancy clocks, right. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s where it came from. I think that’s where it came from.

This historical contingency answers, in part, the question of “why clocks?” Oldfashioned clocks bear a particular nostalgic feeling for those coming from more privileged families, but regular clocks still take on the status with which clocks have been infused. Because clocks carry such meaning, they are considered a must for all homes and are often given as gifts, particularly as wedding gifts or to mark significant events. The second reason that clocks have achieved such an impressive presence in Arviat is the need for locating oneself temporally. As demonstrated at the outset, community membership depends on participation in temporal practices, one of which is knowing what time it is. Feeling temporally located lends one ontological security. Where previously the rhythms of the day would offer this ontological security, now the rhythms have changed completely and clocks become the keepers of time, rather than the rhythm of survival-based nomadic relationships with the weather. In addition, near 24-hour darkness and light mean that one cannot know what time it is, even roughly, by observing the changing lights outside. Whereas I might subconsciously notice it gradually darkening and let that guide my evening rhythm, in Arviat the light remains fairly constant for much of the year and when it does change, it does so rapidly. Several participants refer to a lack of rhythm, primarily those without jobs. Melissa, for example, refers to her temporal pattern as “24-7 TV, all day. [laughter].” Kathy, who does work, stresses that Arviammiut deal with 24-hour

152

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

uniformity of light by “mak[ing] sure our clock says AM or PM [much laughter] otherwise, it would just blend in together. [laughter] Yeah.” In many ways experiencing 24-hour light or dark without the benefit of weather-directed rhythms leads Arviammiut to turn to clocks to help them feel temporally grounded. In other ways, the clocks, in conjunction with the very concept of jobs, work to establish more solidified rhythms which operate in tighter cycles than years or seasons: Phoebe: Yes, every house should have a clock, because we follow the clock today to see what time it is. When we get up, when it’s supper time, and what time we have to go to work. We look at the clock. LJ: Is that different now than before? [“Before” being a term which arose as a sensitizing concept from the participants themselves as they refer to before and after sedimentization.] Phoebe: Yes, it’s different. Um, when they were out on the land, they always had something to do, always, productive. Bring productive. There was no, uh, noon-hour, like, lunch hour, there were no coffee breaks, nothing.

In this sense, the clocks are used to mark time. It is interesting to note that Phoebe refers to all time in the past as spent on productive ends yet the blocks of time she demarcates at the end of her response are all down times times to get away from rational time. Breaks. Lunch hours. By emphatically taking these breaks at the proposed times, not only is rhythm established, but so is agentic resistance against allowing Western cultural temporal practices to encroach further into their lives. There are times for being on clock-time, times which are limited and bounded. Knowing the time, however, becomes important all the time for ontological security and being temporally located (thus also located within society). Many participants shared how frequently they looked at clocks. Sophie has her clock placed so that when her boys come into the house, they can look at it. Nadia tells me: So when I get up in the early morning or at the midnight, I usually go to the washroom or go for smoke. So I had to get up and see what time it is, so the clock is very [visible].

Madison simply states, “Well, we need to know what time it is.” In comparison with other wall-artifacts, participants almost unanimously say that they look at their clock more than anything else on their walls. Interestingly, the elders are the only group that does not share this tendency. They also embody traditionality on behalf of the community in ways that place them even further away from rational clock-time. I argue that, having lived on the land “before” colonization into their young adult years, they maintain many practices formed in their youth which continue to link them to the land, despite their taking up residency in houses. For most, however, clocks draw attention beyond any other items on the walls. LJ: What do you find yourself looking at the most?

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

153

Lauren: Uh, the clocks. [laughter] Brandon: Every time we wake up we see clocks. Clocks all the time. [laughter]

In order to be able to keep an eye on the clocks all the time, Arviammiut place clocks throughout the room such that they are never further than a slight flick of the eye. This speaks to the importance of clocks in temporally grounding Arviammiut. The following answers are representative of the responses I got to my question of “What made you put that clock up there? Illa [I mean], on that wall?” Emma: So I’ll know what time it is, and that’s, it’s near the TV. Ruby: Where it’s nice and, where everybody can see it. Janice: Cause we can see it there better. [laughter] Madison: We have one in the middle of the, illa [I mean], right on top of the tv. Alice: And I like to put clocks on each wall so I don’t have to turn my head. [laughter] Samuel: we used to have one on this wall, cause we didn’t have to look to see the clock. You could just face this way and see a clock and from there you could just see a clock.

Lauren elaborates: You can never have enough clocks. I find that it’s easier for me to, like, I have a clock in my room, the clock in the kitchen, um, stove and the microwave, so if I’m over there I can just look here, if I’m over here I can just look there. [laughter] I have a good collection of clocks.

In considering the status of clocks in Arviat and their importance in grounding oneself temporally with rhythms having been disconnected from the weather and uniform light throughout many days, it now makes sense for me to have found such a plethora of clocks throughout the homes of the Inuit I interviewed. These clocks are, in effect, not in contradiction with the use of time as a tool for resistance, but resolve some of the underlying tension that new temporal frameworks have introduced such that the Inuit are then able to use time agentically and subversively. Samuel considers this bridging of worlds: The main thing for us is we have a, I think we’re struggling to balance our traditional lifestyle and with fitting that and keeping it scheduled in with what is being demanded now. But I think there’s always going to be something demanding anyway, it doesn’t have to be, you know you can be in a single lifestyle and still feel that demand. It’s not just because of cultural strain.

CONCLUSION Temporal practices demonstrate and enact membership in community. They also embody ideologies and can become symbolic of values and identities.

154

LISA-JO K. VAN DEN SCOTT

They are, therefore, an excellent arena for resistance. Arviammiut are able to use Western, rational, clock-time against itself by imposing temporal boundaries around time practices that fit into Western ideologies. By protecting spaces for “Inuit time,” leaving work promptly at five, for example, they subversively make a stand for their group identity, which they define as opposite to Western identity. Large chunks of time are then protected in certain ways from the encroachment of Western cultural paradigms. Temporal behaviors perform membership and distinction. Resistance through temporal practices has been little studied. Most work that examines the relationship of local time-habits or time-reckoning juxtaposed with Western equivalents takes the perspective of evaluating how local practices are fairing in the oppressive regime of globalization. This is valuable and it is heartening to learn that many groups maintain dual temporal practices, rather than simply succumbing. More work, however, could examine the social processes of pushing back against rational time through the perspective of subversive resistance and agency.

REFERENCES Adam, B. (1995). Timewatch: The social analysis of time. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beidelman, T. O. (1963). Kaguru time reckoning: An aspect of the cosmology of an East African people. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 19(1), 9 20. Bliss, C. D. (1982). The same river twice. New York, NY: Atheneum. Charmaz, K. (1991). Good days, bad days. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Cottrell, W. F. (1939). Of time and the railroader. American Sociological Review, 4(2), 190 198. Davis, F. (1956). Definitions of time and recovery in paralytic polio convalescence. American Journal of Sociology, 61(6), 582 587. Davis, F. (1984). Decade labeling: The play of collective memory and narrative plot. Symbolic Interaction, 7(1), 15 24. Durkheim, E. ([1912] 1995). The elementary forms of religious life. New York, NY: Free Press. Engel-Frisch, G. (1943). Some neglected temporal aspects of human ecology. Social Forces, 22(1), 43 47. Flaherty, M. G., & Seipp-Williams, L. (2005). Sociotemporal rhythms in e-mail. Time & Society, 14(1), 39 49. Geertz, C. (1973). Person, time, and conduct in Bali. In The interpretation of cultures (pp. 360 411). New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc. Goehring, B., & Stager, J. K. (1991). The intrusion of industrial time and space into the Inuit lifeworld. Environment and Behavior, 23(6), 666 679. Griffin-Pierce, T. (1992). Earth is my mother, sky is my father: Space, time and astronomy in Navajo sandpainting. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Hallowell, A. I. (1937). Temporal orientation in western civilization and in a pre-literate society. American Anthropologist, 39(4), 647 670. Hodson, J., & Vannini, P. (2007). Island time: The media logic and ritual of ferry commuting on Gabriola Island, BC. Canadian Journal of Communication, 32(2), 261 275. Lewis, J. D., & Weigert, A. J. (1981). The structures and meanings of social time. Social Forces, 60(2), 432 462. Maines, D. R. (1989). Culture and temporality. Cultural Dynamics, 2, 107 123.

Time to Defy: The Use of Temporal Spaces to Enact Resistance

155

Melbin, M. (1978). Night as frontier. American Sociological Review, 43(1), 3 22. Moore, W. E. (1963). The temporal structure of organizations. In E. A. Tiryakian (Ed.), Sociological theory, values, and sociocultural change (pp. 161 169). New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe. Schwartz, B. (1970). Notes on the sociology of sleep. The Sociological Quarterly, 11(4), 485 499. Simmel, G. (1950). The metropolis and mental life. In K. H. Wolff (Ed.), The sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 409 424). New York, NY: Free Press. Sorokin, P., & Merton, R. K. (1937). Social time: A methodological and functional analysis. American Journal of Sociology, 42(5), 615 629. Stern, P. (2003). Upside-down and backwards: Time discipline in a Canadian Inuit Town. Anthropologica, 45(1), 147 161. Thomas, D. K., & Thompson, C. T. (1972). Eskimo housing as planned culture change. Ottawa: Northern Science Research Group, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Wax, M. (1960). Ancient Judaism and the protestant ethic. American Journal of Sociology, 65(5), 449 455. Weber, M. ([1905] 1998). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury Pub. Zerubavel, E. (1977). The French Republican calendar: A case study in the sociology of time. American Sociological Review, 42(6), 868 877. Zerubavel, E. (1979a). Patterns of time in hospital life: A sociological perspective. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zerubavel, E. (1979b). Private time and public time: The temporal structure of social accessibility and professional commitments. Social Forces, 58(1), 38 58. Zerubavel, E. (1979c). The temporal organization of continuity: The case of medical and nursing coverage. Human Organization, 38(1), 78 83. Zerubavel, E. (1981). Hidden rhythms: Schedules and calendars in social life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zerubavel, E. (1982a). Easter and Passover: On calendars and group identity. American Sociological Review, 47(2), 284 289. Zerubavel, E. (1982b). The standardization of time: A sociohistorical perspective. American Journal of Sociology, 88(1), 1 23. Zerubavel, E. (1985). The seven day circle: The history and meaning of the week. New York, NY: Free Press. Zerubavel, E. (1997). Social mindscapes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zerubavel, E. (2004). Time maps: Collective memory and the social shape of the past. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

DUPE, SCHEMER, MOTHER: NAVIGATING AGENCY AND CONSTRAINT AT WORK Jillian Crocker ABSTRACT Considerable research on the experiences of contemporary workers theorizes everyday acts of resistance as inconsequential, emphasizing their limited impact on overarching structures of inequality. This chapter offers a different perspective. Drawing on a feminist interpretivist paradigm, I argue that such characterizations of everyday resistance fail to account for the ways in which workers themselves make sense of power dynamics at work. Incorporating such accounts complicates conventional understandings of low-income workers engaged in everyday resistance as either dupes, as is often suggested by academic research, or schemers, as is frequently articulated by the self-perceived targets of worker rule-breaking their managers. Based on 10 months of ethnographic observation and interviews with nurses and nursing assistants in a long-term care facility, I demonstrate that while workers recognize the constraints within which they act, they nonetheless make sense of their acts of everyday resistance as defiant. The realities of precarious labor and family responsibility do not combine to prevent resistance at work for these women; they combine to transform it. Asserting their agency through a series of relatively mundane and covert acts that gain them autonomy and dignity, workers readily acknowledge their policy refusals while at the same time recognizing the factors that shape them. Describing subversions of authority as strategic collaborations, the constrained agency these workers articulate hinges on their

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 157 173 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048011

157

158

JILLIAN CROCKER

own and their coworkers’ identities not just as workers, but in many cases as low-income working mothers. Keywords: Agency; care work; everyday resistance; nursing assistants; work-family

“FOOLISH” POLICIES, FOOLISH WORKERS? Nursing assistants at the Berkman Nursing Home1 are expected to give two weeks’ advance notice of a shift that will be missed due to sickness at least officially. As low-income care workers charged with the well-being of typically elderly and often frail nursing home residents, the full-time workers at this facility accrue sick time that can be used to supplement their pay checks in the event of a missed shift. This benefit is more than many workers in the contemporary United States can claim. But while their weekly pay is secured in some ways, their jobs are not. Unless they arrange their own coverage (which is difficult) or request time off through formal channels (which requires two weeks’ notice), workers are disciplined each time they cancel a shift for any reason. The first and second times a worker calls out to notify management of such a cancellation, a written warning is recorded in her personnel file. The third time that she calls out, the worker is suspended from work without pay. Call out four times in a rolling three-month period and the worker is terminated no questions asked. So when the seasonal flu swept through Mari’s family from one child, to the others, and finally to Mari she found herself in the unfortunate but common position of needing time off without being able to give two weeks’ notice for an illness that she could not possibly have predicted. A Puerto Rican nursing assistant in her late 20s, Mari had worked at the facility for years and spoke of several of her colleagues not only as coworkers but as friends. Nonetheless, even for someone with social capital, arranging one’s own shift coverage can be difficult. Mari ultimately was terminated from her position at Berkman. She had accrued more than the allowable number of call outs in the 90-day period. I didn’t get to ask Mari about her thoughts on the policy that lead to her termination, but I have a sense that she might agree with her coworkers. As one put it: “It’s stupid.” Others were more specific: “It’s foolishness. The callout policy is foolishness.” Asked to explain their objections to this policy, some nursing assistants pointed to caregiving responsibilities not just at work, but at home: “It doesn’t make any sense. People have children. People get sick.” Others highlighted the flawed logic of discouraging nursing assistants from coming to work sick, which poses a danger to their care recipients, while simultaneously suggesting that they should schedule their “explosive

Navigating Agency and Constraint at Work

159

diarrhea” two weeks in advance or risk being disciplined. “What if I get stung by a bee?” one asked, “I’m going to request the day off because I’m going to get stung by a bee next week on a Friday at 2:00.” Still other nursing assistants found themselves wondering about employees at this facility who were not nursing assistants: “All the head people, they call out a day, do they get wrote up?” The answer to that question, most certainly, is no they do not. Despite their many frustrations, the callout policy continued to be enforced during my time at the Berkman nursing home. Workers objected to this policy openly, did their best to use informal relationships and private deals with the scheduler to circumvent it, and continued to be disciplined with regularity. So when scholars assert that a person working under these conditions is at the low end of a power distribution, it is easy to understand their emphasis. Even if nursing assistants do find informal or individual ways to contest policies they deem foolish, does it matter? Aren’t these workers just being fooled themselves: duped by management into thinking that they have some control? An interpretivist perspective highlights the socially constructed character of individual action. People act based not on an inherent drive or motivation, but based on interpretations of their social context (Blumer, 1969). The meaning one gives to an object or situation is itself driven by social interaction, and those interactions are themselves formed and transformed through the same processes (Blumer, 1969). Such a conceptualization of social life meshes easily with feminist and postmodern understandings of power. Drawing on a conceptualization of power and resistance as fundamentally entangled, with power as relational, productive, and everywhere rather than an object to be possessed (Foucault, 1978), this chapter complicates understandings of the daily experiences of low-income care workers. While the field of resistance studies has taken a range of positions on the nature of power, this perspective is in keeping with much contemporary work (Johansson & Vinthagen, 2014), and emphasizes an agentic, rather than determinist, framework for making sense of micro- or infrapolitics in the workplace. An average nursing home in almost every way, Berkman workers are similar to many low-income workers in the contemporary service economy of the United States: precariously employed and exploited. Ahead of the curve simply by virtue of maintaining their employment, the workers I spoke with at Berkman continued to be subject to this and to other policies governing their daily activities. Rather than focus on the policies and those who enforce them, however, this chapter examines the ways in which workers at Berkman navigate and make sense of such rules. While the nursing assistants I spoke with recognize the structural factors that constrain their choices throughout the workday (and beyond), they also identify points of power and control. Moreover, workers build networks of solidarity around these junctures, constructing a group identity based not on the deviance that their supervisors perceive (discussed below), but on their interdependence and shared interests as low-income working mothers.

160

JILLIAN CROCKER

The chapter begins by offering a framework for understanding the experiences of low-income workers in the workplace, particularly in the context of research on everyday resistance. I then give an overview of the research setting and data, contextualizing the accounts described here. With the context set, I briefly describe some of the key ways in which nursing assistants assert control over their workdays at Berkman, illustrating possible sites of power and resistance. Having done so, I present interpretations of the actions that I observed, and more broadly of workers’ daily experiences, from different ends of the analytical spectrum, with a focus on outlining nursing assistants’ own descriptions of their experiences of compliance and agency. This dimension workers’ perspectives complicates the often dichotomous assessment of low-wage service workers’ workplace power.

LITERATURE REVIEW Considerable research has emphasized the formal, overt, organized, and intermittent strategies that workers employ to transform organizational structure. At the same time, other work has emphasized the significance of ambiguous, less coordinated, and typically less dramatic practices employed by individuals enduring harsh or oppressive circumstances (Hodson, 2001; Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994; Prasad & Prasad, 2000; Roscigno & Hodson, 2004; Scott, 1985). This routine, or everyday, resistance is inherently ambiguous and typically is spontaneous and covert out of necessity (Prasad & Prasad, 1998, 2000; Scott, 1990). Defined loosely as commonplace efforts that exist as a permanent feature of daily life, and directed toward the goal of “making a tolerable living,” this formulation of resistance is intended to capture actions ranging from gossip and horseplay to theft. “Everyday forms of resistance make no headlines” Scott explains, (Scott, 1985, p. 8), but he nonetheless takes the position that the commonplace acts he describes are, in fact, “resistance” insofar as they “deny or mitigate claims made by appropriating classes” (Scott, 1990, p. 302). While Scott’s work has been the focus of much of the critique of the perceived import of these types of actions, he is certainly not alone. Some scholars point to the potential of everyday resistance for future transformative efforts (Pande, 2012; Stombler & Padavic, 1997) while others question the origin of conventional notions of what constitutes “authentic” strategies of resistance (Collins, 2000; Kelley, 1994). When making sense of low-wage workers’ daily efforts to assert their autonomy, their everyday or routine resistance, a common interpretation of rulebreaking actions is that they don’t really matter. Workers who act in ways counter to the official policy may think that they have power, but ultimately until capitalism is overthrown and a new economic structure emerges they’re just being duped. Workplace behaviors such as gossip, game playing, time

Navigating Agency and Constraint at Work

161

wasting, and foot dragging may seem worthwhile to workers, but ultimately are inconsequential. Michael Burawoy (1979) makes this type of argument when he says that many activities that might look like resistance are in fact serving the interests of capital. When workers weave game playing or other social activities into their workday (Roy, 1959), their actions are best understood as consent to a system of exploitation rather than as resistance to that system (Burawoy, 1979). Because the fundamental structures of inequality, and of capital exploitation, remain intact, worker rule-breaking is subsumed into the otherwise alienating labor process. Others have similar takes, with some going so far as to argue that the only “real” resistance is the sort that we associate with revolutions characterized as formal, overt, and coordinated (Rubin, 1996). While research that focuses on the factory floor seems anachronistic in the postindustrial era, scholars focused on care occupations have taken similar positions on the significance of everyday resistance. Examining the effects of organizational culture on the service labor process, Lopez (2006) extends Burawoy when he portrays nursing assistants as not just consenting to their own exploitation, but as facilitating it. Nursing assistants may develop a sense of autonomy by developing shortcuts that they depend on to get an overwhelming amount of work done efficiently, but ultimately the organization knows that they are cutting corners, and in fact depends on these deviations from policy to remain profitable (Lopez, 2006). Also studying nursing assistants, Dodson and Zincavage (2007) make the case that while these workers might feel like their work is rewarding because of the fictive kin relationships that they develop, in fact the ideology of family is being used by the organization to trick workers into doing more for less. To a certain degree such analyses make sense. Workers are, and continue to be, exploited within the current economic structure some more than others. But if considerable research has demonstrated the extent to which routine forms of resistance are inconsequential, this chapter challenges the implicit assumption that the only outcome truly worth pursuing is at the structural level. I offer an analysis of work experiences that acknowledges structural inequality but focuses on the ways in which workers assert, and sometimes fail to assert, their agency in the face of precarious work, low wages, and challenging working conditions. Acknowledging the effects of structural inequality does not preclude examination of micro-level experiences. In fact, quite the opposite is true. A broad category of feminist studies on workers and workplaces illustrates not only exploitation, but the ways in which workers create meaning and maintain their dignity on the shop floor (Collins, 2000; Lamphere, 1985; Stacey, 2011; Westwood, 1985). The organization of care work, in particular, is fundamentally infused with broader structures of inequality (Duffy, 2011; Glenn, 1992, 2004, 2010), and exceptional work has illustrated the extent to which these are embedded in relationships between care workers and those who employ them (Foner, 1994; Rollins, 1987). In her study of home health aides, Stacey (2011) finds that in the context of fictive kin relationships, even these most

162

JILLIAN CROCKER

marginalized workers resist alienation by finding meaning and value in the care they provide. An image of material exploitation and economic marginalization that fails to account for individual navigation of that reality is missing a crucial part of the story.

Workers and Women: Gendered Resistance on the Shop Floor A particular challenge for the study of workplace resistance in a service-based economy characterized by high levels of occupational gender segregation is the interpretation of actions that on the one hand violate work rules, but that simultaneously draw on and reinforce conventional gender norms. Examinations of the ways in which gendered cultural production can be both a source of strength (Lamphere, 1985; Paules, 1991; Westwood, 1985) and constraint (Pierce, 1995) on the shop floor complicate dichotomous understandings of resistance and accommodation. Ideals of workplace transformation in tension with normative gender performance have been highlighted in the context of labor mobilization where less combative organizing strategies have seen particular success in gender segregated workplaces (Clawson, 2003; Hoerr, 1997), as well as in negotiated union contracts where contract provisions reinforce conventional gendered assumptions and divisions of household labor (Crocker & Clawson, 2012). I focus specifically on the shop-floor context and use an understanding of resistance, like Scott’s (1985, 1990), that emphasizes actors’ intent. In particular, I draw on definitions of resistance that emphasize efforts to assert worker autonomy and dignity despite management claims (Hodson, 1995, 2001), and which underscore the importance of even “ambiguous confrontations” for experiences of work and workplaces (Paules, 1991; Prasad & Prasad, 1998, 2000; Westwood, 1985).

DATA AND METHODS The data presented here are part of a larger multi-level, multi-site project that examined the experiences of workers in four healthcare occupations: physicians, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), nurses, and nursing assistants (Gerstel & Clawson, 2014). I draw on data collected during approximately 10 months of nonparticipant ethnographic observation at the Berkman nursing home. Access to Berkman was negotiated through administrative channels, although once I began regular observations I had only limited, and passing, interaction with facility administrators. I was introduced to workers as a researcher from a nearby university interested in worker experiences, and was allowed to observe with moderate freedom. The clearest limitation on my research was tied to policy governing resident privacy: I was prohibited from entering resident rooms.

Navigating Agency and Constraint at Work

163

This condition of my presence directly shaped the interactions and activities that I was able to observe. Because I spent much of my time in public areas, workers’ comings and goings from rooms and from the unit, as well as public and semi-public conversations, emerged as the focus of my observation. At the same time my access was limited, the curiosity of my presence consistently allowed for informal conversations with workers. Both nurses and nursing assistants generously went out of their way to explain and give context for activities that occurred in my presence. On more than one occasion a nursing assistant explicitly directed me to write something down in my notebook usually with a smile. Workers were consistently candid with me regarding their feelings about their work, residents, each other, and management. Observations at the nursing home were supplemented with data from 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with 23 nursing assistants and 7 nurses at Berkman, as well as with analysis of documents collected during observations. Interviews with workers were conducted at a variety of off-site locations, with the emphasis on finding a place where the subject would feel comfortable being candid. Privacy was particularly important because of my research interest in the ways in which workers navigate and sometimes violate official policy. With the exception of a handful of workers who graciously invited me into their homes, for the most part interviews took place in local coffee shops and fast food restaurants. One nurse chose to be interviewed in a (private) conference room on site, but nonetheless was remarkably candid about her experiences. All interviews were transcribed in full, and both observations and interviews were coded using NVivo.

RESEARCH SETTING Berkman is a nonprofit, nonunion, average-sized, skilled long-term care facility located outside of a metropolitan area in the northeast. It is independently operated and shares a campus with an assisted living facility and adult day care center. Its 200 beds are divided equally across five units. Officially, each unit is staffed with approximately one nursing assistant per six residents on day and evening shifts, and one nursing assistant per twelve residents on the night shift although actual staffing levels vary from day to day. In addition to nursing assistants, there are typically two nurses assigned to a unit, as well as administrative nurses and an administrative assistant on the day shift. On the evening shift there are only two nurses, and on the night shift only one. While Berkman sometimes uses nurses from a private agency to fill out a daily schedule, all nursing assistants are employed directly by the facility. The workers observed in this study are, as are nursing assistants more generally, overwhelmingly (96%) women. While the residents of Berkman are almost entirely white, the nursing assistants are primarily (nearly 90%) women of

164

JILLIAN CROCKER

color. Most are mothers, and in many cases are single mothers of young children. Despite these similarities, individuals did describe variations in experience concerning family support, class background (if not current socioeconomic status), religious affiliation, nationality, and ethnicity. In a few cases, these differences were sources of tension among coworkers. Nursing assistants are supervised directly by nurses on their assigned unit, under whose licenses they are authorized to provide care. While, like nursing assistants, nurses at Berkman are primarily women, unlike their subordinates they are overwhelmingly (84%) white. Nurses, of course, also have higher levels of training or education, and earn higher wages and only a handful were recorded as having young children (under 12 years of age). In the workplace, nurses are charged with enforcing organizational policy and, ultimately, with ensuring resident safety. Even so, the two groups have very different care responsibilities: while nursing assistants focus on hands-on care tasks with residents often referred to as “doing care,” nurses are responsible for administrative paperwork and spend the bulk of each shift dispensing medications. And of course they monitor the work done my nursing assistants, functioning as shift managers.

EVERYDAY RESISTANCE Everyday resistance to managerial authority took multiple forms among nursing assistants at Berkman. In keeping with the literature on workplace resistance, I observed three basic types. The first type of routine resistance that I observed among nursing assistants is related to workers’ autonomy. This category includes activities such as spending more time in resident rooms than is encouraged by supervisors, or taking shortcuts that make the workload manageable. In fact, the impact of this type of everyday resistance is perhaps the most contested. For example, while nursing assistants are often described as “hiding” in resident rooms by their supervisors, nursing assistants themselves do not characterize such activity as a violation of work rules. Spending time socializing with residents even absent a specific task is in fact part of their occupational training. The emotion work performed during seemingly informal interaction with residents improves overall well-being, and is something both residents and their families expect of nursing assistants. While nurses may perceive an aide who sits and talks with a resident as lazy, or as avoiding the “real” work on the floor, nursing assistants insist that they are working to improve the lives of those for whom they care although they may be doing so defiantly. Similarly, as others have illustrated (Lopez, 2006), organizations like Berkman could not sustain current staffing levels if nursing assistants failed to problem-solve their overwork with shortcuts that sometimes violate health

Navigating Agency and Constraint at Work

165

codes or other policies. In cases like these, assertions of nursing assistant autonomy measurably serve the interest of the organization, whose residents are likely to report higher levels of well-being as a result of this extra work or creativity. But the character of the work, and the contention that workers know better how to do their jobs than do their managers, may nonetheless be understood as a form of everyday resistance. A second type of worker power described in the literature and observed among nursing assistants at Berkman pertains to the character of the relationships that they developed at work including the boundaries that they placed on those relationships. This category typically includes actions like rejection of nurse-manager requests despite their position in the hierarchy, making sense of the aide-resident relationships as familial or adversarial, and gossip among coworkers. Nursing assistants routinely worked to subvert the organizational hierarchy by sharing stories and information through informal networks. In many cases, this information functioned to validate coworker experiences of frustration. Such actions did not directly support the function of the organization, nor did they significantly undermine its structure. A third type of routine resistance performed by nursing assistants at Berkman is related to work avoidance. This category includes actions like leaving one’s assigned work unit, sleeping while on shift, and conducting nonwork activity like eating meals or making personal phone calls. With the exception of sleeping on shift, which occurred primarily among overnight workers and seemed to be limited to a few repeat offenders who had established reputations as “sleepers,” activities related to work avoidance were so common as to be almost unremarkable among nursing assistants. For example, personal phone calls were often made and taken while on the floor, and for some workers they were a daily occurrence. One nursing assistant described a daily phone call from her son who was expected to call before he left to get himself to the school bus in the morning. Unable to be there to see him off to school herself, this woman described a system whereby her coworkers, too, expected this phone call on her behalf and over time learned to go and get her when it came in. Other nursing assistants regularly got phone calls from caregivers typically family about coordinating childcare coverage, or sometimes rides home from work. Leaving the unit and taking longer breaks than were allowed were also regular occurrences, both of which were facilitated by the nature of nursing assistants’ assigned work tasks. Because a considerable amount of the work these women were expected to perform happened inside resident rooms or involved transporting residents from one place to another it was often difficult for nursemanagers to monitor the whereabouts and activities of nursing assistants. In addition, because they were responsible for distributing medications, nurses were typically tethered to the cart that held these products. As such, nurses relied heavily on nursing assistants to bring them supplies, or to locate the particular aide assigned to a resident. This reliance naturally created the space for nursing

166

JILLIAN CROCKER

assistants to cover for others who were away from the unit whether for a smoke break, to visit a friend in another part of the facility, to make a phone call in a private space, to talk to the scheduler, or because she just hadn’t returned from lunch yet.

MAKING SENSE: SCHEMERS If such acts of everyday resistance are in fact everyday occurrences, what is their significance for nursing assistants’ experiences of the working day? Conventional workplace scholarship has emphasized that sources of worker power such as these routine acts of resistance to official policy or to managerial authority might persist, but ultimately they don’t matter very much. At the same time, the folks on the ground report feeling quite differently about such actions. While not alone, ethnographers of nursing homes stand out for their recognition that tension between workers and managers and specifically between nursing assistants and their manager-nurses is often centered on perceptions of work ethic. Nurse-managers, and sometimes families, routinely characterize these low-wage workers not as dupes but as schemers as trying to get away with doing as little as possible as uncaring, deceitful, and in some cases dangerous (Diamond, 1992; Foner, 1994). My observations at Berkman make a similar case. Managers assume the worst about these workers and in some cases even feel like they are under the thumbs of these nursing assistants, unable to hold them accountable without risk. In some cases, that risk was physical. Describing the reality of many nursing home workers who regularly deal with combative residents, one nurse described the dependence she felt on nursing assistants. As the only nurse on most shifts she worked, Kyra often counted on nursing assistants to complete her own tasks. In particular, she relied on those workers to come quickly when she encountered a difficult situation a combative patient, or a patient who was injured or at risk of becoming so. “You don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you,” she said, speaking of the nursing assistants. As a result of this perceived dependence, the nurse felt like she was forced to give nursing assistants whatever they wanted which included looking the other way when organizational policy was violated. Despite the policy that nurses are floor managers, charged with enforcing organizational policy and enforcing discipline, this nurse felt like she was often at the nursing assistants’ mercy. As such, the perception at Berkman was that these workers could get away with everyday resistance, and that they knew it. So nurse-managers observe the same activity as do researchers perhaps just over longer periods of time, and without a theoretical predisposition and they absolutely interpret it as significant for their experiences of the workplace. While Marxist analyses may well have an answer for such a conflict among

Navigating Agency and Constraint at Work

167

workers and their somewhat better off managers in false consciousness, the distinction between academic and managerial interpretations of worker power begs the question: how do nursing assistants experience constraint, agency, and power in the workplace?

NAVIGATING AGENCY AND CONSTRAINT Like managers, workers often see themselves as making agentic choices to assert their power. While the nursing assistants describe the callout policy as foolish, but follow it nonetheless, those same nursing assistants routinely characterized other official policies as similarly foolish, and openly reported ignoring them as a result. During my time at Berkman, nursing assistants were routinely observed deliberately and knowingly violating workplace rules. They acknowledged doing so, and often reported that their refusals of organizational policy were a result of these workers’ perceptions that they had more relevant expertise than the administrators charged with setting those rules. In some cases, administrators struggled to stay ahead of workers’ resistance to organizational rules. When it became apparent to managers and administrators that some nursing assistants may have been arriving late to work, and some leaving early, and that coworkers had been punching the time clock for each other, the organization made an investment in updated payroll technology that scanned finger prints. With this change in practice, workers found numerous occasions to voice their frustrations over the official policy regarding payroll time. As is typical among workplaces that use time clocks for payroll purposes, Berkman has a policy sometimes referred to as the “plus or minus 7 minutes” rule. For a shift that starts on the hour, a worker has a 15-minute window during which they are compensated the same amount. That is, for a shift that starts at 3 pm, the worker can punch in anywhere between 2:53 pm and 3:07 pm and be paid the same. Nonetheless, a second organizational policy directly conflicts with this payroll policy: according to nurse-managers and the employee handbook, if a shift starts at 3 pm, workers are on the floor and ready to work at 3 pm. This disconnect between two policies, which created a seven-minute window of what nursing assistants saw as free time, generated attempts to take advantage of what could be perceived as official flexibility. Ultimately, the organization changed the equipment and upheld both policies. Even so, workers continued to circumvent the system under the radar. Rather than having peers punch in on their behalf, workers sometimes “forgot” to punch out at the beginning or end of the shift. The scheduler would then have to manually enter a time into the payroll system, based on a self-report. As long as workers avoided being identified as habitual “offenders,” which required strategic manipulation of both timing and relationships, their navigation of these conflicting policies would remain unproblematic.

168

JILLIAN CROCKER

The reality that nursing assistants deliberately ignored and violated workplace rules because they had a sense that they knew better than the policy-makers is further evidenced in workers’ comments about violating one rule in particular taking time-limited breaks at pre-scheduled times. Nursing assistants at Berkman routinely took breaks that were longer than the allowed time 15 minutes for morning and afternoon breaks, 30 minutes for lunch. Moreover, they took these breaks not at the officially scheduled times, but when it was convenient to them. This practice was the impetus for a second system of surveillance the implementation of a sign-in/sign-out sheet at the central desk on each unit: That’s the reason why, [the manager] bring up the sign up [sheet]. […] She complained about the breaks That we abuse the breaks. Which is true, it’s a fact, we do abuse the breaks.

Because nursing assistants were observed to be missing from the unit at times when they should have been present, nurse-management developed a protocol whereby nursing assistants were expected to sign their name, and the time, to a sign-out sheet any time they left the unit and to sign back in upon their return. As this nursing assistant explained, her concern was valid. The nurse felt like her inability to find nursing assistants when she needed them must reflect that they were abusing their freedom to move on and off of the unit. Rather than contesting whether or not such an observation was accurate or fair as they did when similar concerns were expressed over aides “hiding” in resident rooms nursing assistants candidly acknowledged that they were taking longer breaks than allowed. Asked why, one explained: No, it’s just pretty much, like I don’t really look at the time […] you know, if I’m not done, I’m not gonna drop it all, I’m just gonna finish.

Workers understand that these violations have consequences like increased monitoring and the risk of discipline but it’s worth it to them in terms of making their workdays more tolerable. Some chose to take a longer lunch break later than was scheduled because postponing it got them closer to the end of their shift and thereby offered more relief. Some chose to take more than 15 minutes often closer than 25, because they felt entitled to officially begin their break when they reached the break room, and to not count the fiveminute walk to the break room and their bathroom stop as part of their allotment. Some simply felt that the allotted time was not enough to prepare and consume their meal, whether breakfast or lunch, and argued that if they were getting their work done they should be able to take an extra 10 or 15 minutes. Some were smokers, and the idea that they wouldn’t simply step off the unit for a cigarette outside when they needed one was unfathomable. Almost across the board, workers manipulated the sign-out sheet and relied on peers to take breaks at times, and of lengths, that seemed reasonable to them.

Navigating Agency and Constraint at Work

169

MAKING SENSE: “YOU GOTTA DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO” At the same time, it would be misleading to romanticize this agency. Nursing assistants’ actions are meaningful, but they are constrained by a number of factors. And workers are far from naı¨ ve about these constraints. They acknowledge the structural conditions that shape their daily experience, particularly their status as low-wage workers, as women of color, and as (in many cases) single mothers or primary breadwinners. Identifying the disjuncture between how one might act absent such conditions and her actions in the face of them, one explained: I want to be like: ‘What did you say? [rolling eyes, turning head, hand raised] Psshh.’ But instead I’m like: ‘What did you say? [cheerfully, song-like] I’m cooomiiing!’ [mimes jogging down hall]

Why accommodate frustrating requests promptly and with a smile as this nursing assistant described? As one worker explained, You gotta think about your kids and those new sneakers they want.

In fact, this sense that despite their frustrations workers didn’t have much control over labor practices was a common one. “We complain about the policy,” one worker said, “but, know what I’m saying, you just gotta do what you gotta do.” Another was more specific: … when you have kids, you know, you have to just do what you have to do.

This refrain something to the effect of “you gotta do what you gotta do” came up repeatedly. More than half of the CNAs said something like this, and when they did, it certainly resonates as an acknowledgment of structure of the larger institutional forces, social and economic, that are shaping their lives. At the same time, the refrain leaves room for the agency that these workers daily exhibit. The constraints of precarious labor and family responsibility do not combine to prevent resistance at work; they combine to transform it. As with the worker (above) who chooses to smile when she would rather roll her eyes, structural factors compel workers to be more strategic in their assertion of autonomy. Certainly workers are concerned with maintaining employment, but they continue to violate policy even when it comes with risk. That risk is mitigated, however, by asserting agency through infrapolitics relatively mundane and covert acts that gain them autonomy, dignity, or even just an extra 10 minutes of rest. Workers readily acknowledge such defiance of workplace rules while at the same time recognizing the structural constraints that shape it. Interestingly, workers at Berkman navigate that tension between accommodation and resistance to official policy in their collaboration with coworkers. While family responsibility functioned as a constraint on individuals’ workplace resistance, workers routinely supported other women when they defied a policy often still at cost to themselves. One worker concretely described the sort of

170

JILLIAN CROCKER

misrepresentation, and extra effort, that coworkers routinely performed for one another: Let’s say a nurse comes and says, “Who’s got this patient,” right? And you’ll say Mariah, cause she’s on. Well, [the nurse will] say, “Where is she?” I says, “Well, she’s busy right now. You want me to go and do that?” You know. And then I’ll go [help the nurse] or whatever.

At the same time an individual might comply with a resented policy or expectation herself, she will also actively support another’s defiance of that same policy. As one explained, “We all cover for each other … because we understand.” Another reasoned, “they all have children, and […] I want a clear, a clean conscience.” Nursing assistants consistently explain that their actions are motivated by an understanding that their peers depend on this job to support their families just like they do. And while that dependence constrains their workplace choices at an individual level, at a collective level, it motivates them to support each other as they navigate hard work, long hours, and minimal pay. In doing so, these workers, many of whom are single mothers, turn individual acts aimed simply at defending their dignity into collaborative efforts aimed at supporting other marginalized mothers. They are willing to take a risk for others while maintaining the ability to present themselves as compliant workers.

CONCLUSION Nursing assistants use everyday resistance to gain some autonomy at work and to assert their dignity. The income earned at their jobs is far from pin money, and these women see their roles as mothers and as workers as fundamentally intertwined. But in the face of policies that they interpret as out of touch with the reality of their jobs and lives, workers carve out time and distance for themselves. They make phone calls when they should be folding linen. They sit back while they watch The Price is Right with a favorite resident. They walk a little slower than they are physically capable when returning from an event in the auditorium. These actions frustrate their managers, whose regular characterizations of these behaviors and workers as lazy and manipulative is certainly infused with a measure of racism and classism. Such recognition of these actions as defiant is a central feature of the concept of resistance (Hollander & Einwohner, 2004). Nonetheless, the actions are constrained. The realities of limited job opportunities and families to support force these working mothers to keep much of their policy defiance under the radar. But to characterize their actions simply as an accommodation or simply as resistance, for that matter of managerial power fails to capture the complexity of these workers’ lives. When asked, workers acknowledge both the strategies they use to usurp managerial

Navigating Agency and Constraint at Work

171

authority and transform the dynamic on a unit and the extent to which structural factors shape those strategies. The realities of precarious labor and family responsibility do not combine to prevent resistance at work for these women; they combine to transform it, because “you gotta do what you gotta do” both to keep your job and to get through your day. The mechanisms that these women choose to navigate that tension also tells us a lot about what is important to them. Describing subversions of authority as strategic collaborations, the constrained agency these workers articulate hinges on their own and their coworkers’ identities not just as workers, but in many cases as low-income working mothers (Crocker, 2016). In reality, the everyday resistance of nursing assistants also frustrates coworkers at times. Especially because of the nature of the job, aides often find themselves completing a task that should have been done by a peer or on an earlier shift. Even so, when a worker leaves the floor without permission, or takes a longer lunch than is allowed, they cover for each other. These low-income working mothers support each other and take on the risk of lying to a manager or the additional effort of covering for a friend “because they understand,” to use their words. This understanding of themselves as connected to their coworkers because they face similar material conditions and have similar social networks forms the basis for networks of collaborative resistance. Recognizing the source of this sense of responsibility to coworkers even coworkers who at times frustrate them is central to the tension between structure and agency for nursing assistants. Moreover, it is crucial for thinking about how to revitalize a floundering labor movement that could perhaps make institutional changes that might alleviate some of the constraints these workers face. These data illustrate the ways in which workers weave together notions of work, family, and community to subvert authority and to contest their own marginalization as well as that of their perceived allies. Neither dupes nor schemers, these workers operate within the constraints of material and ideological reality to identify sources of solidarity and strength.

NOTE 1. All names are pseudonyms.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author gratefully acknowledges research support provided by the National Science Foundation.

172

JILLIAN CROCKER

REFERENCES Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burawoy, M. (1979). Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labor process under monopoly capitalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Clawson, D. (2003). The next upsurge: Labor and the new social movements. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Crocker, J. (2016). Individual constraint and group solidarity: Marginalized mothers and the paradox of family responsibility. In D. Courpasson & S. Vallas (Eds.), The sage handbook of resistance (pp. 170 184). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Crocker, J., & Clawson, D. (2012). Buying time: Gendered patterns in union contracts. Social Problems, 59(4), 459 480. Diamond, T. (1992). Making gray gold: Narratives of nursing home care. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dodson, L., & Zincavage, R. M. (2007). “It’s Like a Family”: Caring labor, exploitation, and race in nursing homes. Gender & Society, 21(6), 905 928. Duffy, M. (2011). Making care count: A century of gender, race, and paid care work. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Foner, N. (1994). The caregiving dilemma: Work in an American nursing home. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Vol. 1). New York: Pantheon Books. Gerstel, N., & Clawson, D. (2014). Class advantage and the gender divide: Flexibility on the job and at home. American Journal of Sociology, 120(2), 395 431. Glenn, E. N. (1992). From servitude to service work: Historical continuities in the racial division of paid reproductive labor. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 18(1), 1 43. Glenn, E. N. (2004). Unequal freedom: How race and gender shaped American citizenship and labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Glenn, E. N. (2010). Forced to care: Coercion and caregiving in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hodson, R. (1995). Worker resistance: An underdeveloped concept in the sociology of work. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 16, 79 110. Hodson, R. (2001). Dignity at work. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Hoerr, J. (1997). We can’t eat prestige: The women who organized Harvard. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hollander, J. A., & Einwohner, R. L. (2004). Conceptualizing resistance. Sociological Forum, 19(4), 533 554. Jermier, J. M., Knights, D., & Nord, W. R. (1994). Resistance and power in organizations. New York, NY: Routledge. Johansson, A., & Vinthagen, S. (2014). Dimensions of everyday resistance: An analytical framework. Critical Sociology, 42(3), 417 435. Kelley, R. (1994). Race rebels: Culture, politics, and the black working class. New York, NY: The Free Press. Lamphere, L. (1985). Bringing the family to work: Women’s culture on the shop floor. Feminist Studies, 11(3), 519 540. Lopez, S. H. (2006). Culture change management in long-term care: A shop floor view. Politics & Society, 34, 55 80. Pande, A. (2012). From ‘Balcony Talk’ and ‘Practical Prayers’ to illegal collectives: Migrant domestic workers and meso-level resistances in Lebanon. Gender & Society, 26(3), 382 405.

Navigating Agency and Constraint at Work

173

Paules, G. F. (1991). Dishing it out: Power and resistance among waitresses in a new Jersey restaurant. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Pierce, J. (1995). Gender trials: Emotional lives in contemporary law firms. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Prasad, A., & Prasad, P. (1998). Everyday struggles at the workplace: The nature and implications of routine resistance in contemporary organizations. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 15, 369 403. Prasad, P., & Prasad, A. (2000). Stretching the Iron cage: The constitution and implications of routine workplace resistance. Organization Science, 11(4), 387 403. Rollins, J. (1987). Between women: Domestics and their employers. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Roscigno, V. J., & Hodson, R. (2004). The organizational and social foundations of worker resistance. American Sociological Review, 69, 14 39. Roy, D. (1959). Banana time: Job satisfaction and informal interaction. Human Organization, 18, 158 168. Rubin, J. (1996). Defining resistance: Contested interpretations of everyday acts. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, 15, 237 260. Scott, J. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Scott, J. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Stacey, C. L. (2011). The caring self: The work experiences of home care aides. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. Stombler, M., & Padavic, I. (1997). Sister acts: Resisting men’s domination in black and white fraternity little sister programs. Social Problems, 44(2), 257 275. Westwood, S. (1985). All day, every day: Factory and family in the making of women’s lives. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.

“THEY EXPECT YOU TO BE BETTER”: MENTORING AS A TOOL OF RESISTANCE AMONG BLACK FRATERNITY MEN Jasmine Armstrong and Brandon A. Jackson ABSTRACT This study examines the role of mentorship in black Greek letter fraternities (BGLFs) in resisting cultural and institutional oppression. Based on 20 interviews with black male college students, we build upon the works of others that have sought to examine the functions BGLFs play among black men in college. We suggest that BGLF participation offers collegiate black men mentorships with older members who motivate them to succeed personally and academically, support in integrating them into the black student community, and helps develop their professionalism and leadership. This mentorship allows young black men to contest the negative controlling images of black men culturally, and the lack of institutional support at predominantly white colleges and universities. Keywords: Black men; college; fraternities; mentoring; resistance

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 175 190 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048012

175

176

JASMINE ARMSTRONG AND BRANDON A. JACKSON

Black men in college face a wide range of issues on college campuses especially at predominantly white colleges and universities (PWCU). From small, yet cumulative acts of microaggressions (Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000), to more overt types of discrimination, such as being treated as criminals and threats (McCabe, 2009; Smith, Allen, & Danley, 2007), black men face an uphill battle at these institutions of higher learning. This is in addition to the wider issues facing black college students, as evidenced by the wide-ranging collegiate protests that occurred across college campuses in the fall of 2015. And yet, as these protests have shown, students of color, in particular African American students, are not passive in responding to these problems. Mass protests like these are not ongoing or everyday acts, but instead manifest at particular moments in order to express certain viewpoints. Generally, mass protests are thought of as organized demonstrations with revolutionary implications that erupt after a particular tipping point (Scott, 1985, 1989). But we also know that for students of color, finding ways to resist campus marginalization is an ongoing process. In terms of “everyday” acts of resistance (Scott, 1989) on college campuses, research has noted the role of counter-spaces (Solorzano et al., 2000), same-race peer friendships (Villalpando, 2003), and emotional strategies (Wilkins, 2012) in responding to the prejudice that exists at these institutions. But despite the historic role of black Greek letter fraternities (BGLFs), we know less about the ways in which these organizations respond today and how current BGLF membership offers members an opportunity to resist oppression at PWCUs. This chapter examines the role of black fraternity membership in challenging discrimination and alienation at a predominantly white college campus. Specifically, we investigate mentoring within BGLFs as a way to confront the marginalization and lack of institutional support at a predominantly white public university in the southeast. We find that BGLF participation offers collegiate black men mentorships with older members who motivate them to succeed personally and academically, support in integrating black men into the black student community, and helps to develop their professionalism and leadership.

LITERATURE REVIEW Black fraternities were, by and large, founded in the early 20th century on college campuses. As a result of the blatant racism and discrimination on predominantly white institutions, black students sought to create their own organizations (Hughey, 2008; Hughey & Parks, 2011). The intended purpose of these organizations was to address the social, political, and economic struggles of African Americans on college campuses so that African American students could have a platform to express their own college experiences (Hughey & Parks, 2011; Kimbrough & Hutcheson, 1998; McClure, 2006). From 1906 through 1922, eight

Mentoring as a Tool of Resistance among Black Fraternity Men

177

historically black fraternities and sororities blossomed at Cornell University, Indiana University, Butler University, and Howard University. In 1963, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, a ninth historically black Greek organization was founded at Morgan State University. These organizations have come to represent scholarship, brotherhood and sisterhood, and racial uplift (Parks, Hughey, & Cohen, 2014). Today, BGLFs continue to promote a collective commitment to their community and college campus, while giving African American college men the opportunity to develop friendships with other African American men. Black men in BGLFs aspire to make an impact on their college campuses through campus leadership, involvement within their communities, and a focus on scholastic achievement.

Campus Hostilities and Everyday Resistance The college protests that emerged in the fall of 2015 on campuses such as the University of Missouri, Yale University, and Ithaca College brought to the nation’s attention problems that had been ongoing at American colleges and universities. Issues such as racial microaggressions, police harassment, and an overall lack of institutional support (Feagin, 1992; Feagin, Vera, & Imani, 1996; Sedlacek, 1987; Solorzano et al., 2000) were documented in newspaper headlines such as “Do U.S. Colleges Have a Race Problem?” (Griggs, 2015) and “Racial Discrimination Protests Ignite at Colleges across the U.S.” (Hartcollis & Bidgood, 2015). Black college students must endure the stereotypes and controlling images that surround African Americans (Collins, 2004). For black men, the stereotype of the inner-city thug or criminal may lead to harassment by campus officials because they “fit the description” (McCabe, 2009; Smith et al., 2007). Dealing with a constant barrage of microaggressions can become a “tiring” experience (Solorzano et al., 2000). At the institutional level, black students often feel as if they are lacking support (Davis, 1994; Feagin et al., 1996). In fact, one study that compared black men at predominantly white colleges with those at historically black colleges found that the men at predominantly white colleges viewed their colleges as providing less institutional support (Davis, 1994). Students of color regularly protest these hostilities through acts of everyday resistance. These acts occurs whenever “people act in their everyday lives in ways that undermine power,” (Vinthagen & Johansson, 2013, p. 2). Everyday resistance projects on predominantly white colleges are initiated in response to white dominance at these institutions. Less obvious than public demonstrations and protests, these acts are nevertheless aimed at resisting oppression. Everyday resistance strategies used by collegiate students of color take on many forms. One common practice is the use of counter-spaces (Solorzano et al., 2000). These sites include student groups and on-campus offices. As Scott

178

JASMINE ARMSTRONG AND BRANDON A. JACKSON

(1989) points out, the denial of status may lead to autonomous social spaces whereby individuals can assert their dignity. For black and Latino college students, counter-spaces offer safe havens away from campus hostilities and marginalization. Student groups offer sources for peer support, and a means for students to integrate socially and establish cultural connections in college (Feagin & Sikes, 1995; Guiffrida, 2003; Guiffrida & Douthit, 2010; McClure, 2006). When these students surround themselves with peers from similar cultural backgrounds, the students are “drawing from their cultural resources to mitigate the racialized barriers erected by universities” (Villalpando, 2003, p. 623).

Student Group Membership and Mentoring Students are active participants in seeking the types of relationships that help promote their success (McCabe, 2015). This agency allows students to navigate potential obstacles that may hinder their progress. One way in which black men may do this is through membership in black male organizations. The relationships forged in these groups allow them to connect with black mentors (upper classmen and faculty/staff members) who offer the guidance they need to be successful in college (Feagin & Sikes, 1995; Guiffrida, 2003; Guiffrida & Douthit, 2010; McClure, 2006). These mentors act as social capital for these young fraternity men. Here, we can understand social capital as the relationships and networks that provide “access to resources and information for social progression and the accomplishment of goals” (Harper, 2008, p. 1033). High-achieving black male student leaders have been known to make use of these relationships and networks to gain information on scholarships and awards, study abroad opportunities, and recommendation letters (Harper, 2008). By seeking out relationships with fraternity mentors in college, younger fraternity members add to their social capital, which allows them to more easily navigate the campus environment. In college, black men are given the opportunity to expand their professional and educational networks by developing informal and formal mentorships with other black students and faculty. These groups ease the college transition process, helping to counter any effects of alienation black students may feel at predominantly white colleges (Tinto, 1994). Further, black student organizations are viewed as a vehicle for black men to help one another, which is beneficial for college achievement and leadership (Dancy, 2012; Harper, 2008; Jackson, 2012). When in leadership positions, black men in these organizations work to promote positive images of black males in spite of the negative cultural stereotypes that exist (Harper & Quaye, 2007; Sutton & Terrell, 1997). Overall, groups like these help black men at predominantly white colleges feel a sense of

Mentoring as a Tool of Resistance among Black Fraternity Men

179

belonging to the larger university environment (Sidanius, Van Laar, Levin, & Sinclair, 2004). Fraternity leadership positions contribute to black men’s social integration by providing them with peer social support and an attachment to the campus environment. Utilizing the fraternity as a support system gives black men the opportunity to successfully integrate themselves into the campus (McClure, 2006). McClure (2006) illustrates how BGLFs help black men in developing friendships and mentorships with other black male students, and encourages involvement in their communities through community service. Further, the high visibility experienced by black fraternity men leads them to work toward presenting themselves, their organizations, and their universities in a positive light (Kimbrough & Hutcheson, 1998; Ray & Rosow, 2012). The small black student population on predominantly white campuses causes black fraternity men to imitate the “ideal black student” through their leadership and activities, therefore holding them accountable for their actions on campus (Fries-Britt & Griffin, 2007). As such, black fraternity men often serve as positive role models for other students. Given the role that black fraternities play for black men in college, we ask: How does membership in these organizations lead to everyday resistance strategies that protest marginalization and lack of institutional support at predominantly white colleges? We find that through the mentorship and social capital afforded to black college men through BGLF membership, they were able to develop a sense of agency about their lives, and were therefore able to resist the structures of oppression they encountered. Specifically, fraternity membership offered members an opportunity to contest negative controlling images of black men culturally, and the lack of institutional support at these institutions.

METHODS The first author interviewed 20 black fraternity members at a large public research university in the southeast. After gaining approval from the University’s National Panhellenic Council (NPHC), she contacted the campus presidents of BGLFs. The NPHC is the governing body for the nine historically black Greek organizations. Using the presidents as gatekeepers, she recruited respondents at monthly chapter meetings and asked members to schedule interviews. Respondents were required to be existing members of a BGLF and enrolled as undergraduate students. Aided by an IRB-approved interview guide, respondents explained how their college experiences had changed since joining a BGLF. Pseudonyms were employed to ensure the confidentiality of participants involved in the study, including the official names of the BGLFs mentioned throughout the interviews. Utilizing snowball sampling, participants referred other black fraternity

180

JASMINE ARMSTRONG AND BRANDON A. JACKSON

men to interview for the study. Nine respondents were members of Beta Sigma Rho Fraternity Incorporated, six respondents were members of Theta Psi Pi Fraternity Incorporated, and five respondents were members of Mu Gamma Xi Fraternity Incorporated. All of our respondents were identified as Black/ African American, and 19 respondents were between the ages of 20 and 23, with the exception of one respondent who started college at age 29. Interviews were conducted on campus and lasted an average of one hour. Through a grounded analysis of interviews, we find that peer mentorships produce positive academic and social outcomes for black men in BGLFs (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). Mentorships in BGLFs motivated respondents to resist oppression through building strong friendships, assistance in integrating them to the black student community, and developing their professional and leadership skills. In doing so, black men counteracted the negative controlling images of black men by finding ways to succeed at a predominantly white public university.

FINDINGS Black men in BGLFs described how joining a fraternity improved their individual college experiences through mentorships with other black fraternity men. Their mentors motivated these black men to succeed in their academics, offered support to connect them to the black student community, and helped them develop professionally into leaders on campus. More importantly, mentorships in BGLFs provided young black men role models that contested the negative controlling images of black men in mainstream America, and redress the lack of institutional support at PWCUs. The following sections examine the ways in which mentorships in BGLFs provide their members with opportunities and skills needed to challenge marginalization in college and beyond.

Success through Motivation BGLFs were sites of resistance where the motivation provided by peers empowered members to thrive in the face of institutional barriers. These organizations were more than just social fraternities, but protective spaces where fraternity brothers took respondents under their wings and motivated them to succeed in college and beyond, persevering through life’s “storms” and emerging as stronger, more resilient men. Many of the respondents were from disadvantaged backgrounds and had little exposure to positive male role models. Consequently, older BGLF members played honorary “big brother” roles for many respondents and all of the respondents joined their respective fraternities because of their friendships and close relationships with their black mentors.

Mentoring as a Tool of Resistance among Black Fraternity Men

181

Prior to joining his fraternity, for example, Brandon recognized the sincerity of his college mentors: All the people that I saw doing good things on campus people who took their time out of their day to ask me how I was doing, took that time out to make sure I was doing well in school, took that time out to make sure I was involved on campus and that people knew who I was they were just really taking care of me. Like an older brother figure, like a father figure. That’s what really attracted me to the fraternity.

BGLF members’ investment of time and genuine concern with their brothers’ lives were primary reasons why young men like Brandon were attracted to their fraternities. The older members befriended respondents through constant interactions, allowing respondents to become familiar with them and their fraternity. It was through these friendships and peer mentoring that most respondents were able to decide whether to join the BGLFs of these older members. Respondents described finding role models not only through their friendships with their BGLF brothers, but through other black men in campus leadership positions as well. They viewed these black men as role models on campus whom they wanted to emulate. For example, Reggie had this to say: When you start getting involved, you just get cool with them ‘cause Betas are always involved. Just seeing them, I wanted to be “that nigga.” So this is why I became a Beta.

Although a controversial term, here the use of the phrase “that nigga” is complimentary, implying being seen as a popular person on campus or as someone who has achieved a significant accomplishment. Marcus, for his part, described having numerous positive male role models on campus, who collectively taught him a “crash course” in manhood: I had all of these role models surrounding me at once, and all of these different people who I perceived as men like how their lives were different, their points of view all this different feedback from so many sources. So a crash course on what it’s like to be a man. A man in college, a man in life.

Their BGLF brothers and black male role models on campus exposed Reggie, Marcus, and the rest of our respondents to alternative manifestations of black manhood that were clearly different from the images of black men that pervade the popular imagination (Collins, 2004). The BGLF brothers who served as positive role models for incoming cohorts of young black college students were thus an important reminder that black manhood is rich, varied, and certainly more complex than the contemporary discourse on “young black men in America” tends to acknowledge. Under the guise of brotherhood, BGLF mentorships prevented feelings of alienation, and countered the absence of institutional support through friendships with other black men on campus. Respondents were particularly impressed by older fraternity members who appeared to have achieved the triumvirate of college success, balancing strong campus involvement, academic success, and active social lives. They admired the fact that these men held prominent campus leadership positions while doing

182

JASMINE ARMSTRONG AND BRANDON A. JACKSON

well in their courses, and aspired to achieve the same success. Marcus was moved by his mentor’s success on campus and commented: It was cool to come here and all these guys, they were like seniors, had 3.9’s, they were trying to be doctors, lawyers, all this impressive stuff. They were mentoring me.

Additionally, BGLF members held one another accountable for their campus involvement, academic success, and social engagement on campus. Many of the respondents mentioned that there was an expectation to succeed academically and actively participate in campus leadership when becoming a member of a BGLF. Through accountability, respondents began to self-monitor their individual behavior, and accept constructive criticism from their BGLF brothers. Reggie explained that You hold yourself to such a higher standard [when] receiving criticism that you don’t hold yourself to. It teaches you to correct yourself.

Due to the high visibility of BGLFs on PWCU, members worked to portray themselves in a positive light in order to avoid sanctions by outsiders on campus. Ray and Rosow (2012) found that the heightened visibility of BGLFs on campus produced greater levels of accountability toward BGLF men. Isiah summed this up nicely by stating: The fraternity has taught me that before you do something, you have to realize that you are going to be held accountable for that and you need to think wisely.

Students like Isaiah were thus keenly aware of the fact that they did not just represent themselves on campus, but their entire fraternity’s name. The heightened sense of accountability could contribute to the retention of black men in college and positively impact college graduation rates as a result of members motivating and inspiring each other to succeed in college. These fraternity men were able to motivate one another in a way in which the university as an institution could not. Lacking those institutional supports that should be able to encourage them as students, black fraternity members instead turned to one another.

Connecting to the Black Community Many respondents were exposed to the greater black community on campus through their friendships with older members of BGLFs. When entering college at a PWCU, respondents stated that they experienced difficulty finding other black faces to interact with since the black student population is relatively small. As Mario commented: For 2-3 weeks, I didn’t see any blacks. I was eating at the dining halls and a girl told me that I should go to a Black Student Union meeting. So I went there and I see like a million black people. And I was like, “Okay, this is the black people.”

Mentoring as a Tool of Resistance among Black Fraternity Men

183

Often marginalized at predominantly white campuses, black students relied on other black students for social support, strengthening their racial identity, and contributing to their social and academic success (Harper, 2012). Involvement in African American student organizations was an important means for connecting black faculty with black students, promoting greater academic achievement, giving members the opportunity to give back to the black community, and providing them with a safe space to build racial solidarity by socializing with other black faces (Guiffrida, 2003; Kimbrough & Hutcheson, 1998; Patton, Bridges, & Flowers, 2011). Amid a sea of white faces, young black men who wore their Greek letters stood out and were highly visible not only to their fellow BGLF members, but to the student population as a whole (Ray & Rosow, 2012). Therefore, when respondents began to build relationships with their black mentors, they discovered the black student population, which opened up their exposure to other black student organizations, and expanded their social networks. Respondents indicated that membership in BGLFs allowed them to be well-known on campus through their campus leadership, and created opportunities for them to be actively engaged within the black community through volunteering and community service activities. They also pointed out that their mentors guided them through the beginning of their college experience with advice about college life, assistance with coursework, and by introducing them to the college social scene. Subsequently, when respondents became involved with community service, they all wanted to mentor and inspire other young men, just as their mentors had inspired them. Brandon’s comments illustrated this pattern: They [BGLF mentors] are the people that made me like, “That’s what I want to do for other people.” I just wanted to be like that influence they had over me in someone else’s life, ‘cause mentoring is a big part of our fraternity.

The informal mentorship of young black adolescents in high school and middle school was the primary community service that respondents mentioned in their interviews. Many of the respondents were able to relate to the boys they sought to mentor. Darius said: I wish I would have had something like that growing up or had men to come in and really mentor me.

Respondents saw mentoring the young boys as an opportunity to promote the importance of attending college and obtaining a higher education. Members of BGLFs personified positive images of black college men and developed close relationships with the adolescent boys. Brandon explained: My favorite community service: We go to this place called the Motivating Youth of Tomorrow Center and we go there and interact with the kids. We usually take them out and play or we just sit in there and help them with homework for a little bit. It’s good to go out there and make some type of influence on somebody.

184

JASMINE ARMSTRONG AND BRANDON A. JACKSON

Unlike non-Greek black students, respondents were in positions of authority by virtue of their leadership roles and involvement on campus. This afforded them more influence on campus through networking with university administration. Brandon remarked that: I feel like me being in a fraternity, I know a lot of stuff that is going on. I am always ahead of the game. I always know ahead of time what’s about to happen. Especially when it comes to the student government association, black student union, stuff like that. Political stuff, I always know like what’s going on before a lot of people do.

Always being informed about campus opportunities and administrative matters places black men in BGLFs in key positions to be activists for the black student population. However, respondents expressed their frustrations that university officials treated their BGLFs differently than predominantly white Greek organizations. Having to “play their game” or “act accordingly” so that black fraternity men would not be judged negatively was a common theme when discussing this differential treatment. Marcus stated that: They [white students] do set the tone for us since they are the majority, so they are in charge of a lot of things. We act according[ly] to where we will not be judged but accepted by white people. So I will say we do act differently here [at a PWCU] ‘cause we do have a different crowd to appease in order to move up through campus and get internships.

Within the hierarchy of university Greek organizations, white Greeks were at the top, as they had higher amounts of funding for social events and more student involvement due to their larger chapter sizes. This disparity often heightened the sense of alienation black fraternity men felt. As a result, respondents stressed the importance of maintaining their chapters on campus. Marcus explained: This is a chapter with history that you have to keep alive cause it’s not that many of us. Definitely more passion as far as that cause it’s not so many brothers [members] where it’s okay for you to stop working like that with other councils.

Respondents like Marcus stressed that their BGLF could disappear if their members were not engaged on campus through leadership and involved in their fraternity. Stated differently, feeling that their fraternities were marginalized led to higher levels of involvement and engagement among group members. Members found that involvement in other student organizations helped to spread their fraternity name across campus so that their fraternity could recruit potential members, and enter into leadership positions, such as student government, that provided endorsements for greater equality for students of color on campus. They remarked that they were not afforded the luxury to just be “ordinary members,” but were expected to be involved brothers in their fraternity in order to campaign for greater minority student representation in executive positions on campus. Multicultural Greek organizations, including black fraternities, often advocate for minority students by coordinating student forums which encourage

Mentoring as a Tool of Resistance among Black Fraternity Men

185

discussion among students of color on issues ranging from the differential treatment of white students compared to minority students on campus, the decreasing number of faculty of color in classrooms, and initiating resources that raise the retention of students of color. Also, black fraternities sponsor campus student rallies and participate in community demonstrations to promote racial awareness of minorities living on campus and within the community. Brandon conveyed the main reason why his fraternity advocated for black students’ issues by stating, “I am passionate about helping black people succeed. The success of African Americans on this campus … just seeing black people flourish just warms my heart.” For many of our respondents, BGLF membership was a way to combat the oppression caused by isolation and marginalization. Participation in BGLFs introduced members to the black student community on PWCUs which allowed them to interact with other black students. Further, members of BGLFs heavily served within the black community by mentoring the next generation of young black boys. Through community service, BGLF men demonstrated positive models of academically driven black men in order to inspire the adolescent boys to follow in their footsteps. Finally, they were considered advocates for the black student population since they exhibited more influence than black non-Greek students through their student involvement and leadership on campus.

Developing Leadership and Professionalism A majority of our respondents held some form of leadership position on campus and emphasized that their BGLF membership was central in developing their professionalism through leadership. After joining a BGLF, many respondents said they had improved their lives and became better men through their commitment to their fraternity. For instance, Malik maintained that joining a fraternity improved his overall character and individual college experience: I have grown up more. I have matured, but that might just come with my position being the president of my organization. They see me step up more, take on more challenges.

Taking on greater responsibilities and becoming leaders required respondents to prioritize their time and essentially grow towards becoming responsible young adults. Through leadership on campus and in their BGLF, respondents began to appreciate their membership, and they attributed their expanded knowledge about their fraternity to their executive positions. Marcus stated: I guess [an executive] position did make me see Theta in a better light. That position kind of did force me to see the bigger picture, so I could explain it to other people.

Many of the respondents noted that “seeing the bigger picture” meant that membership in a BGLF provided them with opportunities to showcase their

186

JASMINE ARMSTRONG AND BRANDON A. JACKSON

leadership skills in student government positions, or coordinate university events such as homecoming activities. BGLFs broadened members’ experiences by allowing them to interact with different people, and to serve as the “face” of the fraternity and university through these prominent leadership positions. Most of the respondents said they had become more confident in pursuing campus leadership positions, and their newfound confidence had helped them achieve campus opportunities they had previously felt they did not deserve. As Jamal pointed out, “A pro is that you open the door to a new world to where at times it can be right in front of you, but you really can’t see it or understand it until you are a part of it.” BGLF membership thus opened up a whole “new world” of opportunity to young black men, who become empowered to resist oppression through their leadership roles on campus which allow them to take advantage of opportunities that may be unavailable to black non-Greek students. Along with confidence, many respondents came to display increased professionalism in their lives, from their dress, speech, and behaviors. This resulted in many members improving themselves by dressing more professionally, networking with diverse groups, including those in power, and succeeding in their leadership positions, thereby advancing their fraternity’s reputation on campus. One respondent, Elliot, stated that the fraternity encouraged him to display professionalism on campus: Since I joined a fraternity, that’s something we always do. You know how to dress in a suit. You know how to talk to people. You know how to do interviews. Just being more interactive with people. But now I do it on a daily basis. It’s made me a better networker, I guess.

BGLF members displayed an earnest commitment to their fraternity by altering their dress, speech, and demeanor so that their fraternity would be known to transform “boys into men.” Through their membership in BGLFs, they had matured into young, professional black men. Observing older members’ academic success influenced respondents to do better in their coursework and demonstrate professionalism in order to achieve similar college success: [The fraternity] improves your speaking skills, your confidence, your networking, and your desire for a profession cause you see people who are farther along than you at every stage. So you see every level of what you want to do in life. It definitely pushes you to want to [do] better in school so it is very inspiring to me to be in a fraternity. - Marcus

Ultimately, BGLFs enhanced individual qualities of fraternity members, like Marcus and Elliot, by recognizing the potential in each member to become leaders on campus and within the black student community. Respondents expounded on their improved interviewing skills, their business-minded perspective, and one respondent even mentioned there was a “Beta resume” in which members would tailor their existing resumes to include their BGLF involvement. As a fraternity, the BGLF saw the potential in the respondents

Mentoring as a Tool of Resistance among Black Fraternity Men

187

such that it didn’t change their identity but “sharpened who they were as men.” The fraternities improved respondents’ character and combatted negative media stereotypes of black men being angry, lazy, disorderly, and uneducated individuals. The leadership skills and professionalism gained through BGLF membership, helped reduce feelings of alienation through friendships with other black men, and countered the lack of institutional support through their campus leadership and involvement in the black student community. Membership also enhanced respondent’s self-confidence to improve their leadership skills, increase their engagement on campus, and pursue opportunities they previously believed were out of reach.

CONCLUSION As evidenced by recent college protests, discrimination from white peers and a lack of institutional support from colleges and universities is a common problem for students of color. Being a black face in a white-dominated space can bring along a new set of challenges for black students, in particular for black college men. However, mentorships in BGLFs guide black men in college by providing them with peers who motivate them to succeed in their academics, and encourage them to pursue campus leadership opportunities. This study illustrates that BGLF peer mentors help black men resist oppression by motivating them to succeed, integrating them into the black student community, and developing their professionalism through campus and fraternity leadership. The men in this study often mentioned the alienation they felt upon arriving on campus. Lacking peers with common interests, and not having institutional supports to guide them, the men were left to their own devices in finding the support they sought. Instead of mentioning the role of university-sponsored programs and advocates, they often pointed to older peers in black fraternities as role models and motivators for their success. By working together as a brotherhood, members were able to connect with others who supported them emotionally and socially (Jackson, 2012). One way to view these men’s actions is through the lens of role-taking refusal and agency (Musolf, 2012). In many ways, the young men in this study were aware of the negative depictions that surrounded their race and gender. And yet, they refused to play into these characterizations they refused to take on those roles. As such, they resisted the oppression these controlling images often have upon young black men (Collins, 2004). Instead, they were active participants in the activation of their agency. They sought to be successful and connect to the campus black community, and purposely sought out those individuals and groups that could assist with those goals.

188

JASMINE ARMSTRONG AND BRANDON A. JACKSON

Findings from this study support the idea that BGLFs play an important role in the social and academic integration of their members into predominantly white colleges and universities (Guiffrida, 2003; Harper, 2007; McClure, 2006; Patton et al., 2011). Older fraternity members became resources to newer fraternity men, helping them transition into college. The mentorship and social capital from older fraternity brothers and black male role models was an essential part of this integrative process. Mentorships in black fraternities were considered counter-spaces that black men utilized in order to contest oppression on predominantly white institutions (Solorzano et al., 2000). We frame this as an everyday resistance strategy, as fraternity membership allowed them to undermine the power structure that marginalized them as black students (Vinthagen & Johansson, 2013). Although black fraternity men held prominent leadership positions on campus, interviewees expressed frustration with university officials’ differential treatment of them when compared to the treatment of white fraternity men (Davis, 1994; Ray & Rosow, 2012). Nonetheless, through their fraternity membership and mentors’ guidance, respondents experienced feelings of attachment to their campus environment, and reported networking with university administrators. This suggests that the mentorship afforded to black college men through their BGLF membership helped them counter the controlling images of black men culturally, the lack of support from their university, and some of the negative experiences associated with being a black student on a predominantly white campus.

REFERENCES Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York, NY: Routledge Press. Dancy II, T. E. (2012). The brother code: Manhood and masculinity among African American men in college. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. Davis, J. E. (1994). College in black and white: Campus environment and academic achievement of African American Males. The Journal of Negro Education, 63, 620 633. Feagin, J. R. (1992). The continuing significance of racism: Discrimination against Black students in White colleges. Journal of Black Studies, 22, 546 578. Feagin, J., & Sikes, M. P. (1995). How Black students cope with racism on White campuses. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 8, 91 97. Feagin, J., Vera, H., & Imani, K. (1996). The agony of education: Black students at White colleges and universities. New York, NY: Routledge. Fries-Britt, S., & Griffin, K. (2007). The black box: How high-achieving blacks resist stereotypes about black Americans. The Journal of College Student Development, 48, 509 524. Griggs, B. (2015, November 10). Do U.S. colleges have a race problem?. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com Guiffrida, D. A. (2003). African American student organizations as agents of social integration. The Journal of College Student Development, 44, 304 419.

Mentoring as a Tool of Resistance among Black Fraternity Men

189

Guiffrida, D. A., & Douthit, K. Z. (2010). The Black student experience at predominantly White colleges: Implications for school and college counselors. Journal of Counseling and Development, 88, 311 318. Harper, S. R. (2007). The effects of sorority and fraternity membership on class participation and African American student engagement in predominantly white classroom environments. College Student Affairs Journal, 27(1), 94. Harper, S. R. (2008). Realizing the intended outcomes of brown: High-achieving African American male undergraduates and social capital. The Journal of American Behavioral Scientist, 51(7), 1030 1053. Harper, S. R. (2012). Black male student success in higher education: A report from the National Black Male College Achievement Study. University Pennsylvania, Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education, Philadelphia. Harper, S. R., & Quaye, S. J. (2007). Student organizations as venues for Black identity expression and development among African American male student leaders. Journal of College Student Development, 48, 127 144. Hartcollis, A., & Bidgood, J. (2015). Racial discrimination protests ignite at college across the U.S. The New York Times, November 11. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com Hughey, M. (2008). Brotherhood or brothers in the ‘hood’? Debunking the ‘educated gang’ thesis as black fraternity and sorority slander. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11(4), 443 463. Hughey, M., & Parks, G. (2011). Black Greek-Letter organizations 2.0: New directions in the study of African American fraternities and sororities. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Jackson, B. A. (2012). Bonds of brotherhood: Emotional and social support among college black men. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 642, 61 71. Kimbrough, W. M., & Hutcheson, P. (1998). The impact of membership in black Greek-letter organizations on black students’ involvement in collegiate activities and their development of leadership skills. The Journal of Negro Education, 67(2), 96 105. McCabe, J. (2009). Racial and gender microagressions on a predominantly-White campus of Black, Latina/o and White undergraduates. Race, Gender, & Class, 16, 133 151. McCabe, J. (2015). ‘That’s what makes our friendships stronger’: Supportive friendships based on both racial solidarity and racial diversity. In E. M. Lee & C. LaDousa (Eds.), College students’ experiences on power and marginality: Sharing spaces and negotiating differences (pp. 64 79). New York, NY: Routledge. McClure, S. M. (2006). Voluntary association membership: Black Greek men on a predominately white campus. The Journal of Higher Education, 77(6), 1036 1057. Musolf, G. R. (2012). The superiority delusion and critical consciousness: The paradox of roletaking refusal in the microfoundation of dehumanization and resistance. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 39, 71 210. Parks, G. S., Hughey, M. W., & Cohen, R. T. (2014). The great divide: Black fraternal ideals and reality. Sociology Compass, 8, 129 148. Patton, L. D., Bridges, B. K., & Flowers, L. A. (2011). Effects of Greek affiliation on African American students’ engagement: Differences by college racial composition. College Student Affairs Journal, 29(2), 113. Ray, R., & Rosow, J. A. (2012). The two different worlds of black and white fraternity men: Visibility and accountability as mechanisms of privilege. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41(1), 66 94. Scott, J. C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Scott, J. C. (1989). Everyday forms of resistance. In F. D. Colburn (Ed.), Everyday forms of peasant resistance (pp. 3 33). Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Sedlacek, W. E. (1987). Black students on White campuses: 20 years of research. Journal of College Student Personnel, 28, 484 495. Sidanius, J., Van Laar, C., Levin, S., & Sinclair, S. (2004). Ethnic enclaves and the dynamics of social identity on the college campus: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 96 110.

190

JASMINE ARMSTRONG AND BRANDON A. JACKSON

Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., & Danley, L. L. (2007). ‘Assume the position…you fit the description’: Psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51, 551 578. Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T. (2000). Critical race theory, racial microagressions, and Campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college students. The Journal of Negro Education, 69, 60 73. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1994). Grounded theory methodology. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 273 285). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sutton, E. M., & Terrell, M. C. (1997). Identifying and developing leadership opportunities for African American men. New Directions for Student Services, 80, 55 64. Tinto, V. (1994). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Villalpando, O. (2003). Self-segregation or self-preservation? A critical race theory and Latina/o critical theory analysis of a study of Chicano/o college students. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16, 619 646. Vinthagen, S., & Johansson, A. (2013). ‘Everyday resistance’: Exploration of a concept and its theories. Resistance Studies Magazine, 1(September), 1 46. Wilkins, A. (2012). ‘Not out to start a revolution’: Race, gender and emotional restraint among black university men. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41, 34 65.

PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY AND SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM: PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND WRITING CULTURE WITH A SOUTHERN NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBE Michael Spivey ABSTRACT Since Michael Burawoy’s 2004 presidential address to the American Sociological Association, there has been a growing interest among sociologists in “public sociology.” Though controversial in the discipline, public sociology parallels several other “engaged” forms of sociological inquiry, such as service-learning, collaborative research, participatory research, civic engagement, action research, and others. While forms of public sociology are growing among sociologists, there is little linkage with the symbolic interactionist tradition in the discipline. The ethnographic case study presented here attempts to make a link between public sociology and symbolic interactionism. Beginning in 1994 to the present, the author has been involved in the formal and informal recognition efforts of the Pee-Dee Native-American tribe in the author’s home state of South Carolina. The Pee-Dee finally gained state recognition in 2006. The struggle on the part of the tribe to gain state recognition began formally in the early 1970s. The central social issue

Oppression and Resistance: Structure, Agency, Transformation Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 48, 191 210 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620180000048013

191

192

MICHAEL SPIVEY

for the tribe has always revolved around their perceived lack (primarily on the part of the dominant group) in terms of cultural and historical identity. The paradox for the tribe is found in the contradictions between their actual lived historical experience, beginning in colonial times, and the historical interpretation, on the part of earlier historians of the southeast, that the smaller tribes simply “vanished” after 1775. The paradox is also furthered by the stereotypes of what constitutes “real Indians,” which, in many ways, inform the formal recognition requirements by the state. The chapter begins with an exploration of the historical, colonial context, followed with the ethnographic story of my time with the Pee-Dee in the field and our struggle to collaborate on finding a working interpretation of the tribe’s historical and cultural existence as a people. The chapter ends with some thoughts on how a critical symbolic interactionism can promote a successful public sociology project. Keywords: Symbolic interactionism; Native Americans; critical ethnography; public sociology; state-recognized tribes; collaborative research

INTRODUCTION A Falsehood is entirely true to those derangements which produced it and which made it impossible that it should emerge in truth; and an examination of it may reveal more of the “true” “truth” than any more direct attempt upon the “true” “truth” itself. Agee and Evans (1960)

The purpose of my ethnographic research among the Pee-Dee Native Americans of South Carolina is twofold: One, to provide a rare and critical interactionist account of ethnic people in the process of rewriting themselves into history. This chapter provides a rare glimpse of actual people caught up in the contending border zones between histories, “races,” and cultures, and the actual social practice of struggles over meanings; and, secondly, the ethnographic material becomes strategic in highlighting the usefulness of the symbolic interactionist perspective when engaged in a collaborative and critical form of research known as “public sociology.” This chapter provides just one way in which the symbolic interactionist perspective can be useful in helping to solve social issues. My ethnographic research began in October 1994 and continues today, along with other small tribes in the state, as a long-term visual ethnographic project, which I will address in the conclusion. My initial field research was conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation (Spivey, 1998). Like many graduate students conducting ethnographic research, I came to the Pee-Dee

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

193

community with the purpose of conducting a traditional study to further my theoretical interests and concerns. In the end, this purpose was fulfilled. However, my theoretical musings were never interesting to the Pee-Dee people and were deemed unimportant. What was important (and the reason I was asked to help) was the imperative need to conduct historical and cultural research on the tribe for formal state recognition. The work we achieved together represented the first academic research on the Pee-Dee people. Except for a few historical works on the history of Native Americans in South Carolina, which have very little to say about the Pee-Dee and other smaller tribes, documentation is scant at best (Brown, 1966; Milling, 1969). In the end, it would be the oral telling of living together in an “Indian” sharecropping community, with its own school and churches, and rural farming life, that would provide the best evidence toward state recognition.

METHODOLOGY This study was conducted by way of a qualitative fieldwork methodology. This type of methodology, because of its highly flexible and emergent quality, is very suitable for a symbolic interactionist emphasis on the social construction of meaning in everyday life, as well as the postmodernist theme of hybrid cultural forms. Fieldwork for the study began in October 1994 and ended in July 1995. However, I am a native of the community area of Southtown. As a symbolic member of the community, I have many years of experience with the people and culture of the region. I knew most of the tribal leaders as fellow students in Southtown’s high school. This insider’s position was very helpful in negotiating my research role. In fact, being an insider may have been central to making the research possible at all. A sense of trust and rapport was established early on in the research. Interviews with tribal members were based on a snowball approach. The tribal government board, made up of nine members, acted as my key consultants. We agreed that I would use fictitious first names for all tribal members interviewed. The Chief of the tribe asked me to use his title and not a name. While anonymity was fully given in terms of informants’ names as well as the county and town in which the study took place, the leadership insisted on the use of their historical name. Because of the long history of social invisibility, the leadership wants the public to know their tribal name and that they are still present and living together as Native Americans. In the end, the Chief and tribal board members became more than the traditional notion of “key consultants.” They became research partners in the truest sense. The research would not have been completed nor successful without the collaborative efforts between the Chief, the board members, and myself.

194

MICHAEL SPIVEY

Several qualitative methods were utilized in this study. Participant observation and informal conversation were the principle techniques used. Also recorded, unstructured interviews and life histories were conducted, especially in documenting the history of the sharecropping community and Pee-Dee students who attended their two-room, segregated community school. Finally, primary and secondary historical documents were used in the research, such as the U.S. Census and historical publications on Native American life in the region. My interest in the Pee-Dee tribe began when I was still taking classes in the doctoral program in sociology at York University, Toronto, Canada. I was very interested in the self-determination movement among the aboriginal peoples of Canada at the time. I and another graduate student had conducted an ethnographic study of a tribe in Ontario concerning their self-determination efforts through economic development. The study was also published (Haddad & Spivey, 1992). I called the Chief of the Pee-Dee tribe to ask about the possibility of conducting research on their state recognition efforts. He simply stated: “I think you should come home and help the people you grew up with!” During the 10-month period of formal fieldwork, I participated in several roles for the tribe. I was asked to help with the genealogy of tribal members and those who were applying to become members of the tribe. I was also elected as a member of the history and culture committee. These roles would become central in gathering data that would come to represent a portrait of the Pee-Dee Native American community for recognition purposes.

The Ethnographic Sites The main part of the fieldwork for the study took place in a small town of 2000 in an eastern county of South Carolina, which borders North Carolina. The town is designated in the study as simply Southtown. Unlike the expanding growth of the more urban areas of the state, Southtown is located in one of the state’s poorest rural counties. Historically located in the “Black Belt” region of the South, Southtown, as well as the surrounding county, is characterized by underdevelopment, leading some students of the region to label the black belt South as America’s third world (Billings, 1979). African Americans make up nearly 50 percent of the county’s population. However, the percentage of Native Americans living in Southtown and the surrounding county (at the time of the study) was statistically invisible. (Many people with Native American ancestry were not recognized as such, with large numbers of the Pee-Dee community having either the racial categories of “black” or “white” on their birth certificates, as well as not being fully represented as “Indian” on the census records.) At the time, however, the U.S. Census reported the population of Native Americans living within a three-county area to be under 500. The Chief of the Pee-Dee laughed at this number. The tribe now boasts over 500 tribal

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

195

members. Many of these tribal members had the racial category of “white” on their birth certificates. Since state recognition was granted, most members have changed their racial classification on their birth certificates to Native American. The majority of the research took place in Southtown and the surrounding county. Research was also conducted during two field trips to the state archives in Columbia, South Carolina. Research was also conducted in two adjacent counties. Most importantly, the fieldwork was conducted in the original community area of the Pee-Dee, as their original community area. The rural area in this study is designated as the Carolina Community. The community is a rural area characterized by large cotton fields, swamp areas, and dense pine forest. There are a few old antebellum-style homes in the area along with a larger number of old sharecropper shacks and woodened tobacco barns. The large homes are still occupied by white farmers; the sharecropping homes are occupied by Pee-Dee tribal members. The Little Pee-Dee River runs through the Carolina Community area. The Pee-Dee people claim to have journeyed down the river to this area in search of sanctuary from encroaching white settlers. As one Pee-Dee member recounted: “We’ve been pick’n cotton ever since.”

THE PREDICAMENT OF HISTORIES In this historical section, I am faced with the dearth of historical information on the Pee-Dee tribe. Furthermore, I am confronted with the exceedingly rare analytical treatment of Native American life in the southeast region of the United States. The earlier historical works on Native Americans in the region provide only brief sketches of the smaller tribes and their so-called “disappearance” during the eighteenth century (Brown, 1966; Millings, 1969). Furthermore, the early historical writing is highly descriptive and lacks any explicit analytical focus. However, relatively recent historical anthropological research has emerged which analytically resonate with the focus of my ethnographic study. For example, Blu’s (1980) historical ethnography of the Lumbee tribe in Robinson County, North Carolina (adjacent to the South Carolina site of study), with whom the Pee-Dee share many kinships ties, is considered to be the first analytically informed scholarship on the largest nonfederally recognized Native American tribe east of the Mississippi. Blu analyzed the “problem” with Lumbee racial identity to critique the traditional literature concerning race and ethnicity. The only sociological field study of the Native Americans in South Carolina is found in Brewton Berry’s well-known work, Almost White (1963). Based on ethnographic accounts of local whites and blacks on the “problematic” identity of, what Berry called, the Mestizo people of the Eastern United States, Berry’s work contributes a first glimpse of a forgotten and hidden people. However, Berry’s work falls prey to the local white construction of Native

196

MICHAEL SPIVEY

Americans in the region as desiring to be white. My Pee-Dee consultants describe this ideological standpoint among whites as their attempt to “whitewash” local Native Americans. It is obvious that Berry did not spend enough time among the people he studied and did not present his study from their point of view, but that of outsiders. However, in the 1980s and 1990s there were at least two scholars working on the Native Americans of the southeast who provided a fresh reinterpretation that corrected the “vanished” thesis. The historical and analytical studies by Merrell (1989) and Sider (1993) are highly informative and excellent examples of new historical anthropological research, which is rewriting histories from the standpoint of symbolic interaction and emergence. Utilizing the major historical and analytical literature on the Native American tribes in the southeastern United States, these scholars rearticulate an historical imagination of, as Merrell (1989) expresses it, not a world lost forever at the point of colonial contact, but a new world of fluid change and redefinition. Merrell’s work concerns the creation of the Catawba tribe in South Carolina during the colonial period, of which the Pee-Dee played a part; the work by Sider (1993), on the other hand, looks at the same historical period, yet with an emphasis on the creation of the Lumbee, which, again, concerns the history of the Pee-Dee. While both works provide an exciting and fresh perspective on the transformation of native peoples in the southeast region during the colonial period, the work by Sider considers the implications of its fresh historical insights for a deconstruction of dominant notions of what counts as Native American culture and identity, especially their codification in the regulations for Federal Recognition provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). In fact, the work by Sider provides a key to unlocking the problematic of identity among the Native peoples of the region. It is the contradictions and paradoxes invented in the colonial period, by the imposition of histories from above (the white man’s Indian), that still inform the lives of my Pee-Dee consultants and friends in the present. In order to gage an understanding of the present ethnographic context of the Pee-Dee, I will summarize the historical interpretation of the colonial context.

The Invention of the Southeast Indian The sub-heading above is not intended to be taken in a haphazard way. The colonial forces which recreated the political-economic, as well as cultural, arena of the southeastern United States, at the same time invented various Native social formations (most of this invention coming from use on the part of the dominant society as well as adaptation for survival on the part of Natives themselves), as well as cultural stereotypes which embellished the invented radical Otherness of Native Americans from white Europeans; images that helped

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

197

in legitimating the use and eventual marginalization of native peoples (Merrell, 1989; Sider, 1993). In what follows, I hope to show, in the form of an historical sketch, how the contradictory and paradoxical outcomes of the colonial context in the southeast preclude the possibility of a history of the Pee-Dee. Even if much documentation existed on the early history of the tribe, to write a standard linear history of a distinct and separate people (which is one of the requirements for formal recognition) would be to invent a “white man’s Indian,” not the social realities of the aboriginal way of life. While non-recognized Native groups in the southeast are required by the BIA to document a continuous and separate history from other groups, including whites and blacks, from contact to the present, the reality of unified and separate groups of Native peoples in the colonial southeast is the invention of European colonial forces, not the continuance of an aboriginal social form (Merrell, 1989; Sider, 1993). This is the continuing contradiction and paradox that informs the demeaning requirements for formal recognition: that one must prove, with hard historical and anthropological facts, that one’s history resonates with and supports a fantasy world of the white imagination; an imaginary which is nearly impossible to document, even for the most stereotypical Indians of the American West.

The Myth of Relatively Isolated and Unified Tribes To understand the mythological requirement that Native groups must document a history of their autonomy from other groups in their area as well as their internal political and cultural coherence, it is best to begin by looking at the mere numbers of native peoples in the southeast just before the contact period. As Sider (1993) points out, early estimates of Native peoples in the southeast bordered on the ridiculous. Anthropologist, A. L. Kroeber, estimated a population of 150,000 in the pre-contact southeast. Modern, conservative estimates place the number at 10 times that of Kroeber, at 1.5 million. “At stake,” argues Sider (1993, p. 214), “is not only the issue of aboriginal social organization but the magnitude of the European-precipitated genocide: the issue is very controversial.” The pre-contact Pee-Dee, as well as many of their neighbors, based their social organization, not on the Western notion of a tribe, but in terms of town and clan: Throughout the entire southeast, through and beyond the end of the contact period, the town and the clan were the basic units of native social life, and the emergence of confederacies which from the native perspective were confederacies of towns, not tribes, took place through an imposed and increasingly necessary transformation of the relations between native towns. (Sider, 1993, p. 214)

198

MICHAEL SPIVEY

The trade and marriage patterns between towns and clans were very complex and mobile and have yet to be fully understood. It is clear from the above sketch that as Europeans transformed the southeast for their own purposes, they also reinvented the “Indian:” not in his own image, but that of a radical Other; an Other that could be, ultimately, removed, marginalized, and denied precedence. It is also important to make clear that this invention of tribes, traditions, and all the other invented aspects of the white man’s “Indian,” were both imposed from above and chosen from below. As will be seen in the ethnographic overview to follow, such imposed images are appropriated and, in a paradoxical fashion, are strategic for finding pathways to social visibility and group identity.

The Myth of the Recognizable, Real Indian There has long been an argument in both the academy as well as the society at large over what constitutes a “real Native American.” For many years, the answer lay somewhere between notions of cultural purity and blood (Clifford, 1988). In the commonsense of the larger society, and no less so in the southeast historically and even still today, if a person claiming to be Indian did not “act like,” “speak like,” “dance like,” and, most importantly, “look like,” a real Indian they were easily dismissed. Most of this stereotypical thinking comes from images of relatively isolated, “full-blooded Indians” of the plains. A good bit of this type of essentialist thinking comes from rigid, binary thinking on the part of scholars and government officials regarding neat classification of “pure races.” From the outset, many people in western society, including some academics, would dismiss the claim on the part of such groups as the Lumbee and Pee-Dee of a Native American identity on the grounds of their “racially mixed” heritage. Sider (1993, p. xxii) deconstructs the binary opposition between the “pure blood, real Indian,” and the so-called “half-breed:” Twenty or more years ago, some anthropologists and some local whites of Robeson County said that the Lumbee had a contestable identity because they were either partly black or something that was called in professional jargon a triracial isolate. But the Seminole (a federally recognized tribe), for example, were substantially mixed with African Americans, yet few if any contested their Indian identity; moreover, a great many Indian peoples have intermarried with blacks as well as whites, many far more than did the Lumbee [or Pee-Dee], without calling their identity as Indian people into question. How did Lumbee history differ from the history of other Native Americans so as to make their Indian identity an issue?

The answer lay, again, in the ways Native peoples in the southeast had been used by colonial powers. In sum, by 1750, the constantly migrating native societies in the Carolinas began to splinter and recombine with each other. Some of the recombining groups eventually became the Confederacies that were created and sustained by the colonial governments. However, there were many other fragments of native peoples who, out of the immediate need to survive, hid in

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

199

the “no-man’s-land” border regions between states, such as North and South Carolina. Like the Seminole in Florida, the Catawba tribe of South Carolina became the recognized confederacy. They became a political and economic tool in the hands of the colonial powers: providing pelts for the skin trade, taking slaves, and making war with other native peoples seen as enemies of the colonies. In the end, these created tribes became the formally recognized tribes by the federal government. The many fragments of the smaller native societies, like the Pee-Dee, moved into the swamp areas between colonies; land that was of little use to the colonies and in which the Native peoples could become “invisible” (Merrell, 1989). It is from this profound and paradoxical invisibility that the following ethnographic descriptions attempt to evoke. I write from a first-person point of view to highlight the interactive quality of my collaboration with the Chief of the Pee-Dee tribe and members of the tribal council, as we struggle to interpret a form of cultural “visibility” that would provide the “best evidence” for gaining formal state recognition.

INVISIBILITY My wife, children, and I had moved back into my childhood home in Southtown. The Pee-Dee Tribal Center was just two blocks away. I always drove to the Center as I would need a car to run errands for the Chief and his two secretaries and to meet tribal interviewees at their homes in the countryside. The Chief provided a small cubicle within his office as my work site while at the Center. I was greeted at the door of the Center by Bobbie, one of the secretaries. She took me to the Chief’s office and he greeted me with a smile and an embrace. We had attended school together from elementary school through high school. This was the first time I had seen the Chief in years. I left my hometown many years earlier, eventually entering a university in South Carolina and later in Michigan and Toronto, Canada, for my undergraduate and graduate degrees in sociology. The Chief is a very large-framed man, with broad shoulders, a very handsome face, and soulful eyes. He is thoughtful and, at times, quiet. He is also a careful person, streetwise and pragmatic. He informed me that he and members of the tribal committee were not always in agreement about what historical information was important to document for recognition efforts. We talked at length concerning the lack of historical information. He also admitted that the state’s recognition requirements seemed unreasonable in its requests. “This is where we want your help. We do not understand exactly what we need to provide in order to be recognized,” stated the Chief. He looked up at me from his desk with an ironic half-grin on his face and, holding the state recognition

200

MICHAEL SPIVEY

requirements out toward me, said, “Why do we have to worry about all this crap! We are the only people that have to document who we are in order for people to recognize us as Indians! They don’t do this to white people! We are modern Indians! But they want to see the feathers and drums and bows and arrows, see what I mean? Are white people today just like they were five hundred years ago? It’s all just to frustrate us and slow us down!” The Chief handed over the document and asked me to study it so that we would work closely together to begin the documentation. He also told me that there would be a meeting held with the tribal council to discuss my role and my research. Later that evening after giving the recognition document a quick read through, I was reminded of the ironic words from cultural anthropologist, James Clifford (1988, p. 16): “More than a few extinct peoples returned to haunt the Western historical imagination.” I spent most of my time that first month at the tribal center. Like most budding ethnographers, I was experiencing confusion and a bit of reentry culture shock. The informal relations I had growing up with the tribal members in Southtown’s local school were hard to reestablish for me. While growing up, most of my consultants/friends did not openly talk about being “Indian” or being of color. Ironically, in my first six years of schooling, Southtown’s school was segregated and every student, under the law of segregation, had to be “white” in order to attend the school. However, from my surviving class photos from elementary school, there are very few so-called “white” students in the class. Reflecting the hidden history going back to colonial times, the students of color in the classes were made invisible under the ideology of the “whitewash!” The state of South Carolina did not even have a racial category for “Indians!” As the Chief put it: When my family first moved to [Southtown], my brothers and sisters and I were very afraid. The only white people we really knew were the white farmers out in Carolina Community. I remember going up town with my brothers and sisters. The white people in the stores would stare at us! They would ask us what our last names were. When we told them, they would look at us funny and act better than we were. I was petrified when I entered the first grade! I had dark skin and my hair looked different. But, we were told that we were white people! I know that I was not white! I just didn’t understand! My mother and father said that we had to keep quiet about our race.

From interviewing a number of students among the Pee-Dee, it was obvious that not all Pee-Dee students were granted the “whitewash.” Based on the judgment by local school officials, brothers and sisters from a Pee-Dee family who were deemed to be “too dark” had to attend the black school. Even after desegregation in the school system, Native American students were denied their identity. Bill is a member of the tribal council. He recounts a harrowing tale of racial denial: We are tired of being tokens for whites and blacks! I ran track and was on the football team, and to the rest of the boys, white and black, I was their token. It was an education, but

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

201

education with lots of pain! Teachers would tell all the whites to stand up for roll call, then all the blacks. When I did not stand up either time, they would say, “Well, why didn’t you stand up?” I would say, “You did not ask Indians to stand up!” And the teachers would say, “You are suppose to stand up with the whites!” “But, I’m not white!” That’s what I would tell them. All the forms always had blanks for “white” and “black,” but never anything for Indians. I always turned the forms in blank. I guess I didn’t exist, if you can believe that teacher! It is the same problem for all of us! A teacher told me one time that I was not recognized as an Indian in South Carolina, and if I wanted to be counted, I had to check the “white” blank!

There were several points during the time of the research when I interviewed a few white people in the community regarding the identity of the Pee-Dee. As a local retired adult educator put it: Most people who were curious about my work did not believe there were Indians in the county! When you tell them you taught Pee-Dee Indians at an adult education center, they want to know three things: do they look like “real” Indians? Do they live on a reservation? And do they dance? They are Indians, if you ask me, because they think of themselves as Indians! The whites around here refuse to believe it, or just turn a deaf ear to the fact that Indians do live in South Carolina!

Before entering the field of study, my primary theoretical interest, which would become my analytical chapter in my dissertation, centered on the linkage between symbolic interactionism and critical forms of postmodernist thought (Balsamo, 1989; Denzin, 1990; Farberman, 1991). The case of the Pee-Dee tribe was ideal for an exploration of this theoretical linkage. My first two months into the field study, however, were marked by disappointment on my part and anger and frustration, at times, on the part of the Chief concerning the lack of historical information linking the modern Pee-Dee tribe with the aboriginal tribe. During this period, I turned to two theories within the symbolic interactionist tradition that seemed to work as sensitizing concepts that helped to organize my observations, which, many times, seemed contradictory and paradoxical: grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1999) and dramaturgy (Goffman, 1959). Early on in the research I had decided that I needed to use the grounded theory method of allowing the data to dictate the development of theoretical categories around which to make sense of emerging data. The two overarching concerns on the part of the tribal leadership were that of “invisibility” and “visibility.” These two grounded concepts became sensitizing categories from which I would be able to analyze their relationship as the Pee-Dee leadership continued their emergent quest for forms of visibility that would somehow articulate with their invisibility in terms of history, culture, and identity. I had also come to realize a rift between their actual, if hidden, perception of their “Indianness” and their public displays, which, for the most part, were based on generic and stereotypical forms of Native American dress and symbols. With this general conceptual framework in mind, our collaborative efforts really began in earnest. Informally, the Chief and I would sit down together

202

MICHAEL SPIVEY

once or twice a week for an hour or two and discuss the information we were gathering and the meanings of such information for recognition purposes. Twice a month, the Chief and I would meet with three of the tribal council members who were involved in the history and culture committee: Hennings, Mike, and Denise. The conversations were recorded and kept in the tribal office archives. One of the most insightful conversations we had concerned the types and meanings of invisibility. We came up with two paradoxical meanings for invisibility. One type of invisibility was imposed on the tribe. This type was interpreted by the group as negative in nature. The most obvious forms included the colonial period when the tribes were fragmented, along with the experience of ethnocide and death for tribal peoples in the region. In recent times, there exists the negative invisibility caused by poverty due to racism, unemployment, and lack of education. There are also issues revolving around a lack of college educated members, high crime rates, and drug and alcohol abuse among tribal members. Also, most important in the discussions was the invisibility in terms of the lack of knowledge about tribal culture and history, both on the part of members of the tribe and that of the local community. However, in our conversations, we also articulated a positive aspect of invisibility. This positive aspect acted as a metaphorical weapon for tribal survival. One of the nagging questions put forth by state government officials and local authorities concerned the timing of making claims publically that the tribe existed and needed formal recognition. Going back to Sider’s (1993) analysis of the breakup of the tribes during the colonial period, tribal peoples, like the Pee-Dee, were moving in to isolated border zones between North and South Carolina and, in effect, developing an invisible way of life in order to survive. This pattern of making oneself “invisible” racially and culturally continued on into modern times and still continues, relatively speaking, in the present. For example, most of the Pee-Dee people still live in the rural Carolina Community area, which is basically pine forest, swamp land, and farming land. Even some of the local whites were accommodating Pee-Dee invisibility by allowing children to enter into the local segregated “white only” school system. Southtown historically thrived as a cotton mill town, with two cotton mills that operated 24 hours a day. The cotton mills were also segregated but, locally, some PeeDee people left the nearby Carolina Community and moved into the back streets of the mill villages to work in the mills. As a third ethnic group in a binary racial system, many of the tribal members wanted to gain advantages economically and educationally for their families. As many of the people I interviewed stated: “We went along to get along. We didn’t talk about being Indian.” The other major concept, visibility, was ambiguous, contradictory, and paradoxical. The arguments and agreements we made on this topic would be all important in filing for state recognition.

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

203

VISIBILITY How do people become visible again after being invisible since the contact period? How do people seemingly without history suddenly have a history? How does an ethnic group who have been denied their identity since contact, and who either hid their own identity or “forgot” about it, suddenly have an identity? These questions were stark reminders, especially for state recognition, that finding the answers would come neither neatly nor literally. I had already come to the conclusion that the best chance, and the best evidence, for state recognition lay in an interpretive process, through our collaborative discussions of field data we were collecting that would evoke an imagined community (Anderson, 1983). In this case, “imaginary” does not mean “made up.” Just before leaving Toronto for the study, I had the good fortune to read Paul Atkinson’s (1990) innovative book, The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Constructions of Reality. I found the work to be the best methods book (though not intended to be) on doing ethnography that I had read so far in my review of the literature. The book gave me insights into the literary aspects of writing ethnography. Ethnographic writing can evoke in the minds of the readers a cultural way of life, or can textually construct through articulating the data with certain images or meanings in a way that provides evocation of, in our case, Native American community. At this point, however, I did not share these ideas with the group. I had an opportunity to discuss this seemingly unique research situation with another field researcher who had several years of experience working with small, non-state-recognized tribes in North Carolina.

Dialogue with a Second Observer/Interpreter Through my research I read about Larry’s work with non-recognized tribes in North Carolina. I gave him a call and we arranged a day to spend together in the field. We met early one morning at a local gas station in Southtown. I noticed a brand new pickup truck as I pulled in at the station. Larry asked right away if I would be willing to spend the day with him on a trip into the “Sand Hills” area in South Carolina, which was about 18 miles from Southtown. The Sand Hills were actually the ancient sand dunes when the ocean covered most of the state. I was delighted to have the chance to speak with someone who was doing “nuts and bolts” research on non-recognized tribes. Larry and I climbed into his large pickup. On the front of the cab, I noticed a 35 mm camera and a large map that had been color-coded. Larry describes himself as an “independent researcher.” He is a large, heavyset man in his early thirties. He sported a large brimmed felt hat and dark sunglasses. A photograph in his truck’s visor shows him with a large lance in his hands standing next to a dead wild boar. “I hunt

204

MICHAEL SPIVEY

wild boar in North Carolina. I use a lance instead of the gun. When the boar is right on top of you, you shove the lance into them!” “Not me!” I replied. “Well I carry a pistol on my side just in case I have trouble!” Larry said. While driving to the Sand Hills area, Larry told me that he was a member of a Native American tribe in Maryland where he grew up. His mother is Native American and his father is of Irish decent. Larry earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Larry’s research on a small Native American tribe in North Carolina was central in helping the tribe obtain state recognition. The following snippets of dialogue were recorded while we were on the road: M.S.: We have been talking about the problems or dilemmas associated with methodology when researching Native American groups in the region, especially for recognition purposes. Larry: One day I want to write a paper on this. You see, the government expects a straightforward, factual account of the continuous history of such groups from early contact or no later than the early 1800s. Now, that is a big problem! Because that is not the history for groups in the southeast! We can say that these people just vanished. But it is much more complex than that. That hidden history has not been written and the usual methods for studying it just don’t work out! The BIA people know this and they are already considering relaxing some of the regulations. M.S.: So, what type of approach do you use? Larry: Well, first you have to go through all that frustration and admit that conventional ways of just looking for continuous historical “facts” will lead you to a dead end! The documentary evidence is very fragmented or not there at all! Some of your people will identify as Indian and others will not, or some will give different tribal names that they feel attached to historically. Some of your people stay in their historical communities, while many others are on the move! The histories in this area have always been that of blending and movement. A good example of that is the Lumbee tribe. While you have nearly forty thousand Lumbees living in their home county of Robeson [N.C.], you have a large community of Lumbees living in Detroit and another in Baltimore! Now, what will the BIA make of that? So, if you start out with the BIA regulations for recognition as something literal in your mind, then, yes! You have all the evidence before you that these people just vanished! M.S.: So, are you saying that it is not the facts so much as your ability to use the data at hand in order to connect with the connotations associated with dominant notions of “Indian community and culture?” Larry: Yes, that’s it! You don’t fight them, you accommodate them. But, the funny part of it is that every time they take the evidence as “good evidence,” I think they accommodate us too! It makes them question their position a little and hopefully will get them to relax their requirements in the future. You see, it’s all political! It’s not just plain “history” and “facts,” it’s a tug of war over two interpretations of history; two different paths. It’s a political game with some people having a lot to lose or gain! Listen, this is what you need to do for your people. You need to locate their grouping in a geographical area; relocate their community. Next, locate possible churches and, even better, a school. If you have this type of organization in the community, it really makes for strong evidence for the BIA, and for state recognition! Genealogical evidence can show close kinship ties within the community. If you have all this, you’re well on your way!

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

205

We were nearing the South Carolina township of Cheraw. Cheraw township is named after the historical tribe that settled and lived in the area. We spent a day in the isolated areas of the Sand Hills. In this region of dense woodlands and rolling hills, one could imagine how mixed groups of Native Americans, as well as runaway slaves, could find sanctuary. During the day, Larry and I located several “Indian” churches and old graveyards. We spent a lot of time walking through the gravesites. What was most impressive were the large numbers of Pee-Dee surnames on the headstones. A good number of graves dated back to the late 1860s and 1870s. In this hilly and isolated region, the Native Americans did not have a tribal organization for the Cheraws, even though the large Lumbee tribe and many of the Pee-Dee were once among them. Still living in this isolated region from colonial times, it seems that many of the “Indian” peoples here do not outwardly proclaim a Native American identity. I think Larry had an accurate summation of the situation. We stood silently together for a while looking over the rolling hills from a large graveyard atop one of the sand hills. I could tell that Larry was in deep thought. Still gazing over the hills, he spoke softly: You know, these people have been silent for so long. They’ve been silent about their identity because, historically, they did it just to survive. It’s real funny, you know. I mean, all these Indian people have survived together, and they still all come to this church every Sunday and still live up here together. But, I bet you that they don’t identify as Indian, even among themselves for many of them! Or, if they do, they would never tell you or me! That silence has gone on for so long that to say it is not needed anymore. But they still belong together! They recognize themselves in how they live! It all goes without saying, I guess.

At The Crossroads I’m leaving evidence and you got to leave evidence too. And your children got to leave evidence. And when it comes time to hold up the evidence, we got to leave evidence to hold up against them. They can burn the papers but they can’t burn conscience. And that is what makes the evidence. And that’s what makes the verdict. (Jones, 1976)

After my discussions with Larry, I felt confident that we needed to shift our focus from the chase after historical fragments, most of which did not exist, to the never-before documentation of the Pee-Dees living history in Carolina Community. This would not be a simple matter. I had observed that the PeeDee leadership were doing what they could to accommodate the dominant requests in a very literal way. For example, for weeks we searched for deeds or treaties that possibly still existed that the Pee-Dee could claim as a homeland, going back to the original tribe. There were none to be found and the archivists at the state archive insisted that none existed. One archivist even stated, to the face of the Chief of the Pee-Dee, that the Pee-Dee tribe vanished in 1750! The leadership had accommodated the dominant requests, in terms of culture,

206

MICHAEL SPIVEY

by incorporating very generic and stereotypical Native American costumes, jewelry, a large western-style Tee-Pee, as well as forms of music and dance. This was expressed by the Chief publically on several occasions! For example, at a formal meeting with county officials the Chief stated: “If I come in here (officials had just been questioning if the Chief and council were really Indians) like I am today, dressed like the rest of you in modern cloths, you would think that I am not a real Indian. But if I come in here with my feathers on and beating on a drum and whooping it up, you would think I was a real Indian! That’s the Hollywood Indian that white folks want to see!” The Chief had explained to me that they used the generic, “Hollywood” Native American cultural practices and artifacts because it helped to convince local whites and blacks that they were serious about being Native American. The Chief and the tribal council were aware of the contradictions surrounding the issue. I realized that the tribal leadership were using a form of critical dramaturgy to help bolster the local community support for their recognition purposes. Yet, it seemed that their real, “hidden” history that had been lived out in the Carolina Community, the history of silence that made it possible for their community to survive, was, in a way, compromised if loudly proclaimed to the outside world. This real, living Native American culture was based on oral form and had never been documented.

Changing Course I first presented my ideas to the Chief. If he agreed we could then approach the others on the tribal council to get the future course of the research accepted. I presented to the Chief an overview of my conversations with Larry. I needed to provide some evidence to the Chief that the formal recognition requirements for state recognition were flexible to a certain extent and that an oral history of the Carolina Community could provide the best evidence for their tribal claims. For example, a letter written by the BIA to the Hatteras Tuscarora, a faction of the Lumbee, expresses this flexible position (Sider, 1993, p. 255): For acknowledgement purposes a tribe must be a formal group and not a collection of individuals. The group must be able to trace a tribal history and not just the history of particular individuals. Please provide a comprehensive description of the current community. Include information and any documentation you might have to demonstrate how the group maintains its social cohesion or unity. Are there for example, periodic (annual, semi-annual or quarterly) events which bring members together? If so, describe them. Perhaps your group’s cohesiveness resides in kinship ties and social events such as weddings, funerals, church, etc.

It was this area of the formal recognition requirements that we certainly had the best evidence, and it existed in the oral history of the Carolina Community. The Chief and I discussed what we had to work with in the rural community. We had two Pee-Dee churches and, fortunately, a rather famous two-room

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

207

school, which was rare among other non-recognized tribes in the state. The genealogical record could show close kinship ties going back for over a hundred-year period. Cultural connotations of group solidarity and an informal sharing economy could be demonstrated through annual events such as their hog-killing event where tribal members would share the meat with everyone in the community. This practice still continues today. In October each year, male members of the tribe continue a tradition of hunting deer and distributing deer meat, other food items like canned goods, and gifts for the children during the week of Christmas. I participated in the distribution. The women in the community still play a major role in the tribe. They still prepare food together for large gatherings, such as weddings, funerals, and now the annual Pow-Wow (in fact, the present Chief of the Pee-Dee is female). The women also have a quiltmaking club, which has a long history in the tribe. Talking together about all the potential information really excited us both! We put all this information together in paper form and handed it out to the tribal council two days later. After an hour of presenting to the tribal council our ideas about researching and completing the recognition document, and after a productive discussion among tribal council members, it was officially agreed upon to start with the oral history project of the Carolina Community. We had nearly six months left to do all the research, including recorded oral histories of community life, especially of the two-room segregated school with several generations of students. It took a few weeks to get everyone assigned to various tasks to help get the work done. Because I felt that the oral history of the school was of primary importance, as a Native American institution, I gave most of my time to this aspect of the research.

CONCLUSION The research project was completed by the end of the ninth month. During the last month, the community description was written by myself. The Chief and the tribal council read and edited the document before we submitted the petition for state recognition. We were satisfied that the description of the community truly showed cultural cohesiveness, as well as providing a convincing case for an institutionally based and organized way of life as far back as one hundred years. The oral history of the community school was very successful and, in my opinion, played a central role in gaining state recognition. The school opened very early in the twentieth century and remained open until 1970, when it was forced closed due to the civil rights desegregation laws. Beginning in 1934, the school’s head teacher, Mr. Brayboy, taught generations of Pee-Dee students at the school until its closing. He was originally from Pembroke, North Carolina, and was a member of the Lumbee tribe. Ironically, he had married his wife,

208

MICHAEL SPIVEY

who was white, in Robeson County. North Carolina had a law forbidding marriage across racial lines. Mr. Brayboy and his wife moved to the Carolina Community before they were to appear in court in Robeson County and their marriage dissolved. In South Carolina, because there was no category for Native Americans as a racial group, marriage was allowed. We advertised in local newspapers that we were researching the “Brayboy” school and needed volunteers from former students to come forward to be interviewed. We had an outpouring of tribal members who had attended the school, as well as their children. The combined interviews gave us a wonderful picture of everyday life in a Native American sharecropping community. The interviews also revealed that the teacher encouraged their Native American identity and taught them the history of Native American life in the region. It was former students who, after the school’s closing in 1970, became the first tribal members to organize themselves for the pursuit of state recognition. Mr. Brayboy is legendary in the region for his work among the impoverished Pee-Dee students in Carolina Community. In fact, in 1969, he was voted Teacher of the Year in South Carolina. In the same year, he won second runner up in the national competition for Teacher of the Year. An investigative report was published in one of the nation’s leading popular magazines in 1969, exposing the reality of an “Indian school” among the Pee-Dee and the plight of their community. Mr. Brayboy was honored for his many decades of selfless work within the community.

STATE RECOGNITION AND BEYOND The Uncountable distance that sweeps through our hands, the first Prayers in the morning. It is this that I believe in. Sun over the Horizon, a sweating yellow force, our continuance. (Green, 1995, p. 554)

In July 1995, my role, for the time being, came to an end. The forms for state recognition had been submitted. Yet the process can potentially take many years before a decision is made. On January 27, 2006, the Pee-Dee tribe achieved state recognition. There have been many positive benefits in gaining state recognition. My post-state recognition research shows that the identity of the Pee-Dee as a Native American tribe is now widely accepted. Recently, a community dentist, who is white, donated a large area of land for the Pee-Dee tribe to use as their tribal grounds. They are now a strong voice in the community area. My interviews with Pee-Dee high school students show that the students have a stronger sense of ethnic identity and they report that their Native American identity is recognized by many white and black students. Education beyond high school has increased and there are some professionals among the tribal members. Economically, however, state support is still lacking. The tribe is financed

Public Sociology and Symbolic Interactionism

209

mainly through donations. It is in this area of concern that I continue my research and collaboration with the Pee-Dee and other tribes of the state. After finishing my Ph.D. in Sociology in 1998, I was fortunate to begin my career at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, located in Robeson County, North Carolina, and the home of the Lumbee tribe. I teach in both the sociology department and in the Department of American Indian Studies. My dissertation was published as a book and helped contribute to the public recognition of the Pee-Dee as well as other tribes in the state (Spivey, 2000). A colleague and I, in conjunction with the newly state-recognized tribes of South Carolina, and the Indian Affairs Committee of the state, began a visual ethnography project in 2012. The project’s mission is to provide an introduction to each tribe for the continuing goal of promoting public awareness of their existence and history. Our first documentary covered the Waccamaw Tribe of South Carolina (Spivey & Knick, 2013). Finally, the case study of the Pee-Dee tribe offers one example of how a critical symbolic interactionism can contribute to a successful public sociology. I think that SI is particularly well suited when the solution to social problems or issues involves meaning-making. This is especially true when marginalized groups are in a struggle over meanings. Symbolic interactionists have the conceptual tools and insights to effectively collaborate and participate with the groups they are researching to help in “defining the situation” strategically to promote a successful outcome for the goals that the group is seeking.

REFERENCES Agee, J., & Evens, W. (1960). Let us now praise famous men: Three tenant families. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. New York, NY: Verso. Atkinson, P. (1990). The ethnographic imagination: Textual constructions of reality. London: Routledge. Balsamo, A. (1989). Imagining cyborgs: Postmodernism and symbolic interactionism. Symbolic Interaction, 10, 369 379. Berry, B. (1963). Almost white. New York, NY: Macmillan. Billings, D. B. (1979). Planters and the making of a “new south”: Class, politics, and development in North Carolina 1865 1900. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Blu, K. (1980). The Lumbee problem: The making of an American Indian people. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Brown, D. S. (1966). The Catawba Indians: The people of the river. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Clifford, J. (1988). The predicament of culture: Twentieth century ethnography, literature, and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Denzin, N. K. (1990). The spaces of postmodernism: Reading Plummer on Blumer. Symbolic Interaction, 13, 145 154. Farberman, H. A. (1991). Symbolic interaction and post-modernism: Close encounter of a dubious kind. Symbolic Interaction, 14, 471 488.

210

MICHAEL SPIVEY

Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1999). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction Publishers. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York, NY: Ancor Press. Green, R. (1995). Culture and gender in Indian America. In M. Anderson & P. Collins (Eds.), Race, class, and gender: An anthology (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Haddad, T., & Spivey, M. (1992). All or nothing: Modernization, dependency and wage labour on a reserve in Canada. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 12(2), 204 228. Jones, G. (1976). Corregidora. Westminster, MD: Random House. Merrell, J. H. (1989). The Indians’ new world: Catawbas and their neighbors from European contact through the era of removal. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina. Milling, C. (1969). Red Carolinians. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina. Sider, G. (1993). Lumbee Indian histories: Race, ethnicity, and Indian identity in the southern United States. New York, NY: Cambridge. Spivey, M. (2000). Native Americans in the Carolina borderlands: A critical ethnography. Southern Pines, NC: Carolinas Press. Spivey, M. (Producer/Editor), & Knick, S. (Producer/Director/Editor). (2013). The Waccamaw People of South Carolina [Motion picture]. Pembroke, NC: The Native American Resource Center, University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Spivey, R. M. (1998). Identity politics of a southern tribe: A critical ethnography. Doctoral dissertation. Toronto: York University.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Bryant Keith Alexander, PhD, is Professor of Communication, Culture and Performance Studies. He serves as Dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University. His essays appear in a wide range of journals and in volumes such as the Handbook of Performance Studies, Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, Handbook of Communication and Instruction, Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, two editions of the Handbook of Qualitative Inquiry, and the Handbook of Autoethnography. His research circulates around commitments to diversity and critical analysis of the performance of race, culture, gender and institutional politics as evidenced in his three published books: Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity (Erlbaum Press, 2005 edited with education scholars Gary L. Anderson and Bernardo P. Gallegos), Performing Black Masculinity: Race, Culture, and Queer Identity (Alta Mira, 2006), The Performative Sustainability of Race: Reflections on Black Culture and the Politics of Identity (Peter Lang, 2012) and his forthcoming book Storying the Educational Self: Autocritography, Critical Film Pedagogy and the Imagined Classroom. Jasmine Armstrong is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology in the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy at the Florida State University. Her research examines the experiences of black men in higher education, studying their academic and social development on predominantly white institutions through involvement in student organizations such as Greek letter organizations. Laura L. Cochrane, PhD, is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Cultural and Global Studies at Central Michigan University. She teaches topics within the anthropology of religion, ethnographic methods, linguistic anthropology, and African studies. Her longitudinal research in Senegal concerns faith-based local economic development and artisanal production in the contexts of economic challenges and environmental shifts. She is the author of Weaving through Islam in Senegal (2012) and has published articles in both Anthropology and African Studies journals. She is currently completing a book manuscript, “Everyday Faith in Sufi Senegal”, based on life histories of faith. Jillian Crocker is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York Old Westbury. Her research examines issues of agency and group solidarity at the intersections of communities, work, and families, with particular interests in practices of everyday resistance and the politics of caring labor. In 211

212

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

other work, she has analyzed gendered patterns in collective bargaining agreements. She received a PhD in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Brandon A. Jackson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, as well as the African and African American Studies Program, at the University of Arkansas. His research examines emerging adulthood among black men, and has won awards from the Association of Black Sociologists, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He is currently preparing a book manuscript titled “Brotherhood University: Black Men and Social Mobility on a College Campus.” Gil Richard Musolf is Professor of Sociology at Central Michigan University. He has published in a variety of journals, including Symbolic Interaction, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, The Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Contemporary Justice Review, The Social Science Journal, Sociological Inquiry, Sociological Focus, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, and chapters in handbooks and texts. His book, Structure and Agency in Everyday Life: An Introduction to Social Psychology, is in its second edition. Taylor Price recently graduated with his MA in Sociology from Lakehead University, Canada, and is now a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Taylor’s research has been broadly focused on the sociology of scientific knowledge and the sociology of culture. His work explores the experiences of open access journal editors as they attempt to sustain non-profit alternatives of academic publishing while simultaneously competing in academic fields where they have lower levels of social capital, economic capital, and prestige. He has forthcoming publications related to online qualitative interviewing techniques, as well as the new potentials and implications of open access publishing. Antony Puddephatt is Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology at Lakehead University. He is interested in the social theory of George Herbert Mead, as it relates to science and technology studies, environmental sociology, global social work practice, and modern theories about language, thought, and social action. Antony has also studied the organizational culture of competitive chess, and considered ways to improve theorizing in ethnographic research. Antony has also written about Sociology in Canada, as well as the open-access movement in Canada. He is looking forward to the publication of his new co-edited book, with Bradley H. Brewster, titled Microsociological Perspectives for Environmental Sociology (Routledge, 2017). Michael Spivey is a native of South Carolina. He received his B.S. and M.A. degrees in sociology from Central Michigan University. He earned his PhD in sociology from York University, Toronto, Canada in 1998. While a graduate student at York University, Michael conducted ethnographic research on industrial

About the Authors

213

development and culture clash on an aboriginal reservation in Ontario. He has published research on the now state-recognized Native American tribes in South Carolina. He is currently a co-producer and co-editor of a visual ethnographic series concerning the state-recognized tribes in South Carolina. The series is a collaborative effort with the state-recognized tribes and the South Carolina Committee on Indian Affairs. Michael is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice and a faculty member of the American Indian Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. His areas of interest include sociological theory, critical interactionism, social psychology, and race, gender, and class. Jill Taft-Kaufman (PhD, Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley) is Professor of Communication and Dramatic Arts at Central Michigan University. Her publications include work in Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre Topics, Communication Education, Southern Communication Journal, Central States Communication Journal, American Journal of Communication, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, Liminalities, Rhetorical Dimensions in Media, The Future of Performance Studies, and Speech Communication in the 20th Century. Her essay on “Other Ways: Postmodernism and Performance Praxis” won the Rose Johnson Award for best journal article in the Southern Communication Journal. Her most recent publication was a personal reflection on “A Berkeley Spring, 1969” in Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ‘60s & 70s. She has been an associate editor for TPQ, QJS, and advisory editor and reader for journals such as The Rhetoric Society Quarterly. She specializes in adapting and directing of narratives, poetry, and drama. She has won the Central Michigan University Award for Teaching Excellence and the Central Michigan University Honors Program Professor of the Year Award. Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She discovered a love for the study of time while engaged in research on the sociology of walls. The mundane and the taken-forgranted hold a special place for her as uniquely interesting objects of study. Among other journals, she has published in The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Symbolic Interaction, American Behavioral Scientist, and Sociology Compass. She is an associate editor for The Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics and serves as treasurer for The Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. James A. Vela-McConnell has been teaching at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota since the fall of 1997. He received his Master’s and Doctorate degrees at Boston College and his Bachelor’s from Loyola University, New Orleans. His areas of specialization include social psychology, social inequality, and qualitative research methodology. In addition, he teaches courses focusing on social problems, violence, and mental illness. Past research centers on the sociology of friendship, social affinity, and social cohesion. In

214

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

addition to presenting at regional and national sociology conferences, James has been an invited speaker for the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, the Shelter from Hate Conference, and the Tough Faith for Tough Times Conference on Justice, Peace, and Reconciliation in Minneapolis. For more information, visit his website at jamesvelamcconnell.org

INDEX Academic publication norms, challenging, 111 112 Afrocentrism, 12 Agency, 4, 13, 15, 119, 133, 157 173 navigating, 167 168 Alignments, 89 American Dream, 3, 15 Antidiscrimination, 14 Audience(s) barriers to open access publishing, resisting, 107 109 as spect-actor, 75 76 Autocritography, 51 67 Autonomous individual, 4

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 196, 197, 206 Campus hostilities, 177 178 Canada open access scholarly publishing in, 95 113 Canon law, 35 36 Capital financial, 3 human, 3 symbolic, 3 social, 3, 13, 101, 158 cultural, 3, 13, 101 Capitalism, 5 Capitalist profit motives, resisting, 106 107 Cardinal Law of Boston, 35, 38 Care work, 161 Catholic Church, 19 23, 36, 39 43, 45, 46n1 secrecy and discreditable, 31 34 sexual abuse and organizational secrecy within, 27 30 Chamber Theatre. See Narrative theatre Chartism, 14 Chicago Goodman Theatre, 74 Childhood slave labor, 2 Choral narrative strategies, 87 88 Cisse, Soxna Aı¨ ssa, 129 Civil rights, 14 Civil Rights Movement, 177 Class, 2, 3 conflict, 5

Bamba, Shaykh Amadu, 121 Berlin Declaration, 102 Berry, Jason, 21 Bethesda Statement, The, 102 Bifurcation, 84 87 Biopsychosocial approach, 71 Bishop, role of, 34 35 Black community, 182 185 Black feminist thought, 12 Black Greek letter fraternities (BGLFs), 176, 177, 179 188 Black Lives Matter movement, 2 Black men, 175 188 Blumerian interactionism, 97, 98 Boal, Augusto, 75 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 13 Budapest Initiative, The, 102 Bureaucracy, 3

215

216

exploitation, 6 8, 16n3 Clergy malfeasance, 22 Clericalism, 20, 37 Clock-time, 145 154 Code of Canon Law 1917, 35 Coerced secrecy, 33, 42 Collaborative research, 192, 193, 201, 203 Collaborative storytelling, 72, 75, 78 College, 175 188 Colonial occupation, 120 123 Color, 56 57 Community, 117 134 Community-based organizations (CBOs), 119, 126, 127, 133 Community structures, as resistance, 131 134 Comparative case analysis, 28 Complicit secrecy, 32, 42 Concealment, 24 25 Consciousness, 16 critical, 15 double, 11 false, 11 social, 11 Conservatives, 4 Constraint at work, 157 173 Constructivist grounded theory, 104 Contributors barriers to open access publishing, resisting, 109 111 Control of discrediting information, 25 27 Corporeal metaphors, 77, 78 Creative collaboration with others, discovering metaphors of self through, 76 78 Crenshaw, Kimberle´, 8 Criminal justice system, 6, 10 Critical consciousness, 15 critical ethnography, 192, 194 196, 198 200, 203, 209 Critical Race Theory, 12 Critical reflexivity, 52, 53

INDEX

Crow, Jim, 9 Cultural capital, 3, 13, 101 Cyclical time, 142 Dangerous Minds, 54 57 Darwinism, 11 Declaration of Sentiments, 12 Delusion superiority, 8 Denial of human rights, 2 Development, 118, 119, 123, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132 134 Diouf, Abdou, 125 Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), 104 Discrimination, 2 Distributive justice, 2 3 Domination, 98, 99 Double consciousness, 11 DuBois, W. E. B., 11 Due process, 2 Dyadic relationships, stigmatized, 25 26 Ecological theory, 98 Economic liberalism, 126 Emergence, 96, 97, 99 103, 113 Empathy, 11 Empowerment, 40 46 Enlisted secrecy, 33 34 Epistemological emancipation, 12 13 Epistemological imperialism, 11 12, 15 Equality, 15 Everyday resistance, 160, 161, 164 166, 170, 171, 176 179, 188 Extended rationality, 96, 100, 102, 103, 105, 111, 113 Fall, Shaykh Ibra, 130 False consciousness, 11 Feminism, 12, 14

217

Index

Films on education, 56, 65 Financial capital, 3 First Amendment, 35 Foolishness, 158 160 Fragmentation versus wholeness, 84 Fraternities, 175 188 Freeman, Morgan, 57 French Republican Calendar, 138, 139 Gay liberation, 14 Gender, 2, 52 Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, A (documentary), 10 Great Debaters, The, 60 67 Great Migration, 9 Groupement d’Inte´reˆt Economique (GIE, Group of Economic Interest), 128 Group Performance of Literature. See Narrative theatre Health, defined, 71 Homophobia, 8 Human capital, 3 Hunting Ground, The (documentary), 10 Identity, 11 Income inequality, 2, 16n3 Indigenous organizations, 118 Indigenous social structures, 118 Individualism, 4, 15 Inequality, 2 Inequity(ies), 2 Information management, 20, 23 25 Interactionism Blumerian, 97, 98 radical, 96 98, 103, 104, 113 symbolic, 96 98, 104, 192, 193, 196, 201, 209

International Monetary Fund, 125, 133 Internet, 100 103, 109, 112 Intersectionality, 8 Inuit, 138, 140 146, 150, 153 Inuit time, 138, 141, 144, 147, 150, 154 ISIS, 10 Joob, Lat Joor, 121 Justice distributive, 2 3 Juvenile delinquency, 6 Knowledge dissemination, 102 Knowledge production, 103 Lac Rose (Pink Lake), 127 129, 131 Management Commission, 128, 129, 132, 134 Lateness, 145 Leadership development, 185 187 Lead time, 140 Lean on Me, 57 60 Legal-rational authority, 3 Lennon, John, 4 Liberation theology, 14 Linear time, 142 Looking-glass self, 11 Male supremacy, 8, 10 11 Manifesto of the Communist Party, 12 Marx, Karl, 4, 5, 12, 14 Mbow, Se¨rin˜ Babacar, 129 Mentoring, 175 188 Meta-power, 97 “Mirror, The,”, 80 82 Moral authority, 20 Motivation, 11 success through, 180 182 Narrative, as tool for patients, 71 73 Narrative ethics, 76

218

Narrative journey, mapping, 88 89 Narrative medicine, 69 93 Narrative theatre, 72 75, 77, 78, 84, 87 National Panhellenic Council (NPHC), 179 Native Americans, 192 198, 200, 201, 203 209 Ndem’s daara, 129 131 Neoliberalism, 126 127, 129 Nicholas Nickleby, 74 Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 127, 133 Nursing assistants, 158 171 NVivo, 9, 104 Obaid-Chinoy, Sharmeen, 10 Obergefell v. Hodges, 14 Olmos, Edward James, 60 Open access publishing, 95 113 academic publication norms, challenging, 111 112 access barriers to audiences, resisting, 107 109 access barriers to contributors, resisting, 109 111 capitalist profit motives, resisting, 106 107 emergence, 96, 97, 99 103, 113 emergent events, brief history of, 101 103 methods and data, 103 105 power, 96 101, 104, 113 as resistance, 96, 97, 100, 104 112 symbolic interactionism, 97 101 Oppression, 1 3 forms of, 6 12 Organizational secrecy within Catholic Church, 20 23, 27 30 rumors and empowerment, 40 46 typology of, 32

INDEX

Organizational structure, 20 Organizations, stigmatized, 25 27 Overt resistance, 144 Performative film autocritography, 51 67 Pfeiffer, Michelle, 54, 55 Pig Farmer, The, 61, 65 PlayBuild Youth Intensive, 74 “Plus or minus 7 minutes” rule, 167 Poitier, Sidney, 52 Police harassment, 177 Politics of higher education, 53 Postcolonial theory, 12 Poverty, 8 class exploitation and, 7 Power, 96 101, 104, 113, 159 and resistance, 118 119 Predominantly white colleges and universities (PWCU), 176, 180, 182, 185 Prison incarceration rates, 2 Privilege, 2 Professionalism, 185 187 Public sociology, 192, 209 Punctuality, 147 Queer theory, 12 Race, 2, 3, 9 10, 192 Race, 56, 58, 66 Racial microaggressions, 177 Radical interactionism, 96 98, 103, 104, 113 Rape, 10 Rationality conventional, 100 extended, 96, 100, 102, 103, 105, 111, 113 Rational time, 138, 141 143, 146, 148, 152, 154 Readers Theatre. See Narrative theatre

Index

Rehman, Maulana Fazlur, 10 Repression, 16 Resiliency, 66 Resistance, 12 13, 55, 56, 59, 64, 66 access barriers to audiences, 107 109 access barriers to contributors, 109 111 among Black fraternity men, 175 188 capitalist profit motives, 106 107 community structures as, 131 134 everyday, 160, 161, 164 166, 170, 171, 176 179, 188 open access as, 96, 97, 100, 104 112 power and, 118 119 Senegal, 118 124, 129 temporal, 137 154 transformative, 14 workplace, 162 Right to vote, 2 Royal Shakespeare Company, 74 Rumors, 40 46 Scandal, 20 23, 27 31, 35, 37 40, 43, 44, 46 Schemers, 166 167 Secrecy, 26 27 coerced, 33, 42 complicit, 32, 42 and discreditable Church, 31 34 enlisted, 33 34 losing control of, 38 40 maintenance of, 36 37 organizational, within Catholic Chu, 20 23, 27 30 rumors and empowerment, 40 46 structural resources of, 36 37 Secret societies, 27 Self bifurcation, 84 87

219

sensory sculptures of, developing, 79 80 within social world, 87 88 source of energy within, 83 84 through creative collaboration with others, discovering metaphors of, 76 78 visual awareness of, 80 82 Self-awareness through rhythmic patterns of flow and disruption, tempos of, 82 83 Self-esteem, 11 Selling the Black dean, 53 54 Senegal collective and community work in, 117 134 colonial occupation, 120 123 community structures, as resistance, 131 134 economic shifts, 125 126 independence, 124 125 Lac Rose (Pink Lake), 127 129, 131 Ndem’s daara, 129 131 new community roles, 126 127 resistance, 118 124, 129 Senghor, Le´opold Se´dar, 124 Sensory sculptures of self, developing, 79 80 Sex trafficking, 2 Sexual abuse, within Catholic Church, 20 23, 27 30 Social capital, 3, 13, 101, 158 Social consciousness, 11 Social control, 20, 26, 27, 37, 42, 44, 46 Social incompetence, 139 Social justice, 13 14, 15 Social Justice in an Open World, 14 Social relations, 5 Social theory, 12

220

Socie´te´ Indige`ne de Prevoyance (SIPs, Provident Indigenous Societies), 123, 125 Sociotemporal rhythms, 143 Solidarity, 15 Sotomayor, Sonia, 13 Southeast Indian, 196 197 Spencer, Herbert, 11 Stand and Deliver, 60 67 State-recognized tribes, 209 Stevenson, Bryan, 13 Stigma/stigmatization, 20, 23 25, 43 45 Stigmatized organization, 25 27 Storytelling, 72 74 after-math, 92 93 collective, 74 77, 84, 85 creative, 89 90 destinations, 89 explorations, 89 90 informal, 73 itinerary, 90 92 See also Narrative medicine Strategic interaction, 23, 24, 41 Strategic self-presentation, 26 Structure, 3 Structure-and-agency perspective, 4 6, 15 16 Student group membership, 178 179 Subversion, 55 Subversive resistance, 144 Sufism, 121 Superiority delusion, 2, 8, 9 Symbolic capital, 3 Symbolic interactionism, 96 98, 104, 192, 193, 196, 201, 209 Temporal dominance, 140 Temporal resistance, 137 154 Temporal segregation, 139, 140 Theatre, 72 75, 77, 78, 84, 87

INDEX

Theory-building enterprise, 28 Thick intersectionalities, 52 Thomas, W. I., 5 Thomas Axiom, 5 Thought community membership, 138 141 To Sir With Love, 52 53 Transformation, 13 14 Transformation during illness/injury, 69 93 Transformative resistance, 14 Tribes relatively isolated and unified, myth of, 197 198 state-recognized, 209 Trifurcation, 86 Unionism, 14 United Nations Charter, 14 United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, 125 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 14 Visual awareness of self, 80 82 Washington, Denzel, 60 Wealth inequality, 2 Weber, Max, 5 Welfare State, 4 “We Real Cool,” (poem), 13 Whitaker, Forest, 60 White supremacy, 8, 9 10 Wholeness versus fragmentation, 84 Work-family, 171 Workplace resistance, 162 World Bank, 125, 128, 133 World Health Organization, 71 World Wide Web, 101