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COPYRIGHT 2003 Bridgewater State College
Abigail C. Saguy. 2003. University of California Press: Berkeley. 235 pages. Index and appendix are included. Paperback $19.95 / Hardback $50.00.
Reviewed by Kirsten Dellinger, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677, (662) 915-7323, kdelling@olemiss.edu.
As I sit down to write this review, the U.S. is only several days into its most recent political sex scandal. Arnold Schwartzenegger, a controversial contender (and now governor-elect) in the California re-call election, was exposed as a "sexual harasser" when the Los Angeles Times broke the story that he has a history of "groping women." Schwartzenegger responded immediately with the confession that he had "behaved badly" followed with the explanation that some of these indiscretions occurred on "rowdy movie sets." It is too soon to tell whether the public will define these accusations as "sexual assault," "sexual harassment," or simply "men behaving badly," but this incident undoubtedly forces us, once again, to face the question, "What is sexual harassment? Abigail C. Saguy's recent book, of the same name, provides an excellent comparative framework for untangling this complicated question.
As a cultural sociologist, who has lived and studied in both the US and France, Saguy is particularly adept at examining sexual harassment as a social construction. She not only asserts that many layers of cultural context shape the definition of harassment but also carefully empirically demonstrates how this happens. Her book is based on a comparative case study of definitions of sexual harassment in the United States and in France. She draws upon content analysis of legal texts and press coverage regarding sexual...
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