Abigail C. Saguy
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Ph. D., Princeton University AND L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Office: 272 HAINES HALL
Phone: 3107944979
Fax:
310-206-9838
E-mail:
saguy at soc dot ucla dot edu
Mailing Address:
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
Subfield
Gender, culture, law, politics, comparative sociology
Research Interests
I have a longstanding interest in how cultural schemas shape power relations and how subordinate groups are sometimes able to redefine cultural meaning in ways that increase their control. I have pursued these interests through my research on national and institutional definitions of sexual harassment and on scientific and political debates over body weight. In these “hot” or highly contested topics, social actors make their cultural assumptions explicit, making them ideally suited to cultural analysis. Sexual harassment and normative understandings about body weight are topics of central concern to feminist scholars. In the past 30 years, sexual harassment has emerged as a widely-recognized barrier to gender equity in employment and education. Similarly, beauty ideals of extreme slenderness have been shown to have negative effects on women’s self-image and to limit their effectiveness in public and professional life. Compared to their thinner sisters, heavier women are paid less, are less likely to marry, and when married have lower earning spouses. My contribution has been to show how cultural understandings, specifically about sexual harassment or body weight, are shaped by individual and collective action within specific cultural and institutional constraints. To this end, I have used multiple methods and cross-national, cross-issue, and cross-institutional comparisons.
In explaining cross-national differences in sexual harassment definitions, I point to dissimilarities between key institutions in each country and the ways in which these institutions interact. For instance, I show that while feminists in both the U.S. and France struggled for sexual harassment laws, they encountered distinct legal resources. American feminists inherited civil rights laws and jurisprudence, which enabled (and constrained) them to argue that sexual harassment was a form of workplace discrimination, punishable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In contrast, French feminists could not build on a similar legal tradition, as discrimination laws there were weak, but could and did build on existing sexual violence laws to define sexual harassment as a misdemeanor in the Penal Code. Once sexual harassment was inscribed in law, legal definitions shaped corporate responses, individual understandings, and mass media representations of sexual harassment, although often in surprising ways.
In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a top public health concern in the United States and France, despite a lively debate among scientists over whether increasing population weights represent the health risk they’ve been portrayed to be. Why has this issue emerged as so important in both countries? How, why, and to what end is it being framed in each country and by different groups (e.g., anti-obesity researchers and activists or fat acceptance researchers and activists)? How do the news media frame scientific studies differently than do scientific studies or press reports? How does the symbolic meaning of this issue vary cross-nationally? These are the questions that motivate my current research on debates over body weight.
Selected Publications
Book
What is Sexual Harassment?: From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne. University of California Press. 2003.
Selected articles
“Fat in the Fire? Science, the News Media, and the 'Obesity Epidemic'.” 2008. Sociological Forum. 23:1. pp. 53-83.(With Rene Almeling). Email saguy@soc.ucla.edu for a reprint.
“The Epidemiology of Overweight and Obesity: Public Health Crisis or Moral Panic? ” 2006. International Journal of Epidemiology. 35:1. pp. 55-60. (With Paul Campos, Paul Ernsberger, Eric Oliver, and Glen Gaesser).
“Constructing Social Problems in an Age of Globalization: A French-American Comparison.” 2005. American Sociological Review. 70(2):233-259 (With Rodney Benson).
“Weighing Both Sides: Morality, Mortality and Framing Contests over Obesity." 2005. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. 30:5, pp. 869-921 (With Kevin W. Riley).
“International Crossways: Traffic in Sexual Harassment Policy.” 2002. European Journal of Women’s Studies. 9:3, pp. 249-267.
“Employment Discrimination or Sexual Violence?: Defining Sexual Harassment in French and American Law.” 2000. Law and Society Review. 34:4, pp. 1091-1128.
“Puritanism and Promiscuity? Sexual Attitudes in France and the United States.” 1999. Comparative Social Research. Vol. 18, pp. 227-247.
Grants
ASA/NSF Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD): Creating the “Obesity Epidemic”: Science, Social Activism, and the Mass Media. $7000. 2004-2006.
National Science Foundation. Doctoral Dissertation Research: Defining Sexual Harassment in France and the United States. NSF 98-2. $3400. 1998-1999.
French Government. Subvention pour le fonctionnement d’une cotutelle de thèse (Dissertation Grant). 35,000 F ($6364). 1998-1999.
Council for European Studies. The Young Scholars Networking Grant. Spring 2000.
Awards
Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), Stanford. Fellow. 2008-2009.
Fellowship. Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research Program (Yale site). 2000-2002.
Winner. Sally Hacker Award. Sex and Gender section of the American Sociological Association. 2000. "Sexual Harassment in France and the United States: Activists and Public Figures Defend their Definitions."
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