Queer as an Area of Research in Sociology: Critical Examination of How Current Research and Thinking in Queer Theory Relates to Older Traditions in Sociology and Developments in Other Academic Disciplines

Questions on how society lives and how people in the same community end up forming different opinions and beliefs to their identity and social participation continue to influence sociologist. Current research areas of interest regard queer theory and new forms of conducting sociological research using time-surveys. These new areas of research are discussed in relation to the traditions in the discipline of sociology. The essay shows how the issue of temporality and the reconstitution of gender are shaping previous notions of society, body work and organisational sociology. They are the valid queries that needed answers and led to the interest in sociology. The essay draws on the queering sociology module and the body work and gender modules that were delivered as part of the course.

In the sociology course, a lot of what was previously unknown has come to light, and the study of current developments in the field is also aiding the personal inquiry into an individual’s role in assisting society to understand itself and improve. The essay begins by outlining the current area of research which is queerness sociology. After doing that, it examines how current research and thinking in the area of queerness has related to older traditions in the discipline of sociology. The discussion takes place within the boundaries of sociology. Moreover, the study looks at gender, body work and work-body relationships in work organisations as studied in the field of sociology. It ends with a presentation of the time-use survey method as an emergent area of research in sociology that is helping to answer or test the validity of some assumptions and findings of previous studies in sociology.

Queering sociology

Queering in sociology is a recent attempt at correcting the view of society and its attribute from a sociological view. Although queer theory has been used by traditional sociologist, its extent was limited to explaining the uncommon. However, in the last decade, as the gender question became a focus of research, Queer theory and queering as an approach to sociological research gained important. The rest of the paper now explores the theory and its relevance. Queer theory is the main element of the queering sociology, an area with considerable ongoing research focus within sociology.

As it origin shows, queerness only became sensational in the last two to three decades, which implies its non-existence in the 1950s to 1970s period. Queer theory manifested as part of the developments in Anglo-American sexuality theory in the early 1990s. It was a product of post culturalism. Current research has been about qualifying or disqualifying hegemonic assumptions on queer theory. Queering sociology has perpetually insisted on sex being political. However, the current view of some researchers like Penney (2013 pp. 10-17) is that it should be possible to wrest sexuality discourse from its various minoritarianisms. The outcome would be an opening of sexuality to a genuinely universal emancipatory struggle. It would be beyond the reach of capitalism, which has been responsible for complicity and the continued proliferation of sexual and gender identities, as well as their deconstructions (Penney, 2013, pp. 14-18).

For example, a discourse on masculinity that arose recently presents it as victimized, wounded, effeminate or effeminized. It fits it as queered, with a deep urge for masculine men to come up with a reduced form of effeminate form of masculinity (Resser, 2009, p. 72). The opposite approach is critical to masculine domination in the way that men are dominated by masculinity. Even within a single discourse, a simple idea such as masculinity may also appear contradictory. A good example would be in pedagogical discourse. A teacher could talk about a boy or think about a boy in a certain way while official policy proclaims a different thing. In reality, teachers would be arguing about what novels boys should read and how boys should behave. They may discuss ways to address homophobic or sexist remarks given in class (Resser, 2009, p. 101). This example just shows how complexities can arise from one discourse or group of related discourses both in research and in practical settings.

Applications of queering in sociology

Queering sociology has been embraced as a research method of queering peculiarities in people’s identities and subsequent factors helping to shape the observed identities. Those who are not part of the norm have been referred to as queer. At the turn of the twenty-first century, researchers embracing a New View approach began bringing out ideas about what should change in pedagogical and clinical settings dealing with queer clients (Suzanne, 2008, p. 538). Furthermore, more studies are now looking at how the individuals and groups previously lumped into queer groups can begin or continue to use new approaches as their own to queer the others views or the views presented as beneficial to them (Suzanne, 2008, p. 541). From this perspective, it appears that the aspect of queering sociology will continue to elicit reactions and to serve as a gateway for further understanding of its applicable areas, especially sexuality.

In the past, the queer such as gay and lesbians were politicized and founded on unproblematic ideas of minority sexual identity (Penney, 2013, p. 3). Their ambitions were linked to those of other oppressed constituencies such as people of colour and straight women but a recent focus of queer writers brings out aspects of self-concern. Penny (2013, p. 3) noted that they are less willing to forge alliances with any other group that is not defining itself in sexual terms when their claims have a universal reach. The development highlights the possible shortcomings of queer theory which to date has been focusing on theoretical articulations and transgressing presumptive identity categories. It has focused less on thinking through the relation of the theory to historical social movements that led to the rise of queer.

As a method, queer is being developed into a new understanding, capable of taking a format that can capture newer developments in the world, and differing needs of those who belong to the queer. The understanding underlying the new developments was first presented in the 1990s when writers realized that things were not queer but their labelling made them queer. Hence the act of queering then is the action of assigning and explaining labels to that which seems abnormal and to describe and assign it attributes or identities to improve general understanding (McBean, 2013, pp. 123-125). Unfortunately, the approach has been causing confusion in research and sociology studies. For example, one may wonder whether going for queer studies or for gay and lesbian studies would be appropriate to understanding the same social issue. In fact, the new view of queer now seeks to understand the world with all its queerness rather than just revolve around a few aspects of society that have been labelled as queer.

Current writers and researchers on queering sociology have taken distinctive temporal touchstones as their theoretical starting points (McBean, 2013, p. 123). Queer theory, at least its development, has focused more on detaching its understanding from the political landscape such that it is not bound by it. Part of the view has been that queerness is a collective modality of futurity. A persistent feature of the research is that many researchers have turned to their past in queer ways then analysed and presented findings that increase the possibilities of interacting with queerness in time.

According to Stockton (2009, p. 6), queer theory has been applied to explain a person or a group that is visible but unavailable to itself in the present tense. For example, a child is not present but still appears in the view of adults. When they were children, the adult looking back did not see the queerness, but as adults, they look at a child figure and look back to think through the figure. The same approach can be embraced in sexuality, where the issue of gay and lesbianism does not arise until the future is here. The study by Stockton (2009, p. 109) has shown this as all children being queer children, who are presented when they are unavailable. Most importantly, queerness is a relationship to time, which explains that there is much still to explore concerning queerness and temporality. As time lapses, more queer politics will emerge especially in consideration of neoliberal forms of belonging. It is still relatively early to understand the exact manner that queerness will evolve. Nevertheless, the existing research in the recent past has laid the foundation for understanding the possibilities that await queerness and queer theory. It will happen as queerness moves away from a present fixation of politicized issues in society to theoretical underpinnings of queerness that can be applied to non-political things.

Queer research and its relation to other disciplines

The queer theory is now applying to other scholarly disciplines such as art and literature (Ellis, 2014, p. 9). A study of the restoration of fashion can show how it queers time rather than gender and discusses the concept of fashionable lateness (Ellis, 2014, p. 11). At the same time, studies still continue to lump yet to be understood social concepts of identity as queer. An example can be found in how Shakhsari (2014, p. 1001) is revealing the queer time of death. The study points out the inconsistencies of the universality of human rights by looking at Iranian queer and transgender refugee applicants in Turkey.

Having gone through elements of queerness, the essay will now proceed to examine another area of sociology that was interesting and it prompted me to take the course. It is also a development of the section on queering sociology. However, a major difference is coming about in the way body becomes the central focus of review rather than the identity of the person being studied. The next part now explains some of the answers that sociology has offered in explain the role that individuals play in organisation dynamics and how the type of work, specifically body work, influences organisation dynamics.

The Body Work and Gender

The section will reveal how influences of temporality introduced by queer theory have reawaken interest in body work research to reveal new features of sociology of organisations. The lectures on body work and gender have helped to elaborate how concerns for sociologists are shaping research and an overall understanding of the balance and conflicts manifesting in body, work and gender such as a need for work and employment to consider gender. There is also an issue with gender being a defining factor for work or employment and the politics behind different norms and work policies being adopted or discarded under the same explanation of work and gender balance. Finding out about work, employment and society as they relate to each other and how they have been tackled by sociologists was also part of the intentions for studying sociology.

New developments in sociology have examined the difficulties of integrating an analysis of the body and embodiment into what is already known about work and employment. In the past, sociologists did not consider the body. Their interest was on work and work relationships. One of the explanations offered for the missing literature on body is that over time sociology of organisation moved away from emotional connections and individual privileges. It embraced efficiency and consistency as concepts to consider in organisation. It was a general move from a traditional to a bureaucratic society. Nevertheless, there was a school of thought on human relations that presented links between high morale and optimum performance with adequate pay and good working conditions (Gimlin, 2007, p. 354). The shift from industrial to post-industrial service economy created new ways and challenges for companies to construct employee embodiment (Gimlin, 2007, p. 366). It has also created new understanding and ways for individuals to manage their bodies in the workplace and outside it.

Gender is also a salient element in the processes of using bodily displays to encourage compliance and productivity in the workplace. This can be an application in sociology or in the management disciplines. Some studies have looked at how men are engaging in body management and how the performance of masculinity among women often offers counterproductive results (Gimlin, 2007, p. 360). Therefore, an emergence of new sociology studies on gender’s role in work and employment is expected as gender continues to become a defining class or category for understanding social issues.

On the other hand, body work receives considerable attention from sociologists. Part of the focus has been on labour that brings workers into contact with other people’s bodies, which can be demeaning and requires usage of distancing techniques (Cohen, 2011, p. 190). Sociologists show that subordination and domination are the two issues most prevalent in body labour. The demonstration of their meanings can present ambiguities because they can constrain or empower the workers working in relation to the bodies (Wolkowitz, 2002, p. 495). The bureaucratic perspective of organization analysis focusing on efficiency of workers still permeates organisation analysis in sociology. Efficiency savings has become a buzz in the health and social care services settings where body work studies have concentrated. Also, reorganisation and labour rationalisation feature prominently. Work on bodies has been shown to delimit possibilities of labour process rationalisation. It has served as a constraint to the reorganisation of the health and social care sector (Cohen, 2011, p. 190). The sociological analysis of the labour process has been neglecting the focus on the bodies being worked on and the requirements for body manipulation. Meanwhile, body work in the service sector involving touch, manipulation or physical constraint continue to increase. In another perspective, the conceptualisation of work as ‘body work’ highlights an overlooked aspect of work. The fact is that bodies are the objects or materials of production for many jobs (Cohen, 2011, p. 194). The approaches to studying body work are instrumental in understanding how society is able to differentiate between the person and the worker. For example, bureaucracy just considers works as parts of an organisation system that can be tweaked and controlled. Infusing identity and personality or gender into such work arrangements is difficult, and that is why the study of body work relationships has been important.

Although explorations of body work may exhibit a contemporary feel, they have been part of classical inquiries into relationships between economic, social and cultural activities. Hence, looking at features of body work helps to connect the queer thinking to classical sociological thinking. Nevertheless, care of the body in recent research has also highlighted the broader context in which work occurs. It involves shaping, socializing, treating, exciting, caring and maintaining and decorating bodies (Wolkowitz, 2002, p. 495). Classical explorations of body and work relationships showed how capitalism damaged the individual’s ability to creatively exist and instead turned the body into an appendage of the machine. Societies are seen to be produced by collective assemblies and phases of social life that enhance an idea of belonging to a moral order. Within these views, the significance of body work appeared, but remained disguised. The study of body work has presented habits as modes of connection that unify people in specific ways. In the case of body work, they shape people’s embodied health, appearance, pleasures, pains and capacities in particular directions (Cohen, 2011, p. 189).

Some focus has been on care work due it its richness in examples of body work. Here, social norms and cultural symbols relating to intimate parts of the body are studied (Isaksen, 2002, p. 791). The objective is to highlight the way care work is organized, gendered and culturally understood or socially stratified.

A flourishing dialogue on sexuality can now be witnessed in sub fields of organisation analysis, although the same has not become dominant in mainstream organisational analysis studies. Over the last three years, there has been a change in lived experiences. People are consumers and workers, and their lives are influenced by ubiquity of organisations. Sexuality is also forming a central part in people’s lives and some sociological writers have expressed that this is a short sexualized world (Brewis, Tyler, & Mills, 2014, p. 306). Thus, the innovation of sexual imagery in the present world has been noted as the body/sex/word nexus. The description captures the labour processes, workplace relations while capturing the struggle for regulation and resistance. When collectively viewed, they show an intimate embodied, and sexualized form of labour. Although sex is seen as natural, it is unnatural in the workplace as seen in the organisation of sexuality. There is the categorisation, classification, and hierarchical ordering. There is also the lived experience and the management of sexuality happening within and through organisational settings (Brewis, Tyler, & Mills, 2014, p. 308). Such findings expand personal knowledge of sociology and how it would apply to organisational settings where people are required to embrace new cultures and beliefs about work and gender.

The underlying concept uniting work and gender is the organisation, and it has played a major role in promoting an expansion of organisation studies. Queer theory has been used by some researchers to open up the concept of ‘gay friendly’ work contexts. Queering work places has allowed sociologists to have a perspective on environments like the performing arts become represented by gay people as an example. The queer theory also shows its relevance in the inspection of whether the organisation sexualities in the performing arts sector revolve around fixed and homogenized heterosexual/homosexual binary (Rumens & Broomfield, 2014, p. 365). Studies looking into these dynamics have also presented a strong indication of the persistence of heteronormativity, despite cases showing adoption and acceptance of queer identities (Brewis, Tyler, & Mills, 2014, p. 308). The investigations into ‘gay friendly’ work areas present work relationships and gender identities that challenge heteronormativity.

Using queer theory, it has been possible to demonstrate triumph by queers in defeating identity biases in workplaces, but the same approach to research using queer theory has also been a foundation for neglecting or removing the very concepts of gay, lesbians and transgender (Courtney, 2014, p. 383). Once again, in studies such as Courtney (2014, p. 390), queering sociology emerges in the context of temporality. It looks at moments of transgression and non-normative aspects of identities or practices in organisations. It reviews them in the context of subverting heteronormativity while not denying that identity categories are useful. When combining queer inequity and organisation analysis, Courtney (2014, p. 390) reached a conclusion that there is a possibility of the inadvertently queer school leader. In this case, leadership will be producing queer outcomes. Also, the linking of queer theory and the discussion on work body and gender has shown that one aspect of sociology has power to be influenced and to influence other areas of the field.

Sexuality within organisation in the 1970s offered empirical and conceptual developments including the queer theory that emerged in early 1990s (Hearn, 2014, p. 400). Sociology of work, body and gender continues to look at the way the intersections of gender and sexuality are experienced and understood with the hindsight of organisation being ubiquitous. The hyper-patriarchy scenario has men and women very divergent leading to gender inequality. The late capitalist scenario had genders become more convergent but still created greater inequality where genders are more divergent with more equality. A post gender scenario that is in place today seeks to have gender being more convergent resulting in more equality (Hearn, 2014, pp. 401-410). The presented evidence shows that the sociologist must embrace new perspectives for dealing with research on gender based on the new development in how society understands sexuality.

Post culturalism has also offered new ways of viewing gendered and sexual relations and new sociological research is increasingly accommodating post-culturalism thoughts (Brewis, Tyler, & Mills, 2014, p. 307). They have allowed critical discussions to emerge within the fields of management and organisation studies. Consequently, they continue to shape the understanding of work relations and body work relations in organisations (Brewis, Tyler, & Mills, 2014, p. 307). In continuance with the review of gender and identity that had been the main prompt for this essay, the next section will now look at a method for conducting sociological studies that is appropriate for studying everyday life. The next section of this essay also offers some practical usefulness to studying sociology in general by showing how some theories or assumptions in sociology end up being investigated and improved.

Time-Use Surveys: A Unique Methodology for The Study of Everyday Life

In this section, the essay moves from the theoretical perspectives of sociology that have been instrumental in shaping recent developments in studying queerness. It reveals how the new method makes explorations possible unlike the traditional sociological approaches that were often biased to support the current view. The section presents a practical approach to studying social phenomena. It confirms the use of the time-use surveys as a method for inquiring the exhibition of queer theory or body work relations.

Queerness is an area that traditional sociology research methods appear inadequate to investigate. Holistic review of daily life at a large scale level can help unsettle some challenges facing researchers and practitioners having to interact with divergent policies on dealing with queerness. Queering as a technique in sociology allows the movement through time to evaluate the boundaries of the past and the present (Shaw, 2015, p. 2151). In the digital age, there are complicated narratives on race, gender, and sexuality. They are continually circulated through popular media. The issue of women’s participation in labour which might feature in studies on gender and work relationship has presented a workable avenue for using time study as a mode of research.

A time-diary investigation by Craig (2007, p. 150) noted that the effects of the late capitalist scenario where genders are more divergent with more equality. It shows that as women entered the workforce in the last six decades, their entry did not lead to an increase in the number of men spending time in domestic labour in a similar threshold. Using a measure of work time, the paper was able to quantify total paid and unpaid workload. It also captured multitasking by counting work that was done at the same time as other activities. After successfully challenging the myth of the gendered second shift, the study by Craig (2007, p. 150) argued that most previous time use studies were gender biased. They used an incomplete workload measure by only considering primary activity. Most of them neglected childcare time that is done as part of a secondary activity because multitasking is done more by women than men. According to Craig (2007,  p. 151) the ignorance of multitasking obscures an important gender disparity as women are doing more work than men at any one time because a lot of their non-work activities combine with care of children.

Time-use surveys could also be useful as part of organisational analysis. As a fairly recent methodology, it could offer additional insights into the challenging cases facing sociologists investigating aspects of ‘body work’ and body and work relationships or gender manifestations and differences in the workplace within the issues of organisation and reorganisation of labour. The need for efficiency helped to create time-based work where workers are paid based on the number of hours worked, or on an hourly rate. Studies have looked at how these arrangements influence the emotional and physical wellbeing of workers and their families (Thébaud & Weeden, 2006, p. 2370). Salaried professionals are exhibiting a ‘time squeeze’, with standard or nonstandard work schedules affecting interfamilial negotiations (Thébaud & Weeden, 2006, p. 2370). Time can be used as an analytical tool for examining work, gender, and organisations. Employees can be examined on their conceptions of time to structure and control the workplace. The economic interest of employers is to have workers work long hours just as it would be appropriate for them when a machine works without breaking down. Studies have also hinted on the manifestation of gender differences when work is slow and their disappearance with work demands increase and the only measured parameter becomes competency of the worker (Thébaud & Weeden, 2006, p. 2370). These areas of work, body, and organisation can be re-examined with the time-use survey to reveal their validity as social constructions.

Conclusion

The essay has demonstrated, studying an aspect sociology always leads to considerations or examinations of other areas of the field. In this case, queerness in sociology, which is an area of current research, was an important topic that also improved the understanding of body work and gender relation in the sociology of organisation. The paper proceeded to explore specific features of organisation and the beliefs that have shaped its arrangement in society. The paper attached temporality as a feature of queerness studies to the post-culturalism perspectives on organisation. It shows that temporality is a new element embraced by current researchers, which was absent in past inspection into studies in sociology. It has also discussed the use of time-use surveys as an appropriate research method of some of the newer elements of societal concerns such as body work or gender relations at work. Overall, juxtaposed current thinking and traditions within the discipline of sociology.

 

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