Professional Documents
Culture Documents
American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
American Sociological Review.
http://www.jstor.org
759
760
761
762
763
rooted in differences in their institutional settings and in their understandingsof the forces
threateningtheir girls. Yet because these were
not the forces their girls felt threatened by,
both approaches prompted resistance. Two
patterns of control and contestation resulted-the patterns were enacted on the terrains of private and public patriarchy.
UNDERMINING AND REINSCRIBING
PRIVATE PATRIARCHY
It is orientationnight at the ProbationDepartment. Sixteen young women sit in a room and
listen as their probation officer, Carol Jackson, lectures them about the conditions of
their probation. Carol lists a series of rules
before reaching the most important one of
all-her "ruleof independence."While under
her care, Carol tells the girls, they will learn
to rely on themselves and to realize that nobody, not even their boyfriends or homeboys,
can take care of them. "You sittin' here is
proof that those boys aren't carin' for you,"
Carol reminds them. As she speaks, two girls
roll their eyes. Another puts on lipstick in a
mirror; two others flip through pictures in
their wallets and show each other photos of
their homeboys.
In their work on gender bias in the juvenile system, feminist criminologists have
reached a common understanding of the
gendered norms transmittedto young women
in this system. Like feminist state theorists,
feminist criminologists tend to conceptualize
the penal system as a male, paternalistic entity that acts to "enforce women's place in a
patriarchal society" (Chesney-Lind and
Sheldon 1992:80). Many of these scholars
locate this orientation in judicial "chivalry"
and/or "paternalism"-that is, in lingering
notions of female fragility and vulnerability
(Chesney-Lind 1977; Daly 1989; Datesman
and Scarpetti 1980; Frazier, Bock, and
Henretta 1983). This judicial stance allegedly teaches women that passivity and dependence are positive gender attributes,thus
preparing them for traditional positions in
nuclear family structures (Messerschmidt
1986). Other feminist criminologists trace
the system's patriarchalnature to the kind of
girls it draws into its web (Gelsthorpe 1989;
Hudson 1990). They argue that state actors
use status offenses to regulate female sexu-
764
ality and to impose "traditional gender norms
and behaviors" (Alder 1984; Visher 1983;
Webb 1984). Still others focus on the kind of
punishment inflicted on girls, arguing that
girls are policed with hegemonic images of
heterosexuality (Cain 1989) and are taught to
become subordinate partners in heterosexual
relationships (Lees 1989). All of these arguments entail a view of the system as an upholder of traditional sexual mores and an enforcer of private patriarchy.
The "Be-Your-Own-Woman"Rule
Many of the issues addressed by feminist
criminologists also concerned probation officer Carol Jackson and her colleagues.
These state actors held expectations for their
that revolved
female clients-expectations
around their clients' sexuality and relations
to men. Yet to clarify how they approached
these issues, their work must be viewed in
its larger institutional context. These POs
were overworked and overwhelmed. Carol's
girls dropped in for a quick meeting once every few months and then moved on. At the
same time, Carol was committed to "protecting" her clients. This responsibility was twofold: It involved keeping them out of the rest
of the system and teaching them to make it
in their community. The two elements were
connected: By helping her girls stay afloat in
the community, Carol effectively kept them
out of the system. Hence she spent a great
deal of time figuring out what endangered
her girls in their inner-city communities, and
then attacked what she thought pulled them
down. In this way, the terrain where Carol
worked was the community itself. It was
Carol Jackson against the inner city, or at
least her vision of the inner city.
This qualification is important because
Carol had a particular view of these innercity communities and the forces that endangered her girls there. For Carol and other
POs, men were the biggest internal threat to
their girls' survival. According to Carol, most
of her girls had been arrested for offenses related to their "homeboys," a term they used
synonymously with boyfriend or lover. Her
girls had been caught selling drugs for these
men, fighting with them, or robbing stores
with them. Even when it seemed that the men
were not involved, a little digging by Carol
dependency and delinquency that Carol Jackson tried to undercut in her work.
Overall I observed four components of this
socialization process-strategies that Carol
used to break this cycle. First she tried to
make her girls admit that they relied too
much on men. Usually this began with Carol
asking her girls about their boyfriends. Most
of them responded by discussing what their
boyfriends did for them. Lasondra listed all
of the material objects her homeboy had
bought her; Donna described how her boyfriend protected her; Jamika told stories
about what Ricardo gave her sexually, how
good he was in bed. Yet I never saw Carol
accept their portrayalsof these relationships.
Rather, she countered by asking them if they
loved their homeboys enough to do what
these boys wanted or to listen to whatever
they said. If the girl said yes-which most of
them eventually did, with minor qualifications-Carol moved on to her next strategy.
At this juncture she forced them to acknowledge the short-lived nature of heterosexual relationships. Did they think their
homies would always be there? Men aren't
like that, she warned. They come and go as
they please. "And where you gonna be?
'Cause you know you ain't gonna be with
them." One of Carol's favorite tactics here
was to point out that her girls were on probation because of men's inability to care for
them; if their men were protecting them, they
were not doing it very effectively. Usually
Carol coupled this strategy with attempts to
make her girls feel strong themselves. In her
words, she tried to give them "self-esteem."
These POs loved this term. To them it meant
exhibiting strength and perseverance, or, as
supervisor Don said, acting "feisty." Ironically, fostering self-esteem often entailed
praising girls for lying or manipulating
people. POs saw this behavior as evidence
that their girls were bright and assertive. One
of Carol's clients, Shavon, had been arrested
for stabbing a boy at school. She admitted to
Carol that she had lied to the authorities
about her relationship with the boy to receive
a lesser sentence. Carol loved this story and
applauded Shavon for manipulating the system successfully. At other times, promoting
self-esteem was more difficult. Keisha, for
instance, in one of her meetings with Carol,
ripped off her shirt to display a tattoo on her
765
766
767
768
769
770
They frequently told the girls that it was impossible to be a good mother while relying
on state institutions for support. Charlene
made this argument explicitly in a house
meeting devoted to Rachel's resignation. The
girls were distressed about Rachel's departure and saw it as further proof that "no one
in the world cares about us and that's why
we are so fucked up." Infuriated, Charlene
yelled: "You are women. You have babies.
Babies must be cared for. Women care for
others. Until you learn this, you'll be doin' a
lot of crying in your lives."
At Alliance, the girls had to earn motherhood. They did so by exhibiting the initiative
and independence thatAlliance sought to foster in them. In this way the staff adhered to
what Nathanson (1991:159) called a "redefinition of female adolescence" by presenting
this time in the girls' lives as a preparatory
period for self-sufficiency. The battle over
childcare was an example. When I arrivedat
Alliance, the babies came to the classroom
with the girls. Problems arose when Rachel
sensed that the girls worked less when the
babies were around. She tried to alter this
situation with her Brennan Bucks program,
rewarding the girls materially for placing
education before reproduction.It was unsuccessful. Finally she demanded that the babies
be removed from the classroom. Furious, the
girls refused altogether to work. Then Rachel
went on strike. Eventually the director gave
in and provided childcare. Rachel claimed
that this was the girls' punishment; because
they refused to alter theirpriorities, they were
reprimandedwith forced childcare.
In short, Alliance's aim was to undercut
the girls' dependency on institutions. Like
Carol Jackson's expectations for her girls,
the staff's agenda was shaped by the institutional setting. This battleground, however,
was an enclosed, minimum-security facility.
These young women were mothers, official
wards of the court, and AFDC recipients.
They were connected more closely to state
institutions, and less to individual men.
Therefore their potential for institutional reliance was greater. This was precisely what
worried the staff membersand informed their
agenda. This concern prompted them to organize the facility, to create miniprograms,
and to utilize the babies to foster initiative.
In doing so, they warned these "manless"
young women of the risks involved in replacing their fathers/homeboys with an "impersonal pyramid of men" (Burnstyn 1983:64).
Hence Alliance's agenda could be viewed as
potentially empowering. It could be interpreted as an attempt to socialize the girls
against the currents of public patriarchy,of
female dependence on men as a collective
embodied in the state (Boris and Bardaglio
1983; Brown 198 1).
Once again, however, the girls saw it otherwise. Alliance's attempt to undercut their
institutional reliance set into motion its own
resistance-a resistance that also taught the
girls, in the end, precisely what Alliance
wanted them to unlearn.
Bring Back Those Men in Suits
The girls at Alliance were quite aware of the
message that the staff was sending them, but
they saw nothingemancipatoryabout it. From
my first day at the home, it was clear that
they viewed themselves in an "us versus
them"relationshipwith Alliance. They spoke
in these terms. They found the house themes
oppressive-or, as Mildred put it, "all their
talk of bein' self full"-and they used every
possible chance to relay this to the staff.
Maria,for example, was awaiting her release.
One week before her parole hearing, the staff
membersconfrontedher; they had discovered
that she had made phone calls from the front
office. In theory Maria had broken the phone
rule, although in practice everyone knew that
the phone rule was flexible. This time, however, the staff enforced the rule rigidly. They
told Maria that she could spend six more
months at Alliance or take her chances before
the parole board. She did neither: The night
before her original release date, she escaped
with her baby through a basement window,
and never was found. The other girls saw this
as poetic justice and immediately made the
connection between her escape and the house
theme of initiative. They used the incident to
relay messages to the staff. As Tonya said to
Rachel, "Look at that, Maria really 'took the
bull by the horns' didn't she?" As Debra remarked to Liz, "There was no laziness last
night at Alliance! She sure did learn good
from Alliance."
Just like Carol's girls, the Alliance girls
viewed the staff's agenda as not viable and
undesirable. To understandwhy, one must attend to who these girls were. First and foremost, they were teen mothers-young women
with small dependent children. They were
also poor and uneducated. Most were women
of color. Therefore their ability to "make it
on their own" was limited at best. Alliance's
continual proclamations that they should do
so were quite threatening. In Tonya's words,
Alliance made it a "crime" to ask for help,
and this was "all messed up."As Lakishasaid,
"It's like they don't know what's up. The talk
is OK for them but not for us. They aren't
with us." Debra observed, "Yaknow, it's easy
for Rachel to say we can do it on our own.
She gots all her degrees. She don't need no
help and says we don't either."
Furthermore,it was not surprising that the
girls were angered by the staff's desire to
steer them away from a reliance on the state.
All of them had family problems and repeatedly had been cast out of their homes.
Hence these survival networks were not an
option for most of them. Moreover, the heterosexual bonds that Carol's girls defended
so militantly were problematic for these
girls. They were at a disadvantage in the
"heterosexual marketplace"that Carol Jackson described as characteristic of the inner
city. They had babies. They were mothers.
They carried more baggage than others
when they entered this marketplace.Thus it
was harder for them to maneuver into the
kinds of relationships that Carol's girls entered and exited. Many told stories of being
left by their homeboys when they became
pregnant. They still dreamed about these
men (many, like Tonya, continued to doodle
mottoes like "Big Ken, little Kenny, and
Tonya-a family forever"), but basically
they were without men. It may be that these
were Carol's girls in a few years; they were
Carol's girls once the men had disappeared.
Thus they did not embrace Alliance's demand that they break their institutional dependence and "free" themselves from
AFDC.
Instead they were prompted to resist. Unlike Carol's girls, they did not protest by appropriatingmen or their femininity. Such resources were not available in the Alliance
environment.These girls had at their disposal
other state institutions and their babies. These
were the two sites of control. Not by chance,
771
they were the sites upon which the girls mobilized their resistance to the staff.
First, they used welfare. AFDC checks
were a major source of conflict at Alliance.
The staff withheld them to ensure that the
girls did not grow accustomed to being cared
for by the government. For the same reason,
the girls were preoccupied with the checks.
At the beginning of each month, fights
erupted when they asked for accounts of the
money. In doing so, they asserted that it was
their money. They also regulated the staff by
making them account for every penny. The
staff never did so, and thus infuriated the
girls. In one case, when the staff denied
Tonya a new baby blanket, Tonya called the
welfare office to report a stolen check. She
asked the social worker to come to Alliance
and investigate. Apparently when the social
worker arrived,she took the staff by surprise.
Tonya demanded that the woman receive an
account of her checks. The social worker uncomfortably agreed to do so, to the outrage
of the staff.
The girls also used welfare in a more
symbolic way. When they grew angry at the
staff, they spoke of how they planned to be
on welfare for the rest of their lives. In effect, they appropriatedthe politically loaded
"trope of the welfare mother" to protest. For
instance, Rachel spent a great deal of time
persuading the girls to take the GED, but the
girls did not think she was preparing them
well enough for the test. Thus whenever she
raised the subject, they told her they didn't
need to take it because AFDC would care
for them. To annoy her, Tonya always sang
"I'm on welfare and it's gonna take care of
me forever" to the tune of a popular rap
song. The leading example of such appropriation was the girls' Welfare Club, which
originated in a house meeting at which the
girls were accused of being too dependent.
In defiance, Tonya started singing her welfare song. Debra interjected, reminding the
others that they were in the same predicament; they should form a club, a Welfare
Club. At first it was a joke, but then it materialized. They held secret meetings. Probably the girls did not talk about welfare at
the meetings; the name was the important
thing. It was a sign of their resistance,
which clearly was scripted by the form of
control exerted over them.
772
The girls also used CYA, another state institution, to resist. The staff feared CYA because of its power to close down the home,
and the girls played on this fear. When the
staff did something the girls did not like,
they threatened to call CYA. Maria was the
only girl who followed through with this
threat. After her escape from Alliance, she
called CYA to report a series of rule violations. The girls were thrilled when four
CYA officers arrived the next day; all were
men in suits. The girls met with them privately to air their complaints. After the CYA
men left, the girls refused to reveal to the
nervous staff what they had told the men.
The legacy of the Men in Suits lived on at
Alliance. When the girls were angry, they
said "I'll call the Men in Suits if you don't
watch it," or "Those Men in Suits liked us,
I'm gonna ask them to come back." Their
message to the staff was clear: Sometimes
Men in Suits can help. In effect, the girls
were learning how to utilize state institutions for their own ends-not what Alliance
wanted to teach them.
In addition, the girls called on the County
Rules and Regulations Department to come
to their rescue. One morning, this department
called the staff. A girl in the home had made
an anonymous call, reporting a series of licensing violations, and they were sending an
investigator to check the facility. During the
ensuing cleaning frenzy, Mildred secretly admitted to me that she had called. She was
seven months pregnant and angry that the
staff made her do chores: "They say all this
shit about being self full. Forget it, it's slave
labor." When the investigator arrived, she
met alone with the girls and followed them
around the home, listening to their complaints. The staff was furious, the girls were
thrilled. Later, at the collective meeting, the
official scolded the staff for making the girls
do chores; it was forced labor and hence illegal. The girls looked on, smiling triumphantly. After the meeting Nikita whispered
to me: "We done told Alliance today, didn't
we?" Indeed, they had done so, in at least
two ways. They told the staff that the way
they ran the facility was "uncool" and, more
important, that they could mobilize other
state forces to come to their aid.
Finally, just as the staff appropriatedthe
babies to relay their message, the girls mo-
773
tinue the Welfare Club on the outside. "I'm ticular visions of what endangers women.
on welfare and it's gonna take care of me For probation officers, that vision includes
forever,"she sang, checking to see if Rachel men and homeboys; for the Alliance staff, it
was listening. Mildred agreed, laughing. encompasses state institutions. These then
inform their agendas for their clients. They
They had learned well.
prompt probationofficers to attack "private"
patriarchy by demanding independence
CONCLUSION
from men, and the staff of the group home
The conceptualization of the state and its re- to attack "public" patriarchyby insisting on
lation to women, as presented in this ethnog- independence from state bodies. Moreover,
raphy, differs in important ways from pre- this is not imposed on female clients in a
vailing macro-level feminist theories of the "top down" fashion; the girls are active
state. First, by moving to the level of state agents. They evaluate these messages and
practice, I reveal how the state is a differen- fight back by appropriating and inverting
tiated body composed of multiple institu- them. Regulation and resistance are closely
tional contexts. The particular "arm"of the connected; together they constitute patterns.
state examined here, the juvenile justice sys- In this way, the girls' socialization is a netem, is characterized by a dualism in which gotiated process, the product of institutiontwo distinct apparatusesoperate: a coercive ally fashioned modes of control and contesapparatusgoverned by punishmentand force, tation.
At the same time, the patternsof regulation
and a permissive apparatusgoverned by discipline and rules. In this way, the forms of and resistance captured here diverge from
control exerted over clients vary by appara- those described in recent feminist scholarship
tus. They also oppose one another. The Pro- on the state. In an attempt to restore agency
bation Department is not only different from to feminist state theory, these scholars highJuvenile Hall but is in conflict with it; Alli- light the unintendedeffects of the state's genance is not merely an alternative to CYA but der regime and the interactive quality of
stands in opposition to it. Moreover, a dual- women's relations with that regime (Gordon
ism exists within this larger dualism. Differ- 1988, 1990; Morgen 1990; Piven 1990).
ent forms of control characterize even the Overall the patternsof interactionarticulated
"alternative"apparatus. On the one side is in their work consist of a state that tries to
Carol Jackson with her attacks on homeboys advance male dominance as women underand "private"patriarchy; on the other, Alli- mine it-a state that attempts to reproduce
ance with its battles against institutional de- female dependence while women use state rependence and "public"patriarchy.These du- sources to organize or gain power in the
alisms problematize prevailing conceptions home. Yet the patterns I discovered in this
of the state as a homogeneous, singular study are the reverse: State actors try to un"structure."They suggest that it may be more dercut "patriarchal"social relations, while
fruitful to conceive of the state as fragmented female clients defend those relations. Aland layered, with various sites of control and though female clients are strategic actors in
my analysis, they strategize to salvage their
resistance.
Second, by shifting the feminist focus to "dependent"relations with the state. This distate practice, I complicate classic models vergence should not be read as suggesting
of the state's gender regime. The ethno- that feminist theory take these patterns as
graphic data presented here call into ques- more characteristic of the state's relation to
tion the socialist feminist understanding of women. Rather, it suggests that we should
the state as an entity with a uniform, mascu- become more attuned to the many possible
line agenda to impose on women. My analy- forms of these interactions, and less fixed in
sis unearthed multiple agendas for women, our notions of the state's interests in women
and demonstrated how they are institution- or (for that matter) women's interests in the
ally constituted and contested by female cli- state.
Finally, I propose here that the state be
ents. These state actors' agendas are shaped
by the institutional terrains on which they conceptualized as interactive in yet another
work-terrains that provide them with par- sense-as an institution that itself is situated
774
Appendix. Power, Identity, and Intervention in the Field: The Limits of Reflexivity
This ethnographyis based on fieldworkI conducted
from Februaryto November 1992 in a juvenile ProbationDepartmentandin Alliance, a grouphome for
incarceratedteen mothers.My decision to research
these state agencies was motivated by theory. Because the criminaljustice system intervenesdirectly
in people's lives to transform"deviant"women into
"acceptable"women, it was an ideal context for examining the state's gender regime. I chose to work
in the juvenile armof this system because I believed
it would provide a clearerview of this socialization
process; I predictedthat the state's articulationand
imposition of gender norms would be most evident
when applied to young women. Within the juvenile
system, I selected the ProbationDepartmentandAlliance on the basis of several criteria.Because these
agencies had distinct organizationalstructures,they
enabledme to examinewhetherthe institutionalsetting affected the gender messages relayedto female
clients. At the same time, the agencies were located
in the same "alternative"juvenile justice apparatus,
and both took a long-term, rehabilitativeapproach
to clients. These similarities and differences made
them perfect comparativecases for my theoretical
interests.
I began my researchin the ProbationDepartment
by conductinginterviews with the head of the division, the Departmentsupervisor,and two probation
officers. In these interviewsI discoveredthat Carol
775
776
me an "insider"with the girls.
In short, I never knew clearly how my "long line
of adjectives"affected me in the field. My position
was quite situationalandvariable.As Thorne(1993)
argues,identityis not a staticphenomenon.It changes with context; some contexts draw out certainaspects of our "selves" and mute others. Because of
this flexibility, I found it difficult to locate myself
socially in my work. It was also nearly impossible
to determinehow these locations affected my analysis. As a woman who had had negative experiences
with the male staff at Juvenile Hall, was I more sensitive to the divisions in the system? Maybe. As the
daughterof a teenage mother,was I more attunedto
the girls' resistances? Maybe. As a well-educated
woman, did I identify with the Alliance staff and
underestimate their control? Maybe. As a White
woman, have I repressedculturalstereotypesabout
the sexuality of women of color and hence have fixated on this aspect of theirrelationswith the state?I
hope not. All of this is to say that socially situating
our knowledgeclaims is not always feasible, or even
particularlyuseful, in practice.In my work, it would
have entailed presenting a still life of continually
shifting relations.
I encountereddifferentproblemswith the second
kind of reflexivity: returningmy text to the women
I studiedto elicit their reflections on us. Here I had
to consider the interpersonaland social power that
my text could wield over these women, and how it
might disrupt their lives further.With Carol Jackson, I was concerned with the potentially hurtful
consequences of the text. Carol was quite insecure
abouther weight, andreadingabouther girls' mockery could have hurther. Moreover,Caroltakes great
pride in her work. She has numerousfamily problems and, to lessen her feeling of failure, assures
herself that she does well by her "girls." And she
does so; her commitmentto these young women demands respect. Yet I wonderedwhether she would
find this respect in the text, buriedbeneaththe descriptions of mocking resistance. Exposing her to
such mockerythen felt like a power move, even if I
had the intention of sharingthe power of representation.
At Alliance I was concernedaboutthe social pow-
REFERENCES
Abramovitz, Mimi. 1988. Regulating the Lives of
Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial
Times to the Present. Boston, MA: South End
Press.
Alder, Carol. 1984. "Gender Bias in Juvenile Diversion." Crime and Delinquency 30:400-14.
Arnold, Regina. 1990. "Processes of Victimization and Criminalization of Black Women."
Social Justice 17:153-66.
. 1994. "Black Women in Prison." Pp.
171-84 in Womenof Color in U.S. Society, edited by M. Baca Zinn and B. Thorton Dill.
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Boris, Eileen and Peter Bardaglio. 1983. "The
Transformation of Patriarchy: The Historic
Role of the State." Pp. 70-93 in Families, Politics and Public Policy, edited by I. Diamond.
New York: Longman.
Brown, Carol. 1981. "Mothers, Fathers and Children: From Private to Public Patriarchy." Pp.
777
778
Nelson, Barbara. 1990. "The Origins of the Two
Channel Welfare State: Workman's Compensation and Mothers' Aid." Pp. 123-51 in
Women, the State and Welfare, edited by L.
Gordon. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Orloff, Ann Sheila. 1993. "Genderand the Social
Rights of Citizenship." American Sociological
Review 58:303-28.
Pateman, Carol. 1988. "The PatriarchalWelfare
State." Pp. 23 1-60 in Democracy and the Welfare State, edited by A. Gutmann. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Piven, Frances Fox. 1990. "Ideology and the
State." Pp. 250-64 in Women, the State and
Welfare, edited by L. Gordon. Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press.
Rains, Prudence. 1971. Becoming an Unwed
Mother. Chicago, IL: Aldine Atherton.
Reinharz, Shulamit. 1992. Feminist Methods in
Social Research. New York: Oxford.
Rose, Hilary. 1994. Love, Power and Knowledge.
Cambridge, MA: Polity.
Sandoval, Chela. 1991. "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional
Consciousness in the Postmodern World."
Genders 10:2-24.
Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting Soldiers and
Mothers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.