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Dorothy Pawluch: Outstanding Supervisor, Mentor, and Significant other of the Highest Order

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Abstract

In this paper I celebrate the invaluable role Dorothy Pawluch played in my scholarly career and in my life as both role model and mentor. In doing so I discuss the embodied nature of these roles through which she transferred sociological knowledge, norms of the profession, and affective support to me, all of which make her an outstanding supervisor, dear friend, and a significant other of the highest order.

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Notes

  1. For a recent and extensive review of the concept of socialization see Guhin et al. (2021).

  2. It is impossible to point to a precise point between childhood and adulthood as the chronological boundaries of childhood are socially constructed meaning that the point at which childhood ends and adulthood begins is socially, culturally, and historically, not biologically determined (Rogers, 2003).

  3. In other contexts, of course, it might be considered an instance of secondary resocialization if the professional path was neither pleasurable nor desired (Wheeler, 1966).

  4. See Sutherland’s (1937) analysis of the professional thief.

  5. Conceived of in this way a symbolic interactionist approach to professional socialization avoids an over-socialized conception of the individual (Wrong, 1961; see also Blumer, 1969; Simmel, 1959; Wolff, 1950).

  6. Her dissertation is entitled Whither pediatrics: A study in professional transformations, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (Pawluch, 1988).

  7. Concordia University and McGill University are both large comprehensive universities in Montreal, Canada.

  8. Merton (1968) argues that this aspect of anticipatory socialization would likely function in a negative fashion for individuals in closed social systems where social mobility is limited because adoption of the values of the role model would not be enough to surmount such structural constraints.

  9. I use the concept of embodiment here in Turners’ (1996:220) sense of the term as something that as humans, we both “possess” but which also “possesses” us and that is “fundamentally social.”.

  10. Such corporeal description is essential (Shilling, 1991). As Shilling (1991) and Frank (1991) argue, most sociological analysis has been disembodied despite the fact that our bodies are essential to understanding social life, including the social structures that bodies create (Bordieu’s, 1990a, b; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

  11. This is not to say that all women are necessarily effective role models as some may instead perpetuate sexist discourses in academe depending on the normative frames they adopt during their own ongoing processes of professionalization (Winchester & Guhin, 2019).

  12. I owe a debt of thanks to Joey Moore, a close friend and classmate of mine at Concordia University. I do because it was Joey, not any of my professors, who, when I was uncertain of the direction to take at the end of my Master’s program, helpfully suggested that I apply to the doctoral program at McMaster, thus re-connecting me with Dorothy. In this way one’s fellow graduate students also play a role in one’s professional socialization (Adler & Adler, 2005).

  13. Only if both the mentor and novice wish it to be so of course.

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    Jacqueline Low

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Low, J. Dorothy Pawluch: Outstanding Supervisor, Mentor, and Significant other of the Highest Order. Am Soc 53, 141–154 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09492-2

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