Other people's problems: Towards a sociolegal approach to bystander intervention

• In Event: 4104 - Sexual Violence and Intersectional Inequalities

Abstract

Sociolegal scholars examine how self-reports shape institutional responses to discrimination. We have yet to fully analyze the impact of bystander reporting. This project contributes (1) a framework for analyzing bystander actions, based on Felstiner et al.’s (1980) formula for analyzing self-reports. We add (2) novel qualitative data to conversations about bystanders’ failure to name discrimination within their peer groups. Participants in this study mobilized rape; pointed proverbial fingers at derogated Others; and used the discursive “knowing a person” to erase the possibility of peer perpetration. These intellectual frameworks presume that the speaker’s peers are incapable of discriminating. Participants’ presumptions confound bystander action and thus pattern institutional responses to campus sexual violence. This paper (3) responds to the theoretically and practically urgent need for sociological research on sexual violence (Armstrong et al. 2018).

Authors

• Miriam Gleckman-Krut, University of Michigan

• Elizabeth A. Armstrong, University of Michigan

• Erin Bonar, University of Michigan