L Wade
Biographic Data
| ID | 43397 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Wade |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Wade |
| SIGNATURE | WADE L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Occidental College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0827-153X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 167 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1967 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
“Responsibly Irresponsible” Partygoing During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Existing research on noncompliance with public health protocols during the Covid-19 pandemic features relatively low- rather than high-risk violations almost exclusively, with a small, difficult-to-verify set of exceptions. This paper adds an investigation of high-risk noncompliance with a qualitative inquiry into attendance at superspreader events in October 2020. With this possibly unique dataset, I use neutralization theory to analyze 27 colle…
Paradoxes of Displeasure: Understanding Collegiate Hookup Culture's Resilience to Negative Emotional Energy
Most US college students express ambivalence toward collegiate sexual cultures. Why, then, do hookup cultures persist? This article uses Interaction Ritual Theory to explore five emotional pathways through hookup culture: interaction ritual chains with distinct emotional trajectories. At least four are argued to potentially reproduce hookup culture, but only one produces primarily positive emotions. This analysis suggests hookup cultures can pers…
College Students and the Neutralization of Unsafe Sex: Applying a New Model and Establishing a New Research Agenda
Rethinking the Stalled Revolution: Toward New Metaphors for Feminist Struggle
In her pathbreaking 1989 book, The Second Shift, Arlie Hochschild introduced the idea of the “stalled revolution.” In the years since, the phrase has gained prominence and influence among scholars of gender, many of whom now use the term to describe the pace of change in arenas far beyond its original referent: the division of labor at home. Given its outsized role in feminist theory, it is due time to subject the metaphor to an examination. I do…
In pursuit of the potential of sexual field theory: A research agenda
Some argue that sexual field theory is the most promising approach to developing a comprehensive theory of collective sexual life. Yet, it remains underdeveloped. Pointing to a narrow empirical foundation, I use collegiate hookup cultures to reveal the potential of extended case study. I present the first comprehensive consideration of hookup cultures from a field theory perspective and show how these cases can both answer existing questions and …
Narratives of Outbreak and Survival in English-Language Cinema Prior to Covid-19
Efforts to curb the COVID-19 pandemic were hampered by the tendency of some Americans to disbelieve its seriousness, distrust social institutions, and defy public health recommendations. To contribute to understanding these responses, I look to one facet of the discursive environment faced by public health communicators: the last 25 years of commercially successful, English-language, epidemic-themed feature films. I coded a sample of 34 films for…
Doing Casual Sex: A Sexual Fields Approach to the Emotional Force of Hookup Culture
Sex on college campuses has emerged as a source of emotional distress for students. This paper adopts a sexual fields approach to offer a gendered analysis of hookup culture's central emotional imperative: to be casual about sex. Based on 101 first-person accounts of sex and relationships in college, the findings reveal how students enact sexual casualness by hooking up only when drunk, refraining from tenderness, being unfriendly afterward, and …
Unwarranted Allegations in Unwanted Advances: On Laura Kipnis's Attack on Title IX
Ask a Feminist: Michael Kimmel and Lisa Wade Discuss Toxic Masculinity
For this edition of Ask a Feminist, Michael Kimmel and Lisa Wade discuss the role of masculinity in the current political moment, including the rise of Donald Trump and white grievance politics in the United States. A preeminent scholar of masculinity studies, Kimmel analyzes masculinity’s intersections with racism, sexual violence, and backlash politics. Wade, whose work has critically and accessibly interrogated contemporary gender dynamics, sp…
American Allegory: Lindy Hop and the Racial Imagination
The New Science of Sex Difference
While scientists across the academy have abandoned the nature/nurture dichotomy, evidence for the influences of society on our biology is greater than ever. This article reviews new developments in the biological sciences – in the sub‐fields of genetics, hormones, and neuroscience – with special attention to the implications for sociologists interested in gender. The article closes with an argument that embracing these developments has both theor…
Sociological Images: Blogging as Public Sociology
Sociological Images is a website aimed at a broad public audience that encourages readers to develop and apply a sociological imagination. The site includes short, accessible posts published daily. Each includes one or more images and accompanying commentary. Reaching approximately 20,000 readers per day, Sociological Images illustrates the potential for using websites as a platform for public engagement in the social sciences. This report provid…
Learning from “Female Genital Mutilation: Lessons from 30 Years of Academic Discourse
At the intersection of feminism and postcolonial theory is an acrimonious debate over female genital cutting (FGC). I subject this debate to an analysis in order to separate productive from destructive discursive strategies. I find that both FGC and the literature about the practice are frequently mischaracterized in consequential ways. Especially prior to the mid-1990s, scholars frame FGC as an example of either cultural inferiority or cultural …
Sexualizing Sarah Palin: The Social and Political Context of the Sexual Objectification of Female Candidates
Journalism, advocacy and the social construction of consensus
Scholarship examining media coverage of social problems largely examines coverage of contentious issues. In this study, I contribute to our understanding of journalist practices by examining coverage of an issue over which there is a US consensus: female genital cutting (FGC). With an analysis of newspaper coverage supplemented by interviews and primary documents, I find that, in contrast to existing literature that shows that reporters must refr…
The emancipatory promise of the habitus: Lindy hop, the body, and social change
Existing research about the role of the habitus in social change emphasizes inertia. Individuals in new contexts are understood to face disadvantage, making disruption of a hierarchical status quo difficult. Recent theory regarding our ability to strategically change and use our bodily habits, however, suggests that the habitus may not be condemned to a purely conservative role. Here I examine a community of lindy hoppers who are re-shaping the c…
Hook-Up Culture: Setting a New Research Agenda
Defining Gendered Oppression in U.S. Newspapers: The Strategic Value of “Female Genital Mutilation
According to the logic of the gendered modernity/tradition binary, women in traditional societies are oppressed and women in modern societies liberated. While the binary valorizes modern women, it potentially erases gendered oppression in the West and undermines feminist movements on behalf of Western women. Using U.S. newspaper text, I ask whether female genital cutting (FGC) is used to define women in modern societies as liberated. I find that …
The Potential Relevances of Biology to Social Inquiry
Sociologists often react with hostility to explanations that evoke biology, and some critics of the discipline contend that this 'biophobia' undermines the credibility of sociology and makes it seem increasingly irrelevant in larger public debates. The negative reactions are many times diffuse and undiscerning of the different endeavors lumped together whenever one speaks broadly of biological (or 'biosocial') explanations. We seek to introduce g…
Relationship Dissolution as a Life Stage Transition: Effects on Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors
In this paper, with the use of linear regressions to investigate how relationship dissolution affects sexual attitudes and behaviors, the authors address the stereotype that newly single people seek multiple sexual partners. Although the newly single people surveyed did obtain new sexual partners, the rate at which they acquired new partners did not support the stereotype. Specifically, men with custody of their children seemed oriented toward fi…
Professionals in Organizations: A Neoteric Model
Most current models of formal organizations exhibit certain similarities. One, which may be called the Weber-Mannheim model, emphasizes the legal-rational ordering of formal relationships and, concomitantly, the notions of hierarchy, specialization, and the downward flow of authority. The Barnard-Simon model, while it focuses on the premises upon which organizational decisions are based, nonetheless assumes that organizational decision-making is …
The Potential Relevances of Biology to Social Inquiry
Sociologists often react with hostility to explanations that evoke biology, and some critics of the discipline contend that this 'biophobia' undermines the credibility of sociology and makes it seem increasingly irrelevant in larger public debates. The negative reactions are many times diffuse and undiscerning of the different endeavors lumped together whenever one speaks broadly of biological (or 'biosocial') explanations. We seek to introduce g…
Hook-Up Culture: Setting a New Research Agenda
The emancipatory promise of the habitus: Lindy hop, the body, and social change
Existing research about the role of the habitus in social change emphasizes inertia. Individuals in new contexts are understood to face disadvantage, making disruption of a hierarchical status quo difficult. Recent theory regarding our ability to strategically change and use our bodily habits, however, suggests that the habitus may not be condemned to a purely conservative role. Here I examine a community of lindy hoppers who are re-shaping the c…
Learning from “Female Genital Mutilation: Lessons from 30 Years of Academic Discourse
At the intersection of feminism and postcolonial theory is an acrimonious debate over female genital cutting (FGC). I subject this debate to an analysis in order to separate productive from destructive discursive strategies. I find that both FGC and the literature about the practice are frequently mischaracterized in consequential ways. Especially prior to the mid-1990s, scholars frame FGC as an example of either cultural inferiority or cultural …
Journalism, advocacy and the social construction of consensus
Scholarship examining media coverage of social problems largely examines coverage of contentious issues. In this study, I contribute to our understanding of journalist practices by examining coverage of an issue over which there is a US consensus: female genital cutting (FGC). With an analysis of newspaper coverage supplemented by interviews and primary documents, I find that, in contrast to existing literature that shows that reporters must refr…
Sexualizing Sarah Palin: The Social and Political Context of the Sexual Objectification of Female Candidates
Defining Gendered Oppression in U.S. Newspapers: The Strategic Value of “Female Genital Mutilation
According to the logic of the gendered modernity/tradition binary, women in traditional societies are oppressed and women in modern societies liberated. While the binary valorizes modern women, it potentially erases gendered oppression in the West and undermines feminist movements on behalf of Western women. Using U.S. newspaper text, I ask whether female genital cutting (FGC) is used to define women in modern societies as liberated. I find that …
Relationship Dissolution as a Life Stage Transition: Effects on Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors
In this paper, with the use of linear regressions to investigate how relationship dissolution affects sexual attitudes and behaviors, the authors address the stereotype that newly single people seek multiple sexual partners. Although the newly single people surveyed did obtain new sexual partners, the rate at which they acquired new partners did not support the stereotype. Specifically, men with custody of their children seemed oriented toward fi…
Doing Casual Sex: A Sexual Fields Approach to the Emotional Force of Hookup Culture
Sex on college campuses has emerged as a source of emotional distress for students. This paper adopts a sexual fields approach to offer a gendered analysis of hookup culture's central emotional imperative: to be casual about sex. Based on 101 first-person accounts of sex and relationships in college, the findings reveal how students enact sexual casualness by hooking up only when drunk, refraining from tenderness, being unfriendly afterward, and …
Sociological Images: Blogging as Public Sociology
Sociological Images is a website aimed at a broad public audience that encourages readers to develop and apply a sociological imagination. The site includes short, accessible posts published daily. Each includes one or more images and accompanying commentary. Reaching approximately 20,000 readers per day, Sociological Images illustrates the potential for using websites as a platform for public engagement in the social sciences. This report provid…
Ask a Feminist: Michael Kimmel and Lisa Wade Discuss Toxic Masculinity
For this edition of Ask a Feminist, Michael Kimmel and Lisa Wade discuss the role of masculinity in the current political moment, including the rise of Donald Trump and white grievance politics in the United States. A preeminent scholar of masculinity studies, Kimmel analyzes masculinity’s intersections with racism, sexual violence, and backlash politics. Wade, whose work has critically and accessibly interrogated contemporary gender dynamics, sp…
The New Science of Sex Difference
While scientists across the academy have abandoned the nature/nurture dichotomy, evidence for the influences of society on our biology is greater than ever. This article reviews new developments in the biological sciences – in the sub‐fields of genetics, hormones, and neuroscience – with special attention to the implications for sociologists interested in gender. The article closes with an argument that embracing these developments has both theor…
Rethinking the Stalled Revolution: Toward New Metaphors for Feminist Struggle
In her pathbreaking 1989 book, The Second Shift, Arlie Hochschild introduced the idea of the “stalled revolution.” In the years since, the phrase has gained prominence and influence among scholars of gender, many of whom now use the term to describe the pace of change in arenas far beyond its original referent: the division of labor at home. Given its outsized role in feminist theory, it is due time to subject the metaphor to an examination. I do…
College Students and the Neutralization of Unsafe Sex: Applying a New Model and Establishing a New Research Agenda
Professionals in Organizations: A Neoteric Model
Most current models of formal organizations exhibit certain similarities. One, which may be called the Weber-Mannheim model, emphasizes the legal-rational ordering of formal relationships and, concomitantly, the notions of hierarchy, specialization, and the downward flow of authority. The Barnard-Simon model, while it focuses on the premises upon which organizational decisions are based, nonetheless assumes that organizational decision-making is …
Professionals in Organizations: A Neoteric Model
Most current models of formal organizations exhibit certain similarities. One, which may be called the Weber-Mannheim model, emphasizes the legal-rational ordering of formal relationships and, concomitantly, the notions of hierarchy, specialization, and the downward flow of authority. The Barnard-Simon model, while it focuses on the premises upon which organizational decisions are based, nonetheless assumes that organizational decision-making is …
Relationship Dissolution as a Life Stage Transition: Effects on Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors
In this paper, with the use of linear regressions to investigate how relationship dissolution affects sexual attitudes and behaviors, the authors address the stereotype that newly single people seek multiple sexual partners. Although the newly single people surveyed did obtain new sexual partners, the rate at which they acquired new partners did not support the stereotype. Specifically, men with custody of their children seemed oriented toward fi…
The Potential Relevances of Biology to Social Inquiry
Sociologists often react with hostility to explanations that evoke biology, and some critics of the discipline contend that this 'biophobia' undermines the credibility of sociology and makes it seem increasingly irrelevant in larger public debates. The negative reactions are many times diffuse and undiscerning of the different endeavors lumped together whenever one speaks broadly of biological (or 'biosocial') explanations. We seek to introduce g…
Defining Gendered Oppression in U.S. Newspapers: The Strategic Value of “Female Genital Mutilation
According to the logic of the gendered modernity/tradition binary, women in traditional societies are oppressed and women in modern societies liberated. While the binary valorizes modern women, it potentially erases gendered oppression in the West and undermines feminist movements on behalf of Western women. Using U.S. newspaper text, I ask whether female genital cutting (FGC) is used to define women in modern societies as liberated. I find that …
Hook-Up Culture: Setting a New Research Agenda
Sexualizing Sarah Palin: The Social and Political Context of the Sexual Objectification of Female Candidates
Journalism, advocacy and the social construction of consensus
Scholarship examining media coverage of social problems largely examines coverage of contentious issues. In this study, I contribute to our understanding of journalist practices by examining coverage of an issue over which there is a US consensus: female genital cutting (FGC). With an analysis of newspaper coverage supplemented by interviews and primary documents, I find that, in contrast to existing literature that shows that reporters must refr…
The emancipatory promise of the habitus: Lindy hop, the body, and social change
Existing research about the role of the habitus in social change emphasizes inertia. Individuals in new contexts are understood to face disadvantage, making disruption of a hierarchical status quo difficult. Recent theory regarding our ability to strategically change and use our bodily habits, however, suggests that the habitus may not be condemned to a purely conservative role. Here I examine a community of lindy hoppers who are re-shaping the c…
Sociological Images: Blogging as Public Sociology
Sociological Images is a website aimed at a broad public audience that encourages readers to develop and apply a sociological imagination. The site includes short, accessible posts published daily. Each includes one or more images and accompanying commentary. Reaching approximately 20,000 readers per day, Sociological Images illustrates the potential for using websites as a platform for public engagement in the social sciences. This report provid…
Learning from “Female Genital Mutilation: Lessons from 30 Years of Academic Discourse
At the intersection of feminism and postcolonial theory is an acrimonious debate over female genital cutting (FGC). I subject this debate to an analysis in order to separate productive from destructive discursive strategies. I find that both FGC and the literature about the practice are frequently mischaracterized in consequential ways. Especially prior to the mid-1990s, scholars frame FGC as an example of either cultural inferiority or cultural …
The New Science of Sex Difference
While scientists across the academy have abandoned the nature/nurture dichotomy, evidence for the influences of society on our biology is greater than ever. This article reviews new developments in the biological sciences – in the sub‐fields of genetics, hormones, and neuroscience – with special attention to the implications for sociologists interested in gender. The article closes with an argument that embracing these developments has both theor…
American Allegory: Lindy Hop and the Racial Imagination
Unwarranted Allegations in Unwanted Advances: On Laura Kipnis's Attack on Title IX
Ask a Feminist: Michael Kimmel and Lisa Wade Discuss Toxic Masculinity
For this edition of Ask a Feminist, Michael Kimmel and Lisa Wade discuss the role of masculinity in the current political moment, including the rise of Donald Trump and white grievance politics in the United States. A preeminent scholar of masculinity studies, Kimmel analyzes masculinity’s intersections with racism, sexual violence, and backlash politics. Wade, whose work has critically and accessibly interrogated contemporary gender dynamics, sp…
Doing Casual Sex: A Sexual Fields Approach to the Emotional Force of Hookup Culture
Sex on college campuses has emerged as a source of emotional distress for students. This paper adopts a sexual fields approach to offer a gendered analysis of hookup culture's central emotional imperative: to be casual about sex. Based on 101 first-person accounts of sex and relationships in college, the findings reveal how students enact sexual casualness by hooking up only when drunk, refraining from tenderness, being unfriendly afterward, and …
In pursuit of the potential of sexual field theory: A research agenda
Some argue that sexual field theory is the most promising approach to developing a comprehensive theory of collective sexual life. Yet, it remains underdeveloped. Pointing to a narrow empirical foundation, I use collegiate hookup cultures to reveal the potential of extended case study. I present the first comprehensive consideration of hookup cultures from a field theory perspective and show how these cases can both answer existing questions and …
Narratives of Outbreak and Survival in English-Language Cinema Prior to Covid-19
Efforts to curb the COVID-19 pandemic were hampered by the tendency of some Americans to disbelieve its seriousness, distrust social institutions, and defy public health recommendations. To contribute to understanding these responses, I look to one facet of the discursive environment faced by public health communicators: the last 25 years of commercially successful, English-language, epidemic-themed feature films. I coded a sample of 34 films for…
Rethinking the Stalled Revolution: Toward New Metaphors for Feminist Struggle
In her pathbreaking 1989 book, The Second Shift, Arlie Hochschild introduced the idea of the “stalled revolution.” In the years since, the phrase has gained prominence and influence among scholars of gender, many of whom now use the term to describe the pace of change in arenas far beyond its original referent: the division of labor at home. Given its outsized role in feminist theory, it is due time to subject the metaphor to an examination. I do…
Paradoxes of Displeasure: Understanding Collegiate Hookup Culture's Resilience to Negative Emotional Energy
Most US college students express ambivalence toward collegiate sexual cultures. Why, then, do hookup cultures persist? This article uses Interaction Ritual Theory to explore five emotional pathways through hookup culture: interaction ritual chains with distinct emotional trajectories. At least four are argued to potentially reproduce hookup culture, but only one produces primarily positive emotions. This analysis suggests hookup cultures can pers…
College Students and the Neutralization of Unsafe Sex: Applying a New Model and Establishing a New Research Agenda
“Responsibly Irresponsible” Partygoing During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Existing research on noncompliance with public health protocols during the Covid-19 pandemic features relatively low- rather than high-risk violations almost exclusively, with a small, difficult-to-verify set of exceptions. This paper adds an investigation of high-risk noncompliance with a qualitative inquiry into attendance at superspreader events in October 2020. With this possibly unique dataset, I use neutralization theory to analyze 27 colle…
Political science (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Gender Roles and Identity Studies (5 works)