[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2005, vol. 30, no. 4]
2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2005/3004-0009$10.00
L o i s P r e s s e r
Negotiating Power and Narrative in Research: Implications
for Feminist Methodology
Feminist research begins with women's own perspectives and experi-
ences. Insofar as women's perspectives and experiences are subordi-
nated in scientific inquiries and the larger culture, feminist researchers
seek to eliminate hierarchies of knowledge construction.1
We are sensitive
to our place in such hierarchies, so we disclose the multiple, historically
specific positions we hold in relation to both study questions and partic-
ipants. That is, we attempt to "write ourselves into the analysis" (Gilgun
and McLeod 1999, 185).2
In this article, I maintain that we have not
written ourselves in nearly enough.
I conducted qualitative interviews with men who had committed se-
rious violent crimes, including crimes against women--rape of girls and
women and assault and murder of female partners. My aim was to un-
derstand the men's self-presentations and accounts of violence. Men's
vantage on their violence against women is a relatively new feminist topic
(Anderson and Umberson 2001, 359). Such research tends to probe the
justifications and excuses (e.g., victim blaming) of men who violate
women.3
Their violence is seen as embedded in broader discursive power
relations. Yet the influence of the power relations of the research on men's
accounts is largely ignored. Studies of accounts of male violators typically
do not focus attention on the contexts in which men present these ac-
counts. As a result, the humanity of the men, including their own prob-
This research was supported by funding from the Office of Research and AdvancedStudies
at the University of Cincinnati. An earlier draft of the article was presented at the 2003
Society for the Study of Social Problems annual meeting in Chicago. Sincere thanks go to
Kip Williams, Javier Trevin~o, Emily Gaarder, Russ Immarigeon, and Kimberly Cook for
inspired recommendations and to Mary Walker for editorial assistance.
1
For example, Ann Oakley (1981), Judith Stacey (1988), Pamela Cotterill (1992), and
Diane L. Wolf (1996) have engaged with this issue.
2
See also Harding 1987, 1991; Reinharz 1992; and Norum 2000.
3
See Scully and Marolla 1985; Dobash and Dobash 1998; Gilgun and McLeod 1999;
Anderson and Umberson 2001.
2068  Presser
lematic position vis-a`-vis certain masculinities, is neglected (Jackson 1991;
Connell 1995).
Consider Jane F. Gilgun and Laura McLeod's (1999) sensitive report
on the accounts they heard during interviews with rapists. They reveal
their emotional reactions to these accounts and the limits of their empathy.
They were "horrified" (185); the men's "way of thinking was for the most
part outside [their] frames of reference" (175). In conceptualizing their
informants' accounts as ways of thinking, Gilgun and McLeod treat them
as having an existence independent of the interview. In other words, the
men are reporting on past gendered action. For example, Gilgun and
McLeod comment that an informant known as Tim used contradictory
discourses in describing his sexual seduction of boys. He "trained" his
victims but also convinced himself that the relations were "mutual" (180).
Gilgun and McLeod presume that Tim "believed his own constructions"
(181). But Tim is plainly presenting an analysis of his past thoughts (even
if they are also his current thoughts) when he relates: "That further re-
inforced my belief that they wanted to be doing it" (180). This remark
clearly displays a "consciousness of narrativity" (Polonoff 1987, 53).
However deviant or abhorrent his past actions, Tim is conforming to the
contemporary demands we make of offenders--demands of self-disclosure
and self-critique (Fox 1999; McKendy 2004).
The sort of reflexivity evident in Gilgun and McLeod's analysis is of
the weak variety, where the analyst eschews the pretense of neutral ob-
servation yet fails to situate the research within "larger social, economic,
and political currents" (Harding 1991, 162). Consequently, the men in
Gilgun and McLeod's study appear simply as conduits for oppressive dis-
courses. Not surprisingly, Tim's power strikes the first author as "dia-
bolical" (181). In qualitative studies of female offenders, feminist crimi-
nologists tend to emphasize marginalization in past and present contexts
(e.g., Chesney-Lind 1997; Girshick 1999; Gaarder and Belknap 2002).
It is my observation that feminist researchers are not "doing feminist
methodology" when it comes to studying violent men.
Should they? I am convinced that we should also expose the marginal-
ization of those violent male subjects who speak to us. We should assimilate
into our observations their current social situation, which necessarily in-
cludes the present research interaction (Schiffrin 1996; Chanfrault-Duchet
2000). But then we can no longer say that we are "collecting" stories from
our informants (Miles and Crush 1993; Atkinson and Silverman 1997).
And so, whereas feminist criminologists have protested depictions and sto-
ries of female offenders that are told in words that are not those of the
offenders (Farr 2000; Belknap 2001), I question the possibility of eliciting
S I G N S Summer 2005  2069
the offenders' own constructions of events. A context of discursive control
shapes the accounts that offenders give.
Criminologists access the power of the state to identify violent persons.
Political and economic interests shape definitions of violence. The physical
harm caused by, say, corporate actors is typically not called violence (Barak
2003, 25). If criminalized at all, such actions tend to be treated with
leniency (Reiman 2001). Research on violence is thus already patterned
along class lines. The researcher is implicated in a system of selective
classification of and punishment for "violence."
Those who perpetrate interpersonal violence, such as sexual assault and
murder, are predominantly men (U.S. Department of Justice 1999). Women
researchers, myself included, are unlikely to feel at ease interviewing men
who have raped and murdered who are not under state-derived control.
We rely on such control for our safety. The fact that we most often speak
with captives has ramifications that remain unexplored. For example, in-
capacitated offenders may be more apt to rationalize how and why they
came to inhabit this social (i.e., stigmatized) and geographical (i.e., in-
stitutional) space. The deprivation of male autonomy, given cultural def-
initions of masculinity, may result in insistent efforts to control the other
during the interview, a matter I will explore presently.
Whereas the social status and location of the informant convey macrolevel
effects on his or her speech, there are also microlevel features of talk with
which we wield power. As instigator and director of the interview--with
any subjects--the researcher sets the agendum, even if it is one of apparently
unstructured talk. The "point" of the interview is conveyed to subjects
through apparently extraneous features of the study, such as the informed
consent form. The researcher's interest in certain topics affects his/her
listening responses, which indicate whether and when enough has been said
for the goal of addressing the research question (Schegloff 1982). The spe-
cific purpose of the interview--whether conveyed directly or indirectly--
influences narrators in the selection of "facts" about "what happened."4
In this article I consider these various influences as I argue for strong
reflexivity in studies of gender relations. We should include as data the
context of the interview, including the resources that allow the interview
to take place at all. The interviews I conducted with "violent men" acted
as settings for the constructing of narratives. I was a collaborator in these
constructions. Hence in this article, I critique the possibility of an eman-
4
Further, we tell our stories in terms of socially available categories of personhood and
behavior (Wiersma 1988; Cruikshank 1990; Gergen 1992; Chanfrault-Duchet 2000). These
are only partly transmitted at the level of local exchange.
2070  Presser
cipatory methodology as I analyze the situated, collaborative negotiation
of narrated identities in research interviews with men. I conclude with a
call for a reflexivity that attends to dynamic relations of power within the
research setting.
Accounts are situated
People's accounts of their behavior are always responses to being held to
account (Scott and Lyman 1968). Thus, when offenders tell us why they
offended, they are not just voicing an internal attitude about their pre-
rogatives. They are also responding to those circumstances that allow us
to ask why.
Typically, academics who wish to interview "violent offenders" have
access to persons who have been sanctioned and incapacitated. After all,
it is difficult to locate, obtain institutional approval to interview, and secure
a sense of safety with "violent offenders" any other way. Those labeled
violent are marginalized along race and class lines to begin with (Reiman
2001); criminal justice processing further marginalizes them. Having been
defeated--held accountable, as it were--by "society" and the justice sys-
tem, they resist defeat through their accounts.
The power abuses that make the interview possible (e.g., incarceration)
are implicated in the abuses of men during the interview (e.g., sexualizing
the encounter), which are implicated in the abuses they report on--that
is, their stories of violence. In attempting to understand men's violence,
researchers have focused mainly on the latter sort of abuse--men's neu-
tralizations of violence. They have not attended to the active use and flow
of power through research. In the following pages I approach the context
within which I encountered violent men as essential grounds for under-
standing the men's self-reports.
Cross-gender studies of men generate unique concerns about research
practice. But these concerns articulate a familiar theme in feminist schol-
arship--that we study people's actual life experiences (Smith 1987). The
actual life experiences I investigate in this article are those of the research
encounter. The men I interviewed used the interview, an event regulated
by the state in every case, to present themselves as masculine and to contest
subjugation by the state.
Theorizing masculinity in the interview
In the Western context, hegemonic masculinity "emphasizes practices to-
ward authority, control, independence, competitive individualism, ag-
S I G N S Summer 2005  2071
gressiveness, and the capacity for violence" (Messerschmidt 2000, 10).
According to James Messerschmidt's structured action theory, masculine
resources and situational opportunities affect how one may present oneself
as manly. Messerschmidt defines masculine resources as follows: "Masculine
resources are contextually available practices (e.g., bullying, fighting, en-
gaging in sexuality, and acting like a `gentleman') that can be drawn upon
so that men and boys can demonstrate to others they are `manly.' Resources
appropriate for masculine construction change situationally" (12).
Constraints on masculine resources are various. Messerschmidt (1993)
emphasizes economic marginalization due to the social relevancies of race
and class. Physical control is another constraint. For individuals under
physical control, such as prison inmates, regulation extends to the most
basic aspects of social life (Goffman 1961; Ross and Richards 2002).
Deprivation of autonomy blocks resources--for example, the ability to
spend time as one wishes--for doing hegemonic masculinity. At the same
time, the deprivation of autonomy is a direct "masculinity challenge"
(Messerschmidt 2000, 13) in that it contests a key characteristic of mas-
culinity--self-determination.
Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman observe that "any social en-
counter can be pressed into service in the interests of doing gender"
(1987, 138). Accordingly, a research interview may serve as a site of gender
activity. Michael L. Schwalbe and Michelle Wolkomir explicate the mul-
tiple meanings of the research interview for masculinity in particular: "An
interview situation . . . is an opportunity to signify masculinity inasmuch
as men are allowed to portray themselves as in control, autonomous,
rational, and so on. It is a threat inasmuch as an interviewer controls the
interaction, asks questions that put these elements of manly self-portrayal
into doubt, and does not simply affirm a man's masculinity displays"
(2002, 205­6). Most of the men in my study were under a high degree
of criminal justice control. Whereas criminal justice control thwarted some
resources for signifying masculinity, the interview offered others, such as
my need for their assistance with the study.
Cross-gender research
Enactments of presentably male or female behavior occur in all research.
Cross-gender studies simply bring the processes of gender accomplishment
into plain view. Much as anthropologists are better able to discern cultures
not their own, gender dynamics are clearer when research interviews are
cross-gender. The literature is replete with discussions of how doing cross-
gender research affects the amount and type of data one can obtain. One's
2072  Presser
gender and other social statuses influence esteem, trust, and rapport, which
facilitate or thwart access to data.5
The effects of research-situated gender
relations on the data themselves are not widely researched.
Christine L. Williams and E. Joel Heikes (1993) observed that male
nurses said different things about job discrimination depending on the
interviewer's gender. The nurses framed issues concerning gender and
work differently to Williams (a woman) and Heikes (a man). For example,
the men "interviewed by a woman tended to suggest that male-female
differences were not inevitable" (Williams and Heikes 1993, 284). In
contrast, "the men interviewed by the man tended to speak categorically
about men and women, using an us-versus-them framework" (285). That
is, the male subjects conveyed a more profeminist viewpoint with the
female researcher--a sort of social desirability bias (Babbie 2001).
Where the research questions concern identity and self-presentation,
gender relations in research more obviously shape data. Terry Arendell's
(1997) interviews with divorced fathers confirm that male research par-
ticipants use the female interviewer's gender to make particular claims
about themselves. Arendell notes that participants "were both presenting
themselves as masculine persons--defined by them as being competent,
assertive, controlling and rational--and working on proving their man-
hood during their conversations with me" (347). Through concrete verbal
and physical gestures, such as ordering for Arendell in restaurants, the
men reestablished their identities--under siege due to the divorce expe-
rience--as responsible and in control.
Harold Garfinkel (1967) considered how Agnes, a transsexual, actively
achieved a feminine identity. Agnes accomplished hegemonic femininity,
including deference to men, through Garfinkel's research encounters with
her. Garfinkel's masculine conduct plainly facilitated that accomplishment:
"There were many occasions where my attentions flattered her with respect
to her femininity; for example, holding her arm while I guided her across
the street; having lunch with her at the Medical Center; offering to hang
up her coat; relieving her of her handbag; holding the automobile door
for her while she entered; being solicitous for her comfort before I closed
the auto door and took my own seat behind the wheel" (133). Garfinkel
held Agnes accountable for accomplishing femininity to the extent that
he expected her to take his chivalrous moves for granted. Garfinkel did
5
Lois Easterday et al. (1977), Carol Warren and Paul Rasmussen (1977), Neil Mc-
Keganey and Michael Bloor (1991), Javier Trevin~o (1992), Rebecca Horn (1997), Sally
Brown (2001), and Martha Huggins and Marie-Louise Glebbeek (2003) consider how gen-
der has influenced their access as researchers.
S I G N S Summer 2005  2073
not highlight his own gender as consequential; the study assumes the
traditional standpoint on gender as female gender. It provides a rare il-
lustration of researcher-subject collaboration in gender accomplishment,
and the influence this collaboration has on study findings. Informants and
researchers use their gender relations with each other to affirm an appro-
priately gendered self.
Methods
Sample
Social service organizations working with convicts and ex-convicts in New
Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania referred research participants
to me. Over a period of nearly three years I interviewed twenty-seven
men. They had committed assault (eighteen men), manslaughter or hom-
icide (nine), attempted murder (two), robbery (eleven), rape (four), and
attempted rape (one). The majority of the men were convicted of one or
more of these crimes; two had been arrested but not convicted. Most had
committed more than one of these offenses in their lifetimes. Seven of
the men said they had assaulted their female partners. In addition, one
murder and one attempted murder were perpetrated against female part-
ners. Based on self-description, twelve of the men were African American,
nine were white, three were Latino, two were biracial (one black-white
and one black-Latino), and one was of East Indian descent. Most of the
men told me that they had grown up in poverty.
Getting to the data
All but one of the research participants were interviewed on one to four
separate occasions. I tape-recorded most of the interviews. An important
exception concerned Kevin, who was on death row during the study pe-
riod.6
Kevin was allowed to place collect phone calls, each as long as fifteen
minutes, at times designated by prison administrators. I took careful notes
on these phone interviews. In addition to nine phone calls, I sent Kevin
three letters with questions, and he replied with four letters.
Each interview tended to last from one to three hours. Most of the
interviews included only the participant and myself.7
However, agency
6
All names of research participants are pseudonyms. I sometimes go by the name Lo.
7
There were three exceptions. The telephone interviews with Kevin were supposedly
monitored by the prison administration. Wayne, a deaf man, was interviewed three times in
the presence (i.e., with the assistance) of a sign language interpreter. James spoke to my
class, which included nine other people.
2074  Presser
personnel were usually close at hand, beyond the doors of the rooms
where interviews took place. The interviews were for the most part un-
structured. Prior to conducting any interviews, I developed a limited num-
ber of standard questions, such as "Do you see yourself as a criminal?"
These were designed to prompt talk of how the men perceived themselves,
their lives, and their offending behavior. I did not tell research participants
that I was interviewing men only, nor did I tell them that I was interested
in male gender.
The informed consent form stated that the purpose of the research was
to "learn more about people who had been involved in violent crime."
It also stated that the informant may be asked about experiences he had
as a child and as an adult, related to crime and other life events. I disclosed
that I was a graduate student and that the study was part of my graduate
work. Informally, I told each informant to share whatever he would like
to with me. My analysis of my transcripts revealed that I tended to question
informants about their current status (e.g., how much time he had left
to serve) or most recent offense to begin the conversation. Later in the
interviews I was more apt to use prompts that directly addressed identity.
I also questioned many of the informants on their reasons for and feelings
about their crimes.
Data analysis
My analysis proceeded in several steps. My overall method was one of
grounding theory in the data--that is, coding qualitative data in terms of
emergent categories and, as coding proceeded, making theory out of the
most widely applicable categories (Glaser and Strauss 1967). I imported
the transcribed narrative data from Microsoft Word into N5 (NUD*IST),
a software package for analyzing qualitative data.
The first step of the analysis involved coding all of the data according
to any themes that seemed sociologically interesting. This was a first pass,
and it helped to familiarize me with the men's stories. In time I restruc-
tured the themes to reflect progress in my thinking about the narratives.
I began thinking about comparisons and contrasts--between people and
between selves (over time)--as essential to the coherence of the narratives
and thus to identity. The new structure consisted of eight branches, in-
cluding social distinctions that the men drew, the men's talk about their
true selves, talk about the self over time, ways in which the men evidently
used the interview, and ways in which I evidently shaped the interview.
These branched into talk about their moral reform, their moral stability
over time, and their ongoing struggles against some internal or external
S I G N S Summer 2005  2075
entity. In time, this second generation of themes emerged as the most
important for determining what their stories were about.
First, I saw the men's stories as about either change or stability in the
moral self. That is, the protagonist of the stories had been reformed since
the most recent crime or had stayed the same basic person over the life
course. Whether one claimed moral reform or moral stability, as I came
to call this schism, the protagonist was cast as a hero in his own life,
battling adversaries in an ongoing struggle. Particular adversaries varied.
They were internal (e.g., drug addiction) and external (e.g., the criminal
justice system). The criminal justice system was by far the most common
adversary identified.
A more general theme was the accounting for one's deviance (or for
having been labeled as deviant). Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman (1968)
propose that accounts of deviance are fundamental to human social life.
Every other theme I identified could be seen as a contribution to such
an account. Here, then, was an elementary effect that I had on the nar-
ratives: the presence of an audience prompted the delivery of an account.
My coding to this point had failed to capture fully the interaction
between researcher and participant. I was missing a sense of the flow of
the interview, including the texture of interaction. The next step in my
analysis was to create memos on each research participant based on the
original narrative. In each memo I documented the progression of all
interviews with that participant. The memos read like a running summary
of, first, how the man's narrative was unfolding and, second, what was,
apparently, going on between us. The memo also contained rudimentary
analyses of the interaction. An excerpt from a memo based on my interview
with Hector follows. Abbreviated words and references have been spelled
out; otherwise no changes have been made to the memo as recorded.
Of record of violence, Hector says "I just defended myself--when
I had to," giving a clear statement of victim identity. Interruption,
someone enters to check on whether I'm "all right," I say yes "we're
all right" but thank the visitor. Change pronoun to "we"--sug-
gesting that I am aligned with Hector, also that I need no protection
from him? I continue questioning: has he had felonies. He answers
that he doesn't even know what felony is, thus presenting as an
innocent in regard to the criminal justice system. I empathize, bridg-
ing social distance: neither am I clear (what a felony is), but I try
to explain.
These memos helped me to study communicative exchanges in context.
2076  Presser
Here I backed Hector's claim of being a noncriminal, denying the blatant
message disseminated within the institution--that its inmates pose a con-
stant threat to others' safety. Thus I discovered that the men's narratives
were co-constructed in the interview. A focus on two research partici-
pants--Dwight and Kevin--allows a close demonstration of this finding.
Dwight: "I was the man of the house"
As of our first interview in July 1999, Dwight had recently been released
from prison. Dwight described a lengthy and serious criminal history. He
started using alcohol at age ten. By age thirteen he had committed bur-
glary, car theft, and robbery and was using cocaine and heroin. At fourteen
he was arrested and incarcerated for larceny. His case was transferred to
adult court, and he served a year and a half in adult prison. Not long
after, at age sixteen, he was arrested for armed robbery. This case was also
waived to adult court, and he was sentenced to prison for ten years. While
incarcerated, he stabbed a fellow inmate who had allegedly thrown hot
water on him.
Dwight's recent prison sentence reflected two distinct criminal charges.
The first charge was for his rape of a female acquaintance. Ironically and
tragically, while the court case for the rape was pending and Dwight was
at home awaiting trial, his girlfriend's teenage daughter was raped. Dwight
shot the neighbor who had raped her. The man survived, and Dwight
was charged with aggravated assault. Dwight pled guilty to both the rape
and the aggravated assault and served fifteen years in prison. I met Dwight
following his release. He was on a two-year parole term.
Dwight described his childhood as difficult. His father abandoned the
family when Dwight was five. His mother and nine siblings were left with
little income. Poverty led to alienation at school; he discussed the shame
of not having new clothes to wear like his peers. Truancy and drug and
alcohol abuse were, he said, the result.
Dwight's mother had a boyfriend who was verbally abusive toward her
and the children. During one altercation, his mother swung an axe at her
boyfriend. Dwight said that his own aggressiveness evolved from exposure
to such brutality: "That's what trigger my anger towards a lot of situa-
tions." Hostility and low self-esteem led him to exploit others. He thought
only about how he could manipulate others, "'cause I didn't care nothin'
about myself. . . . I was screwed up inside." In time, he proudly adopted
a criminal identity ("think I'm bad"), such that delinquency had positive
appeal. He got "pleasure just doin' somethin' wrong."
In describing the crimes he had committed over the years, Dwight
S I G N S Summer 2005  2077
tended to focus on his past sexual assaults. He said that he frequently
bought women alcohol until they were inebriated and then had sex with
them; he admitted that the women often did not know what they were
doing. Dwight recounted his recent rape as perpetrated against a female
acquaintance who, earlier the same evening, wanted to have sex with
Dwight. He had declined but later raped her forcibly. He described the
rape as a power struggle. He was "playin' her game," something he at-
tributed to socialization into a certain subculture: "When a person live
out in the street, they play so many games." Dwight caused his victim
serious physical injury. Assessing the consequences, he reported that "the
hospital bill they say was $10,000" and "they say I bruised her up. They
say her face an' her body." He added: "I screwed her life up."
Dwight also caused great harm to the man--a neighbor--who had
raped his girlfriend's daughter. After finding the teenage girl bleeding, he
left the apartment to purchase drugs, get high, and then force his way
into the man's apartment, where he shot the man in the groin. On leaving
the apartment, he handed $2,000 to the rapist's "old lady" for hospital
bills. He explained to me that he knew that the shooting would cause
financial loss to the family. Dwight was also mindful of its negative con-
sequences for him--he would "never step foot back on the ground"--
which was reportedly why he got high just before perpetrating this vio-
lence. He was steeling himself for what he "had to do." I asked if he felt
he had a choice regarding the shooting, and he answered that he very
much loved his girlfriend, whose daughter had been victimized. He also
stated: "I was the man of the house, so I had to do what I had to do."
Dwight depicted himself as having lacked personal agency in the past. His
decisions to offend were the result of social expectations as well as his
own inner demons.
Dwight's recent prison sentence--his longest ever--was initially very
difficult for him. He was frequently placed in punitive segregation for
selling drugs, refusing to work, and for what he termed "disrespect." A
turning point came after a parole board hearing at which he was refused
release. He realized that he needed to make dramatic life changes. He
started attending prison-based Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics
Anonymous meetings. He shared with me autobiographical writings from
prison treatment programs, in which his Muslim name is recorded. Dwight
commented that many men knew him in prison and that they assigned
him a name that suggested sensitivity. Offering an example of his humane
prison persona, he said that he would often advise a new young inmate
on how "to keep his manhood." Dwight also participated in treatment
programs for sex offenders. He spoke of sustained dedication to his twelve-
2078  Presser
step program and the lessons he learned in sex offender treatment. He
came to believe that rapists are "sick" but also that men generally need
to respect women's wishes and feelings.
Dwight's story was one of essential goodness that had been corrupted
early by the social and psychological consequences of economic hardship.
Low self-esteem turned to anger and a criminal identity. He became ex-
ploitative in all his relations with other people. In particular, he was brutal
and unfeeling toward the women he sexually assaulted. In recounting
specific crimes, Dwight explicitly condemned his sexual assaults on
women. He condemned other past crimes more vaguely, sometimes neu-
tralizing acts of aggression as mandated by a manly role. When I asked
why he participated in riots at two different prisons, he explained that
during a riot the behavioral code is "every man for himself."
Now directed by new understandings about how to behave, Dwight's
moral life is not without conflict. Dwight asserted his moral rectitude in
current struggles against authority figures. Specifically, he took issue with
parole conditions and house rules. When recent urine tests were positive,
he claimed that he did not know why. He was sanctioned with an earlier
curfew time. In trying to explain why the tests were positive, he told me:
"I got heated up. An' me an' the house guy--we got [into] a confusion,
you know, misunderstanding, almost argument." Dwight also mentioned
that his parole officer "wrote him up" for lateness to an appointment.
Dwight focused on the officer's ill will: "He was trying to--ya know--
cross me up an' send me back [to prison]--but I didn't let it happen."
In both examples Dwight focused on his struggle for freedom and not
on his troublesome conduct.
Dwight's story is gendered. The early impetus to delinquency was due
to his father's abandonment and his mother's victimization. His offenses
were, to his mind, accomplishments of masculinity. Before, he obtained
gratification in living up to a tough image and in dominating women.
Noteworthy is how Dwight channeled a certain liberal feminist discourse
on gender. In Dwight's narrative, he has been socialized to withhold
feelings and to disrespect women. Both emotional repression and disre-
spect for women led to offending.
Dwight's reform is also gendered. Lessons in changing his "thinking
errors" and reconnecting with his feelings have purportedly instilled in
him a more respectful attitude toward women. Dwight now lives peacefully
with people, women in particular. He provided several examples of coming
to women's assistance. He advised one woman to leave a neglectful boy-
friend; he advised another to pursue a college degree in defiance of her
husband's wishes and family demands. He enjoyed nothing more than to
S I G N S Summer 2005  2079
talk to women about his new sensitivity. He told a woman he recently
met at a social service agency: "When I went in, ya know, I thought all
females was a sex object. Yeah I say, now no woman out here on the street
got to worry about me puttin' a hand on 'em." These days Dwight strug-
gles to be recognized as a good man.
Dwight's storytelling: "I don't take away what y'all got between
your legs"
The interview and I were tangibly assimilated into this story of who
Dwight is today. Dwight verbally positioned me as female "other," whom
he had formerly abused and whom he now assists: "[Now] I don't take
away what y'all got between your legs." Dwight enacted a helpful, peaceful
self with me in the interview. For example, he repeatedly encouraged me
to use his personal documents for my study: "Because, see, it's a lot of
stuff in here--will help you analyze." He was also one of several men who
seized an opportunity to advise me about something, where the advice
was specifically related to their criminal pasts. Helping me was an active
reversal of past exploitation--a redemptive act (see Maruna 2001).
Dwight's advice was directed toward me as a woman unschooled in the
ways of men. He advised me about holding onto personal power and
satisfaction in romantic relationships with men:
Dwight: Ya know, you a good person. So, I'm hopin' that you don't
get--you're stuck with some (unclear) guy--you know wha'm sayin' . . .
Lois Presser (LP): [Chuckle.]
Dwight: . . . [who] don't want you for--don't want you for you.
Dwight's protectiveness may be seen as the accomplishment of a chiv-
alrous masculinity--"acting like a `gentleman'" (Messerschmidt 2000,
12). Interviews with all twenty-seven of the research participants suggest
that chivalry was a popular way of "doing" gender in the interview (Presser
2004). Such chivalry positions the female other in terms of hegemonic
femininity, encompassing vulnerability and heterosexuality.
But the darker reality of chivalry is its assertion of authority. Not sur-
prisingly, Dwight struggled for control during our interaction. He in-
structed me on helping him to violate the rule against smoking inside the
house.
Dwight: See? Then I started uh--understandin'--under. . . Did he
[halfway house director] come back? Did he come back?
LP: No. Why?
Dwight: Did he come back?
LP: No.
2080  Presser
Dwight: S' anyway, 'scuse me, I got to have a cigarette.
LP: Oh.
Dwight: You see a car comes, just say: "Y'all put it out!"
LP: Oh, 'cause you're not supposed to smoke?
Dwight: Not here.
LP: Oh, y-you don't want to go out there?
Dwight: No, it's t-too wet out there.
LP: It's too what?
Dwight: Too wet.
LP: Oh.
Dwight: Been rainin'! You been in here all--it been rainin'!
LP: Oh, it has been raining. Are you sure? Maybe you should . . .
Dwight: No! I'm straight!
LP: Really? 'Cause if it's a rule, you know, and you just finished saying
how you like people to keep you on the straight track.
Dwight: Mm-mm!
LP: All right. I'm gonna let you do what you want to do. [Looking
out the door at a sickly looking cat in the small backyard.] You know
what, that kitty has got to go to a vet!
I have presented this lengthy exchange to demonstrate the interactional
nature of the power dynamic. It is nothing short of a struggle for control.
Dwight enlisted me as his accomplice in breaking a house rule. I took up
the position of the halfway-house administration, advocating their rules
("Maybe you should . . . "). After he resisted, I tried to convince him
to change his mind by presenting myself as someone who might help to
keep him out of trouble. When I could not gain his compliance in this
way, I gave in by agreeing not to contest the rule violation ("I'm gonna
let you do what you want to do") while reasserting myself as an authority
figure: I am the one to let him do as he wishes.
Upon data analysis, to my chagrin, I found that the men were not the
only ones to position me in gendered ways. I did so myself. To ease tension
after the power struggle, I accomplished femininity by conveying empathy
for a small animal ("You know what, that kitty has got to go to a vet!").
Kevin: "I'm under constant attack"
My contacts with Kevin--phone calls and letters--lasted a period of eight
months. Kevin had been on death row for eighteen-and-a-half years as of
our first phone interview. In the course of robbing a convenience store,
he was alleged to have fatally stabbed the clerk. Unlike Dwight, Kevin
S I G N S Summer 2005  2081
denied having committed any violence. He maintained that an accomplice
stabbed the store clerk.
In the interviews, Kevin confided far less about his life and his criminal
history than Dwight had. He did reveal that he had grown up poor, with
a violent father. He reflected on his mother's experience: "I was six months
old when my father used to beat my mother real bad. She had a hard
life." Kevin tended not to emphasize the difficulty of his own upbringing,
however. Instead, he romanticized the tough world in which he grew up.
Whereas Kevin alluded vaguely to past misconduct, including involvement
in serious crime, he depicted himself as consistently decent. He spoke of
abiding by largely undefined "codes of honor" all his life.
During our first interview, Kevin presented himself as an advocate for
other death row inmates. Nonetheless, he said he considered only a few
"brothers." He presented himself as braver and stronger than other peo-
ple. He remarked that he has "always dealt with things, faced them head-
on." Given his unique character, he looked out for others. For example,
he refused to let his family visit as often as they wished because he believed
the prison visits upset them.
Kevin depicted himself as embattled--an enemy of corrupt authority.
There was a tangible basis for this identity. Kevin's federal appeals had
repeatedly proven unsuccessful in overturning his murder conviction. He
bristled at being treated like "a mad animal" in prison (first interview).
He resented that the media had depicted him as "this monster" (second
interview). He mentioned his intent to file a slander suit against the local
newspaper for "calling [him] a punk and a coward for eighteen-and-a-
half years," thus "attacking [his] character." In a letter Kevin sent me in
month seven, he described himself as being "under constant attack."
The coherence of Kevin's self-identification as an upstanding person
was served by sparse detail of what he had done to harm other people.
Offering few specifics, he paid tribute to a nonconformist past enjoyed
with male companions. Kevin conveyed pride in his past involvement in
a macho subculture. He wrote me in month seven: "I can remember
cruising around getting high listening to Rumors [record album]. Back
in those days a guy could womanize and really not worry about catching
anything. Unless he had someone at home [line drawing of frazzled-
looking face]. I've never played the cheating game, but some of my old
partners used to."
In the world Kevin evoked, risky misconduct was a game. Neal Shover's
(1996) study of persistent male property offenders suggests that the phe-
nomenological rewards of offending ("life as party") include its role in
2082  Presser
crafting a certain identity. Shover explains: "Prospective actions are eval-
uated not only in terms of the amount of trouble they may bring but also
for what success at them would suggest to others about one's identity or
character. These matters can be extremely important, particularly for men
whose investments in legitimate identities and lines of action are shallow
and unrewarding" (109). Jack Katz makes a similar but less materialist
argument--that violence gives action "a seductively glorious, rather than
a mundane, indifferent, significance" (1988, 128). Indeed, Kevin was
nostalgic about the weighty trouble he and his partners had caused. It
signified masculinity to him, then and now. The following extract is from
our eighth phone interview (month nine):
LP: What were you like before you went in?
Kevin: Typical boy. I did stupid stuff. [Laugh.] The more something
would make my heart pound, the more I wanted to do it. Yeah. Just a
typical guy. . . . As I think I told you, I was used to living a certain
lifestyle. I grew up in a certain kind of world. Petty crimes just wasn't
what I was involved in.
Kevin stressed the fact of having been consistently maligned and mis-
understood by others. Being misunderstood was for him a gendered phe-
nomenon. Men stigmatize him in a play for power, while women marvel
at his steadfast morality. In the aforementioned letter of month seven, he
wrote:
As I have always said, I am more innocent than what people believe.
However those that have placed me here know I am innocent, but
they along with their followers need to keep the dirt flying to conceal
the truth. Because of my codes of honor my hands have always been
tied. Not to [sic] long ago a precious woman I know got on my
case about my principles and said things along these lines, what have
my codes gotten me, have they kept me warm at night? My principles
have gotten me nothing. I have thrown my life away and have hurt
everyone I have ever loved and cared for, that have loved and cared
for me. I live with this guilt of hurting them. I can not put this
sorrow into words, other than it's been killing me. I've even been
getting flack from some because I knew how those in this case were
trying to save themselves and placing me in the hot seat and yet I
still wouldn't say anything. I couldn't. I wouldn't be saying what
little I have said, if these clowns hadn't of come forward with what
they have. I know it doesn't make sense. I'm a educated man, I
speak a couple of languages, bla, bla, bla. But logic doesn't apply
S I G N S Summer 2005  2083
to principles. Principles apply to the man. Well Lo honey, I have
gone on enough.
Those who "conceal the truth" about Kevin for their own advantage--
accomplices, prosecutors, judges, and journalists--are mainly men. Female
intimates recognize his principled nature but worry that it does him harm.
"Principles apply to the man" indeed.
As I show in the next section, Kevin positioned me as just such a female
intimate, a witness to his ultimately tragic integrity. Kevin inferred this
attitude on my part; I did not articulate it. I abstained completely from
challenging Kevin on all that was missing from his narrative, including an
adequate account of the robbery-turned-murder that led to his execution.
It seemed cruel to disrupt the fragile coherence achieved by a man so
close to death. I also refrained from challenging him on patently sexual
comments. Notes that I took after our third phone interview (month two)
read as follows:
He talks about his innocence and a noncontextualized effort by Som-
ers County prosecutor's office to "characterize" him a certain way.
He continues to make the point that he is being "mischaracterized"
by saying he is actually "a nice guy" whose large size and tattoos make
him appear to be "a terrible person." Kevin emphasizes his intelligence
("Hell, I'm better educated than most of them") as part of who he
is. Collaboration between us is evident, and implicit references are
made to where I stand. Flirtatious/gendered reference to his having
been good-looking when he first got to prison 18 1/2 years ago.
The flirting accelerates after I return with an autobiographical ref-
erence to being not much older, after which he says: "Oh you're a
baby. You're a minor gettin' old guys arrested." (Hence, over time,
there is an increasing daring on his part with his flirting.) There is,
I notice, an effort by Kevin to ask me about myself, and a corre-
sponding effort by me to change topic back to him. Kevin asks me
if I'm working on my doctorate and then if he is "my thesis." I ask
Kevin about his writing.
Kevin's writing was the site of a different sort of masculinity, one in-
volving intellectual competence.
Kevin: So I guess you didn't like what I wrote in that letter?
LP: Why? No, I liked your letter. Did you get the letter I wrote back?
Kevin: No.
LP: Oh. I wrote you back. Are you saying that because you didn't get
2084  Presser
my letter back? No, I liked what you wrote. You're very provocative and
you write very well.
Kevin: Hey [with glee]--you're a college professor, right? Ay!
Kevin was gratified by my supposed approval of his written work, given
my social status as a professor. Kevin resented being cast as a stupid person
and distinguished himself from others in terms of intelligence. In his letter
of month seven, he wrote: "You know I'm not the average bone-head in
prison." The clearest indication of Kevin's ideal persona came during our
last conversation (month nine), when I asked Kevin how he wanted to
be remembered. He replied: "I think you've known me long enough and
spoken with me long enough to know that I'm not some kind of un-
educated monster like they make me out to be."
Kevin's story is one of being miscast as a lesser person--even a non-
person. He constructs himself as an exceptional man. His alleged inno-
cence of the murder for which he was condemned is a platform for pre-
senting himself as misunderstood and heroic. Yet Kevin claims to have
once participated in a highly masculine world of misconduct. That world
was regulated by moral principles that Kevin commends but does not
detail.
Kevin's storytelling: "It's part of life, baby girl"
Kevin incorporated the interview and me as the interviewer--features of
storytelling--into his narrative. For example, Kevin used my middle-class
credentials to resist the stigma of being uneducated ("You're a college
professor, right?"). More generally, Kevin cast me as a partner in his
struggle against a corrupt justice system. In fact, Kevin knew me to be
an anti­death penalty activist. At the start of our third interview (month
two), Kevin asked, "Did you go to the meeting last night?" taking for
granted that I knew about a meeting concerning the status of his appeals.
In month eight, Kevin's mother phoned me to relay a message from him:
"Pass the documents that I mailed to you around campus. Have people
write or e-mail the governor to order a federal investigation into my
conviction and the Somers County prosecutor's office." Clearly, Kevin
spoke of the battle for his life as one I waged with him. The interview
was a forum for maintaining his innocence and reflecting on it with a
supporter.
In addition, the interview was a forum for his being a good man by
helping a woman in need. First, Kevin helped me by participating in my
research. After amending my informed consent form (adding a particular
disclaimer) before signing it, Kevin wrote: "This way I can still assist you
S I G N S Summer 2005  2085
with your study, and protect myself." Second, Kevin helped me emo-
tionally, by protecting me in the battle against his executioners. At the
close of most of our phone conversations and in his letters to me, he
urged me to "stay strong." During our penultimate phone conversation
in month nine Kevin commented that I sounded sad on the phone. He
then comforted me, saying, "It's part of life, baby girl." During the next
phone call he raised the topic of my ordeal: "Lo, now the last time I spoke
with you it was kind of hard on you." Concerning his impending death,
Kevin disowned his own feelings, a typically masculine feat. Kevin posi-
tioned me as sensitive and assigned himself the complementary masculine
role as my hero (see Connell 1995, 213). This assignment also enabled
Kevin to enact a "good self" as opposed to the "monster" he was in the
criminal justice system and in the media.
Kevin consistently referred to me in gendered terms, and frequently in
sexual ones. Like female researchers before me, I was subjected to "hus-
tling" (Easterday et al. 1977, 339; Warren and Rasmussen 1977, 362;
Huggins and Glebbeek 2003, 371­72). Beginning in our fourth phone
interview (month three), Kevin bid me goodbye with terms of endear-
ment--"honey" or "sweetheart." These indicated a familiarity that belied
a formal research relationship. In his letter of month seven Kevin addressed
me as "Dearest Lois" and wrote: "I enjoyed talking with you the other
day. I enjoy the conversation of a intelligent woman."
Our seventh interview (month eight) had Kevin comforting me about
the near prospect of his execution: "Don't worry. I'll be out there stalking
you before too long! I like you college girls." He joked in the same way
during our very last talk: "I'll come back and stalk you. I'd make a good
stalker. Then you'll say `Mommy, Daddy!'" (mimicking a young female
voice). Accustomed to thinking about the men's claims to moral decency,
I was unsure how to evaluate Kevin's stalking threat. Was he playing with--
resisting--his categorization as evil? Since he had already established him-
self with me as righteous, it seemed unlikely that he would feel the need,
now, to assert that claim ironically. Instead, I believe that Kevin was con-
veying a message of power over me. The state, Kevin's master for more
than eighteen years, was to control his life even to the point of terminating
it. Denied his freedom to the end, Kevin constructed a fantasy of hege-
monic masculinity through posthumous aggression.
Like Dwight, Kevin laid claim to a masculinity that both protects
women and rules them. I did not call Kevin on his sexual remarks. I may
have been concerned that he would terminate our contacts if I challenged
him--a risk Andrew Herod (1993, 314) acknowledges with regard to
researchers contesting subjects' sexist attitudes. I also pitied him. For the
2086  Presser
most part, though, I was responding to my training in qualitative methods
to be tolerant and to let Kevin say what he would without intervention
(Schatzman and Strauss 1973). I was beholden to Kevin's executioners--
to state power--for this "passive" stance.
Conclusion
Increasingly, women are studying violent men to understand their "vo-
cabulary of motives" (Mills 1940) for controlling women. Like other
female and feminist researchers (e.g., Scully and Marolla 1985; Gilgun
and McLeod 1999; Anderson and Umberson 2001), I heard justifications
and excuses for violence, including avowals of one's innocence, depictions
of a provocative victim, and minimizations of the effects of violence. These
accounts served a general presentation of self as both decent and mas-
culine, though, as in Kevin's case, not so masculine as to authenticate
one's dehumanization.
The accounts were situated within the particular power relations of the
research. The interview provided participants with certain resources for
presenting themselves as good and manly. Dwight and Kevin enacted their
decent selves with me. In doing so, they positioned me as a heterosexual
female. For Dwight this meant that I needed his strength and guidance
concerning relations with men. Kevin positioned me as an object of fan-
tasies of domination. The fact that Kevin and I were both white may have
contributed to his intimacy with me.
I was also subject to mild coercion and threats. Dwight and Kevin used
the research interview to "have their way" despite control by the criminal
justice system. I propose that such behavior be considered as defiance of
the justice system supported by the general acceptability of men ruling
women. The female interviewer of male informants, who wields discursive
power and whose research is permitted if not authorized by the state, is
seen to be stepping out of place.
The interview was the site of behavior consequential to the men's
narratives of self, including my responses to the men's power plays. There-
fore, in the ongoing project of understanding gender relations, we must
go beyond simply writing ourselves into research interviews to writing
our exchanges into them (Tedlock 1991; Twyman, Morrison, and Sporton
1999). Missing from qualitative studies of men by women is a systematic
investigation of how relations of power between interviewer and partic-
ipant become part of interview data. Feminist researchers in particular
ought to consider these "research effects." Concrete settings of interaction
S I G N S Summer 2005  2087
provide and withhold opportunities for and challenges to gendering be-
havior. The research interview is one such setting.
Stories are constructed situationally. The stories Dwight and Kevin told
were structured to elicit both my affirmation of their accounts of deviance
and my need for their protection, advice, or consolation. Kevin's story
was also fitted to me as an anti­death penalty activist and as a woman;
both locate me as a source of understanding and empathy. I agree with
Judith Stacey on the need for "a feminist research that is rigorously self-
aware and therefore humble about the partiality of its ethnographic vision
and its capacity to represent self and other" (1988, 26). For me this
translates into a specific methodological process--a close and deep (mul-
tilevel) examination of the "how" of talk, and not just the "what" (Hol-
stein and Gubrium 2000). If methods are to cohere with critical theories
of power, we must integrate research-situated dynamics into data analysis.
This sort of strong reflexivity will better illuminate how gender is "con-
tinually being forged, contested, reworked and reaffirmed" (Jackson 1991,
210). The researcher's goal is not to emancipate the authentic story of
the narrator--none exists--but rather to expose as much as she can of
the relations that influence the construction of the story that is told.
Department of Sociology
University of Tennessee
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