Ross Haenfler
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
P.O. Box 1848
University, MS  38677-1848

Phone: 662-915-7338
Office: Leavell 204
E-mail:
Vitae

Biography:
As an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi, I teach Social Movements, Political Sociology, and Men and Masculinities. My other specialties include gender, social theory, youth subcultures, qualitative methods, and social change. I have taught at the University of Colorado, University of Denver, and Colorado College, where my courses included Nonviolence and the Ethics of Social Action, Self & Consciousness, Youth Subcultures, and Implementing Social Change. I love teaching and try to teach classes that create possibilities for students to live more fulfilling lives while making a difference in the world.

I enjoy combining service and travel and have volunteered at an orphanage in Guatemala and taken students on a service-learning trip to Costa Rica. I also like hiking and backpacking anywhere from the Rockies to Peru.

Research:

My research focuses on how everyday people engage in social change as members of subcultures and loosely organized social movements. Since most people do not consider themselves “activists,” I am interested in how they create changes in their own lives that reflect their values and how these individual actions add up to social change. Part of this work led me to co-author The Better World Handbook: Small Changes that Make a Big Difference (New Society 2007).

My current research project is a book about a variety of youth subcultures called Deviance and Youth Subcultures (Oxford). I examine groups such as skinheads, Goths, virginity pledgers, hip hoppers, and computer geeks while explaining subcultural and deviance theories.

Publications:

I have written several articles about the straight edge movement, a clean living youth movement associated with the punk and hardcore scenes, and recently published Straight Edge: Clean Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, and Social Change (Rutgers 2006). The book is an account of my eight year ethnographic study of straight edge.

Haenfler, Ross. 2006. Straight Edge: Clean Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, and Social Change. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Haenfler, Ross. 2004. “Rethinking Subcultural Resistance: Core Values of the Straight Edge Movement.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 33, 1:406-436.

Haenfler, Ross. 2004. “Manhood in Contradiction: The Two Faces of Straight Edge.” Men and Masculinities July 2004, 7: 77-99.

Haenfler, Ross. 2004. “Collective Identity In The Straight Edge Movement: How Diffuse Movements Foster Commitment, Encourage Individualized Participation, And Promote Cultural Change.” The Sociological Quarterly, 45, 4.