Asperger’s, Aliens, America

Last-ditch attempts by British citizen Gary McKinnon to prevent his extradition to the United States (US) for “the biggest military computer hack of all time” have recently been rejected by the home secretary. This will make McKinnon the first person in the world to be extradited to the US for computer misuse.

McKinnon, however, insists that his actions were simply a misguided attempt to uncover evidence of “UFO technology” that he believed was being concealed by the US government, rather than a maliciously motivated attempt to cause deliberate damage.

Furthermore, McKinnon has been diagnosed by autism expert Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, cousin of the comedian Sacha Baron-Cohen, as suffering from the mental disorder of Asperger’s syndrome. This condition can result in problems with social interaction, and is often characterised by obsessive interests.

Consequently, the extradition decision is widely seen as further misuse of the fast-track extradition treaty with the United States that was signed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

From a social psychology perspective, this case is interesting as it hinges on competing constructions of identity, with McKinnon being on one hand positioned as a ‘terrorist hacker’ carrying out ‘evil’ actions, and on the other as a ‘vulnerable person’ carrying out ‘eccentric’ ones. This illustrates the work carried out by Sacks (1972) in his consideration of the discursive construction of membership categories and their associated bound activities through social interaction.

In a further twist, the British Ministry of Defence has recently released hundreds of previously classified reports of UFO sightings, and announced that it will no longer respond to further notifications from the public.

‘Computer hacker Gary McKinnon to be extradited to US’ from the Guardian

‘The betrayal of Gary McKinnon’ from the Guardian

Gary McKinnon support website

Louis, W. R. (2009). Terrorism, Identity, and Conflict Management

Sacks, H. (1972). On the analyzability of stories by children. In J. J. Gumperz (Ed.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (pp. 325-345).

Banksy vs. the ‘viewer’s maxim’

In some of my previous news edits, I have discussed how Harvey Sacks’ (1995) Membership Categorisation Analysis is a useful methodological apparatus for social psychologists wishing to examine the deployment of identity categories and the practices that get them produced. In this news edit I want to briefly outline one element of the ‘viewer’s maxim’ and suggest, some pieces of Banksy’s satirical graffiti trade on challenging its ‘relevance rules’.

Sacks argued that the everyday use of categories rely on some ‘relevance rules’. One of these is ‘that it proposes that for an observer of a category-bound activity, the category to which the activity is bound has a special relevance for formulating an identification of its doer’ (Sacks, 1995: 259). In other words, the identity (category) of the doer can be ascertained from seeing a category-bound activity being done.

Suppose you were to observe a person throwing flowers. You might expect the identity of the flower thrower to be a member of the category ‘romantic person’ or perhaps a ‘festival goer’ (e.g. The Lotus Throwing Festival in Bang Phli, Thailand). It is probably unlikely that you would expect to see a person dressed like the one in Banksy’s ‘flower thrower’ (see inset picture), presumably a member of the category ‘rioter’.

Since specific activities tend to be associated with particular category members, for the ‘viewer’s maxim’ to work, observations of these in practice necessarily produce expectations of normative behaviour. When a disjuncture occurs between activity and doer, we hold the doer accountable for their non-conformative behaviour. Of course with artwork, we can only question the motive of the artist for challenging what we expect to normatively see.

Social Psychology and Discourse

The Handbook of Discourse Analysis

The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory

Mothers, Sex Tapes and Gender Morality

Coleen Nolan’s recent televised revelation that she made a sex tape provides an interesting example of how talk and discourse is saturated with moral work. Her self-confession allowed for a host of consequential moral assumptions to be made about her making of a sex tape. These assumptions rest on the known-in-common attributes that are associated with gender categories. The apparent ‘shock’ experienced by her sons, panel and audience about the revelation allows us to see her actions as a ‘breach’ to the common-sense cultural knowledge about how ‘moral types of women’ (e.g. mothers) should behave.

Wowk’s (1984) research from a murder suspect interrogation and Stokoe’s (2003) neighbour disputes research provide interesting examples of this moral accountability in practice. Their data revealed that peoples’ perceptions of morality, in relation to women, were aligned with specific activities and characteristics for ‘good mothers’ (e.g. ‘sexually discreet’, ‘mother-as-childcarer’) and ‘bad mothers’ (e.g. ‘being overtly sexual’, ‘swearing’). They also found that moral judgments were often non-explicit and smuggled in through indirect references to illicit behaviour in order to subtly police moral boundaries. Coleen’s sons, the panel and the audience therefore, by their very (re)actions, can be seen to be unavoidably engaged in producing and sustaining a gendered moral order out of the particulars provided by Coleen.
Loose Women – Coleen Nolan

Coleen Nolan shocks the Loose Women TV audience – and her sons – as she admits to starring in a sex tape

Social Psychology and Discourse

Mothers, Single Women and Sluts: Gender, Morality and Membership Categorization in Neighbour Disputes

Michael Jackson: A Legend

How could social psychologists think about the recent, sad and tragic death of Michael Jackson? An obvious example would be to focus on public mourning and perhaps the psychological distress experienced from loosing a superstar icon. A less obvious, yet equally interesting means of viewing Michael Jackson’s death, is to consider the media categorizations of him during his lifetime and how this may influence the way people remember him.

Categories comprise part of the central machinery of social organization and focusing on their deployment can provide a valuable insight into the management of people’s categorizations of themselves and others. For example Michael Jackson was categorised as a ‘superstar entertainer’ with its particular (and his personal) category-bound activities (actions) e.g. dancing ‘backward-gliding moonwalk’, singing ‘high-pitched singing’ and fashion sense ‘white glove, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses’. These category-bound activities are conventional expectations about what constitute normative behaviour for a ‘superstar entertainer’.

When the link between a category and appropriate normative behaviour is broken, a disjuncture occurs and that person may be seen as different, morally accountable for their actions and re-categorised. Michael Jackson wearing a ‘germ mask’, ‘keeping a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions’ and ‘surrounding himself with children at his Neverland ranch’ provide us with an interesting example of this moral accountability and re-categorisation e.g. from ‘normal’ to ‘crazy’ (The Sun, 2009).

Listen to Michael Jackson on YouTube

Read the Sun tribute

Read more on Membership Categorisation Analysis and Ethnomethodology

Read more about psychological distress