M F Lavin
Biographic Data
| ID | 42907 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M F Lavin |
| GIVEN NAMES | M F |
| FAMILY NAME | Lavin |
| SIGNATURE | LAVIN M F |
| AFFILIATIONS | SUNY Oneonta |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8811-2944 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Work of Tarot
Melissa F. Lavin on how professional tarot readers provide emotional support to their clients as they navigate uncertainty
Introduction to the Special Issue: Teaching Apocalypse, Now
On Spiritualist Workers: Healing and Divining through Tarot and the Metaphysical
In the following article, I explore how tarot card readers (and other spiritualist workers) “control the future” to heal and empower their clients, emphasizing the porous roles of therapy and advocacy that assorted “psychics” perform. I examine how these workers navigate interactional trials, including misassigned identity, ethical challenges, and interactional boundaries in readings at psychic fairs and in private practice. Tarot card readers an…
Normalizing Deviants: Notes on the De-Stigma Trend
This article explores destigmatization discourses in the United States in the early 21st century, as social and political strategies and as narrative social movements unto themselves. We argue that the first decades of the new century see a trend of marginalized actors across many categories, including queer marriage, drugs, (discreditable) mental illness and (discredited) other areas of identity and disability, make narrative attempts to neutral…
Introduction to Deviance, The Undead: Contemporary Deviancy and Social Movements, A Special Issue
The sociology of deviance refuses to die, despite decades-long critiques. In the 1970s, Scheff, Gove, and Chauncey treated the pages of the American Sociological Review to debates about labeling th
Frame Analysis and Deviance Scholarship: Exploring Links through Drugs and Guns
Deviance scholarship and social movement scholarship share similar substantive interests such as changes to rules and laws, identity-based movements, and a focus on social change. This article contends that social movement scholarship, particularly frame analysis, offers conceptual tools that may reinvigorate deviance scholarship and address some areas of concern raised by critics. Furthermore, this article explores the utility of the sociology o…
She Got Herself There: Narrative Resistance in the Drug Discourse of Strippers
There has been ample literature on strip clubs regarding interactions between strippers and patrons, power and social control, and how dancers manage their identities as stigmatized workers. Few studies have explored how dancers grapple with their doubly deviant identities as dancers and as drug and alcohol users. Through interviews and fieldwork, I explore how dancers frame their drug use. At times, dancers stigmatize other dancers by using dama…
They Call Us Problem Child: Delinquency, Medicalization, and Social Class in Primary Education
This article recounts my seven-year struggle with my son in his high-performing school district, and his immediate shift in identity from delinquent to honor student when we changed districts. I argue that social class is encoded in setting and family form. Factors like context, class and family form discrimination, diagnosis in schools, and access to resources, all shaped Coby’s social experiences
If You Want It, You Can Get It Right Here: Space and Drug Use in Strip Clubs
There is a burgeoning body of sociological literature that focuses on strip clubs and the club actors therein; most notably, strippers. Most of this scholarly work has emphasized interactions between strippers and customers, the deployment of stigma management strategies in order to neutralize deviantizing interactions and identities, gender performances and hierarchies, power, inequality and social control, and socialization processes associated…
Rule-Making and Rule-Breaking: Strip Club Social Control Regarding Alcohol and Other Drugs
Through fieldwork and interviews, this research addresses internal and external social control of drug and alcohol use in "Mell's Belles," a strip club in a working-class northeastern city. I describe a variety of internal social control techniques used to regulate alcohol and illicit drugs, and then note the impact of external social control on the strip club, including police raids and general surveillance. Strip clubs have an unpredictable, la…
Rule-Making and Rule-Breaking: Strip Club Social Control Regarding Alcohol and Other Drugs
Through fieldwork and interviews, this research addresses internal and external social control of drug and alcohol use in "Mell's Belles," a strip club in a working-class northeastern city. I describe a variety of internal social control techniques used to regulate alcohol and illicit drugs, and then note the impact of external social control on the strip club, including police raids and general surveillance. Strip clubs have an unpredictable, la…
She Got Herself There: Narrative Resistance in the Drug Discourse of Strippers
There has been ample literature on strip clubs regarding interactions between strippers and patrons, power and social control, and how dancers manage their identities as stigmatized workers. Few studies have explored how dancers grapple with their doubly deviant identities as dancers and as drug and alcohol users. Through interviews and fieldwork, I explore how dancers frame their drug use. At times, dancers stigmatize other dancers by using dama…
Normalizing Deviants: Notes on the De-Stigma Trend
This article explores destigmatization discourses in the United States in the early 21st century, as social and political strategies and as narrative social movements unto themselves. We argue that the first decades of the new century see a trend of marginalized actors across many categories, including queer marriage, drugs, (discreditable) mental illness and (discredited) other areas of identity and disability, make narrative attempts to neutral…
They Call Us Problem Child: Delinquency, Medicalization, and Social Class in Primary Education
This article recounts my seven-year struggle with my son in his high-performing school district, and his immediate shift in identity from delinquent to honor student when we changed districts. I argue that social class is encoded in setting and family form. Factors like context, class and family form discrimination, diagnosis in schools, and access to resources, all shaped Coby’s social experiences
If You Want It, You Can Get It Right Here: Space and Drug Use in Strip Clubs
There is a burgeoning body of sociological literature that focuses on strip clubs and the club actors therein; most notably, strippers. Most of this scholarly work has emphasized interactions between strippers and customers, the deployment of stigma management strategies in order to neutralize deviantizing interactions and identities, gender performances and hierarchies, power, inequality and social control, and socialization processes associated…
Introduction to Deviance, The Undead: Contemporary Deviancy and Social Movements, A Special Issue
The sociology of deviance refuses to die, despite decades-long critiques. In the 1970s, Scheff, Gove, and Chauncey treated the pages of the American Sociological Review to debates about labeling th
Rule-Making and Rule-Breaking: Strip Club Social Control Regarding Alcohol and Other Drugs
Through fieldwork and interviews, this research addresses internal and external social control of drug and alcohol use in "Mell's Belles," a strip club in a working-class northeastern city. I describe a variety of internal social control techniques used to regulate alcohol and illicit drugs, and then note the impact of external social control on the strip club, including police raids and general surveillance. Strip clubs have an unpredictable, la…
If You Want It, You Can Get It Right Here: Space and Drug Use in Strip Clubs
There is a burgeoning body of sociological literature that focuses on strip clubs and the club actors therein; most notably, strippers. Most of this scholarly work has emphasized interactions between strippers and customers, the deployment of stigma management strategies in order to neutralize deviantizing interactions and identities, gender performances and hierarchies, power, inequality and social control, and socialization processes associated…
They Call Us Problem Child: Delinquency, Medicalization, and Social Class in Primary Education
This article recounts my seven-year struggle with my son in his high-performing school district, and his immediate shift in identity from delinquent to honor student when we changed districts. I argue that social class is encoded in setting and family form. Factors like context, class and family form discrimination, diagnosis in schools, and access to resources, all shaped Coby’s social experiences
She Got Herself There: Narrative Resistance in the Drug Discourse of Strippers
There has been ample literature on strip clubs regarding interactions between strippers and patrons, power and social control, and how dancers manage their identities as stigmatized workers. Few studies have explored how dancers grapple with their doubly deviant identities as dancers and as drug and alcohol users. Through interviews and fieldwork, I explore how dancers frame their drug use. At times, dancers stigmatize other dancers by using dama…
Normalizing Deviants: Notes on the De-Stigma Trend
This article explores destigmatization discourses in the United States in the early 21st century, as social and political strategies and as narrative social movements unto themselves. We argue that the first decades of the new century see a trend of marginalized actors across many categories, including queer marriage, drugs, (discreditable) mental illness and (discredited) other areas of identity and disability, make narrative attempts to neutral…
Introduction to Deviance, The Undead: Contemporary Deviancy and Social Movements, A Special Issue
The sociology of deviance refuses to die, despite decades-long critiques. In the 1970s, Scheff, Gove, and Chauncey treated the pages of the American Sociological Review to debates about labeling th
Frame Analysis and Deviance Scholarship: Exploring Links through Drugs and Guns
Deviance scholarship and social movement scholarship share similar substantive interests such as changes to rules and laws, identity-based movements, and a focus on social change. This article contends that social movement scholarship, particularly frame analysis, offers conceptual tools that may reinvigorate deviance scholarship and address some areas of concern raised by critics. Furthermore, this article explores the utility of the sociology o…
On Spiritualist Workers: Healing and Divining through Tarot and the Metaphysical
In the following article, I explore how tarot card readers (and other spiritualist workers) “control the future” to heal and empower their clients, emphasizing the porous roles of therapy and advocacy that assorted “psychics” perform. I examine how these workers navigate interactional trials, including misassigned identity, ethical challenges, and interactional boundaries in readings at psychic fairs and in private practice. Tarot card readers an…
Introduction to the Special Issue: Teaching Apocalypse, Now
The Work of Tarot
Melissa F. Lavin on how professional tarot readers provide emotional support to their clients as they navigate uncertainty
Sociology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (4 works) · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Social science (4 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (3 works)