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Mary Nell Trautner Assistant Professor Buffalo, NY 14260 trautner [at]
buffalo [dot] edu CV [pdf] Recent
Courses Graduate: Sociology of Gender Sociology of Law Undergraduate: Sociology of Gender Sociology of Law Criminology Senior Seminar, Soc of Law |
Publications: Hatton, Erin and Mary Nell
Trautner. 2012. “Images of Powerful Women in the Age of ‘Choice Feminism’.”
Forthcoming, Journal of Gender Studies. Nickolai, Daniel H., Steve
G. Hoffman, and Mary Nell Trautner. 2012. “Can a Knowledge Sanctuary also be
an Economic Engine? The Marketization of Higher Education as Institutional
Boundary Work.” Forthcoming, Sociology
Compass. Trautner, Mary Nell. 2011.
“Tort Reform and Access to Justice: How Legal
Environments Shape Lawyers’ Case Selection.” Qualitative Sociology 34(4):523-538. Hatton, Erin and Mary Nell
Trautner. 2011. “Equal
Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover
of Rolling Stone.”
Sexuality & Culture 15(3):256-278. Kwan, Samantha and Mary
Nell Trautner. 2011. “Weighty
Concerns.” Contexts 10(2):52-57. Kwan, Samantha and Mary
Nell Trautner. 2011. “Judging
Books By Their Covers: Teaching Students about Physical Attractiveness Bias.”
Teaching Sociology 39(1):16-26. Trautner, Mary Nell and
Samantha Kwan. 2010. “Gendered
Appearance Norms: An Analysis of Employment Discrimination Lawsuits,
1970-2008.” Research
in the Sociology of Work 20:127-150. Grant, Don S., Mary Nell
Trautner, Liam C. Downey, and Lisa Thiebaud. 2010. “Bringing
the Polluters Back In: Environmental Inequality and the Organization of
Chemical Production.” American
Sociological Review 74(4):479-504. Trautner, Mary Nell and
Jessica L. Collett. 2010. “Students
Who Strip: The Benefits of Alternate Identities for Managing Stigma.”
Symbolic Interaction 33(2):257-279. Trautner, Mary Nell. 2009.
“Personal Responsibility v. Corporate Liability: How
Personal Injury Lawyers Screen Cases in an Era of Tort Reform.”
Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance
12:203-230. Kwan, Samantha and Mary Nell
Trautner. 2009. “Beauty Work:
Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and
Questions of Agency.” Sociology
Compass 3(1):49-71. Trautner, Mary Nell. 2007.
“How Social Hierarchies within the Personal Injury Bar
Affect Case Screening Decisions.” New York Law School Law Review 51(2):215-240. Trautner, Mary Nell. 2005.
“Doing Gender, Doing Class: The Performance of Sexuality
in Exotic Dance Clubs.” Gender
& Society 19(6):771-788. Grant, Don S., Andrew W.
Jones, and Mary Nell Trautner. 2004. “Do Facilities
with Distant Headquarters Pollute More? How Civic Engagement Conditions the
Environmental Performance of Absentee Managed Plants.” Social Forces 83(1):189-214. Grant, Don S. and Mary
Nell Trautner. 2004. “Employer
Opinions on Living Wage Initiatives.” Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society 8(1):71-82. Manuscripts under review + in progress: Trautner,
Mary Nell, Samantha Kwan, and Scott V. Savage. “Masculinity, Competence, and
Health: The Influence of Weight and Race on Social Perceptions of Men.” Like other visible characteristics such as skin color,
gender, or age, physical appearance and body size are diffuse status
characteristics. Numerous studies demonstrate that individuals hold preconceived
notions about what it means to be fat. Researchers have found a long list of
negative stereotypes associated with overweight and obese persons, including
laziness, unintelligence, incompetence, and lack of motivation and
self-discipline. Such perceptions have consequences for, among other things,
employment decisions about hiring, promotion, compensation, and dismissal.
Yet the majority of previous studies focus either on women only, or on
differences between men and women, leaving intra-group differences
understudied. In this article, we examine how body size and race interact and
combine in individuals’ perceptions of success and competence, health and
laziness, and masculinity. Our analyses are based on a quasi-experimental
design in which undergraduate students used semantic differential scales to
rate photographs of black and white men. Our findings demonstrate significant
differences between students’ evaluations of black and white men based on
body size. Thin white men are perceived to be more intelligent, more
successful, and more competent than their thin black counterparts. However,
these results reverse when the men are overweight: overweight black men are
seen as more intelligent and more competent than overweight white men. They
are also seen as more successful and hardworking, and more masculine. Thus,
the stigma of body size differently impacts black and white men, with
overweight white men judged more negatively than overweight black men. We
hypothesize two possible accounts for these findings: black threat
neutralization and race-based attribution theory. [conditionally accepted] Mulcahy,
Michael J. and Mary Nell Trautner. “The Effects of Target Vulnerabilities on
Social Movement Outcomes: Living Wage Campaigns in U.S. Cities.” How do target vulnerabilities affect social movement
outcomes? We construct a political process model of the effects of target
vulnerabilities on movement outcomes, and test it empirically, using the case
of living wage campaigns. We model the effects of target vulnerabilities --
political elites’ vulnerability to the threat of popular delegitimation as a
result of business subsidy practices -- on the likelihood of two different,
ordered city-level living wage movement outcomes, akin to Gamson’s (1990) “acceptance”
and “new advantages” outcomes. We also test the notion that the diffusion of
contested innovations is a two-phase process, in which local factors and
contagion are more influential in the early phase than in the later phase.
Based on ordinal regression analyses of living wage outcomes in a 10-year
annual panel dataset of 596 U.S. cities, we find that target vulnerabilities
significantly increase the probability of living wage movement outcomes, but
these effects are not uniform across type of outcome or phases of the
diffusion process. [revise-and-resubmit] Mulcahy,
Michael J. and Mary Nell Trautner. “Do Living Wage Campaigns Contribute to
Labor Union Organizing? An Analysis of Intermovement Effects.” Both labor movement research and social movement theories
of intermovement effects support the expectation that community coalition
campaigns have a positive effect on union organizing, but we lack systematic
tests of these expectations. We test these expectations with regression
analyses of the effects of living wage campaigns on union organizing within
the institutional context of the National Labor Relations Board, using panel
date from 596 U.S. cities between 1990 and 2002. This case allows us to examine
a number of open questions in research on intermovement effects. We find both
positive and negative effects of living wage campaigns on local union
organizing efforts outside the context of any major protest cycle, but the
effects are highly contingent on a number of factors: the outcome of the
local living wage campaign, the specific unions and organizing outcomes in
question, the characteristics of the organizational field, and the phase of
the living wage movement. [revise-and-resubmit] Trautner, Mary
Nell, Erin Hatton, and Kelly E. Smith. “What Workers Want Depends: Legal
Knowledge and the Desire for Workplace Change among Day Laborers.” We identify legal knowledge as a key difference between
workers who desire workplace change and those who do not. Based on surveys
with 121 day laborers, we find that not all are equally dissatisfied with
their jobs, despite uniformly difficult working conditions. Some day laborers
do not want to make any real changes to the day labor industry, while others
want only minor changes. Yet other day laborers desire major changes to the
industry, including substantial wage increases, greater government
regulation, and unionization. The difference between these workers is their
knowledge of employment law: Those who know the law are more likely to desire
major workplace change. [working paper] Trautner,
Mary Nell, Samantha Kwan, and Scott V. Savage. “Gender, Appearance, and Legal
Outcomes: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Employment Discrimination
Cases.” We analyze the relationship between gender, appearance,
and legal outcomes, using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). QCA methods
assume that many different paths may lead to a particular outcome, and are
especially well suited for determining whether the configurations associated
with a positive outcome differ from those associated with a negative
one. In this paper, we focus on the
combinations of conditions that lead to case loss, as the vast majority of
appearance-based employment discrimination cases lose. Our analyses show six combinations that
lead to losing, with notable differences between why men lose compared to why
women lose. Analyses of appearance-related employment discrimination lawsuits
can shed light on ways in which organizations create and reinforce
stereotypes that are gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized. By focusing on
legal outcomes, we can also see how such policies are supported, reinforced,
codified, or conversely, deemed unacceptable by the legal system. [working paper] last updated
February 7, 2011 |