This article offers both a feminist and an ethnomethodological reanalysis of Harold Garfinkel's report on Agnes, the intersexed person he studied with several colleagues. Both reanalyses yield similar conclusions. Specifically, while it does illuminate the work of accomplishing gender, the report on Agnes simultaneously illustrates how gender operates as a powerful background expectancy among professional as well as “lay” sociologists.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Belenky, Mary Field
, Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule. 1986. Women's ways of knowing: Self, voice, and mind.New York: Basic Books.
2.
Berg, Ellen.1987. Feminist theory: Moving sociology from the “Malestream.”Footnotes15(March): 5, 11.
3.
Brown, Richard Harvey.
1987. Society as text: Essays on rhetoric, reason, and reality.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4.
Cahill, Spencer E.1989. Fashioning males and females: Appearance management and the social reproduction of gender.Symbolic Interaction12:281-98.
5.
Cancian, Francesca M.
, and Steven L. Gordon.1988. Changing emotion norms in marriage: Love and anger in U.S. women's magazines since 1900.Gender & Society2:308-42.
6.
Cannon, Lynn Weber
, Elizabeth Higginbotham, and Marianne L. A. Leung.1988. Race and class biases in qualitative research on women.Gender & Society2:449-62.
7.
Clifford, James.
1986. Introduction: Partial truths. In Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press.
8.
Crawford, Mary
, and Linda English.1984. Generic versus specific inclusion of women in language: Effects on recall.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research13:373-81.
9.
Friedan, Betty.
1963. The feminine mystique.New York: Dell.
10.
Garfinkel, Harold.
1967. Studies in ethnomethodology.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
11.
Geertz, C.
1973. The interpretation of culture: Selected essays.New York: Basic Books.
12.
Goffman, Erving.
1963. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Gouldner, Alvin W.
1971. The coming crisis of Western sociology.New York: Avon Equinox.
15.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell.
1983. The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling.Berkeley: University of California Press.
16.
Jameson, Frederic.
1988. The ideologies of theory: Essays, 1971-1986. Vol. 1, Situations of theory.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
17.
Keller, Evelyn Fox.
1985. Reflections on gender and science.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
18.
Martyna, Wendy.1980. Beyond the “he/man” approach: The case for nonsexist language.Signs5:482-93.
19.
Sacks, Harvey
, Emmanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson.1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.Language50:696-735.
20.
Safilios-Rothschild, Constantina.
1977. Love, sex, and sex roles.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
21.
Schutz, Alfred.
1970. Reflections on the problem of relevance.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
22.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein.
1978. On the margins of discourse: The relation of literature to language.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
23.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein.
1981. Narrative versions, narrative theories. In On narrative, edited by W.J.T. Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
24.
West, Candace
, and Don H. Zimmerman.1987. Doing gender.Gender & Society1:125-51.
