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
Although language manipulation can be broken into countless categories and sub-categories, diction is arguably the common denominator. When one conducts an analysis of another’s words, it is both logical and necessary for one to address the author’s word choice. Vàzquez’s essay is full of strategically placed adjectives and transitions to pull the reader to her message. She refers to society’s gender roles as being a “straitjacket” that “suffocates” (p. 493, 3rd paragraph). Both of the words “straitjacket” and “suffocates” not only embody the frustration felt by homosexuals, but also suggest that society is bound by its own unreasonable expectations. The author’s metaphorical suffocating straightjacket serves as a signal to the reader that society’s treatment of gender roles is in dire need of reform.
They mention the transition of “the closet,” as being a place in which people could not see you, to becoming a metaphor over the last two decades of the twentieth century used for queers who face a lack of sexual identity. Shneer and Aviv bring together two conflicting ideas of the American view of queerness: the ideas of the past, and the present. They state as queerness became more visible, people finally had the choice of living multiple lives, or integrating one’s lives and spaces (Shneer and Aviv 2006: 245). They highlight another change in the past twenty years as the clash between being queer and studying queerness (Shneer and Aviv 2006: 246-7). They argue that the active and visible contests over power among American queers show that queers now occupy an important place in our culture. They expand on the fact that queerness, real, and performed, is everywhere (Shneer and Aviv 2006: 248). This source shows the transformation in American culture of the acceptance of queerness. It makes an extremely critical resource by providing evidence of the changes in culture throughout the last two decades. Having the information that queerness is becoming more accepted in culture links to a higher percentage of LGBTQ youths becoming comfortable with their sexual identity. However, compared to the other sources, this
Mauer, Marc. 1999. The Race to Incarcerate. New York: The New Press National Research Council. 1993.
In the 21 first Century, the United States still has an extremely large number of individuals in the penal system. To this day, the American country still contains the highest prison population rate in the world. Although mass incarceration rates are extremely high, decreases in this number have been made. Since the first time since the 1970s, the imprisoned population has declined about 3 percent. This small step seemingly exemplifies how a vast majority of individuals who becoming aware of these issues and performing actions to decrease these numbers. In the Chapter 13 of James Kilgore’s Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time, he asserts how individuals who oppose mass incarceration
Over the course of history, the definition of manhood has changed and morphed according to society’s rules. In his essay “Masculinity as Homophobia,” number four in The Matrix Reader, Michael Kimmel tackles the truth about what manhood has become and how society has challenged the meaning of homophobia. He begins with an analysis of history, and then proceeds to relate masculinity and homophobia to power, women, and violence.
Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.
Harris, H. (2017, March). The Prison Dilemma: Ending America's Incarceration Epidemic. Foreign Affairs, pp. 118-129.
In his chapter on “Assessing the Prison Experiment”, he explained that the increase in crime rates is not the sole reason that mass incarceration occurs, it was also because courts and legislature did indeed get ‘tougher” on offenders (Currie 14). Under the circumstances of the war on drugs, which was launched by President Richard Nixon, the incarceration rate and sentence longevity increased dramatically, as Currie discussed in his chapter. Currie also pointed out that the war on drugs had a huge influence on the incarceration rate of African American inmates. “between 1985 and 1995, the number of black state prison inmates sentenced for drug offenses rose by more than 700 percent” (Currie 13). Some of these offenders were sentenced to more than ten years without parole, which releases prisoners before the completion of their sentences.
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.
Gender Outlaws (Smith, 2010) breaks the laws of gender by defying gender normative rules that exclude trans, queer and other non-conforming gender expressions often oppressed by “gender-norming rules,” rules, “expected to observe” or be subject to ridicule and often times labeled as freak by those who consider themselves as normal (p. 28). A gender outlaw seeks to, redefine the notion of gender and are carving out spaces of their own” (p. 30).
Thompson, Heather Anne. Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History. The Journal of American History (2010) 97 (3): 703-734 doi:10.1093/jahist/97.3.703
Eli Clare’s “Freak and Queers” explores how certain bodies are deemed “other” or “abnormal” while others are considered to be “standard” or “normal,” highlighting the negative perceptions regarding disability, race, class, sexuality, and gender throughout the U.S. The concept of normality and abnormality is often socially constructed, which connects to the narrow definition upheld by society of “normal” that values able-bodiedness, whiteness, wealth, heterosexuality, and cisgender identities. This narrow definition perpetuates the marginalization and stigmatization of these groups of individuals whose bodies or identities do not fit within these “normal” categories. Clare argues that the negative perceptions are not universal or objective,
Trachtenberg, B. (2009, February). Incarceration policy strikes out: Exploding prison population compromises the U.S. justice system. ABA Journal, 66.
As Tamsin Wilton explains in her piece, “Which One’s the Man? The Heterosexualisation of Lesbian Sex,” society has fronted that heterosexuality, or desire for the opposite sex, is the norm. However, the reason behind why this is the case is left out. Rather, Wilton claims that “heterosexual desire is [an] eroticised power difference [because] heterosexual desire originates in the power relationship between men and women” (161). This social struggle for power forces the majority of individuals into male-female based relationships because most women are unable to overcome the oppressive cycle society has led them into. Whereas heterosexual relationships are made up of the male (the oppressor) and the female (the victim who is unable to fight against the oppressor), homosexual relationships involve two or more individuals that have been freed from their oppressor-oppressed roles.
Queer theory is a theory, which tries to stop the presence of identities and stereotypes, which cultivate a racist climate against sexual diversities. The new theory is based on data of feminist theories, which present the role of gender and gives responses about gender, sexuality and sexual desires. Also, for the authors of the queer texts, the main point is to explain how the language and speech are used to present that the construction of sexual identities is opposite to our era, as the identities are not stabile and cannot determine our social presence. It is also mentioned that all sexual behaviours are considered as social constructions and lead to a specific way of social interpretation. Finally, we can say that these studies must be modernized and not be based only on the texts of a specific