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Reframing Narratives: the Role of Storytelling in Resisting Stigma and Shaping Positive Identities Among Active Drug Dealers
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationThis study explores how PWSD construct and promote positive identities through narratives, despite the negative connotations often associated with their illicit behavior. Drawing from narrative criminology, which highlights the importance of storytelling in assigning meaning to life events, this research investigates how PWSD resist the stigmatized “drug dealer” identity imposed by society. While prior research has focused on how PWSD maintain positive identities within the confines of their role as dealers, this study extends the literature by examining how they construct alternative, more favorable identities. These identities include those as friends, businesspeople, and risk managers. By distancing themselves from negative aspects of drug dealing, these individuals reframe their actions as positive and mitigate feelings of guilt and shame associated with stigmatized behavior. Based on interviews with 33 active drug dealers from St. Louis, Missouri, this study reveals that participants frequently acknowledged the negative societal view of “drug dealers” yet actively resisted this label by emphasizing other aspects of their identities. The findings contribute to our understanding of how PWSD neutralize the stigma of their behavior, align with more positive identities, and make decisions based on these constructed selves. By offering new insights into the dynamics of identity construction, this research adds nuance to deterrence and neutralization theories, demonstrating how narratives are used not only to justify behavior but also to navigate complex social judgements
Gender Differences in Symbolic Boundaries within a Rural Meth Market
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationThrough symbolic boundaries, individuals define themselves in contrast to identities they perceive as undesirable or negative. Using secondary qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with meth cooks in rural Alabama, I explore the similarities and differences in the way men and women who cook shake and bake meth construct symbolic boundaries. Across both genders, participants emphasized the symbolic differences between themselves and various types of other cooks and users they viewed as either incapable or immoral. At times, the men and women did so in similar ways. Specifically, they took effort to distinguish themselves from reckless cooks, wild women, incompetent women, dope whores, and dysfunctional addicts in the same ways. At others, however, they did so in different ways. This was the case when they spoke of those they considered unethical cooks, exploitive cooks, “drug dealers,” and pickers. These findings indicate that functionality and gender intersect with identity formation, influencing how participants navigate stigmatization within illicit drug markets
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Voices from criminal justice ::insider perspectives, outsider experiences /
No full textTechniques of neutralization
No full textMany scholars have developed numerous theories to explain how people overcome the moral hurdles of crime, perhaps none have been as well received as Sykes and Matza’s (1957) neutralization theory. According to the theory, norm-violators seek to free themselves of the guilt and potential negative self-image associated with their actions by pre-emptively using linguistic devices (that is, techniques of neutralization) that nullify the corresponding guilt. The use of such neutralization techniques is what allows offenders to start and maintain criminal and deviant careers. In their original formulation of the theory, Sykes and Matza state that techniques of neutralization must precede deviant behaviour. Recently, some scholars have sought to determine the stability of neutralizing beliefs. Using trajectory analysis, this research suggests that adolescents vary in their acceptance of neutralizations and that these groups are relatively stable, at least throughout adolescence.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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