University Culture: Lecture 4

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University Culture Lecture 4

• Technology Suggestions
• Email glitch may be better now however, if you
  did not receive an email from me yesterday
  afternoon, please write an alternate email
  address beside your name on the attendance sheet.
• Handout next weeks reading by Dozier
• Recapping last lecture readings
• Doing/Undoing Gender at SMU, Halifax Bars,
  Shopping Centres
• Were exploring the textual discourse of
  doing/undoing gender in these places
• Application of Dorothy Smiths relations of
  ruling through text
• Smith believes text is one powerful location for
  power to unfold it tells us whos who/whats
  what...doesnt it?

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• Technology nightmare
• Searching through database rather than directly
  through journal article title
• Handouts Upcoming readings
• (1) SMUO Dozier, R. (2005). Beards, breasts, and
  bodies Doing sex in a gendered world. Gender and
  Society, 19 (3), 297-316.
• (2) SMUO McCrone, D. and Bechhofer, F. (2008).
  National identity and social inclusion. Ethnic
  and Racial Studies, 31 (7), 1245-1266.

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Back to social facts and gender
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Last class, we learned that

• Roughgarden notes
• It is difficult for many societies and groups to
  affirm/support gender diversity. think of any?
• Both terms sex and gender imply male and
  female according to biological or natural
  terms.
• But, we use these as social terms as well.
• To challenge the universality of labels of
  male/female and sex/gender, Roughgarden urges us
  to problematize the taken for granted divisions
  of sex and gender.

• As Roughgarden has pointed out, sex and gender
  are not necessarily divisions of inherent or
  natural features of species there is a case for
  how sex and gender happen within society to
  maintain ORDER.

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• This happening is an example of a social
  construction.
• Know this
• Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote The
  Social Construction of Reality - - a book on the
  sociology of knowledge (1966)
• Reality is socially constructed by knowledges.
  Social reality is NOT a social fact in and of
  itself (sui generis), but is produced and
  communicated as we internalize the historical
  social facts around us, synthesize them according
  to the knowldedges we already have, and
  externalize those social facts in a way that
  usually conforms to the existing social
  reality...until someone rocks the boat in
  Bergers Sacred Canopy, he writes that our social
  reality is precarious.

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Speaking of rocking boats

• University culture may also be the first place
  when your commonsense knowledge, religion and
  spiritual beliefs, academic knowledge, and
  personal value systems on gender become in
  conflict.
• How do you keep your ideals afloat?
• The readings

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West and Zimmerman 1987
DOING GENDER (Article 1) NET Doing gender.
http//www.clas.ufl.edu/users/krisj/spring03/syg20
00/0226_doinggendernotes.html

• Wrote landmark article on Doing Gender (do you
  think much has changed in 30 years concerning
  gender?

• Important Here, the key concept is that of
  accountability people come to be required to be
  accountable for every action they perform to be
  appropriate to ones sex category. Any type of
  social interaction and activityy are
  potentially subject to doing gender
  reinforcing the notion of essential difference
  between females and males. Gender
  differences are made to appear natural and
  essential through doing gender.
• HOW WERE YOU ACCOUNTABLE TO GENDER NORMS SO FAR
  TODAY? Consider how gender is both done and
  undone in this clip

• Gender is not so much as a set of traits
  residing within individuals, but as something
  people do in their social interactions. It is
  embedded in every aspect of everyday interactions
  that ones actions in doing gender simultaneously
  produces, reproduces, sustains and legitimates
  the social meanings accorded to gender.

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UNDOING GENDER

• (Article 3) SMUO Deutsch, F. (2007). Undoing
  gender. Gender and Society, 21 (1), 106-127.
• Deutschs article is a response to West and
  Zimmermans theory that gender is something which
  is done within social interactions according to
  the accountability of the person being
  judged.Deutsch given that our measuring sticks
  regarding gender are so often problematic, we
  need to ask, now, how to un-do gender.
• Deutsch believed that, if interaction is the site
  of doing gender, might it also be the site of
  undoing it.
• Is there such a thing as un-doing anything, or
  is that just doing something else ?

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Deutsch praises West Zimmerman for introducing
4 important points
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• In such attempts to correct or deconstruct or
  undo gender, then, are some people oppressed?

• Who?
• How?

• Why?
• What will be gained and lost, by whom, if the
  objectors succeed in undoing the gender of
  others?
• What are people afraid of? Losing their ideals?
  Something else?

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Building sociological questions

• -- If we un-do gender, will we all be the same?
  Will we undo gender differences? Will there be
  roles for being/doing men nor women? How might
  that affect society?
•  
• -- Does transexuality undo gender, or transform
  it? Should it be paid for with public tax monies?
  Why, why not?
•  
• -- If female humans did not need males to
  reproduce, what would society look like? What
  would have to change? What would stay the same?
•  
• -- What, if anything, is the difference between
  sex change surgery and breast implant surgery or
  penile enhancement implants? Is one more natural
  or socially acceptable than the other? Is that
  messing with nature?

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Doing/Undoing Gender at SMU, Halifax Bars,
Shopping Centres

• Exploring text seeking ways we do/undo gender

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SMU Online registration

• Go to Main Content  
•  HELP EXIT
•  Personal Information (Checklist item 2 of 10)
  Enter your Personal Information. If you enter
  your e-mail address you will need to verify it by
  entering it again.
• - indicates a required field.
• Citizenship
• Email Verify e-mail address
• SIN (XXXXXXXXX)
• Gender Yes Male No Female
• Birth Date Month Month Day Day Year (YYYY) Year
  Return to Checklist without saving changes Skip
  to top of page
• Release 7.3

• GENDER IS A REQUIRED FIELD
• Is this doing gender?
• WHO is doing it?
• You? SMU? Others?

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Remember Dorothy Smith concept

• RELATIONS OF RULING TEXT IS HOW THE RULING
  APPARATUS ORGANIZES, REGULATES AND DIRECTS
  SOCIETY WE NEED TO GUARD AGAINST THAT IN
  SOCIOLOGY ITSELF. Smith considers this an
  institutional process and that we encounter
  many points of entry to these processes in
  everyday/everynight life.

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Halifax Bar Scene

• How is gender represented in the text connected
  to Halifax bars?

• In the next slides...where is it?
• How are you accountable for a certain gender when
  you are there?

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http//members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/cf445/
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http//lh6.ggpht.com/dohnut.hooters/SIyK65ZOv_I/AA
AAAAAAC0E/8rvjStZleIk/s400/HootersofDartmouthNS.pn
g
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• LINK to text about Halifax Bar Scene --- an
  example of how (popular) text regulates you
  familiarize yourself with this blog for an exam
  question

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Which gender is involved with

• Wet t-shirt contests?
• Ladies night?

• Unpack these two social facts.

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In sum,
Ideals/Ideas about gender, sex, sexuality, and
nature are not clear once we question our taken
for granted assumptions. This is included in
Berger and Luckmanns concept of social
constructionism. Some say that those ideals are
social facts and are not innate to humans that
which acts externally on us but which we
internalize and make part of our own belief
system we become accountable to them and those
of others. Ideas can change yet, sometimes,
even when we know people are hurting, depressed,
suicidal, uncertain and confused, ostracized,
killed, or something similar, our actions (the
Practical) are slow to catch up. Is this just
human nature?
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Halifax Shopping Centre

• LINK
• What are some social facts about how gender
  happens at this environment?

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Reading for next week are on genders first
cousins sex and and sexuality

• SMUO Dozier, R. (2005). Beards, breasts, and
  bodies Doing sex in a gendered
• world. Gender and Society, 19 (3), 297-316.
• Note this is a handout today