Author Archives: James Vela-McConnell

About James Vela-McConnell

Professor Vela-McConnell has been teaching at Augsburg College since the fall of 1997. Tenured and promoted in 2003, he achieved the rank of Professor in 2012 and in the same year was honored with the Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Learning Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Scholarship from the Augsburg College Center for Teaching and Learning and the Office of the Dean. Professor Vela-McConnell’s areas of specialization include social psychology, social inequality, and qualitative research methodology & feminist epistemology. Additional areas of interest include violence, social problems, social cohesion, sociology of friendships, and mental illness.

Is it hot in here, or is it just me? Reality as contested terrain

You’ve been there. Someone walks into a room and asks, “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” Have you ever thought about that question? It seems rather odd to say such a thing when you look at … Continue reading

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The Stigmatized Organization: Setting a Research Agenda

The following represents a review of the limited work on the stigmatized organization and sets the stage for an examination of the clergy sex abuse scandal and the stigmatization faced by the Catholic Church. As a social psychologist, and unlike … Continue reading

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Placing Stigma in Context

As a social psychologist—and unlike an organizational sociologist—I am curious to explore the processes by which an organization is stigmatized. In the context of the clergy sex abuse scandal and cover-up within the Catholic Church, individual priests, bishops, cardinals, and … Continue reading

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Beyond a Doubt

In the beginning of the movie Doubt (2008), the priest gives a sermon on that topic, saying that people can unite in doubt as much as they unite in certainty.  The main character, a nun who is the principal of the Catholic … Continue reading

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