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

Abstract

In this article, the links between neighbour relationships, gender and morality are explored from an ethnomethodological perspective. Talk between disputing neighbours was analysed for instances of gender relevance and subsequent moral assessment of neighbourly activities. Data from two contexts were recorded: neighbour mediation and televised disputes. The data were transcribed and subsequently analysed using Membership Categorization Analysis, an approach that examines speakers' situated categorizations of themselves and others and tracks the emergence of cultural and moral knowledge about social life. It was found that neighbours' complaints and defences were gendered in terms of categorizations of and about women. Three inter-related themes emerged in this gendering of neighbour relations. The first was that of `motherhood' and its role in warranting not just complaints about women neighbours, but also defences against complaints. Second, women's relationship status was regularly invoked. The categorization of `single woman' emerged in accounts as a source of complaint or defence. Third, speakers' juxtapositions of certain activities with the category `woman' were treated as breaches of the moral order. Overall, neighbour disputes were routinely gendered activities in which being a woman was treated as sufficient warrant for complaints between neighbours.