Other, Please Specify

This provocative collection showcases the work of emerging and established sociologists in the fields of sexuality and gender studies as they reflect on what it means to develop, practice, and teach queer methods. Located within the critical conversation about the possibilities and challenges of utilizing insights from humanistic queer epistemologies in social scientific research, Other, Please Specify presents to a new generation of researchers an array of experiences, insights, and approaches, revealing the power of investigations of the social world. With contributions from sociologists who have helped define queer studies and who use a range of interpretative and statistical methods, this volume offers methodological advice and practical strategies in research design and execution, all with the intent of getting queer research off the ground and building a collaborative community within this emerging subfield. 

 

D'Lane Compton is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Orleans. Compton is the coauthor of How Identities, Stereotypes, and Inequalities Matter through Gender Studies and a contributor to several volumes, including the International Handbook on the Demography of Sexuality.

Tey Meadow is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Meadow is the author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century.  

Kristen Schilt is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Just One of the Guys?: Transgender Men and the Persistence of Gender Inequality, and her work has appeared in journals such as Gender & Society and the Annual Review of Sociology.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Queer Work in a Straight Discipline
Kristen Schilt, Tey Meadow, and D’Lane Compton

PART I ANTI-ORTHODOXIES

1. The “Not Sociology” Problem
Kristen Schilt

2. The Methods Gatekeepers and the Exiled Queers
Jane Ward

3. Trans Issues in Sociology: A Trans-Centered Perspective
Emilia Lombardi

4. Beyond Academia: Strategies for Using LGBT Research to Influence Public Policy
Gary J. Gates and Jody L. Herman

5. Pornographics as Queer Method
Angela Jones

PART II RELATIONSHIPS

6. Not Out in the Field: Studying Privacy and Disclosure as an Invisible (Trans) Man
Cayce C. Hughes

7. Thank You for Coming Out Today: The Queer Discomforts of In-Depth Interviewing
Catherine Connell

8. Studying the “Right” Can Feel Wrong: Reflections on Researching Anti-LGBT Movements
Tina Fetner and Melanie Heath

9. The Mess: Vulnerability as Ethnographic Practice
Tey Meadow

PART III STRATEGIES

10. Challenges, Triumphs, and Praxis: Collecting Qualitative Data on Less Visible and Marginalized Populations
Mignon R. Moore

11. How Many (Queer) Cases Do I Need? Thinking Through Research Design
D’Lane Compton

12. Queer Spatial Analysis
Amin Ghaziani

13. Queer Persistence in the Archive
Amy L. Stone

14. Gendering Carnal Ethnography: A Queer Reception
Kimberly Kay Hoang

PART IV EPISTEMOLOGIES

15. Translation as Queer Methodology
Evren Savci

16. Queer and Punishment: Sexual Social Control and the Legacy of “Nuts, Sluts and Preverts”
Trevor Hoppe

17. The Demography of Sexuality: Queering Demographic Methods
Amanda K. Baumle

18. What to Do with Actual People? Thinking Through a Queer Social Science Method
C. J. Pascoe

19. Queer Accounting: Methodological Investments and Disinvestments
Carla A. Pfeffer

List of Contributors
Index