Social Thought and Research, Volume 35 (2019)https://hdl.handle.net/1808/308052024-03-28T14:10:02Z2024-03-28T14:10:02ZTrailer Park Residents: Are They Worthy of Society's Respect?Anderson, Steven T.https://hdl.handle.net/1808/308132020-11-10T09:00:53Z2019-01-01T00:00:00ZTrailer Park Residents: Are They Worthy of Society's Respect?
Anderson, Steven T.
Existing research is limited in explaining the existence of and reasons for stereotypes held against trailer park residents. This study uses an experimental design to measure attitudes towards trailer park residents, specifically in terms of being considered worthy of society’s respect. An Internet questionnaire was designed and administered to a sample of 559 introductory sociology students at a Midwestern university using semantic differentials to measure attitudes towards a fictitious couple. Participants were divided into a control and an experimental group. The groups were presented with two different vignettes, which were the same except for the experimental group, for which the vignette contained the term trailer park as a descriptor. The results indicated that differences between the control group and the experimental group on several measures were significant. The results supported the hypothesis that those who live in trailer parks were deemed less worthy of society’s respect by college students. In conclusion, the findings support the notion that people who live in trailer parks have been singled out in American culture for denigration.
2019-01-01T00:00:00ZBook Review: Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, & Threatens our FutureGoettlich, Walterhttps://hdl.handle.net/1808/308122020-11-10T14:49:50Z2019-01-01T00:00:00ZBook Review: Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, & Threatens our Future
Goettlich, Walter
2019-01-01T00:00:00ZStrategies for Sexual Subversion: Informing the Future of Sexualities Research and ActivismHerrera, Andrea P.https://hdl.handle.net/1808/308112020-11-10T14:47:28Z2019-01-01T00:00:00ZStrategies for Sexual Subversion: Informing the Future of Sexualities Research and Activism
Herrera, Andrea P.
In this paper, I review, analyze, and evaluate the myriad ways early canonical and more recent high-profile scholarship in the field of sexualities envision a liberatory sexual politics and the most fruitful modes of achieving it. Due to theorists’ diverging interpretations of the causes and forms of sexual oppression as well as their differing visions of liberated sexuality, I find that prescriptions for dismantling the “ethnosexual regime” (Nagel 2000) vary widely. The strategies suggested by scholars can be categorized into: 1) radical lesbian-feminist separatism, 2) identity politics, 3) the redeployment of gender, which encompasses trans and intersex bodies, gender play (e.g., butch-femme, drag, and shifting constructions of masculinity), and non-binary identities, 4) micro-level individual and interpersonal solutions, 5) changes in educational institutions, and 6) sexualities research itself. I conclude by making suggestions for sociologists who seek to further theorize and effect the subversion of normative systems of sexuality.
2019-01-01T00:00:00ZRe-examining Adorno on the Regression of Consciousness and Democracy: Towards Social TransformationAu, Ansonhttps://hdl.handle.net/1808/308102020-11-10T14:45:56Z2019-01-01T00:00:00ZRe-examining Adorno on the Regression of Consciousness and Democracy: Towards Social Transformation
Au, Anson
Scholars have charged Adorno of hypocritically abandoning efforts to articulate possibilities of social transformation, a propensity he emphasizes is central to social critique and sociocritical sociology. Keeping consistent with his fundamentally negative position, this essay reexamines democracy by scoping his work and reorganizing its philosophical and sociological contexts to open dialogue on the characteristics of democracy that Adorno would not reject. Throughout, I negatively reflect upon the nature of this democracy and criticize it towards the goal of fleshing out the paths of social transformation possible and available for its realization – through the things it could not be. Adopting this coupling as a point of departure, I analyze the regression of consciousness in Adorno’s thought, as the root of ego-weakness – the destroyer of maturity and that which underpins every shackle he sees as subjugating the masses – and bring this into dialogue with the insights informed by Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and action theory. To examine the practical implications of social transformation, this essay will also demonstrate how they play out in contemporary contexts, drawing parallels with evidence from contemporary social movements, on account of their conception as a means of social transformation and of Adorno’s own engagement with this conception.
2019-01-01T00:00:00Z