bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Influencing Common Sense Interpretations Of An Urban Setting: The Freeway Coffee Shop*
Authors: Unruh David R.
Published: January 2008

This paper attempts to make explicit the process and strategies by which one urban setting (a freeway coffee shop) attempts to guide, influence, and direct the interpretations of passersby. In this way, we might begin to see how urban settings and organizations construct and manage impressions which facilitate the codification schemes of urbanites. Finally, the approach suggested in this paper is one which will hopefully contribute to the broader study of urban social organization. The data were collected through informal conversations, unstructured interviews, and participant observation.
Interactional Considerations In Studying American “Indians” The Case Of Adolescent Self‐Esteem*
Authors: Cockerham William C.
Published: January 2008

This paper argues that symbolic interactionists must recognize the necessity to not overgeneralize their data and to accurately reflect the natural environment of “Indianness” when investigating the empirical reality of the American “Indian's” social world. Data pertaining to the self‐esteem of Arapahoe and Shoshone adolescents living on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation are discussed as a case in point. Arapahoe and Shoshone youth attending integrated high schools, as a racial and numerical minority, were found to have relatively high levels of self‐esteem. The implications of this finding are reviewed.
Role Selection: The Influence of Internalized Vocabularies of Motive
Authors: Zurcher Louis A.
Published: January 2008

The notion of internalized vocabulary of motive is introduced in an analysis of role selection that also incorporates the concepts person, self, identity, and role‐taking. The selection process is described as being influenced by the person's attempt to assemble a role pattern which provides an overall source of validation and satisfaction for an internalized vocabulary of motive. The role‐choice implications of the balance of satisfactions among what are called operating dominant roles, model dominant roles and ephemeral roles are considered, and a measurement technique is suggested. It is argued that what appears to be conformist role enactment by a person can actually be a creative act of role selection. The role taken “as is” can effectively contribute another component to an idiosyncratically balanced role array assembled and enacted by the individual.
Power: A Conceptual Framework*
Authors: Luckenbill David F.
Published: January 2008

Symbolic interactionism lacks a coherent conception of power. This paper defines power in a manner consistent with the interactionist perspective. Power is conceptualized as a collective transaction characterized by a division of labor, movement toward a common end, and flexible coordination between opponents. Power is distinguished from other types of collective transactions by asymmetrical interaction, a conflict of interests between opponents, and the intentional production of compliance. Some implications of considering power as a collective transaction are then examined.
LAW AS SYMBOLIC ACTION: KENNETH BURKE'S SOCIOLOGY OF LAW*
Authors: Meisenhelder Thomas
Published: January 2008

In this paper, I present Kenneth Burke's sociology of law as a critical interactionist alternative to the now dominant functionalist sociology of law. Burke's perspective conceives of the law as a form of symbolic action that contributes much to social order. Further it ties the structure and operation of the law to the ontological symbolicity of human being. Finally I suggest that the use of this theoretical framework in research on the place of law in society will produce results that are both critical and hermeneutic.
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY AND SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM: A CRITICAL COMPARISON OF TEMPORAL ORIENTATIONS*
Authors: Hardesty Monica J.
Published: January 2008

For some time, sociologists have called for the study of the temporal characteristics of social life. Ethnomethodology and Symbolic Interactionism are two sociological theories which have begun to develop analyses of social timing. In this report, exemplary research efforts from each perspective are examined and evaluated along the temporal dimensions of the past, order, sequence, and the future. It is shown that research methods are key in elaborating or hindering the study of temporality. Specifically, Symbolic Interactionists' strategies have allowed a rich temporal orientation to be developed and specified whereas strategies employed by Ethnomethodologists have resulted in research that is confined to the immediate realm of experience and thereby have been narrow in temporal scope.
Producing Drama: Symbolic Communication and the Police*
Authors: Manning Peter K.
Published: January 2008

Organizational analysis, based on a version of symbolic interactionism, is used here to advance a dramaturgical perspective on the relationships between organization, information and technology. Organizations are defined as meaning‐production systems stabilized by relatively permanent interactions that are temporally and spatially‐based. Ethnographic data, gathered by fieldwork in two police communication centers in the United States and in England, are presented. Each organization receives messages centrally and processes them through three segments (operators, dispatchers and officers). In semiotic terms, the police can be seen to be a means for producing drama, or the selective presentation of signs which either heighten or reduce the salience of other signs in a message. The primary conditions which increase the likelihood of drama being attached to policing are tentatively advanced. The police reduce the salience of emotive or expressive aspects of communication by encoding (recoding) citizens' messages from an aesthetic mode to a logical classificatory code. The greater the information supplied by a caller, the more ambiguity in the call‐classification process, and the more interpretation is required. Interpretations rendered are based in part upon segment specific understandings of the meanings of the calls, and in part on more general or shared meanings based upon the occupational culture. The result of these interpretations is that messages become more poetic in character as they move across segments within the system. The police also reproduce their own metaphoric version or map of society in and by their encoding, decoding and recoding actions. By so doing, they maintain the dramatic importance of the police and their actions, and the centrality of myths that reify the notion that the police can and do control all that needs controlling in a society.
Ritual Power in Interaction*
Authors: Travers Andrew
Published: January 2008

Research (by a self‐styled participant observer) into two fashions of persons—nurses and punks—lends unexpected significance to the ritual “frame” as this appears in Erving Goffman's thought. A new concept that was only implicit in Goffman's ritual frame is demanded by the research experiences. This is “ritual power.” Ritual power, especially when it is strong, is like “presence” or “possession”, and it may well exert a major claim on interactants' consciousnesses (whether the interactants are displaying it or appreciating it). Of course, it must follow that verbal forms which try to define ritual power will do so the more powerfully the more they arrest the reader's attention. So it may not be a good idea to use sociological rhetoric of any sort to suggest that punks and nurses are exemplary referents of “ritual power”, but this last possibility is only latent in what follows.
The Dramaturgical Model of Behavior: Its Strengths and Weaknesses*
Authors: Wilshire Bruce
Published: January 2008

By means of the dramaturgical model we freshly illuminate social behavior as role‐like “performances” in which persons manage the impressions that others get of them. This impression management involves the concealment of data in a “dramatic” struggle with those others who wish to penetrate one's “mask.” But the chief limitations of the dramaturgical model are that it excites the invalid inferences that offstage “roles” are more like stage actors' roles than they really are, and that the person is nothing but these “roles.” The differences between onstage and offstage behavior are kept in view when the metaphorical concept of “role playing” is re‐connected to its source in role playing onstage. Through an analysis of theatre and the concepts of appearance and time we conclude that while we must appear to others in a “role‐like” way offstage in order to be ourselves, we are nevertheless involved in world‐time offstage in a way that fundamentally distinguishes our “role‐playing” from an actor's role playing. We are our “roles”, but not just our “roles.”
Children's Perceptions of Mental Illness: A Partial Test of Scheff's Hypothesis*
Authors: Baker Donald , Bedell John , Prinsky Lorraine
Published: January 2008

Scheff's proposition that “stereotyped images of mental disorder are learned in early childhood” was tested in a study of seventy‐five (75) elementary school children. Interviews indicate that children were familiar with simple concepts associated with mental illness, i.e., crazy, nuts, and cuckoo, but that few children knew more sophisticated terms or psychiatric labels. The children tended to see the concepts they were familiar with in terms of residual norm violations, which partially supports Scheff's hypothesis. Contrary to Scheff's expectations, however, adults were most frequently cited as primary agents of socialization and other children were rarely cited as sources of information. The children viewed media as less important than suggested by Scheff in providing images of mental illness and violence. The data suggest, contrary to the proposition tested, that elementary school‐age children have amorphous conceptions of psychiatric deviance and findings in this study raise questions regarding the widespread applicability of the labeling perspective to pre‐adolescent children.
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM VS. ETHNOMETHODOLOGY*
Authors: Gallant Mary J. , Kleinman Sherryl
Published: January 2008

Are ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism essentially the same? An examination of these perspectives suggests that each offers a unique contribution to sociological knowledge. Although both perspectives have been influenced by pragmatism, ethnomethodology shares affinity with James' philosophy while symbolic interactionism is allied with Dewey's and Mead's. Both perspectives emphasize meaning and constraints, but each offers critically different conceptualizations of them. Symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology share a verstehen outlook, yet each perspective uses different methods to gain “understanding.” Hence, these perspectives differ philosophically, conceptually, and methodologically.
NETWORK AND MEANING: AN INTERACTIONIST APPROACH TO STRUCTURE*
Authors: Fine Gary Alan , Kleinman Sherryl
Published: January 2008

Social network is a concept interactionists might use to link individual behavior to the larger social system. A symbolic interactionist formulation of network would: 1) approximate the original, anthropological usage better than the current structural conception does, 2) offer symbolic interactionists a unit of social organization better suited to their perspective than the small group, and 3) allow symbolic interactionists to deal with “macro” sociological concerns. Network is conceived of as a set of relationships which people imbue with meaning and use for personal or collective purposes. By emphasizing subjective meaning and the investigation of multi‐purpose and weak ties, the interactionist formulation provides theoretical insights into those aspects of society which “structural” approaches overlook.
SELF‐MOCKERY: AN ALTERNATIVE FORM OF SELF‐PRESENTATION*
Authors: Ungar Sheldon
Published: January 2008

The first part of the paper delineates grounds for doubting that enhancing performances are as pervasive as the self‐presentational literature suggests. Then, the notion of structural ambivalence is used to demonstrate that there is considerable “leeway” in role taking, especially in the case of humorous or playful behaviour. Extending this analysis, it is argued that self‐mockery constitutes an important aspect of the presentation of self. The remaining sections of the paper seek to define, illustrate and explore the functions of various types of self‐mockery. Above all, it is suggested that self‐mockery serves to increase the positive emotional sentiments among participants.
TOWARD A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ENTERTAINMENT MAGIC (CONJURING)*
Authors: Nardi Peter M.
Published: January 2008

The dynamics of everyday social interactions can often be clarified by studying the social organization of unusual realms of activity. One such activity is conjuring–magic performed as entertainment. This article discusses various sociological and social psychological dimensions in the performance of magic. It focuses on the similarities between a magic act and the social interactions of everyday life. It also discusses the dialectic between magic reasoning and mundane reasoning–between the audience's expectations built from the organization of everyday life and the violations of expectations produced by the magician's construction of an alternate reality. A magic trick is described from the perspectives of both magician and spectator using such topics as the directional, concealment, and disattend channels of activity; breaking frames; bracketing; sex roles; expectations; perception and attention; and rationality. The article concludes with some brief suggestions for additional research topics and some implications for both a theoretical and an applied sociological social psychology.
WHEN THE DOCTOR IS A “LADY”: POWER, STATUS AND GENDER IN PHYSICIAN‐PATIENT ENCOUNTERS*
Authors: West Candace
Published: January 2008

An extensive body of research indicates that men interrupt women much more often than the reverse, across a variety of situations. Some conclude that men's interruptions of women in cross‐sex conversations constitute an exercise of power and dominance over their conversational partners. To be sure, power is an important facet of many other social relationships, such as those between whites and Blacks, bosses and employees, and—of immediate interest—doctors and patients. Moreover, much of our existing knowledge of sex differences in behavior confounds gender with status. This paper reports results of an exploratory study of interruptions between physicians and patients during actual “visits to the doctor.” Findings based on detailed analyses of videotaped encounters offer empirical support for an asymmetrical view of the physician‐patient relationship: physicians interrupt patients disproportionately—except when the doctor is a “lady.” Then, patients interrupt as much or more than physicians, and their interruptions seem to subvert physicians' authority. Discussion focuses on the respective roles of power, status and gender in face‐to‐face interaction.
The Stigma of Race: Who Now Bears the Mark of Cain?*
Authors: Killian Lewis M.
Published: January 2008

Instances are cited from the U.S. and India in which individual whites and Brahmans were attacked as being guilty of prejudice and discrimination simply on the basis of their hereditary group membership. These are characterized as involving “stigma reversal,” defined as the imputation of guilt and moral inferority to the members of a dominant group on the basis of descent when the moral justification of the group's position of advantage is being redefined. Evidence of the use of stigma reversal as an argument in support of protective discrimination or preferential treatment of minority group members is presented. It is postulated that stigma reversal is related to changes in self‐conception which accompany minority protest movements and redefinition of the sense of group position even by members of the dominant group. Dominant group members whose definition of the situation is that they are becoming victims themselves may lead to defensive reactions similar to those previously observed among traditional minorities. The negative consequences which stigma reversal may have for public policies designed to help disadvantaged minorities are discussed.
Emerson, Cooley, and the American Heroic Vision*
Authors: Schwartz Barry
Published: January 2008

Willful leaders and mindless masses are governing images in Carlyle's and Nietzsche's romantic conception of political domination. In contrast, the nineteenth century American notion of heroic leadership was inspired by liberal sentiment and drew mainly on classical republican definitions of greatness. These sentiments and definitions supplied the basis for Ralph Waldo Emerson's theory of heroes and hero worship. The first part of this paper shows how the tension between elitist and democratic conceptions of the hero permeated Emerson's early work, and how this tension was finally resolved in his essays on representative men. The second part of the paper deals with Charles Horton Cooley's admiration of Emerson, and the affinity between Emerson's mature ideas and Cooley's studies of genius, emulation, fame, and leadership. Cooley's political sociology, like Emerson's, was based on a profound attachment to democratic principles. Cooley also believed, as did Emerson, that these intangible principles only remain secure as long as society emulates the great men who personify them. Building upon Emerson's conception of the heroic figure as a symbol rather than a source of social order and social change, Cooley passed on to later generations of American sociologists a conception of heroic leadership that differs sharply from the romantic visions which prevailed in Europe from Emerson's time to Cooley's own day.
The Emotional Basis of Charisma*
Authors: Wasielewski Patricia L.
Published: January 2008

Charisma is commonly thought of as an extraordinary personal characteristic. In contrast, this paper proposes that charisma is a product of emotional interaction between charismatic leaders and their followers. More specifically, charisma is argued to spring from charismatic leaders' use of emotion rules to redefine both objective and subjective aspects of their followers' realities. Through modeling emotion charismatics first gain legitimacy; then they propose changes in the social order and redefine the emotions necessary for such changes to occur. An analytical model of the emergence of charisma based on the evoking, revoking, and refraining of emotion rules is developed. To tentatively illustrate its utility the model is applied to speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. The implications of this analysis of emotional interaction for the study of social change are discussed.
INTERPRETING THE SOCIOLOGICAL CLASSICS: CAN THERE BE A “TRUE” MEANING OF MEAD?
Authors: Fine Gary Alan , Kleinman Sherryl
Published: January 2008

Many sociologists have tried in vain to find the “true” meaning of the classic works in the discipline. An interactionist perspective suggests that this search is not a valid one for sociologists, especially symbolic interactionists. Although there can be no “true” meaning, some authors use conventions of writing that make their work more or less clear. Using Mead's Mind, Self and Society as an example, we discuss the dimensions of clarity. We then argue that the sociological classics should be read to (I) simulate new theories and research (pragmatic analysis), (2) determine how sociologists have used that classic to support or refute particular theories or perspectives (rhetorical analysis), and (3) provide information about the sociological concerns of the author and his/her contemporaries (historical analysis).
“YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF DORCHESTER, BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE DORCHESTER OUT OF THE BOY”: TOWARD A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF MOBILITY
Authors: Karp David A.
Published: January 2008

This article seeks to illuminate some of the social psychological correlates of social mobility. It proceeds from the observation that while a great deal is known about aggregate rates of mobility and the factors that inhibit or enhance persons' movement through social structures, far less is known about the way individuals define, interpret, comprehend, and give meaning to their own movement through social space. In‐depth interview data from 25 professionals who grew up in working‐ or lower‐class circumstances suggests that such a background deeply influences persons' perceptions and actions throughout their occupational lives. The professionals whose own words we will hear, all between 50 and 60 years of age, have “made it” in the occupational world. And they have done it by traversing great social distances. As the recount their stories of becoming doctors, lawyers, academics, and businesspersons, they also mention over and again how their motives, strategic occupational choices, and self‐images are connected to the circumstances of their origins. Class and ethnic background is an important “frame” within which persons understand, experience, and create their careers.
SCIENTOLOGY “ETHICS”: DEVIANCE, IDENTITY AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN A CULT‐LIKE SOCIAL WORLD
Authors: Straus Roger
Published: January 2008

Qualitative research at the macrosocial level can be facilitated by examining the more fully articulated social worlds existing within advanced societies. Based on the author's field research, Scientology's structure, culture, and comparability to American capitalist society are discussed and “Ethics,” its institution of social control, is shown to involve a paradigm in which conduct flows from social identity and deviance is defined in terms of a progression of stages of identity loss through reference group confusion. A hypothetical case shows how each stage is treated through specific intervention formula designed to reverse the process. “Ethics” is shown to closely parallel symbolic interactionist theories of deviance. Its differences from symbolic interactionism are ascribed to the inherent contradiction between the individualistic and system‐centered orientations permeating American capitalist society.
The Social Construction of Historical Events Through Public Dramas
Authors: Gross Edward
Published: January 2008

Medieval Corpus Christi pageants, community and royal public dramas, and French revolutionary demonstrations are examined in order to uncover the elements of their social construction. The elements are seen to be focus, engrossment, costuming, performer selection, scripting, performance effects and moods, and the presentation of symbols. These theatrical elements form a technology that is employed by elites when they collectively seek to symbolize power, present the status order, demand expressions of loyalty, symbolize tradition, emphasize solidarity, and engineer social and cultural change. It is concluded that the study of power effectiveness requires attention not only to legitimacy and interest satisfaction but also to the manner in which power is presented.
Thought for Food: A Study of Written Instructions
Authors: Tomlinson Graham
Published: January 2008

In the late twentieth century, our society has experienced a tremendous increase in written instructions. The question this article addresses is: How do people interpret these instructions? The data employed to answer this question are recipes from cookbooks. The features analyzed include instructions external to the recipes, the format of recipes, and such internal elements as the names, the ingredients, and the instructions. Throughout the article, instructions are assumed to be incomplete. Thus the analysis focuses on levels of incompleteness. The research indicates a number of generic features of written instructions as well as five levels of incompleteness. Because problems of interpretation have been at the center of interest to symbolic interactionists and others, the article places the problematics of the interpretation of written instructions within those theoretical concerns.
POWER AND SOLIDARITY IN “INTERRUPTION”: A CRITIQUE OF THE SANTA BARBARA SCHOOL CONCEPTION AND ITS APPLICATION BY ORCUTT AND HARVEY (1985)
Authors: Murray Stephen O.
Published: January 2008

The simplistic conception of interruption employed in conversation analysis and survey research reports of male monopoly must be elaborated to include other social meanings in addition to violation of a speaker's rights if it is to account for conversational order or deviance. With no reason to suppose that the narrow, technical sense of interruption and the implacably negative evaluation conversation analysts make about interruption are generally shared throughout the rest of American culture, answers to questions in surveys about interruption cannot be assumed to refer to the category termed interruption in conversation analysis. Dissensus about coding instances of the category are reported and other situated meanings of interruption suggested.
Pygmies and Villagers, Ritual or Play? On the Place of Contrasting Modes of Metacommunication in Social Systems
Authors: Ben‐Ari Eyal
Published: January 2008

How are social activities and relations maintained despite actors holding to divergent definitions of these activities and relations? This is explored through a reexamination of an ethnographic account of two groups that participate in joint activities but interpret them differently. The account is that of the Mbuti Pygmies and their neighboring Bantu villagers as described by Colin Turnbull. It is argued is that the maintenance of continued interactions between such groups is facilitated by the grounding of the divergent interpretations of these interactions in contrasting modes of metacommunication: ritual and play. This article concludes with an exploration of some theoretical and comparative issues raised by the analysis.
Lived Realities and the Construction of Social Problems: The Case of Wife Abuse
Authors: Loseke Donileen R.
Published: January 2008

This article examines the official and subjective realities of one social problem, wife abuse, and it considers consequences of differences between these two types of reality. First, claims appearing in the professional literature are used to define the specific content of the official social problem. Then, characteristics of violence as experienced are compared with this official definition. Finally, data from a shelter for battered women are used to illustrate consequences of official definitions in organizations designed to ameliorate the individual troubles associated with social problems. The study demonstrates how the official definition of wife abuse acts and actors has reduced the recognizability of the phenomenon in lived experience and also set the stage for reality‐definition contests in social services for abused wives. This illustrates the importance of examining sociologically the specific content of social problems claims and the necessity of attending to social problems in their full phenomenological realities.
HERBERT BLUMER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO TWENTIETH‐CENTURY SOCIOLOGY
Authors: Shibutani Tamotsu
Published: January 2008

Herbert Blumer's work has had considerable impact on the growth of twentieth‐century sociology. He kept alive an interest in George Mead at a time when Pragmatism floundered. Although it is unlikely that Mead's work would have been overlooked, there can be no question that Blumer's forceful advocacy helped bring it to the forefront of modern social thought. Park first organized the subfield of collective behavior, but it was Blumer who kept it going in the face of opposition from structural‐functionalism. Whether or not collective behavior endures as a separate area of specialization, sociologists will have to concern themselves with the manner in which human beings adapt to problematic situations. Although his views on methodology have been controversial, some of his positions will probably prevail. His insistence on the direct observation of people in their indigenous settings and his contention that human agency must be taken into account in explanations of social processes are difficult to counter.
SUBSTANCE AND STYLE: AN APPRAISAL OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL LEGACY OF HERBERT BLUMER
Authors: Stryker Sheldon
Published: January 2008

The substance and the style of Herbert Blumer's legacy to sociology are examined. Examining the former proceeds by specifying essentials and nonessentials of a symbolic interactionist framework, and by distinguishing between Blumer's ideas that do and do not contribute toward the objective of general explanatory theory premised on the framework together with rigorous tests of such theory using a full arsenal of research methods and techniques. Examining the latter proceeds by suggesting that Blumer's style of combative and oppositional argumentation, while not without its utility, has contributed to a present‐day scholasticism within symbolic interactionism that inhibits the development of the framework.
MYTH, TEXT, AND INTERACTION COMPLICITY IN THE NEGLECT OF BLUMER'S MACROSOCIOLOGY
Authors: Maines David R.
Published: January 2008

This article depicts a major line of assessment of the work of Herbert Blumer as constituting a series of myths. Portrayals of his work as subjectivistic and ideographic combine with the predominant myth that Blumer ignored issues of large‐scale organization and social structure. Documentation of his analyses of corporate power relations, racial stratification, and industrialization and industrial organization reveals the mythical character of much published opinion regarding his work. The micro‐macro distinction is an ideology within which these myths have been created and perpetuated. Interactionists who have benignly bought into that ideology contribute to the myth of Blumer's neglect of societal organization. In closing it is suggested that greater attention needs to be given to the influence of Robert Park on Blumer's perspectives and that such an assessment might contribute to a broadening of the base of symbolic interactionism.
HERBERT BLUMER: A PILGRIMAGE WITH PRAGMATISM
Authors: Tucker Charles W.
Published: January 2008

This article is an examination of Herbert Blumer's lifelong effort to perpetuate pragmatism raises serious questions about the future of the social sciences. He tried, through critical analyses, to tell social scientists how to make their fields scientific. Opposition to this effort was overwhelming and eventually weakened his own perspective and thus his influence in the discipline. The story of Blumer provides several lessons for future social scientists. It is intended that these lessons to be useful to those who still believe in a scientific social science.
Strange Bedfellows: Deafness, Language, and the Sociology of Knowledge
Authors: Evans A. Donald
Published: January 2008

Most deaf children lack mundane knowledge of the world because of language deprivation and, sometimes, social isolation. Most of these children acquire language late and, therefore, remain longer in the Unwelt (the world of stimuli and physical objects) along with non‐symboling animals. This ethnographic study of a State School for the Deaf (SSD) presents a picture of a relatively closed linguistic community and its limited fund of knowledge. Wittgenstein's (1973) aphorism, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”, is perfectly realized and illustrated at SSD. Some high school students did not know names for parts of a human face. The findings indicate that deaf children live in a world of “gaps” and “blanks” as they maneuver among a disproportionate number of physical (as opposed to social) objects. Their multiple sign language systems and funds of knowledge are relatively more holistic, concrete, and context‐bound than are the language and knowledge systems of their English‐speaking counterparts. Education at SSD is more a preparation for life at SSD than it is for life in the outlying economic and high‐tech society.
The Development of Idealism in Pharmacy School
Authors: Hornosty Roy W.
Published: January 2008

This article traces the transformation and development of idealism in a cohort of pharmacy students in a Canadian pharmacy school. The data show that a form of professional idealism which emphasizes a patient‐oriented practice of pharmacy and reflects the profession's vision of the future role of the pharmacist emerges during the first year of study, wanes during the second year, is revitalized during the latter part of the third, and develops throughout the fourth, reaching its peak as students approach graduation. This unusual pattern is explained in terms of factors related to and arising from the attempt to reprofessionalize pharmacy.
From Hell to Utopia and Back to Hell: Charismatic Relationships
Authors: Couch Carl J.
Published: January 2008

Weber and most subsequent analysts of charisma have adopted a synchronic standpoint. The author offers a diachronic formulation, delineating the social processes that create, modify, and transform charismatic relationships. A mature charismatic relationship emerges as: (1) consensual definitions of discontents emerge; (2) the identities of leader and followers are established; (3) social encounters (gatherings) are programmed to enhance charismatic acts; (4) new solidarities are established; (5) new consensual definitions of reality are established; and (6) a Utopian future is formulated. The common phenomenon of charismatic relationships transforming into tyrannies is a consequence of the qualities of some of the social processes produced to maintain a charismatic relationship. Representative relationships are an alternative to charismatic and tyrannical ones.
CRIMINALS AS HEROES: LINKING SYMBOL TO STRUCTURE
Authors: Kooistra Paul
Published: January 2008

This article examines the phenomenon of the heroic criminal and describes the structural preconditions necessary for his appearance. The author argues that these lawbreakers are best understood as cultural products that represent a concept of extra‐legal justice. Their criminality, at least initially, is imputed with political meaning. Such symbols emerge when the rational, formal, bureaucratic justice of the state fails to reflect popular conceptions of justice. These symbolic figures are endemic in any culturally complex state society, although usually their appeal is to a small and relatively powerless public. But at times when the perception of law as unjust is widespread, the heroic criminal may emerge as a national figure of epic proportions. At such times a virtual epidemic of such figures may appear since entrepreneurs, motivated by either politics or profit, “market” such symbols to a receptive public. Using comparative analysis, the author presents briefcase studies of Jesse James, William Bonney (Billy the Kid), John Dillinger, and Charles Arthur (Pretty Boy) Floyd to demonstrate how they became legendary figures. The author then describes more contemporary symbols of extra‐legal justice and the structural factors that inspired their heroic image.
A Behavioral Examination of Mead's View of Role‐Taking
Authors: Rigney Ernest G. , Smith Richard L.
Published: January 2008

According to Mead, self appears as individuals take the role of others toward their own gestures. In two investigations, the hand movements of subjects were observed as they verbalized different commands specifying hand or head movement to another person. The first investigation explored the possibility of directly observing and recording instances of role‐taking. In the second, the visual accessibility between experimental subjects was varied in order to assess its effect on the frequency of overt role‐taking. Results indicate that the process of role‐taking is amenable to direct observation; and, furthermore, that overt role‐taking decreases as visual accessibility increases.
In Search of Mesostructure in the Family: An Interactionist Approach to Division of Labor
Authors: Pestello Frances G. , Voydanoff Patricia
Published: January 2008

This paper demonstrates the importance of the concept of mesostructure for understanding how families create and enact a gendered division of labor. The work of symbolic interactionists, especially those using the negotiated order perspective, is used to examine linkages and processes of articulation between the public and private worlds. Mesostructure provides a conceptual device for examining how men and women merge their respective activities within the context of social constraints. Six interlinked concepts developed by Hall (1987)—collective activity, network, conventions‐practices, resources‐power, processuality‐temporality, and grounding—form the foundation for a mesostructural analysis of family division of labor. These concepts are used to explicate the interaction of structure and process in gender division of labor in families.
Fashion, Postmodernity and Personal Appearance: A Symbolic Interactionist Formulation
Authors: Kaiser Susan B. , Nagasawa Richard H. , Hutton Sandra S.
Published: January 2008

A theoretical explanation of fashion change is offered, drawing upon symbolic‐interactionist insights on fashion and appearance, and developing macro‐micro connections between cultural ambivalence and the negotiation of meaning as inspired by symbolic ambiguity in appearances. The postmodern condition, connected with advanced capitalism, spawns cultural ambivalence and a plethora of clothing styles that emerge, in part, to clarify and lend expression to ambivalence. A broad variety of clothing styles, however, coupled with tendencies toward production of self, contribute to a high degree of ambiguity in individually constructed appearances, the meaning of which must then be collectively negotiated in social interaction. Failure of clothing styles to resolve cultural ambivalence results in fashion change in an ongoing dialectic.
The Re‐Creation Of Gender In A Male Workplace
Authors: Padavic Irene
Published: January 2008

This paper draws on participant observation in a male‐dominated blue‐collar job to understand how the concepts of masculinity and femininity are re‐created through coworker interactions on the shopfloor and the effect of this on women. Men typecast women in these jobs as either feminine or unfeminine and treated them differently, but in both cases, women's presence was useful for defining–and in the case of sex‐role appropriate women–enforcing masculinity. Such treatment isolated women from the on‐going work culture and constrained them to certain behaviors.
Troubles With Textual Authority In Sociology
Authors: Schneider Joseph W.
Published: January 2008

This text raises questions about the dilemma of the authorial voice in sociology texts that presume to present factual, data‐based narratives about other people and their lives. The discussion bears particularly on so‐called qualitative and historical forms of sociological writing although the issues are equally alive for other sociological genres. The dilemma of the authorial voice has beer given rather wide attention of late in literary studies and in anthropology. Relatively little attention thus far has been given to the topic in professional sociology. By drawing on variant reflexive forms, the text seeks to bring its own production and grounds under examination in such a way to suggest how the dilemma is present for those writing substantive narrative texts.
Ignored, Neglected, And Abused: The Behavior Variable In Attitude‐Behavior Research
Authors: Pestello H. Frances G. , Pestello Fred P.
Published: January 2008

A fundamental area of concern for social scientists is the relationship between attitudes and behavior. In recent years there has been a plethora of work on the attitude‐behavior relationship. This work is examined in light of earlier theoretical and methodological critiques offered by Blumer and Deutscher. Of specific concern is the conceptualization and measurement of behavior. A comprehensive collection of sixty‐two recently published articles on the topic are examined. It is found that little consideration is given to how behavior is conceptualized and measured. One result of the treatment which it receives is that studies remain contradictory in their findings. Researchers can better contribute to theoretical and methodological advances by heeding interactionist advice to adopt techniques which respect the constructed nature of the social world. A promising foundation upon which to build is suggested by two theoretical pieces in the sample.
Saul D. Alinsky: An Applied Urban Symbolic Interactionist
Authors: Reitzes Donald C. , Reitzes Dietrich C.
Published: January 2008

Urban sociology and symbolic interaction theory share Robert E. Park as a leading figure, yet there has not been a tradition of applying symbolic interaction theory to issues of urban research. A convergence is suggested as urbanists are becoming aware of the importance of sentiments and symbols in organizing and motivating urban behavior, and symbolic interactionists increasingly are becoming interested in social structure. Saul D. Alinsky demonstrated an applied symbolic interactionist perspective in his efforts to develop organizations capable of strengthening community cohesiveness and increasing citizen participation and involvement in local affairs.
The Nature of Social Pasts and Their Use as Foundations for Situated Action
Authors: Katovich Michael A. , Couch Carl J.
Published: January 2008

In this paper social pasts are considered to be foundations of everyday interpersonal life, including everyday situated action. We distinguish social pasts from culture by noting that the former involves recognition of specific joint acts and social placements while the latter involves recognition of ties to acts and placements in general. We further distinguish shared pasts–which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements that interactors constructed together–from common pasts–which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements that interactors constructed with others. We assess the importance of using either common or shared pasts in the course of completing and simplifying complex and everyday transactions so as to create an appearance of routine‐ness in relation to constructing these acts.
Toward a Formal Theory of Social Processes
Authors: Couch Carl J.
Published: January 2008

A research program informed by Simmers geometric and Mead's processual frame of thought has isolated (1) the six elements of sociation that are established each time people produce a cooperative act, (2) the additional elements created when people construct episodes of interpersonal accounting and interpersonal negotiating, (3) some of the elements created when people put in place tyrannic, solidary, authority, and representative relationships, and (4) a few of the elements established when people become organizationally situated.
The Conversation
Authors: Denzin Norman K.
Published: January 2008

A critical, interpretive reading of Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film The Conversation is offered. As an example of reflexive cinema, this film unravels the ideological arguments that support the investigative‐voyeuristic gaze, whether that is the gaze of the ethnographer, the sociologist, or the wiretap expert. The relationships between sociological, ethnographic and cinematic realism are examined. The need for greater reflexivity in our sociological–investigative practices is suggested.
The Emergence of the Emotional Self: A Developmental Theory
Authors: Johnson Cathryn
Published: January 2008

G.H. Mead (1934) offers a set of stages of development which describes how infants transform into mindful and self‐reflexive social beings through social interaction. He does not, however, provide any parallel set of stages in the development of emotionality. This paper attempts to extend Mead's model by specifying seven stages in emotional development which are interdependent with Mead's stages of development of mind and self. These stages specify how individuals learn to share emotions with others, and learn to identify and interpret their own and others' emotional selves. Fundamental to this analysis is that self development and emotional development are inextricably linked. A framework is offered for the analysis of emotions that (1) recognizes emotions as processual; (2) notes the hierarchial relations among emotions; and (3) presumes that cognition and emotion are not mutually exclusive. The framework illustrates its utility by answering the question, “How does an infant transform from a being who experiences sensations into a being who experiences emotions?”
Authentic/Inauthentic Identities in the Prison Visiting Room
Authors: Muedeking George D.
Published: January 2008

The observations reported here demonstrate ways in which some incarcerated prison convicts use available materials, i.e., people, objects, and the physical setting of the prison visiting room to (a) violate rules, in order to (b) construct a situated identity based on self‐autonomy and freedom from constraints. Sometimes the actions of guards and staff are to allow, within the context of the visiting room and within limits, for these situated social identities to be objectified even though these identities may have little currency in other prison contexts, and this situated self contradicts the intention of the prison regimen. The situated self found in the visiting room is considered to have beneficial influences on the inmate and is important for achieving desired, future outcomes related to treatment. When certain limits are breached, there will be attempts to suppress these identities. Several symbolic interactionist concepts, including awareness contexts and authentic/inauthentic identities, are employed to explain the behaviors of inmates, guards, and visitors and to point to treatment programs that would be most effective.
Communication, Modernity, and Democracy in Habermas and Dewey
Authors: Antonio Robert J. , Kellner Douglas
Published: January 2008

The political culture of the Federal Republic [of Germany] would be worse today if it had not adopted impulses from American political culture during the first postwar decades. The Federal Republic opened itself for the first time to the West without reservations: we adopted the political theory of the Enlightenment, we grasped the pluralism which, first carried by religious sects, molded the political mentality, and we became acquainted with the radical democratic spirit of the American pragmatism of Peirce, Mead, and Dewey. (Jiirgen Habermas 1985a, p. 93)
Habermas, Mead, and Rationality
Authors: Hinkle Gisela J.
Published: January 2008

This paper takes the position that symbolic interaction can become more relevant to the social issues of modernity and postmodernity by overcoming its traditional tendencies to be apolitical and to focus predominantly on micro aspects of social relations. It considers a serious reading of Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action as a contribution to this effort. Specifically it sees Habermas' reconstruction of the conception of the individual actor involved in communicating through significant symbols into one consistent with speech act theory and the concepts of speaker and listener as constructive and helpful. The paper also examines Mead's behav‐ioristic theory of attitudes, types of attitudes and taking the attitude of the other(s), and relates it to his logical formulation of rational universals. It suggests that Mead's optimistic image of society and his position on rationality are no longer appropriate for discussing social issues in a global society with multiple rationalities. It sees possibilities for reformulation in Habermas' theory because, like Mead's theory, it construes rationality in communicative terms.