J William Spencer
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 136935 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | J William Spencer |
| NOMBRES | J William |
| APELLIDO | Spencer |
| FIRMA | SPENCER J W |
| AFILIACIONES | Purdue University |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 25 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 135 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 25 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1983 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2017 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
I Felt Guilty for Being So Happy”
Scholars have highlighted ambivalence as a central feature of experiences of divorce and its aftermath and discussed ambivalence as an important issue for divorcees in adjusting to their new status. While most of this scholarship assesses postdivorce ambivalence as a psychological phenomenon to be addressed therapeutically, this study analyzes postdivorce ambivalence as an interpretive problem to be addressed sociologically. Following Merton’s (1…
The Lessons of Columbine, Part I
The Contested Meaning of the Crosses at Columbine
Spontaneous memorials that emerged at Columbine after the shootings became a focal point of news coverage. Especially visible in this discourse were 15 wooden crosses that symbolized the 13 victims of the shootings and the 2 youth who carried out the shootings. The discourse about such memorials has much to reveal about the collective meanings of the events that gave rise to them. In the case of the crosses of Columbine, these meanings are matter…
The Lessons of Columbine, Part II
It's Not as Simple as It Seems
While violence problems are a staple of both the mass media and work by constructionist social problems theorists, most of the latter has focused on violent adults. Constructionist research suggests that the media depict violent persons as evil victimizers, deserving of fear and condemnation, and their victims as deserving of sympathy. This article extends the constructionist literature on violence problems by examining news stories that construc…
That's How We Do Things Here
This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium,…
Creating Fear
The creative use of by news media and social control organizations has produced a discurse of fear - the awareness and expection that danger and risk are lurking everywhere. Case studies illustrates how certain organizations and social institutions benefit from the explotation of such construction. One social impact is a manipulated public empathy: We now have more victims than at any time in our prior history. Another, more troubling resutl is t…
The Contributions of an Interactionist Approach to Research and Theory on Criminal Careers
The term `criminal career' is treated in different ways by two distinct approaches, with differing ontological assumptions about human social behavior—a positivist approach and a pragmatist/ symbolic interactionist approach. Our major argument is that those interested in criminal careers and in stability and change in `criminal propensity' have much to gain by attending to symbolic interactionist conceptions of careers in crime and deviance, whic…
We Don't Pay for Bus Tickets, but We Can Help You Find Work
Guided by the concept of social problems work and the micropolitics of trouble perspective, we examine the discursive strategies used by social workers to conduct intake interviews with homeless clients. Trouble was a pervasive feature of these encounters: clients often requested services that diverged from the service preferences expressed by social workers. Social workers used elicitation strategies to solicit information about clients" biograp…
Homeless in Paradise
New Ethnographies
Mutual Relevance of Ethnography and Discourse
This article argues for the mutual relevance of ethnography and discourse analysis to field-based research. Although this is not a particularly new idea, ethnographic studies and studies of face-to-face interaction are still often conducted in ways that ignore or downplay their mutual relevance. Ethnographers are reminded of the importance of treating situated language use as a topic of inquiry in the settings they study. Conversely, students of …
Media Constructions of Risk and Safety
The media play an important role in the social construction of risk and safety. In this article, we analyze how reports in a New Orleans newspaper defined the risk and safety associated with a series of four events during the summer of 1988: a drought, low water levels in the Mississippi River, a saltwater intrusion, and toxic pollution in local bodies of water. The newspaper reports defined some of the events as hazards by assessing their negati…
Making 'Suitable Referrals
The extant literature on the referral process in human service delivery has been examined as either a 'micro,' intra-organizational activity or a 'macro,' interorganizational phenomenon. The negotiated-order perspective is used to bridge this gap by examining how interorganizational and other contextual-level factors shape the routine accomplishment of the referral process. The data come from a case study of the referral-related activities of soc…
Field Research on Human Service Encounters
Field research on human service encounters (e.g., doctor-patient interaction, policesuspect encounters, counselor-student interviews) has become increasingly diverse in the types of human service organizations studied, the methods used to collect data, and analytic foci. Despite this diversity, the process of assembling a data base has not been subjected to systematic treatment. Field researchers interested in human service encounters face a numb…
Out-of-home maltreatment
Negotiating Role Definitions and the Working Consensus in Self-Work
Definitions of social roles and the maintenance of a working consensus are two kinds of background expectations which are important for actors'accomplishment of self-work. Interactionists have traditionally assumed that these background expectations are unambiguously available to social actors as they negotiate situated meanings of selves and situations. Using data from dyadic role-play conversations, this study examines instances where interacta…
The Sociology of Social Problems
The Transformation of Gender into Conversational Advantage
This article examines the relationship between gender and conversational power by treating as problematic the process through which a social position is transformed into conversational advantage. Using symbolic interactionism, it is argued that conversational power is exercised over the course of a role performance and is affected by the identities of the interactants and the context in which interaction occurs. This argument is evaluated by usin…
The role of text in the processing of people in organizations
The micro processes which comprise the daily operations of formal organizations, particularly those organizations charged with processing people, have been relatively neglected. Although conversational analysts have shown interest in these micro processes, they have tended to neglect the role that bureaucratic texts play in these processes. I treat the background knowledge and information that personnel possess as resources upon which personnel c…
Self-Work in Social Interaction
Using a dyadic role-play exercise, this study examines the strategies used by interactants to negotiate role-identities. Subjects were found to utilize self-attributes in producing basic moves such as claims to, and repudiations of, the role-identity of outstanding student. Claims and repudiations were subject to various kinds of definitional work by ego in the form of aligning actions. Alter also produced definitional work on previous claims in …
Crime in Indian country
Accounting for Pre-Sentencing Recommendations
Many studies of social reactions to deviance have focused on how agents of social control make decisions, but little is known about how these agents produce accounts for their decisions. Research on accounts or rationales for decisions can provide important insights into the typologies of deviant actors used by agents in their daily work activities. We present an analysis of the accounts that probation officers produce as support for their evalua…
Conducting Presentencing Investigations
Most research on the criminal justice system has tended to neglect the presentencing processes whereby probation officers conduct presentencing investigations. This article uses discourse and textual data, in conjunction with ethnographic data, to examine how probation officers routinely accomplish these investigations. Probation officers confront three major tasks in conducting such investigations: eliciting, interpreting, and utilizing informat…
Accounts, Attitudes, and Solutions
Previous research on probation officers has neglected how they conduct presentencing interviews. In this paper I analyze tape recordings of interactions between officers and defendants to see how officers assess defendants' orientations toward their criminal behavior. I conclude that officers negotiate these orientations to obtain acceptable responses from defendants. In addition, officers use these responses to label defendants for the purpose o…
Accounts, Attitudes, and Solutions
Previous research on probation officers has neglected how they conduct presentencing interviews. In this paper I analyze tape recordings of interactions between officers and defendants to see how officers assess defendants' orientations toward their criminal behavior. I conclude that officers negotiate these orientations to obtain acceptable responses from defendants. In addition, officers use these responses to label defendants for the purpose o…
Accounting for Pre-Sentencing Recommendations
Many studies of social reactions to deviance have focused on how agents of social control make decisions, but little is known about how these agents produce accounts for their decisions. Research on accounts or rationales for decisions can provide important insights into the typologies of deviant actors used by agents in their daily work activities. We present an analysis of the accounts that probation officers produce as support for their evalua…
The Contributions of an Interactionist Approach to Research and Theory on Criminal Careers
The term `criminal career' is treated in different ways by two distinct approaches, with differing ontological assumptions about human social behavior—a positivist approach and a pragmatist/ symbolic interactionist approach. Our major argument is that those interested in criminal careers and in stability and change in `criminal propensity' have much to gain by attending to symbolic interactionist conceptions of careers in crime and deviance, whic…
We Don't Pay for Bus Tickets, but We Can Help You Find Work
Guided by the concept of social problems work and the micropolitics of trouble perspective, we examine the discursive strategies used by social workers to conduct intake interviews with homeless clients. Trouble was a pervasive feature of these encounters: clients often requested services that diverged from the service preferences expressed by social workers. Social workers used elicitation strategies to solicit information about clients" biograp…
Media Constructions of Risk and Safety
The media play an important role in the social construction of risk and safety. In this article, we analyze how reports in a New Orleans newspaper defined the risk and safety associated with a series of four events during the summer of 1988: a drought, low water levels in the Mississippi River, a saltwater intrusion, and toxic pollution in local bodies of water. The newspaper reports defined some of the events as hazards by assessing their negati…
Conducting Presentencing Investigations
Most research on the criminal justice system has tended to neglect the presentencing processes whereby probation officers conduct presentencing investigations. This article uses discourse and textual data, in conjunction with ethnographic data, to examine how probation officers routinely accomplish these investigations. Probation officers confront three major tasks in conducting such investigations: eliciting, interpreting, and utilizing informat…
It's Not as Simple as It Seems
While violence problems are a staple of both the mass media and work by constructionist social problems theorists, most of the latter has focused on violent adults. Constructionist research suggests that the media depict violent persons as evil victimizers, deserving of fear and condemnation, and their victims as deserving of sympathy. This article extends the constructionist literature on violence problems by examining news stories that construc…
Mutual Relevance of Ethnography and Discourse
This article argues for the mutual relevance of ethnography and discourse analysis to field-based research. Although this is not a particularly new idea, ethnographic studies and studies of face-to-face interaction are still often conducted in ways that ignore or downplay their mutual relevance. Ethnographers are reminded of the importance of treating situated language use as a topic of inquiry in the settings they study. Conversely, students of …
Out-of-home maltreatment
Self-Work in Social Interaction
Using a dyadic role-play exercise, this study examines the strategies used by interactants to negotiate role-identities. Subjects were found to utilize self-attributes in producing basic moves such as claims to, and repudiations of, the role-identity of outstanding student. Claims and repudiations were subject to various kinds of definitional work by ego in the form of aligning actions. Alter also produced definitional work on previous claims in …
Crime in Indian country
Making 'Suitable Referrals
The extant literature on the referral process in human service delivery has been examined as either a 'micro,' intra-organizational activity or a 'macro,' interorganizational phenomenon. The negotiated-order perspective is used to bridge this gap by examining how interorganizational and other contextual-level factors shape the routine accomplishment of the referral process. The data come from a case study of the referral-related activities of soc…
Field Research on Human Service Encounters
Field research on human service encounters (e.g., doctor-patient interaction, policesuspect encounters, counselor-student interviews) has become increasingly diverse in the types of human service organizations studied, the methods used to collect data, and analytic foci. Despite this diversity, the process of assembling a data base has not been subjected to systematic treatment. Field researchers interested in human service encounters face a numb…
The Sociology of Social Problems
The Lessons of Columbine, Part I
The Contested Meaning of the Crosses at Columbine
Spontaneous memorials that emerged at Columbine after the shootings became a focal point of news coverage. Especially visible in this discourse were 15 wooden crosses that symbolized the 13 victims of the shootings and the 2 youth who carried out the shootings. The discourse about such memorials has much to reveal about the collective meanings of the events that gave rise to them. In the case of the crosses of Columbine, these meanings are matter…
That's How We Do Things Here
This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium,…
Negotiating Role Definitions and the Working Consensus in Self-Work
Definitions of social roles and the maintenance of a working consensus are two kinds of background expectations which are important for actors'accomplishment of self-work. Interactionists have traditionally assumed that these background expectations are unambiguously available to social actors as they negotiate situated meanings of selves and situations. Using data from dyadic role-play conversations, this study examines instances where interacta…
The Transformation of Gender into Conversational Advantage
This article examines the relationship between gender and conversational power by treating as problematic the process through which a social position is transformed into conversational advantage. Using symbolic interactionism, it is argued that conversational power is exercised over the course of a role performance and is affected by the identities of the interactants and the context in which interaction occurs. This argument is evaluated by usin…
I Felt Guilty for Being So Happy”
Scholars have highlighted ambivalence as a central feature of experiences of divorce and its aftermath and discussed ambivalence as an important issue for divorcees in adjusting to their new status. While most of this scholarship assesses postdivorce ambivalence as a psychological phenomenon to be addressed therapeutically, this study analyzes postdivorce ambivalence as an interpretive problem to be addressed sociologically. Following Merton’s (1…
The Lessons of Columbine, Part II
The role of text in the processing of people in organizations
The micro processes which comprise the daily operations of formal organizations, particularly those organizations charged with processing people, have been relatively neglected. Although conversational analysts have shown interest in these micro processes, they have tended to neglect the role that bureaucratic texts play in these processes. I treat the background knowledge and information that personnel possess as resources upon which personnel c…
Accounts, Attitudes, and Solutions
Previous research on probation officers has neglected how they conduct presentencing interviews. In this paper I analyze tape recordings of interactions between officers and defendants to see how officers assess defendants' orientations toward their criminal behavior. I conclude that officers negotiate these orientations to obtain acceptable responses from defendants. In addition, officers use these responses to label defendants for the purpose o…
Conducting Presentencing Investigations
Most research on the criminal justice system has tended to neglect the presentencing processes whereby probation officers conduct presentencing investigations. This article uses discourse and textual data, in conjunction with ethnographic data, to examine how probation officers routinely accomplish these investigations. Probation officers confront three major tasks in conducting such investigations: eliciting, interpreting, and utilizing informat…
Self-Work in Social Interaction
Using a dyadic role-play exercise, this study examines the strategies used by interactants to negotiate role-identities. Subjects were found to utilize self-attributes in producing basic moves such as claims to, and repudiations of, the role-identity of outstanding student. Claims and repudiations were subject to various kinds of definitional work by ego in the form of aligning actions. Alter also produced definitional work on previous claims in …
Crime in Indian country
Accounting for Pre-Sentencing Recommendations
Many studies of social reactions to deviance have focused on how agents of social control make decisions, but little is known about how these agents produce accounts for their decisions. Research on accounts or rationales for decisions can provide important insights into the typologies of deviant actors used by agents in their daily work activities. We present an analysis of the accounts that probation officers produce as support for their evalua…
The role of text in the processing of people in organizations
The micro processes which comprise the daily operations of formal organizations, particularly those organizations charged with processing people, have been relatively neglected. Although conversational analysts have shown interest in these micro processes, they have tended to neglect the role that bureaucratic texts play in these processes. I treat the background knowledge and information that personnel possess as resources upon which personnel c…
The Sociology of Social Problems
The Transformation of Gender into Conversational Advantage
This article examines the relationship between gender and conversational power by treating as problematic the process through which a social position is transformed into conversational advantage. Using symbolic interactionism, it is argued that conversational power is exercised over the course of a role performance and is affected by the identities of the interactants and the context in which interaction occurs. This argument is evaluated by usin…
Out-of-home maltreatment
Negotiating Role Definitions and the Working Consensus in Self-Work
Definitions of social roles and the maintenance of a working consensus are two kinds of background expectations which are important for actors'accomplishment of self-work. Interactionists have traditionally assumed that these background expectations are unambiguously available to social actors as they negotiate situated meanings of selves and situations. Using data from dyadic role-play conversations, this study examines instances where interacta…
Making 'Suitable Referrals
The extant literature on the referral process in human service delivery has been examined as either a 'micro,' intra-organizational activity or a 'macro,' interorganizational phenomenon. The negotiated-order perspective is used to bridge this gap by examining how interorganizational and other contextual-level factors shape the routine accomplishment of the referral process. The data come from a case study of the referral-related activities of soc…
Field Research on Human Service Encounters
Field research on human service encounters (e.g., doctor-patient interaction, policesuspect encounters, counselor-student interviews) has become increasingly diverse in the types of human service organizations studied, the methods used to collect data, and analytic foci. Despite this diversity, the process of assembling a data base has not been subjected to systematic treatment. Field researchers interested in human service encounters face a numb…
New Ethnographies
Mutual Relevance of Ethnography and Discourse
This article argues for the mutual relevance of ethnography and discourse analysis to field-based research. Although this is not a particularly new idea, ethnographic studies and studies of face-to-face interaction are still often conducted in ways that ignore or downplay their mutual relevance. Ethnographers are reminded of the importance of treating situated language use as a topic of inquiry in the settings they study. Conversely, students of …
Media Constructions of Risk and Safety
The media play an important role in the social construction of risk and safety. In this article, we analyze how reports in a New Orleans newspaper defined the risk and safety associated with a series of four events during the summer of 1988: a drought, low water levels in the Mississippi River, a saltwater intrusion, and toxic pollution in local bodies of water. The newspaper reports defined some of the events as hazards by assessing their negati…
Homeless in Paradise
We Don't Pay for Bus Tickets, but We Can Help You Find Work
Guided by the concept of social problems work and the micropolitics of trouble perspective, we examine the discursive strategies used by social workers to conduct intake interviews with homeless clients. Trouble was a pervasive feature of these encounters: clients often requested services that diverged from the service preferences expressed by social workers. Social workers used elicitation strategies to solicit information about clients" biograp…
The Contributions of an Interactionist Approach to Research and Theory on Criminal Careers
The term `criminal career' is treated in different ways by two distinct approaches, with differing ontological assumptions about human social behavior—a positivist approach and a pragmatist/ symbolic interactionist approach. Our major argument is that those interested in criminal careers and in stability and change in `criminal propensity' have much to gain by attending to symbolic interactionist conceptions of careers in crime and deviance, whic…
Creating Fear
The creative use of by news media and social control organizations has produced a discurse of fear - the awareness and expection that danger and risk are lurking everywhere. Case studies illustrates how certain organizations and social institutions benefit from the explotation of such construction. One social impact is a manipulated public empathy: We now have more victims than at any time in our prior history. Another, more troubling resutl is t…
It's Not as Simple as It Seems
While violence problems are a staple of both the mass media and work by constructionist social problems theorists, most of the latter has focused on violent adults. Constructionist research suggests that the media depict violent persons as evil victimizers, deserving of fear and condemnation, and their victims as deserving of sympathy. This article extends the constructionist literature on violence problems by examining news stories that construc…
That's How We Do Things Here
This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium,…
The Lessons of Columbine, Part I
The Contested Meaning of the Crosses at Columbine
Spontaneous memorials that emerged at Columbine after the shootings became a focal point of news coverage. Especially visible in this discourse were 15 wooden crosses that symbolized the 13 victims of the shootings and the 2 youth who carried out the shootings. The discourse about such memorials has much to reveal about the collective meanings of the events that gave rise to them. In the case of the crosses of Columbine, these meanings are matter…
The Lessons of Columbine, Part II
I Felt Guilty for Being So Happy”
Scholars have highlighted ambivalence as a central feature of experiences of divorce and its aftermath and discussed ambivalence as an important issue for divorcees in adjusting to their new status. While most of this scholarship assesses postdivorce ambivalence as a psychological phenomenon to be addressed therapeutically, this study analyzes postdivorce ambivalence as an interpretive problem to be addressed sociologically. Following Merton’s (1…
Sociology (21 obras) · Political science (15 obras) · Psychology (14 obras) · Criminology (10 obras) · Business (7 obras) · Computer Science (7 obras) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (7 obras) · Social Psychology (7 obras) · Epistemology (6 obras) · Law (6 obras)