Conceptualizing Sexual Harassment as Discursive Practice

This is an interdisciplinary approach to sexual harassment that examines the meaning of concepts such as discourse, power, ideology, sexuality, and abuse. The essays explore discursive practice as a way of understanding sexual harassment, how it is normalized and sustained, how it may be contested and challenged, and how it may be studied. In giving voice to discursive frameworks and encouraging debate among authors with differing ideas, Bingham provides readers with a rich array of viewpoints and readings to consider in their own thinking about sexual harassment, both as a social practice and as a topic of research. Rather than attempting to provide resolution or draw conclusions, this volume challenges scholars to begin the process of re-forming conceptual perspectives for sexual harassment research and activism. Although questioning our understandings of sexual harassment and discursiveness is unsettling and difficult, it is necessary in order to instigate change in both ourselves as social actors and in our research of human behavior.