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ASA Section on Body & Embodiment
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Embodied Negotiations of Respectability in "Risky" Social Exchanges

2/15/2016

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Written by:
Krista Sigurdson, PhD, Assistant Adjunct Professor,
Social & Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco
Visiting Assistant Professor, Mills College

Jody Ahlm, PhD Candidate
Sociology Department, University of Illinois at Chicago

     Building on presentations and conversations at the 2015 ASA Section on Body and Embodiment and Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section joint session on “Bodies and Sexualities in Science and Technology Studies,” this post explores some connections between safety and respectability in two contrasting and revealing cases: human milk sharing and gay male hookup apps. In both cases the (perceived) risk of the exchange is in the specter of disease transmission, particularly HIV. Human milk sharing refers to the practice of giving away extra breast milk “informally” in the sense that there is no central collection, testing, processing and distribution site as there is with non-profit human milk banks. In the last few years, milk sharing has gained enormous traction among parents through the use of Facebook to connect donors and recipients. The popular app Grindr shows nearby users and their approximate distance and has a reputation for facilitating casual semi-anonymous sex.  We suggest here that in informal milk sharing, breastfeeding mothers have an available category, the good breastfeeding mother, for establishing their respectability and safety. For gay men, respectability is accessed through sexual moderation and discretion. How the “risky” behaviors that milk sharing mothers and gay male app users engage in is interpreted depends on the categories of respectability afforded to each of these groups. Because of this, members of these groups engage in different types of embodied practices to negotiate the perceptions of their practices.
 
HUMAN MILK EXCHANGE

     In recent history, “just as the world of blood banking was convulsed by the AIDS epidemic [in the 1980s and 1990s], AIDS caused a cataclysm in the much smaller world of milk banking” (Swanson 2014:193). With the first discovered transmission of AIDS through a blood transfusion and the discovery of HIV in human milk in the late 1980s, milk banks formally rejected payed milk sellers and reinforced their model of uncompensated “donor breast milk” as that which they offer (Swanson 2014). The rejection of paying milk donors continues to permeate the world of non-profit milk banking (Swanson 2014, Gerstein Pineau 2012) and has impacted the construction of informal milk sharing as a safe, respectable, and ethical form of exchange (Sigurdson 2015). Informal sharing practices operationalize an ethic of “informed sharing” where donors and recipients are individually responsible for vetting each other.[1]

     Krista found in her research on informal milk sharing in the San Francisco Bay Area that risk assessment was often mitigated by recipients enacting the concept of a “good breastfeeding mother” who not only breastfeeds her own baby but also puts in the extra embodied and technologically mediated labor of pumping, collecting, and storing surplus breast milk for her own baby or to give to another. As hard working breastfeeding/donating mothers they were not seen as the “type” to hide medical conditions (e.g. HIV or other STD also transmissible by breast milk), engage in risky behavior like IV drug use or casual unprotected sex or knowingly compromise the milk through adulteration.[2] Respectabily was established by donors giving milk without remuneration and by recipients not pressuring donors for more milk. In many cases, Krista observed that donors and recipients had equally experienced infant feeding as a technoscientifically mediated form of embodied labor. As Krista wrote about (Sigurdson 2015), many donors came to donate because they developed a pumping pattern that encouraged an “over-production” of milk and many recipients spent hours at the pump or using other breastfeeding devices and lactation products trying to produce more milk. (see Avishai 2007 on “breastfeeding projects”).
 
GAY MALE HOOK UP APPS

     The popularity of Grindr as a means of finding casual sex has made it a lightning rod for anxieties over gay men’s sexual practices. Current discussions about respectability politics in LGBTQ communities in the US are inextricably tied to the HIV crisis of the 1980s/1990s, when longstanding tensions in political strategies for improving the lives of LGBTQ people were injected with a life-or-death urgency. As public cruising has become more stigmatized and heavily policed, and the pressures of respectability politics and gentrification have de-sexualized many public gay spaces (Hanhardt 2013), apps such as Grindr have become a primary site for finding casual sex partners. The marriage equality movement’s focus on gay identity over gay sex limits gay respectability to mongamous coupledom and stigmatizes promiscuity (Duggan 2004, Eng 2010).

     In Jody’s digital ethnography of Grindr she found that users’ anxieties over their reputation were often manifested in the management of their digitized bodies. Torso shots used as profile pictures, pictures of erect penises sent through private message, and references to a preference for receptive or penetrative sex (“bottom” or “top”) are used to signal sexual intent, even in the presence of conflicting statements such as “just on here checking things out,” or “not looking for hook ups”. Whether presenting a certain ambivalence toward the app or openly using it for hook ups, Grindr users must negotiate the stigma of promiscuity associated with the app. The structure of the app creates affordances that allow users to keep separate the explicit photos they send in private messages and the face-pic on their public profile. Significantly, many users will not talk to another user without seeing a face pic, either in their profile or in the first private message, saying things like “It’s 2015 have a face.” The simultaneous imperative to be out and to guard one’s reputation reflects the pressures of contemporary respectability politics to make visible gay identity while portraying an assimilable sexuality.




[1] The exchange of breast milk outside of the primary mother/baby dyad have long histories going back to eras of commonplace wet nursing (Golden 1996; Swanson 2014). These histories have been mired in controversies related to respectability and safety amidst contextual dynamics of gender, race, class, nation, sexuality and the expectations of proper motherly conduct (e.g. Jones-Rogers 2011).

[2] Most of the milk sharing participants Krista interviewed were high income, well-educated and often white. This reflects the demographics of those who are most likely to breastfeed and overcome “lactastrophes” (Palmquist and Doehler 2014) through labor and time intensive practices. Class and race afforded markers of respectability and perceived low risk to many of the mothers engaged in milk sharing.

 

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The Embodied Experience of Ethnography: Accessing Corporeal and Emotional Knowledge through Participant Observation

2/1/2016

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Picture
Roscoe C. Scarborough, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor
Franklin and Marshall College
Department of Sociology







Embodied Knowledge and Participant Observation
Drawing upon my experiences researching belonging among CrossFitters and firefighters (Scarborough 2015), I argue that participant observation is invaluable for producing knowledge on embodied experience. Participant observation offers unparalleled access to corporeal and emotional experiences that cannot be recorded through interviews or observation-only ethnography.
 
Ethnographers must avoid many potential pitfalls in their research. There are concerns about maintaining one’s objectivity. Total immersion in a social milieu comes at the risk of “going native”—transitioning out of a sociological mode of examining behavior. Even Erving Goffman, one of the most celebrated sociologists of everyday encounters, warns us, “only a schmuck studies his own life” (Goffman in Fine 2009). Losing objectivity, going native, and researching one’s own life all pose risks of succumbing to subjectivity and bias. However, ethnographers must negotiate these dangers and utilize participant observation to examine corporeal and emotional experiences. Participant observation in activities like CrossFit and firefighting produces knowledge only available to insiders. While in-depth interviews yield a wealth of information (Pugh 2013), embodied experiences are best understood by taking part in the action.  

Alliance CrossFit
My interest in examining belonging led me to join Alliance CrossFit.[1] CrossFit was an enthralling culture of community filled with patrons eager to participate in its focused, ritualistic encounters. Beyond the cultural and social processes animating the “box” (insider lingo for “gym”), there was also an important corporeal dimension to belonging.
 
After my first workout, I could barely walk up the stairs to my apartment. I spent about thirty minutes lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, regretting having signed a six-month membership. Over the next few weeks, I experienced deep-seated knots in my shoulders and spent a considerable amount of time using hot packs. I’d never been in so much pain for so long.
 
It was a lengthy process to condition my body to perform Olympic weightlifting movements, basic gymnastic skills, and adapting to high-intensity interval training. With time, my body became accustomed to the routine of CrossFit; my weights went up and my times went down. I found enjoyment in mastering the technique of technical movements and working at the limit of my cardiovascular capacity. I transitioned from suffering in the name of research to longing for the cathartic release of operating at my body’s full capacity.
 
At CrossFit, my corporeal transition was paralleled by an emotional evolution. In the beginning, CrossFit was nothing more than hard work. On one hand, my gym efforts were research, a necessary evil required for my dissertation. On the other hand, I experienced the work as superfluous physical suffering. As a longtime recreational runner, the pain I was experiencing in the gym and the never-ending soreness led me to question whether CrossFitters were masochistic. In a gradual change of attitude that paralleled my corporeal development, my experience of the physical work associated with CrossFit changed. Beyond an initial shame-avoiding approach of aiming to achieve a time or weight that was comparable to my peers, I began to enjoy completing a set of weighted squats or moving through a circuit of exercises. The journey of developing specialized physical competence and the requisite endurance for CrossFit provided an awareness and appreciation for the embodied process of integrating into a social world that demanded corporeal excellence. Taking part in this development generated an insider’s understanding of the pleasures of challenging corporeal work.
 
Monacan Volunteer Fire Department
In the same project on belonging, I became a firefighter and served in that capacity for two years at Monacan Volunteer Fire Department. Beginning the project, I expected firefighters to bond around hard, dangerous work in burning buildings. For sure, fires are “magnified moments” (Hochschild 1994:4) of great cultural significance, but this is only part of the story. Over fifty evening and weekend meetings of fire academy involved skipping sleep, acquiring sore backs and knees, and developing previously unused muscle groups. While academy was an experience of institutional indoctrination, it was also a taxing trial of embodied hardships and corporeal endurance.
 
Serving as a firefighter, I discovered that belonging is forged through a routine of training, bunking together, and sleepless nights running alarms and medical calls. Connection emerged from being “in the trenches together” through the rigors of developing muscle memory of foundational skills for “the big one.” In the station, belonging also was produced through grassroots rituals like “the scrounge.” After training and other institutional responsibilities were fulfilled, many firefighters providing overnight staffing would “scrounge” through leftovers in a friendly competition to concoct the most appealing late night snack. Enduring sleep deprivation or feeling the sugar high induced by a 2:30 a.m. mint chocolate chip burrito are embodied experiences that play a part in connection. It is unlikely that interviews or observation-only ethnography would yield a meaningful understanding of how brotherhood develops out of participation in these acts.
 
Compared to CrossFit, the emotional experience of firefighting is less bound to the physical work. Yet, “emotional labor” (Hochschild 1983) is a central, often subterranean, component of life in the fire service. Traumas of motor vehicle crashes and medical emergencies become routine. Initially, facing death in its native environment was a jarring emotional experience, but I came to negotiate it as a form of labor.[2]
 
Awakened from a slumber at 5:50 a.m., I arrived at my first cardiac arrest to a bedroom with a hysterical wife screaming and a police officer performing C.P.R. on an older male. As the F.N.G. (“fucking new guy”) on the crew, I was directed, “Get her outta here.” I corralled the woman down the hallway, charging her with a diversionary task of locating a list of medications and locating insurance information. After turning this chore over to the police officer, I returned to take my turn providing chest compressions. In a bit of a daze, I was instructed by the medic to provide more rapid and deeper compressions. The shrieks of the wife, the expression on the victim’s unconscious face, and the popping of breaking ribs due to compressions were shocking experiences that a C.P.R. course cannot simulate. I functioned as trained and ordered, but the ordeal left me anxious in the moment and disquieted for days.
 
At the final cardiac arrest I ran during my fieldwork, my emotional experience was quite different. After two years, cardiac arrests had become routine. I learned to dehumanize the victims and get to work. I got satisfaction out of providing deep, bone-crunching C.P.R. that insured circulation of oxygenated blood.[3] Whether the victim lived or not, I found fulfillment in providing optimized professional service: navigating the team swiftly to the call, providing effective C.P.R., and rapid defibrillation. I learned to manage my emotions and reframe death as another firefighting duty. A member of the firefighting brotherhood who has been in the trenches and shares common experiences—an insider—is best equipped to examine, understand, and report on these embodied emotional experiences.
 
The Value of Getting Your Hands Dirty
Reflecting on my fieldwork with CrossFitters and firefighters, I find that corporeal and emotional experiences are inextricably intertwined in embodied action. Participant observation offers a tool to mine embodied knowledge that is difficult to access. While interviews can offer insight into personal narratives, perspectives, and emotions, a deeper experiential knowledge is acquired through participation. While remaining mindful of our subjectivity and bias, we should continue developing an understanding of the embodied experience of ethnographic fieldwork (e.g., Paradis 2015). Getting your hands dirty in the field develops new empirical and theoretical questions on embodiment, but it also draws us deeper into the social worlds of those we aim to understand.

 
Notes
1. Organization names are pseudonyms.
2. The most common instances of death encountered by Monacan firefighters were cardiac arrests. On any cardiac arrest, effective C.P.R. and rapid defibrillation are essential for survival. To insure effective C.P.R. is performed, firefighters work as a team; each individual provides two minutes of compressions on a rotating basis until the victim is revived or death is declared.
3. In the field, Lifepak 15 monitors report SpO2 levels, the oxygen saturation level of peripheral capillaries.

 
Works Cited
Fine, Gary Alan. 2009. “Goffman Turns to Me and Says, ‘Only a Schmuck Studies His
Own Life.’” Bios Sociologicus: The Erving Goffman Archives. Retrieved on May 12, 2015 (http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/goffman_archives/20).

Hochschild, Arlie. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Hochschild, Arlie. 1994. “The Commercial Spirit of Intimate Life and the Abduction of
Feminism.” Theory, Culture and Society 11:1-24.

Paradis, Elise. 2015. “The Ethnographic Body, or the Ethnographic Bodies? Bodily Self,
or Bodily Identity?” ASA Section on Body & Embodiment, November 15. Retrieved November 16, 2015 (http://sectionbodyembodiment.weebly.com/blog/
the-ethnographic-body-or-the-ethnographic-bodiesbodily-self-or-bodily-identity).

Pugh, Allison J. 2013. “What Good are Interviews for Thinking about Culture?
Demystifying Interpretive Analysis.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 1:42-68.

Scarborough, Roscoe C. 2015. Moments and Their Men: Cultural Architectures and
Interactional Ecologies of Belonging and Inequality. Unpublished Dissertation. Department of Sociology, University of Virginia.



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