bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
THE MOVIES AND SOCIAL OBSERVATION: READING BLUMER'S MOVIES AND CONDUCT
Authors: Clough Patricia T.
Published: January 2008

This article focuses on an early work of Herbert Blumer, Movies and Conduct, a study which reports the reactions of moviegoers to motion pictures. Contrasting Blumer's study with contemporary feminist film studies which are based on a psychoanalytically oriented semiotics, I argue that Blumer's contribution to sociology was an observational methodology of documentation and description, generally known as Symbolic Interactionism, which drew on a cinematographic sense of vision. At the same time, this methodology claimed a scientific objectivity for social observation by erasing from it any traces of the visual erotic which constituted both early cinema and the psychoanalytic interpretation of the subject. Thus, Blumer's methodology presents itself as “sexless.”
KI: The ‘Fervor of Vitality’ and the Subjective Self
Authors: Kumagai Hisa A.
Published: January 2008

Curiously, in the word ki, we find that the Japanese have internalized physical energy into a felt‐feeling (e.g., a sense of vital potency and aliveness), thereby significantly expanding the substance of the T phase of the self. Of conceptual interest here is that in the word ki—used as a root word to indicate and connect elementary feelings and thought processes—the Japanese have reified ‘energy’ into a subjective entity that moves the individual to become both activator and respondent of interactional processes. The general awareness of ki by the people themselves is evidenced in various facets of their personal consensual life—from socialization practices to formal presentation. In closing, the author attempts to link ki to Mead's ‘impulse’ concludes that (a) ki is more substantive and active than ‘impulse’ in the movement of the social act; and (b) in contrast to that of Mead, the Japanese model provides an explicit conceptual demonstration of the substantive role of the ‘I’ as well as affective elements in social interaction.
Aces and Bombers: The Post‐Exam Impression Management Strategies of Students
Authors: Albas Daniel , Albas Cheryl
Published: January 2008

In this study we attempted to develop a classification of the strategies students employ to manage self‐impressions after grades have been awarded and examination papers returned. These encounters between students are of three types: first, when students who have scored a top grade in this exam (Aces) encounter other students who received a low or even failing grade (Bombers); second, when Aces encounter other Aces; and, third, when Bombers encounter other Bombers. The impression management strategies employed in these encounters are constrained by well‐known rules of modesty in regard to one's own achievements and considerateness for lesser achieving peers, dictated by the particular encounter type described above. These rules are spelled out and an attempt made to generalize the findings to a wider universe of interactions.
Negotiated Order and the Clinical Pharmacist: The Ongoing Process of Structure
Authors: Mesler Mark A.
Published: January 2008

Negotiated order theory was initiated about twenty‐five years ago within the interactionist perspective as an alternative to the dominant perspective of organizational behavior as structurally determined. Since that time, the theoretical framework has proven itself to be a viable means of understanding individual relationships within their larger contexts, for understanding the relationship between process and structure. This theoretical perspective is particularly appropriate for analyzing the attempts of hospital pharmacists to negotiate an expanded, more “clinical” role for themselves on the medical team. This article presents data gathered through extensive participant observation of pharmacists in two hospital settings as it applies to negotiated order theory.
Works and Lives, The Anthropologist as Author, by Clifford Ceertz
Authors: Rabinow Paul
Published: January 2008

Tales of the Field, On Writing Ethnography, by John Van Maanen
Society as Text: Essays on Rhetoric, Reason, and Reality, by Richard Harvey Brown
Authors: Dickens David R. , Fontana Andrea
Published: January 2008

Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences, by George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer.
Semiotic Theory and Environmental Evaluation: A Proposal For a New Approach and a New Method
Authors: Pennartz Paul J. J.
Published: January 2008

People evaluate their physical, urban environment through processes of interpretation. The environment is considered a collection of signs with symbolic content. With meaning neglected as a central issue, current theories are lacking. The theoretical background of this study is semiotics, while elements are drawn from symbolic interactionism and phenomenology. By means of a case‐study the author has attempted to describe a new approach and methodology. The aim is to elucidate the processes underlying positive and negative evaluation of a modern shopping center. The analysis successively demonstrates differences in affective response, sign‐vehicles, codes and meanings and, lastly, in beliefs and values connected to structures of relevance and life‐situation of the consumer. The long‐term purpose of the study is to identify the codes and values that operate within the consumption and production of the urban environment, and to describe the function of urban elements as a potential counterbalance against the colonization processes of the life‐world.
Fashioning Males and Females: Appearance Management and the Social Reproduction of Gender
Authors: Cahill Spencer E.
Published: January 2008

The author examines the part played by appearance management in both the intergenerational and everyday reproduction of gendered identities in contemporary American society. The author empirically explores the contributions of appearance management to young children's gender socialization by drawing upon observation in preschools, informal interviews with children's parents, as well as others' observations and findings. That analysis indicates that sex‐class related appearance management invests infants with gendered identities, promotes children's sex‐class related identification of others, and encourages them to embrace behaviorally their own ascribed sex‐class identities. Sex‐class related appearance management is of fundamental importance to both the intergenerational and interactional reproduction of the seemingly natural and moral order of gendered person that characterizes our society.
RACE RELATIONS AS COLLECTIVE DEFINITION: RENOGIATING ABORIGINAL‐GOVERNMENT RELATIONS IN CANADA
Authors: Fleras Augie
Published: January 2008

Recent trends in Canadian aboriginal‐government relations are examined by way of an interactionist perspective on race and ethnic relations. Employing Blumer's notion of group interaction as socially constructed and collectively defined, aboriginal‐government relations are proposed to have undergone a reassessment in response to various developments. This is particular true of the situation in Canada where Native Indians have become actively involved in a ‘collective redefinition’ of their relational status. Failure, however, to achieve a constitutionally‐based self‐governing position has cast light on the politics of aboriginal renewal. In applying Blumer's interactionist perspective, debate over the direction of aboriginal‐government relations are shown to embody both competing images and definitions, as well as shifting tactics and adjustments.
RELATIVE ADVANTAGE
Authors: Wolf Charlotte
Published: January 2008

A concept of relative advantage is outlined in this article. Based on an oppressed group's selective assessment of their circumstances or character or values in comparison with either those of another group or at different points of time for their own group, the consensual image that they are relatively better off or relatively superior in some way is constructed. Drawing on the experiences of three oppressed groups, it is suggested in this article that the reality construction process occurs in various circumstances, and that the shape of relative advantage is defined differently, possibly in accord with this. It is concluded that this perception might help to engender a sense of group honor and also serve as a strategic factor in the tamping down of discontent and in the maintenance of the oppressive social order.
EMERGENT SOCIALITY: A DIALECTIC OF COMMITMENT AND ORDER
Authors: Rawls Anne Warfield
Published: January 2008

A conversation has a life of its own and makes demands on its own behalf. It is a little social system with its own boundary maintaining tendencies; it is a little patch of commitment and loyalty with its own heroes and its own villains. (Goffman 1967:113)
PUBLIC SUICIDE AS A DEED OF OPTIONLESS INTIMACY
Authors: Bjelić Dušan I.
Published: January 2008

This article offers an ethnomethodological analysis of suicide practices in situ. By analyzing a videotaped record of a public suicide by a government official this article is able to examine the temporal relations between the unfolding suicide act and the situational contingencies arising from its interactional context. In the case examined, the suicide was planned as a ceremony, in part to indicate the official facing corruption charges. A press conference provided the pretext for the suicide ceremony in which the official intended to deliver a prepared speech to accuse his accusers and bid farewell to loved ones before shooting himself. Things turned out differently than he planned, though he did in the end shoot himself. The analysis focuses on how the audience's reaction to the imminent suicide foreclosed the suicide cermony while at the same time pre‐emptying the pre‐suicide speech deferring the impending suicide.
Mixed Messages: Emotions in the Modern Era
Authors: Kleinman Sherryl
Published: January 2008

The Sociology of Emotions: Original Essays and Research Papers, Edited by David D. Franks and E. Doyle McCarthy
The Social Context of Police Lying
Authors: Hunt Jennifer , Manning Peter K.
Published: January 2008

This is an analysis of the social context of normal police lies. We define lies as speech acts which the speaker knows are misleading or false, are intended to deceive, and where evidence to the contrary is known to the observer. Lies are relative to a moral context, and what an audience will accept. Lies include excuses, which deny full responsibility for an act, but acknowledge its immorality, and justifications, which accept responsibility but deny blame‐worthiness. Police learn to lie and to carefully distinguish normal (or acceptable) lies from unacceptable lies, suggesting that lies are a part of a negotiated occupational order. We show how and why some types of lies are rewarded by police using ethnographic data from an 18 month field study of a large urban force. Lies can be of little issue, or become troublesome. We report and analyze two kinds of troublesome lies: case lies, recognized stories an officer utilizes in a courtroom or on paper to facilitate the conviction of a suspect, and cover stories, lies an officer tells in court, to supervisors, and on the job with the aim of providing a verbal shield or mitigation in the event of discipline. Both excuses and justifications are woven together in these vignettes. An example of a refusal to lie is used to illustrate some of the limits on lying as well organizational factors in lying. Some implications for official lying are also noted.
Ethnic Differences in Interpretive Conventions and the Reproduction of Inequality in Everyday Life
Authors: Murray Stephen O.
Published: January 2008

Failure of conversational involvement based on compounding unrecognized clashes of interpreting the intent of utterances has serious consequences in gatekeeping encounters, and also in excluding those socialized within ethnic minorities from easy participation in the informal organizations within workplaces. Examples of some divergent social meanings of interactional features and some interactional breakdowns suggest how unconscious patterns of interpreting the intent of interlocutors can lead to reinforcing stereotypes about ethnic groups.
Insufficient and Disappointing
Authors: Denzin Norman K.
Published: January 2008

Interactionism: Exposition and Critique, Second edition, by Larry T. Reynolds
Ethnic Identity Among Mixed‐Heritage People In Hawaii
Authors: Stephan Cookie White
Published: January 2008

In this study, intensive interviews were used to explore the identity of a sample of mixed‐heritage Hawaiin college students from a variety of ethnic groups. The great majority of respondents listed at least one multiple‐heritage identity (e.g., Chinese‐Japanese). While cultural exposure and ethnic identity were strongly associated, cultural exposure is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for ethnic identity to occur. Differences in perceptions of ethnic identity between respondents with stable and situtionally changing identities were discussed. The conceptions of identity proposed by processual and structural symbolic interactionists both received some support in these data.
Transverse Interaction: A Pragmatic Perspective On Environment As Other
Authors: Weigert Andrew J.
Published: January 2008

This paper formulates an overlooked type of “transverse interaction” between symbol users and the physical environment. Understanding this type leads to recognition of objects constructed as environmental others. Other is a key concept within the interactionist tradition, but emphasis has been on the social life process rather than the physical world that is there. Parallel with the Generalized Social Other is a Generalized Environmental Other. These considerations emphasize naturalistic meanings as a central concern for interactionists.
Agency, Structure, and Com parat ive Con texts: Toward a Synthetic lnteractionism
Authors: Fine Gary Alan
Published: January 2008

Recent sociological theorizing has addressed the relationship between agency and structure. Although this issue has not frequently been discussed by interactionists, it is implicitly critical to the perspective. As I argue, an interactionist approach can capture both the objective and subjective components of structures, settings, and events, while reminding us that contexts can be defined at all levels of generality and should be understood in reference to other contexts (acomparative contextapproach). I raise the core concepts of obdurateness, constraint, negotiation, sedimentation, symbolization, identification, and ritualization, attempting to generalize these concepts into asynthetic interactionismbased on the grounding of action in the comparison of contexts. My goal is to develop an understanding of the “interaction order” that does justice to both order and interaction.
Talk About Embarrassment: Exploring the Taboo‐Repression‐Denial Hypothesis
Authors: Harrington C. Lee
Published: January 2008

Theory and research suggest that, while embarrassment may be intrinsic to social interaction, its expression is C. taboo. Embarrassment is seen as reflecting social incompetence. As such, members make routine attempts to repress embarrassment in the self and to deny embarrassment to self and others. I call this the taboo–repression–denial hypothesis. However, despite attempts at repression and denial, members reveal embarrassment in a variety of ways, including verbally, paralinguistically/vocally, and facially/bodily. This paper is an initial investigation of emotion denial in verbal discourse. Through an analysis of embarrassment talk and non‐embarrassment talk, I discover six features of the verbal context of references to embarrassment which aid in the disguise and denial of feeling: (1) verbal mitigation; (2) a link between references to embarrassment and mitigation; (3) verbal projection; (4) a link between use of “ya know”, embarrassment references, and mitigation; (5) a link between use of “I don't know”, embarrassment references, and mitigation; and (6) a link between references to embarrassment and laughter. Findings indicate verbal and nonverbal methods of emotion denial, and provide initial support for the taboo–repression–denial hypothesis.
The Satanism Scare or the Antisatanism Scare
Authors: McCallion Michael
Published: January 2008

The Satanism Scare, edited by James T. Richardson, Joel Best, and David G. Bromley
The Alcoholic in Films: Self or Other?
Authors: Cullum‐Swan Betsy
Published: January 2008

Hollywood Shot by Shot: Alcoholism in American Cinema, by Norman K. Denzin
Habermas, Critical Theory, and the Relativistic Predicament
Authors: Sciulli David
Published: January 2008

Habermas' critical theory stands or falls on the unity of procedural reason. When Stephen Toulmin raised the problem of reason being differentiated by functions and purposes within each field of argumentation, whether law, medicine, science, or politics, Habermas' response was both weak and vague. This paper proposes how Habermas may concede Toulmin's point, and yet demonstrate that it does not ultimately challenge the unity of procedural reason that grounds his critical theory.
From Fat to Thin: Informal Rites Affirming Identity Change
Authors: Rubin Nissan , Shmilovitz Carmella , Weiss Meira
Published: January 2008

Rituals provide public solutions to some types of life crises, or change. There are crises which beset the individual in modern society which are not easily addressed by public ritual. The present paper observes such a life crisis and identifies conscious rites performed by individuals. These rites are called, “personal definitional rites”, and take place in situations demanding identity changes. Newly acquired identity is performed ritually in an attempt to elicit recognition of a new social state.

Thirty‐six patients clinically defined as obese underwent gastric reduction surgery. Patients were interviewed after having lost excess weight in order to understand the social results of the dramatic change in appearance. Patients described various “rites” they used to complete their conversion from fat to thin. These rites are compared to rites of transition and definition.
Drama = Life?
Authors: Manning Peter K.
Published: January 2008

The Drama of Social Life: Essays in Post‐Modern Social Psychology, by T.R. Young
Self and Society in Popular Social Criticism 1920–1980
Authors: Benton James S.
Published: January 2008

Since the tumult of the 1960s, sociologists and cultural historians have suggested that a “new sensibility” has become more prominent in the United States and other advanced capitalist democracies. In most accounts, the core of the change is an increase in expressive individualism, popularly justified by discourse very much indebted to the language of academic and clinical psychology. Among symbolic interactionists, Ralph Turner's proposal that there has been a shift from “institutional” to “impulsive” anchorage of the self has been the single most influential contribution to this debate. Turner's analysis is placed in the larger context of his work and considered in the light of changes in social criticism and the rhetoric of self in popular “conduct‐of‐life” literature published between 1920 and 1980. Three relatively distinct waves of social criticism are found in that literature during that period, with each one more firmly based on individualistic and psychologistic views of self and society than its predecessor.
What is Real in the Age of Virtual Reality?“Retraining” Frame Analysis for a Technological World
Authors: Chayko Mary
Published: January 2008

How do social actors determine what is really happening and what is not? This distinction, analyzed in such depth by Erving Goffman in Frame Analysis, now requires further analysis as technologies such as virtual reality become ever more affordable and available, transforming many aspects of everyday life and, inevitably, the definition of the “real” experience itself. This article considers the ways that experience is generated and organized in modern social life, arguing that a “refraining” of frame analysis and a “reconceptualization” of reality itself is necessary to help us understand the ways in which social worlds involving highly sophisticated technologies are created and endowed with meaning by actors, as well as the subtle, long‐term effects of such technologies.
Goffman Against Postmodernism: Emotion and the Reality of the Self
Authors: Schwalbe Michael L.
Published: January 2008

Goffman has been read as arguing that selves are no more than images created in conformity with situational expectations. I read Goffman as saying that the reality of selfhood is not an image, but a psychobiological proces shaped by signs and symbols. Seen in this way, the reality of the self is evident, as Goffman suggested, not in conformity but in moments of feeling, resistance, and choice. Drawing out what is implicit in Goffman, this article proposes that all forms of signifying behavior, including self‐presentations, are means to sustain the coherence of the self. For this to work, however, people must, as Goffman pointed out, trust each other to respect the rules governing signifying behavior and must care about the feelings attached to selves. The article argues that the inequalities of so‐called postmodern society are undermining the trust and care on which the interaction order and coherent selfhood depend. Goffman's ideas about the self are used to develop an optimistic critique of the conditions that have produced these pernicious trends.
Uncomfortably Numb: Countercultural Impulses in the Postmodern Era
Authors: Gottschalk Simon
Published: January 2008

Informed by 1960s research suggesting that early signs of emerging social psychological trends are visible in countercultural groups, the article uses in‐depth interviews and participant observation to explore the attitudes of the “Freaks”—a group of countercultural students. Finding that they express pessimism and cynicism, rejection of metanarratives and fragmented identities, the article suggests some comparisons between the Freaks' attitudes and those held by their 1960s predecessors and elaborates on the meaning of these attitudes in light of contemporary theoretical debates about a postmodern self.
Identity Crisis and Postcommunist Psychology
Authors: Kon Igor S.
Published: January 2008

This article examines the effect that the recent changes in Soviet Society have had on the self‐identity of its members. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the precipitous decline of its economy deprived individuals of the familiar guideposts that served to define their identity. The void created in the self‐consciousness of ex‐Soviet citizens is now being filled by nationalist ideologies which emphasize ethnic exclusiveness and suppress the universalistic identity references typical of the modern era. The argument is made that the habitual self formed during the Soviet era offers a strong resistance to change and poses serious problems for Russian reformers.
The Postmodernization of Death and Dying
Authors: Simon William , Haney C. Allen , Buenteo Russell
Published: January 2008

The very concept of postmodernity suggests a significant change in the conduct of contemporary social life. Five aspects of this change are described. They are: the normalization of persistent and diffuse change; the abandonment of the concept of nature as necessarily embodying lawful regularity; the death of telos, or the discrediting of the concept of a history as a master, purposeful narrative; adaptations to largely unanticipated levels of individuation; and potential changes in the politics of the self. Implications of these changes are explored by speculative consideration of their impacts on death and dying.
Chan Is Missing:The Asian Eye Examines Cultural Studies
Authors: Denzin Norman K.
Published: January 2008

A critical reading of the Oriental sleuth in Hollywood films, focusing on the Charlie Chan series, is offered. The Chan series is contrasted to the 1981 Wayne Wang film,Chan Is Missing. These texts are fitted into a cultural studies perspective which criticizes the voyeuristic, investigative project of the traditional Asian eye.
Small Disagreements: Character Contests and Working Consensus in Informal Talk
Authors: Malone Martin J.
Published: January 2008

This article is an analysis of a single conversational episode. A disagreement about the significance of a shared event between two participants in a conversation leads to what Goffman calls a character contest. It is resolved by three others present to achieve a new working consensus. The analysis is about character contests and examines face threat, accounts, and working consensus as constituents of the interaction order which operates to maintain face and self presentation. Gender and role are part of the institutional context of this dispute. They provide ideological resources which contribute first to the conflict and later to a new working consensus. The analysis explores how the interactional and institutional orders are intertwined in informal talk.
Negotiated Orders: The Negotiation of Directives in Paramedic‐Nurse Interaction
Authors: Mellinger Wayne Martin
Published: January 2008

Whereas the “negotiated order approach” emphasizes the importance of communicative events in the constitution of organizational settings, there has been little attempt to formally describe the properties of talk that occur in these settings. This article demonstrates that detailed examination of the temporal unfolding of negotiative processes contributes to our understanding of the bundle of tasks which comprise organizational settings. Through close analysis of the negotiation of directives in paramedic calls for emergency field orders, I demonstrate that negotiation is more than a metaphor for describing organizational order; real‐world negotiations are complex interactional processes which can be described in their rich detail.
Thoughts on the Body: Past, Present, and Future
Authors: Kotarba Joseph A.
Published: January 2008

Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time, by Kathy Charmaz.

At The Will of The Body: Reflections on Illness, by Arthur W. Frank.

The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, edited by Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan S. Turner.
Generating Common Sense Knowledge Among Police Officers
Authors: McNulty Elizabeth W.
Published: January 2008

This research looks at police officers to illustrate how common sense knowledge is generated within the context of everyday life routines. At a broader level, this research challenges the idea that common sense knowledge is innate, spontaneously generated, or simply transmitted from one generation to the next. Common sense knowledge is highly valued in police culture as a means of dealing with the many ambiguous situations that officers face. This study describes how police recruits are taught to accept and respond effectively to the ambiguity intrinsic in most situations. Finally, the article provides empirical evidence of the process by which police officers collectively generate common sense knowledge, emphasizing the role of work‐related routines.
The Role of the Communal Voice in Constructing Meaning at the Funeral of an Infant Child in a Quaker Community in Costa Rica
Authors: Howard Marian
Published: January 2008

This article attempts to capture the ongoing process of the construction of a “communal voice” out of the idiosyncratic “individual voices” of diverse people in a remote Quaker Community in the rainforest mountains of Costa Rica. The communal story is investigated through the rituals surrounding the death of an infant child. The constant dialogue is examined as the Cliffedgians struggle with issues of community/individualism, tolerance/conviction, and simplicity/benefit. Attention is also given to the communal construction of taboo areas of discourse.
Race Riots Past and Present: A Cultural‐Collective Behavior Approach
Authors: Turner Ralph H.
Published: January 2008

Four essential themes in a cultural‐collective behavior approach to race riots are developed. First is the historical shift in patterns of race rioting. Second is the application of a general collective behavior model accounting for extrainstitutionality, conversion of feelings into overt action, and acting collectively rather than individually. Third is process, stressing contingent developments during a period of testing. Fourth is the nullification of customary meanings of action, with clues to understanding drawn from anthropological study of “rituals of rebellion” and psychological studies of “obedience to authority.”
Between Science and Literature: What Are Our Options?
Authors: Ellis Carolyn
Published: January 2008

Friendship Matters: Communication, Dialectics, and the Life Course, by William K. Rawlins.
The Dialectics of Depression
Authors: Karp David A.
Published: January 2008

This article attempts to illuminate the phenomenology of clinical depression by making it sociologically intelligible. It proceeds from the fundamental premise of the sociology of medicine that there is a dialectical relationship between illness and social experience. Throughout, it explores the paradox that depressed persons greatly desire connection while they are simultaneously deprived of the ability to realize it. In‐depth interview data from 35 persons diagnosed and treated for clinical depression suggest that four factors interact synergistically to deepen depression's isolation: (1) the intrinsic character of the emotional experience of depression, (2) the failure of individuals to have a clear vocabulary for understanding their own predicament, (3) the incomprehensibility of depression to “normals,” and (4) the stigma attached to “going public” with one's problem. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda that links the incidence of depression to structural factors diminishing social connection.
Dependency—Bond as Construct
Authors: Wolf Charlotte
Published: January 2008

This article is a discussion of reality construction of dependency‐bonds by oppressed groups with an oppressor. In this model of dependency‐bond processes, it is suggested that oppressed people, when possible, attempt to translate the power‐dependency equation from one of coercion and objectification into a less onerous, more agreeable bond; that is, subordinate people strive to establish and to reinforce dependency relationships as a strategy of control whereby the power of superiors is deflected from coercive measures against them into lines of obligation toward them. It is further proposed that the secondary effects of this process include the social construction of subordinate identity as dependent and of subordinate place as dependent place.
Undercover Social‐distancing Techniques
Authors: Jacobs Bruce A.
Published: January 2008

This article explores the excuses undercover narcotics officers in high schools make to maintain social distance (i.e., affective detachment) from students. Social distance is necessary to prevent students from later claiming in court they were entrapped. Officers used four social‐distancing techniques, each linked to particular conditions and circumstances: (1) claims of existing interpersonal attachment, (2) parental‐recrimination excuses, (3) extracurricular‐role‐obligation excuses, and (4) feigned interest followed by unforeseen‐circumstance excuses or appeals to defeasibility. Discussion focuses on the conceptual importance of social‐distancing excuses for the sociology of accounts. The data's larger microstructural implications are considered through the notion of attenuated ties. I interviewed 30 undercover officers operating out of a large U.S. city.
A Symbolic Interactionist User's Guide to the Answering Machine: 22 Reflections on Vocal Encounters in an Emerging Social World
Authors: Raz Aviad E. , Shapira Rina
Published: January 2008

This article offers a sociological analysis of a new communication technology—the answering machine. A general semiotic model of “machine talk” is suggested and connected, through the social world perspective, to forms of sociability that involve the fragmentation of time and space. The symbolic meaning given to the answering machine in literature, television, the cinema, and everyday language, as well as its use at home, are examined. Drawing on such disembodied discursive practices as speciality and simulacra, the conclusion provides a Baudrillardian look at “machine talk” as reflecting the postmodern shift from face‐to‐face interactions to telecommunications.
Postpragmatism: Beyond Dewey and Mead
Authors: Denzin Norman K.
Published: January 2008

Continual Permutations of Action, by Anselm L. Strauss.
Women at the Keyhole: Fatal Female Visions
Authors: Denzin Norman K.
Published: January 2008

An examination of thefemine gaze, as given in two recent mainstream Hollywood films (Black Widow, Fatal Attraction), is presented. How this gaze and its I understandings complement a feminist‐based cultural studies project is discussed.
Rituals of Exchange in the Social World of Israeli Beggars: An Exploratory Study
Authors: Meir‐Dviri Mina , Raz Aviad E.
Published: January 2008

Based on a fieldwork in a central bus station in Israel, this study offers a novel consideration of the symbolic interactions underlying processes of communication, social exchange, and status attainment among beggars. The case study presents a possible alternative to sociological analyses of beggary as “deviant activity” by drawing upon the constructs of social‐world perspective and symbolic types.
“You Just Might Get It Right One Day”: On Being Informed By Carl J. Couch
Authors: Jensen Rose M.
Published: January 2008

The founders of the intellectual tradition that became known as symbolic interaction theory were the first to articulate the principle that society exists in communication…. Let us focus our analytic powers on social acts.
Carl Couch: Bridging Sociology and Communication
Authors: Chen Shing‐Ling S.
Published: January 2008

The article documents how Carl Couch used a sociological approach to conceptualize, analyze, and interpret the communication phenomena studied. It is argued that Couch's analyses offered a thorough sociological discussion and comprehensive understanding of communication issues by relating them to the study of social relationships. One major contribution of Couch's works in communication is his analyses of information technologies. Couch demonstrated the reciprocal relationships between information technologies and social structures. He corrected the technological deterministic flaw in Harold Innis' and Marshall McLuhan's work to demonstrate the interface between information technologies and social structures. To further illustrate the insights of Couch's theses, a study of the experiences of college students with Walkman listening and another study of the Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers' Club are considered.
In Loco Parentis: An Elaboration of the Parental Relationship Form
Authors: Molseed Mari J.
Published: January 2008

This statement demonstrates the applicability of the parental relationship form as specified by Carl J. Couch by applying the generic elements of this form to multiple content situations. I demonstrate that the survival of subordinates is enhanced when superordinates enact the parental relationship, while survival of subordinates is rendered problematic when superordinates fail to enact this relationship. I further argue that categorical identities of race, gender, and ethnicity are linked to the enactment, or lack of enactment, of this form, which contributes to inequality.
Openings Revisited: The Foundations of Social Interaction
Authors: Hintz Robert A. , Miller Dan E.
Published: January 2008

Twenty years after its publication, the “openings” research of Miller, Hintz, and Couch (1975) continues to be the conceptual foundation of the New Iowa School of Symbolic Interation. However, we believe that this work has been misread. Returning to the original work, we offer a new reading of this groundbreaking research that broadens the scope of the analysis and more closely defines the hierarchical structure of social interation found in all social encounters.
Collective Representations of Battered Women
Authors: Charmaz Kathy
Published: January 2008

The Battered Woman and Shelters: The Social Construction of Wife Abuse, by Donileen R. Loseke.
Mapping Pleasure: Rock Music and Sociology
Authors: Friesen Bruce K.
Published: January 2008

Adolescents and Their Music: If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old, edited by Jonathan S. Epstein.
The Best Years of Their Lives: A Portrait of a Residential Home for People With AIDS
Authors: Cherry Keith
Published: January 2008

The article results from 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the “Tahitian Islander,” an apartment building in Florida for people with AIDs. This essay offers stories of three longtime residents as a way of describing and interpreting discourse that creates and maintains a sense of self and place. By using a narrative form that is built around dialogue, the author offers examples of how people with AIDS (PWAs) talk about themselves and talk to each other. Through the particulars of daily practice and conversation, this essay shows us that PWAs are actively and continually engaged in the production of identity and community.
The Ethical Horizons of Postmodernity
Authors: Dickens David R.
Published: January 2008

Contested Knowledge: Social Theory in the Postmodern Era, by Steven Seidman.

Postmodern Ethics, by Zygmunt Bauman.
Post‐Pragmatism
Authors: Denzin Norman K.
Published: January 2008

Pragmatism and Social Theory, by Hans Joas.
The Enactment and Appraisal of Authenticity in a Skid Row Therapeutic Community
Authors: Weinberg Darin
Published: January 2008

This article describes the enactment and appraisal of authenticity in a skid row therapeutic community for the treatment of substance problems. Commitment to recovery was a basic requirement of participation in treatment, but it was widely assumed among program participants that many of their peers merely feigned commitment to recovery in order to remain sheltered. As a result, the enactment and appraisal of authentic commitment to recovery became a central organizing feature of therapeutic practice in the program. I first describe how the program's demand that participants engage in authentic self‐disclosure bore on the treatment experienced by homeless residents of skid row. I then outline local techniques employed by program members for enacting and appraising authentic commitment to recovery through progressive stages of the treatment process. I conclude with a discussion of how this analysis deepens our understanding of the enactment and appraisal of authenticity throughout social life and a critique of Hochschild's influential constructionist formulation of the relationship between emotion management and personal authenticity.
Telling the Truth after Postmodernism1
Authors: Smith Dorothy E.
Published: January 2008

The concerns of this paper come from an attempt to develop sociological inquiry from women's standpoint and to create a sociology for people. It is a project that must rely on the possibility of “telling the truth.” The poststructuralist/postmodernist critique of representation and reference creates a fundamental problem for this project. It challenges the very possibility of a sociology committed to inquiry into the actualities of the social as people live them.

The poststructuralist/postmodernist critique of the unitary subject of modernity is central. It is argued that the subject and subject‐object relations are inescapably in and of discourse and language. Both subject and object are discursively constituted and there is no beyond to which reference can be made in establishing the truth of statements. Rather subjects are constituted only in discourse and are fragmented, multiple, diverse. This paper argues that, though the unitary subject is rejected, an individuated subject survives though multiplied and that a central failure of poststructuralism/postmodernism is to come to grips with the social as actual socially organized practices.

Using the theories of George Herbert Mead and Mikhail Bakhtin, the paper goes on to offer an alternative understanding of referring and “telling the truth.” Observations of sequences in which people are identifying an object for one another are described to demonstrate the radically and ineluctably social character of the process. The argument is then extrapolated with further examples to offer an alternative account of referring. A description of using a street map in an actual context of “finding our way” exemplifies how a science might be inserted into a local practice. Telling the truth, it is argued, is always and only in just such actual sequences of dialogue among people directly present to one another or indirectly present in the texts they have produced. My own and others' observations are used to reconceptualize “referring” in general as integral to a social act of finding and recognizing an object as a local performance. In conclusion, I suggest that the example of a map offers to sociology a model that does not displace and subordinate people's experience but can be used by them to expand their knowledge beyond it.
Everett Hughes: Sociology's Mission1
Authors: Strauss Anselm
Published: January 2008

In this paper, I reflect on the life and work of Everett Hughes. I discuss the similarities and differences between his writings and those of Robert Park; I describe his biographical influences and the use he made of marginality; I consider the relevance of his professional commitments for contemporary sociology and his unique vision of sociology's mission. I conclude by calling for renewed interest in his concepts and principles.
Smuggled Sound: Bootleg Recording and the Pursuit of Popular Memory
Authors: Neumann Mark , Simpson Timothy A.
Published: January 2008

This paper explores the meanings that bootleg recording holds in peoples’ lives. “Bootlegging” refers to the practice of making unauthorized recordings of live performances. Our paper is an interpretive analysis of interviews with bootleg producers and collectors. In their accounts, they suggest how their activities offer an extraordinary example of what it means to participate in contemporary popular culture. As bootleggers smuggle tape recorders into concerts, or trade tapes in underground networks, they pursue rare artifacts of popular culture. Their stories of bootleg taping, collecting and trading suggest an alternative to depictions of popular culture as merely a process of production and consumption. Instead, these accounts demonstrate how some people document their participation in mass cultural events on their own terms and for their own uses. Here, bootlegging is seen as an attempt by people to capture live performances, to collect them as a source of memory and authenticity, and to mediate the events of their lives through means of technological reproduction.
Adventure as Character Work: The Collective Taming of Fear
Authors: Holyfield Lori , Fine Gary Alan
Published: January 2008

It is ultimately through experience that character is formulated and made evident. From an ethnographic examination of an adventure program (Ropes Adventure, Inc.) that attempts to mold the identity of adolescents who have been detained for minor felonies and misdemeanors, we examine how personal challenge can be channeled into moral messages. By evoking and then taming fear (adventure), organizations demonstrate the power of personal accomplishment, trust, and cooperation—each socially legitimated moral virtues. We argue that character building efforts may be hampered when organizational aims and actual implementation of structured adventure collide.
Ugly Duckling to Swan: Labeling Theory and the Stigmatization of Red Hair
Authors: Heckert Druann Maria , Best Amy
Published: January 2008

Interviews were conducted with redheads, and labeling theory is used to analyze their stigmatization in society as well as their perceptions of having red hair. First, using the relativistic stance of labeling theory, red hair is described as a type of deviance. Second, the processes involved in the labeling of redheads are examined, especially in regard to how redheads have personally experienced stereotyping. The stereotypes that redheads perceive to be socially constructed are as follows: hot temper, clownish, weirdness, Irishness, not capable of being in the sun, wild women, wimpy men, and intellectual superiority. Finally, the impact of being negatively labeled and treated in society is considered. Redheads typically receive negative treatment as children, and, as a consequence, redheads experience a lowered self‐esteem, feelings of differentness, and a sense of being the center of attention. Nevertheless, redheads typically transform a negative experience into a positive one by learning to appreciate their hair color and how it has shaped their sense of self. In essence, they become an example of tertiary deviants.
Objectivity and Narrative in Contemporary Reporting: A Formal Analysis
Authors: Hanson Ralph E.
Published: January 2008

Traditionally, Americans have held the ideal that newspapers should transmit knowledge to readers by giving “objective” accounts of official events. This article argues that many news stories have extended objectivity through the use of narrative. Stories attempt to evoke feelings in the reader by drawing on a shared stock of knowledge held by members of society through the use of narrative storytelling techniques rather than attempting to transmit neutral information through the form of objectivity.
The Relevance of Interactional and Institutional Contexts for the Study of Gender Differences: A Demonstrative Case Study
Authors: Garcia Angela
Published: January 2008

Previous studies of gender differences in language and interaction have made inadequate use of the context of the language behavior being studied. In this paper, I use a single‐case method to demonstrate how a conversation analytic approach to the interactional and institutional context of a mediation hearing can be informative in the search for gender differences. In the mediation hearing studied, an apparent gender difference in the mediator's address of disputants is first identified and then shown to disappear when the interactional and institutional context of the utterances are taken into account.
Going to the Crackhouse: Critical Space as a Form of Resistance in Total Institutions and Everyday Life
Authors: McCorkel Jill A.
Published: January 2008

This article explores the extent to which organizational identity claims and the formal organization of social control influence how actors in a total institution conceptualize their “real” selves. The setting for this case study is Project Rehabilitate Women, a drug treatment program serving incarcerated female offenders. Using Goffman's analysis of the total institution as a guide, I explore the importance of “secondary adjustments” for self‐definition. This analysis will show that the capacity of residents to distance themselves from the label of “addict” is contingent on the formal structure of social control. I will argue that, in the absence of traditional distancing strategies, residents construct “critical space” as an alternative means to subvert institutional control mechanisms and to creatively acquire the resources necessary to articulate definitions of self that are distinct from staff constructions. It is clear that resistance, whether temporary or sustained, successful or failed, is central to how subordinates maintain their sense of self in an environment committed to radical self‐transformation.