The Library Workshop: Loosening the Belt, Undisciplined Research

2. Compare the results of searching the same precise topic in a database suggested for your subject area, two scholarly databases from/for differing fields, WorldCat, and a database geared toward Women/Gender Studies. Discuss how the different disciplines approach the topic.

Over the course of my studies so far, I have used to search term “Gender Attribution” in many different databases, including:

-Social Sciences Full Text (Sociology & Psychology)

-GenderWatch (Gender Studies)

-JSTOR (Humanities)

-WorldCat

-Contemporary Women’s Issues (Women’s Studies)

Here is a brief summary of how the different fields approach the subject of gender attribution:

Sociology of Gender:

            Sociology approaches gender attribution as a part of social interaction, usually as part of the framing of the social space (Garfinkel 1967; Kessler and McKenna 1978; Goffman 1987). On the ‘pure sociology’ side of the spectrum, gender attribution is treated as a socially situated phenomenon enacted by members within the natural attitude, and negotiated throughout a social interaction (Garfinkel 1967; Kessler and McKenna 1978; Crawford 2000; Speer 2005; Stokoe 2006). On the ‘applied sociology’ side of the spectrum, gender attribution - along with racial attribution, class attribution, etc. - is seen as playing a role in the interactional side of sexism, racism, classism, etc (West and Zimmerman 1987; West and Fenstermaker 1995; Ridgeway and Correll 2004).

Psychology:

            Psychologists approach gender attribution as part of a cognitive schema for organizing interactional partners into categories for typification purposes (Stangor et al . 1992; Irmen 2006).

Biology/Sociology of Medicine:

            Biologists, especially feminist biologists, approach gender attribution as the process by which biological researchers apply social precepts to ‘objective’ observations (Kessler 1990, 1998; Fausto-Sterling 1992, 2000).

Women’s and Gender Studies:

            Women’s and Gender Studies approach gender attribution in much the same way as applied sociologists do, although they tend to spend less time focusing on how gender attribution plays into oppression and more time on the structures of that oppression (Devor 1989; Hawkesworth 1997; Ridgeway and Correll 2004; Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008).

5. Research your specific topic in the literature of the 70s and 80s. Research the same topic in the literature of the 90s and 00s. Discuss the evolution of the field based on this exercise.

Despite the progress made in the field of gender studies since Kessler and McKenna (1978) coined the term “gender attribution”, not much progress has been made in the study of the actual mechanisms of gender attribution. Kessler and McKenna mention two previous writers who touched on the subject on the topic - Garfinkel’s (1967) discussion of Agnes and Birdwhistell’s (1970) writing on the subject - but other than those and Kessler and McKenna’s own work, not much research has been done on the topic. Much of the research in gender studies has glossed the gender attribution process or only touched on it briefly in the pursuit of discussing how gender is ‘done’ or how structural gender inequalities are constructed (West and Zimmerman 1987; Rogers 1992; West and Fenstermaker 1995, 2002; Ridgeway 2009).

There have been two important exceptions to this, however. First, in the field of social psychology, studies on the automatic activation of social categories and cognitive schema have produced results that support Kessler and McKenna’s theories about the primacy of gender attribution (Stangor et al . 1992; Irmen 2006). Second, through the use of conversation analysis, a few other researchers have examined the linguistic components of the gender attribution process (Speer 2005; Stokoe 2006).

6. Research a seminal scholar or text through reviews, citation index, biographical information, etc and discuss the effect of scholar/work on the discipline.

The seminal text in the theorization of gender attribution, and in the ethnomethodological study of gender as a whole, is Kessler and McKenna’s (1978) Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, wherein the term “gender attribution” was coined. Kessler and McKenna’s work can be seen as having an influence on three different areas of study. First, the authors’ discussion of the social construction of the biological basis of sex differentiation influenced Kessler’s later work in the management of intersexed children, as well as other authors in the field of the medical construction of gender (Kessler 1990, 1998; Fausto-Sterling 1992, 2000). Second, the authors’ theorizing about the construction of gender influenced ethnomethodological theories of gender, such as the more widely-cited work of West and others (West and Zimmerman 1987; West and Fenstermaker 1995). Finally, their research with transsexuals influenced theorizing in the field of transgender studies (Devor 1989; Hausman 2001; Dozier 2005).

References

Crawford, Mary. 2000. “A Reappraisal of Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach : Editor’s Introduction How to Make Sex and Do Gender.” Feminism & Psychology. 10(7):7-10. (Retrieved from Sage Publications on July 29, 2010.)

Crawley, Sara L., Lara J. Foley, and Constance L. Shehan. 2008. Gendering Bodies. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Devor, Holly. 1989. Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.

Dozier, Raine. 2005. “Beards, Breasts, and Bodies: Doing Sex in a Gendered World.” Gender and Society. 19(3):297-316. (Retrieved from JSTOR on March 19, 2010.)

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1992. Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men. New York: Basic Books.

------. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books.

Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Goffman, Erving. 1987. Gender Advertisements. Harper Torchbooks ed. New York: Harper & Row.

Hausman, Bernice L. 2001. “Recent Transgender Theory.” Feminist Studies. 27(2):465-90.

Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Irmen, Lisa. 2006. “Automatic Activation and Use of Gender Subgroups.” Sex Roles. 55:435-44. (Retrieved from Wilson Web on July 14, 2010.)

Kessler, Suzanne J. 1990. “The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Infants.” Signs. 16(1):3-26.

------. 1998. Lessons from the Intersexed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Kessler, Suzanne J. and Wendy McKenna. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Ridgeway, Cecilia L. 2009. “Framed Before We Know It: How Gender Shapes Social Relations.” Gender and Society. 23(2):145-60. (Retrieved from SAGE Journals Online on September 8, 2010.)

Ridgeway, Cecilia L. and Shelley J. Correll. 2004. “Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations.” Gender and Society. 18(4):510-31. (Retrieved from JSTOR on March 19, 2010.)

Rogers, Mary F. 1992. “They All Were Passing: Agnes, Garfinkel, and Company.” Gender and Society. 6(2):169-91. (Retrieved from JSTOR on September 8, 2010.)

Speer, Susan A. 2005. “The Interactional Organization of the Gender Attribution Process.” Sociology. 39(1):67-87. (Retrieved from SAGE Journals Online on July 29, 2010.)

Stangor, Charles, Laure Lynch, Changming Duan, and Beth Glass. 1992. “Categorization of Individuals on the Basis of Multiple Social Features.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 62(2):207-18.

Stokoe, Elizabeth. 2006. “On Ethnomethodology, Feminism, and the Analysis of Categorial Reference to Gender in Talk-In-Interaction.” The Sociological Review. 54(3):467-94.

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender and Society. 1(2):125-51. (Retrieved from JSTOR on May 18, 2010.)

West, Candace and Sarah Fenstermaker. 1995. “Doing Difference.” Gender and Society. 9(1):8-37. (Retrieved from JSTOR on May 18, 2010.)

-----. 2002. “Accountability in Action: The Accomplishment of Gender, Race and Class in a Meeting of the University of California Board of Regents.” Discourse and Society. 13(4):537-63. (Retrieved from SAGE Journals Online on September 8, 2010.)