Pragmatism, Activism, and Cynicism: Logics of Engagement with Community Action to Improve Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Health
Special Social Groups, Social Factors and Disparities in Health and Health Care
ISBN: 978-1-78635-468-6, eISBN: 978-1-78635-467-9
Publication date: 8 August 2016
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter examines how people weigh and discuss opportunities for collective action to improve community health. Drawing from research on civic and social movement engagement, it focuses specifically on how cultural logics of pragmatism, activism, and cynicism are invoked in such debates.
Methodology/approach
Qualitative data come from four focus group discussions of strategies for reducing tobacco use in Atlanta’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities. Participants included 36 self-identified community members.
Findings
Pragmatic logics were used most often in evaluating the tobacco control strategies, with activist logics second and cynicism a distant third. This echoes prior research, but our participants used these logics in unexpected ways: they combined pragmatism and activism, downplaying the former’s emphasis on individual self-interest and the latter’s emphasis on contentious confrontation. In addition, use of the logics varied by focus group and strategy, but not with individual speaker’s identities.
Research limitations/implications
Though limited by a narrow demographic focus and small convenience sample, our study suggests that public support for community health initiatives will likely depend on how they are framed and on the interactional dynamics and shared identities of the groups they are presented to.
Originality/value
Logics of pragmatism, activism, and cynicism inform debate over community health initiatives, as with other forms of civic action. However, use of these logics is not uniform but varies with the groups and issues at hand. Our study participants’ mutual LGBT identification gave them a sense of shared community and a familiarity with the politicization of personal life that led them to combine pragmatist and activist logics in novel ways.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding
This study was funded by the Georgia State Tobacco Use Prevention Program through the DeKalb County Board of Health. Logistical support was provided by the Atlanta Lesbian Health Initiative and the National LGBT Tobacco Control Network.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the 36 members of Atlanta’s LGBT community who gave their time to participate in our focus groups, and the members of the Research and Community Advisory Boards that made this project possible.
Citation
Damarin, A.K., Marshall, Z. and Bryant, L. (2016), "Pragmatism, Activism, and Cynicism: Logics of Engagement with Community Action to Improve Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Health", Special Social Groups, Social Factors and Disparities in Health and Health Care (Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Vol. 34), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 175-198. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0275-495920160000034010
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited