Stephen Valocchi's 'Not Yet Queer Enough'

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What does it mean to queer an existing work of sociology? To answer this question I will use the conceptual framework outlined by Stephen Valocchi’s article “Not Yet Queer Enough” and apply it to Katherine Beckett’s book, Making Crime Pay. Valocchi encourages current and future sociological research to be cognizant of the ways in which sociology reproduces binaries and existing power relations by “treating the categories and the normative relationship among them as the starting assumptions on which our research is based and the major lens through which we interpret our data” (Valocchi 2005:752). Beckett argues against the commonly held view that public opinion was a crucial factor in the growth of incarceration in the United States. Her main …show more content…

The second section will define what Valocchi means by queering sociological work. It will also give brief summaries of the works that he queers in his paper. The third section will summarize Beckett’ work and then queer it in two important ways. 1) Taking seriously the role that gender and sexuality and their intersection with race have played in the discourse on mass incarceration and the identity formation of a criminal. 2) Supplementing her work with ethnographic accounts that can capture the complexity of these intersections and the ways in which they affect the discourse surrounding crime and incarceration …show more content…

This dualistic form of thinking can be applied to other categories as well. By categorizing identities into neat boxes such as black and white, rich and poor, male and female, sociologists not only obfuscate the socio-historical contexts of these categories and the ways they intersect with one another, they also run the risk of perpetuating the very inequalities the categories are built upon. “These categories exert power over individuals, especially for those who do not fit neatly within their normative alignments” (2005:752).
Queer theory takes this risk seriously and attempts to deconstruct these binaries. It pays strong attention to the socially constructed nature of these categories and attempts to illuminate the power relations perpetuated by and benefiting from their existence. Operating on the assumption that these categories are constructed and not fixed, it is to be expected that there will be incoherence, complexity, and deviations from the norm. Queer theory focuses on these deviant cases that violate dominant social norms and challenges the foundational assumptions that the norms are built

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