Symbolic Interactionism Reading Guide
Introduction
This document consists of the weekly reading guides I prepared for my graduate seminar on Symbolic
Interactionism (Soc 525C) at Iowa State University during Fall 2013.
The reading guides attempt to provide context for the readings found in the online coursepack
available to my students. The boldfaced readings were the core readings we all read each week and
discussed in class.
Full citations for all mentioned articles are available in the course syllabus, which is currently here:
www.public.iastate.edu/~dschwein/SIsyllabus.pdf
A reading list of this length might suggest some claim of comprehensiveness so I want to disavow that
notion. I am already aware of omissions and gaps I hope to fill if I ever have the opportunity to teach
the class again. In addition, the list is shaped by the need to organize the readings around 13 particular
topics and by my own prejudices about interactionism and what a good interactionist article looks like,
as well the gaps in my own exploration of the perspective.
This reading guide is currently available here:
www.public.iastate.edu/~dschwein/SIreadingguide.pdf
— David Schweingruber
[email protected]
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Week 1: Course Overview
The first two core readings for this week are essays by leading interactionists. Both give a
positive report on the current state and future prospects of the perspective but with different emphases.
Gary Alan Fine’s “The Sad Demise, Mysterious Disappearance, and Glorious Triumph of
Symbolic Interactionism” appeared in the Annual Review of Sociology in 1993. Later in the class we
will read Fine’s research on restaurant kitchens and high school debate teams. Fine’s earlier overview
of SI, which appeared in a 1990 volume edited by George Ritzer, is included as a bonus reading.
David Maines’ “Interactionism’s Place” appeared in a 2003 special issue of Symbolic
Interaction. This issue featured essays by winners of the George Herbert Mead Career Award, which is
given by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Each author was invited to write on “your
views on symbolic interactionism during the 20th century and the directions you would like to see it
take in the 21st century.” Each essay was followed with a comment by another symbolic interactionist.
Jeffery Ulmer’s comment on Maine’s essay, “Demarginalizing Symbolic Interactionism,” is included
as a bonus reading. The entire special issue is included in the course pack (under “Mead Award
Winner Essays”).
I chose the third reading, Scott Harris’ chapter in the Handbook of Constructionist Research
(2007), “Constructionism in Sociology: Objective and Interpretive Forms,” in order to situate
symbolic interactionism within social constructionism more generally. Although SI isn’t the only
sociological perspective to take constructionism into consideration, constructionism is central to SI’s
identity (as in Herbert Blumer’s three premises) and its research. Harris’ chapter is a succinct
explanation of constructionism and an incisive analysis of how it is used in sociology. His dichotomy
of interpretive vs. objective varieties of constructionism will prove useful throughout the class. (Later
in the class, we’ll read Harris’ research on marital inequality.)
There are many articles in which the author(s) explain what they think are the distinctive
features of SI. Our fourth reading, “Organizing Door-to-Door Sales: A Symbolic Interactionist
Analysis” from Peter Kivisto’s theory reader Illuminating Social Life (5th ed.), sets itself apart from
others in this genre because it explains what I think are its distinctive features. I co-wrote it with Nancy
Berns and it represents our summary of interactionism as illustrated by our research on door-to-door
sales.
Also included as a bonus reading is David Snow’s (2001) “Extending and Broadening
Blumer’s Conceptualization of Symbolic Interactionism,” in which he suggests “four broader and more
inclusive orienting principles that Blumer’s conceptualization implies but does not fully articulate.”
Later in the class we will look at Snow’s research on social movements and homelessness.
Snow’s article resulted in a response from Kevin Mihata (2002), “Emergence and Complexity
in Interactionism,” in which he argues that interactionists “ask complex questions.”
In Maines’ (2000) essay on “The Social Construction of Meaning,” he argues that all
sociologists now take social constructionism into account. (This essay is one of Harris’ foils.)
Sheldon Stryker’s 1987 article “The Vitalization of Symbolic Interactionism” is adopted from
the address he gave upon the occasion of winning the Cooley-Mead Award, which is presented for
career achievement by the ASA’s Section on Social Psychology. Stryker is a leading advocate for a
structural symbolic interactionism and this emphasis should be apparent in the essay. We will
encounter Stryker again during our week on structural symbolic interactionism.
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Week 2: Origins and Principles (The Chicago School)
The term “symbolic interactionism” was coined 76 years ago by Herbert Blumer, who later
called the name “a somewhat barbaric neologism that I coined in an offhand way.” Blumer claimed
that his perspective represented the views of his teacher, the pragmatist philosopher George Herbert
Mead. Blumer’s version of SI is typically referred to as the Chicago School of Symbolic Interactionism
since Mead, Blumer and many other early contributors to it were University of Chicago faculty.
SI arose out of two important influences at the Chicago sociology department. The first was the
impact of pragmatist philosophy, which was represented by Mead and John Dewey. The other
influence was a program of ethnographic research on social life in the city of Chicago. Before World
War II, Robert Park was a key contributor to this tradition. After the war, a key figure was Park’s
student, Everett C. Hughes.
Two background readings from the Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism (2003) provide an
overview of the origins of SI. In Larry Reynolds’ chapter on “Early Representatives,” he treats Mead,
along with Charles Horton Cooley (of “looking-glass self” fame) and W.I. Thomas (“definition of the
situation”), who was also at Chicago, as “the three figures whose influence on symbolic interactionism
arguably looms largest.” Gil Richard Musolf’s chapter on “The Chicago School” provides information
about the development and tenets of that school.
In the post-war period, Blumer and Hughes were major figures in the training of Chicago
graduate students, who included Howard S. Becker and Erving Goffman. Blumer provided the
intellectual foundation of SI but conducted very little research, while Hughes carried out a large
research program and provided research training to graduate students. The two reportedly did not like
each other.
The core readings will focus on four major early figures connected to the Chicago School of SI:
Mead, Blumer, Hughes and Becker.
We will read two of Mead’s papers, “The Social Self” (1913) and “A Behavioristic Account
of the Significant Symbol” (1922). Both were published in his Selected Writings (1964), which
collects papers he published during his lifetime. (Mead’s most famous book, Mind, Self, and Society
[1934], is based on course notes from his social psychology class at Chicago.)
Six more Mead papers are included in the course pack as bonus readings: “What Social Objects
Must Psychology Presuppose?” (1910), “The Mechanism of Social Consciousness” (1912), “Scientific
Method and the Individual Thinker” (1917), “The Genesis of the Self and Social Control” (1925),
“Cooley’s Contribution to American Social Thought” (1930), and “The Philosophy of John Dewey”
(1935).
Three commentaries on Mead’s ideas are also included. Lonnie Athens, the “maverick
criminologist,” provides a discussion of “Mead’s Lost Conception of Society” (2005), David Maines,
Noreen Sugrue, and Michael Katovich explicate “The Sociological Import of G.H. Mead’s Theory of
the Past” (1983), and Gary Alan Fine and Sherryl Kleinman ask “Can There Be a ‘True’ Meaning of
Mead?” (1986).
Blumer’s interpretation of Mead is on display in “Sociological Implications of the Thought of
George Herbert Mead” (1966). (Blumer’s role as Mead’s interpreter is contested. In the “Great
Debates” section of the course pack, I have included two exchanges on this issue. The first, Blumer vs.
Bales, was sparked by this Blumer article. The second is Blumer’s exchange with Clark McPhail and
Cynthia Rexroat.)
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Seven of Blumer’s other articles are included as bonus readings: “Science Without Concepts”
(1931), “The Problem of the Concept in Social Psychology” (1940), “Public Opinion and Public
Opinion Polling” (1948), “What is Wrong with Social Theory?” (1954), “Attitudes and the Social Act”
(1955), “Sociological Analysis and the ‘Variable’” (1956), and “The Methodological Position of
Symbolic Interactionism” (1969). All were republished in Symbolic Interactionism (1969). The 1969
piece is the opening chapter of that book and lays out the famous three premises of SI.
Seven of the bonus readings are commentaries on Blumer. The most interesting may be Joel
Best’s “Blumer’s Dilemma: The Critic as a Tragic Figure” (2006). Best calls Blumer a tragic figure
because he was “wedded to theoretical principles that cannot be put into practice.” The others are all
articles published shortly after his death in 1987. Five are from a special 1988 issue of Symbolic
Interaction: Howard Becker’s “Herbert Blumer’s Conceptual Impact,” David Maine’s “Myth, Text,
and Interaction Complicity in the Neglect of Blumer’s Macrosociology,” Tamotsu Shibutani’s
“Herbert Blumer’s Contributions to Twentieth-Century Sociology,” Sheldon Stryker’s “Substance and
Style: An Appraisal of the Sociological Legacy of Herbert Blumer,” and Charles Tucker’s “Herbert
Blumer: A Pilgramage with Pragmatism.” The other memorial essay was published in the Journal of
Contemporary Ethnography by Blumer’s student Jacqueline Wiseman,
Our core reading from Hughes is one of his most famous papers, “Dilemmas and
Contradictions of Status” (1945).”Two other papers, “The Study of Institutions” (1942) and
“Mistakes at Work” (1951), are included as bonus readings. Many of Hughes’ papers are in two
collections, Men and their Work (1958) and The Sociological Eye (1971).
Two reflections on Hughes are included as bonus readings. In “Everett C. Hughes and the
Development of Fieldwork in Sociology,” (1987), Jean-Michel Chapoulie describes some of Hughes’
contributions to the discipline, while Anselm Strauss discusses “Everett Hughes: Sociology’s Mission”
(1996).
The remaining two core readings are early papers by Hughes’ student Becker, “The
Professional Dance Musician and His Audience” (1951) and “Becoming a Marihuana User”
(1953). Both of these later appeared in Outsiders (1963), which was an early contribution to labeling
theory and a constructionist perspective on deviance. Another paper from Outsiders, “Marihuana Use
and Social Control” (1955) appears as a bonus reading.
The bonus readings also include a number of other early articles by Becker: “The Career of the
Chicago Public School Teacher” (1952), “Notes on the Concept of Commitment” (1960), “Personal
Change in Adult Life” (1964), “History, Culture and Subjective Experience” (1967), “A School Is a
Lousy Place to Learn Anything in” (1972), “The Fate of Idealism in Medical School” (1958, with
Blanche Geer) and “Careers, Pesonality, and Adult Socialization” (1956, with Anselm L. Strauss).
Becker is one of my sociological heroes and we will encounter his work on art worlds during
our week on “doing things together.” I have included two interviews with him as bonus readings. In
the first of these, conducted by Julius Debro in 1970, Becker talks about his early career. In the second,
conducted by Ken Plummer in 2002, Becker dismisses the latest fashions of the discipline. Another
Becker-related bonus reading is Clinton Sander’s recent essay “Learning from Experience:
Recollection of Working with Howard S. Becker” (2013).
Among the other bonus readings are two articles by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss:
"Awareness Contexts and Social Interaction” (1964) and “Temporal Aspects of Dying as a NonScheduled Status Passage" (1965). Strauss was another important Chicagoan who developed the idea
of negotiated (or processual) order and, with Glaser, created grounded theory. Two other bonus
readings are two articles by Charles Horton Cooley: “Social Consciousness” (1907) and “The Roots of
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Social Knowledge” (1926). Another is “Reference Groups as Perspectives” by Tamotsu Shibutani,
another early interactionist.
Rounding out the bonus readings are three historical analyses. Robert Dingwall’s “Notes
Toward an Intellectual History of Symbolic Interactionism” (2001) argues that the SI label describes
the type of sociology that was practiced at Chicago from 1900-1940 but later became unfashionable.
To the contrary, argues Howard Becker in “The Chicago School, So-Called” (1999), Chicago was a
“school of activity,” not a “school of thought.” Finally, Peter Kivisto and William Swatos (1990)
explain where Max Weber fits into this picture in “Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America”
(1990).
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Week 3: Goffman and the Dramaturgical Perspective
Erving Goffman didn’t consider himself a symbolic interactionist, but his work has had a
tremendous influence on the perspective and the entire discipline. Although Goffman wrote occasional
journal articles, his most influential ideas came from his books, including: The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life (1959), Asylums (1961), Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963),
and Frame Analysis (1974). In addition to developing what has become known as the dramaturgical
perspective on social life, Goffman coined a series of widely used terms, including impression
management, stigma, total institution, civil inattention, interaction ritual, and identity kit.
I am having you read two excerpts from Goffman’s books, the first chapters of The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (“Performances”) and Stigma (“Stigma and Social Identity”).
A number of Goffman’s articles are included in the course pack as bonus readings. The most
significant one is probably his 1982 ASA Presidential Address, “The Interaction Order” (1983).
(Goffman was unable to give the address himself because of illness, and he died before the article was
published.) The others are “Embarrassment and Social Organization” (1956), “The Nature of
Deference and Demeanor” (1956b), “‘The Neglected Situation” (1964), “Replies and Responses”
(1976), “The Arrangement between the Sexes” (1977), “Response Cries” (1978), and “Felicity’s
Condition” (1983b). The final article with Goffman’s name attached to it is a transcription of a talk,
“On Fieldwork” (1989), he gave at the 1974 Pacific Sociological Association Meetings, which was
surreptitiously recorded and published after his death.
The other three core readings are dramaturgical analyses that draw upon Goffman’s concepts.
First, Spencer Cahill and five of his undergraduate students analyzed bathroom behavior in
“Meanwhile Backstage: Public Bathrooms and the Interaction Order” (1985). Cahill & Robin
Eggleston’s “Reconsidering the Stigma of Physical Disability: Wheelchair Use and Public Kindness”
(1995), is included as a bonus reading. We will read another article from their wheelchair project
during our week on emotions.
Nancy Herman’s examination of the stigma of mental illness is reported in “Return to Sender:
Reintegrative Stigma-Management Strategies of Ex-Psychiatric Patients” (1993). A follow-up
article (co-authored with Gil Richard Musolf), “Resistance Among Ex-Psychiatric Patients: Expressive
and Instrumental Rituals” (1998), is included as a bonus reading, as is her recent article (with David A.
Kinney), “Sober as Deviant: The Stigma of Sobriety and How Some College Students ‘Stay Dry’ on a
‘Wet’ Campus” (2013).
The final core reading is by our department’s own Abdi Kusow. His “Contesting Stigma: On
Goffman’s Assumptions of Normative Order” (2004) shows how Somali immigrants in Toronto
disavow the nature of their color-based stigma and impose their own stigma on mainstream Canadian
society.
The coursepack also includes several commentaries on Goffman’s influence. The background
reading is Charles Edgley’s “The Dramaturgical Genre” (2003) from The Handbook of Symbolic
Interactionism. Also included as bonus readings are John Lofland’s “Erving Goffman’s Sociological
Legacies” (1984), William A. Gamson’s “Goffman’s Legacy to Political Sociology” (1985), Candace
West’s “Goffman in Feminist Perspective” (1996), and Howard S. Becker’s “The Politics of
Presentation: Goffman and Total Institutions” (2003). Three other articles, all related to Goffman and
emotions, are an essay by Thomas J. Scheff (“Looking-Glass Self: Goffman as Symbolic
Interactionist,” 2005) arguing that Goffman is an symbolic interactionist in the tradition of Charles
Cooley, and responses by Phillip Manning (“Reinvigorating the Tradition of Symbolic Interactionism,”
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2005) and Carol Brooks Gardner & William P. Gronfein (“Reflections on Varieties of Shame
Induction, Shame Management, and Shame Avoidance in Some Works of Erving Goffman,” 2005).
I’ve included a large collection of empirical bonus readings. The first set focuses on
immpression management and the presentation of self, covering such topics as panhandling (Lankenau
1999a, 1999b), college students reciving exam grades (Albas & Albas 1988), romance readers (Bracket
2000), hospice (Cain 2012), motherhood (Collett 2005), city government (Futrell 1999), Internet home
pages (Walker 2000), ex-convicts (Harding 2003), unemployment (Miller 1986), airport checkpoints
(Pütz 2012), undercover narcotics agents (Jacobs 1992), and shyness (Scott 2005). Also included is
Alex Thompson’s 2012 Blumer Award co-winning paper “’Sometimes, I Think I Might Say Too
Much’: Dark Secrets and the Performance of Inflammatory Bowel Disease” (2013). Finally, I’ve
included my two co-authored papers on engagement proposals: “‘Popping the Question’ When the
Answer is Known: The Engagement Proposal as Performance” (Schweingruber, Anahita & Berns
2004) and “‘A Story and a Ring’: Audience Judgments about Engagement Proposals” (Schweingruber,
Cast & Anahita).
One of Goffman’s most used concepts is stigma. A second set of articles look at stigma toward
and stigma managagement by racists (Berbrier 1999, Hughey 2012; Simi & Futrell 2009), strippers
(Bradley 2007; Trautner & Collett 2010), the disabled (Taub, McLorg & Fanflik 2004), drug users
(Hathaway 2004), homeless kids (Roschelle & Kaufman 2004), belly dancers (Kraus 2010), female
athletes (Blinde & Taub 1992), psychics (Evans, Forsyth & Foreman 2003), people with OCD (Fennell
2007), murderer’s relatives (May 2000), the voluntarily childless (Park 2002), redheads (Heckert &
Best 1997), customers at an adult novelty store (Hefley 2007), women with breast implants (Saxena
2013), the mentally ill (Thoits 2011), white middle-class singles (Zajicek & Koski 2003), gays and
lesbians (Kaufman & Johnson 2004), and women who “come out as fat” (Saguy & Ward 2011).
Other stigma bonus articles include Bruce Link and Jo Phelan’s Annual Review of Sociology
article “Conceptualizing Stigma” (2001); and two articles that reconceptualize stigma using structural
symbolic interactionist concepts: James Daniel Lee and Elizabeth Craft’s “Protecting One’s Self from
a Stigmatized Disease… Once One Has It,” and Ellen Granberg’s “‘Now My ‘Old Self’ Is Thin’:
Stigma Exits after Weight Loss” (2011).
Goffman’s concept of frame analysis is also widely used by sociologists, but most of the frame
analysis articles in the course pack are to be found in week #13 (Crowds, Behavior in Public and
Social Movements). An exception here is Jonas Linderoth’s use of frame analysis in his study of
World of Warcraft, “The Effort of Being in a Fictional World: Upkeyings and Laminated Frames”
(2012).
The course pack also contains one reading focusing on Goffman’s concept of total institution:
Jill McCorkel’s “Going to the Crackhouse: Critical Space as a Form of Resistance in Total Institutions
and Everyday Life” (1998).
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Week 4: Structural Symbolic Interactionism (Iowa and Indiana Schools)
Herbert Blumer’s interpretation of Mead and his attempt to police the boundaries of SI have not
sat well with many self-designated symbolic interactionists. One early group of dissenters, trained by
Manford Kuhn at the University of Iowa, became known as the Iowa School of Symbolic
Interactionism. Many commentators still refer to the Chicago and Iowa Schools as the main divisions
in SI (e.g., Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism) even though little research is currently being
published by those who identify with the Iowa School.
Meanwhile, another group of sociologists publishes regularly in the prestigious Social
Psychology Quarterly, wins the Cooley-Mead Award on a regular basis, and identifies its ideas as
symbolic interactionist, but is largely ignored by those working in the Chicago School tradition. This
group is known as the Indiana School of SI since three of its leading scholars, Sheldon Stryker, Peter
Burke, and David Heise, are or were faculty members at the University of Indiana. Its members also
refer to themselves as structural symbolic interactionists.
Both the Iowa and Indiana Schools differed with Blumer on three major grounds: (1) They
viewed social structure as a more important constraint on individuals than Blumer did; (2) they
conceptualized the self as a structure as well as a process; and (3) they advocated the use of a wider
range of methods, including quantitative ones, than did Blumer.
This week’s core readings include four from the Indiana School and two from the Iowa School.
There are also background and bonus reading from each school.
Indiana School Readings
The background readings on the Indiana School include two by Sheldon Stryker, founder of
school. One is a chapter from Stryker’s 1980 book Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural
Version, in which he lays out his version of interactionist thought. The other is Styker’s “Whither
Symbolic Interaction? Reflections on a Personal Odyssey” (2003), his contribution to the special
Symbolic Interaction issue by George Herbert Mead Award winners. In it he describes the antagonism
toward structural SI, which he believes is dissipating. The response to the article, included as a bonus
reading, was written by Burke (2003).
I included three of Styker’s empirical articles in the bonus readings: “Relationships of Married
Offspring and Parent: A Test of Mead’s Theory” (1956); “Identity Salience and Psychological
Centrality: Equivalent, Overlapping, or Complementary Concepts?”(1994, with Richard Serpe); and
“Structural Precursors to Identity Processes: The Role of Proximate Social Structures” (2012, with
David Merolla, Serpe & Wesley Schultz). (Stryker’s Cooley-Mead Award Address can be found
among the first week bonus readings.) I’ve also included an article by Stryker’s student, Richard Serpe,
“Stability and Change in Self: A Structural Symbolic Interactionist Explanation” (1987).
In the first core reading, “The Past, Present, and Future of Identity Theory” (2000), Stryker
and Peter Burke discuss the two variants of identity theory they created. Burke, one of the most prolific
structural symbolic interactionists, won the Cooley-Mead Award in 2003. His address, “Identities and
Social Structure” (2004), is our next core reading. Stryker’s introduction of Burke, included as a
bonus reading, gives some background about Burke’s accomplishments.
Among Burke’s other articles included as bonus readings are: “The Self: Measurement
Requirements from an Interactionist Perspective” (1980), “The Link Between Identity and Role
Performance” (1981, with Donald Reitzes), “Identity Processes and Social Stress” (1991), “An Identity
Theory Approach to Commitment” (1991, with Reitzes), “Levels, Agency, and Control in the Parent
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Identity” (1999, with Teresa Tsushima), and “Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory” (2000, with
Jan Stets).
Alicia Cast, one of Burke’s Ph.D. students, is an author of the remaining Indiana School
articles. Her solo-authored core reading is “Power and the Ability to Define the Situation” (2003).
Alicia was on our faculty before moving to UC-Santa Barbara.
The final Indian School core reading is “Reconstructing the Good Farmer Identity: Shifts in
Farmer Identities and Farm Management Practices to Improve Water Quality” by ISU Ph.D
student Jean McGuire, ISU faculty member Lois Wright Morton and Cast.
I’ve included five more of Alicia’s articles as bonus readings: her 1999 SPQ article with Stets
and Burke, “Does the Self Conform to the Views of Others?”; her 2003 Social Forces article with
Peter Burke, “A Theory of Self-Esteem”; a pair of solo-authored aticles from 2004, “Role-Taking and
Interaction” and “Well-Being and the Transition to Parenthood: An Identity Theory Approach”; and
her 2007 SPQ article with Allison Cantwell, “Identity Change in Newly Married Couples: Effects of
Positive and Negative Feedback.” Cantwell is a recently graduate from our department, now in
graduate school at UC-Riverside.
Another Indiana symbolic interactionist of note is David Heise, creator Affect Control Theory,
which he explains in his Cooley-Mead Award address “Controlling Affective Experience
Interpersonally” (1999). Smith-Lovin’s introduction provides some background on Heise’s career.
Four other Heise articles are included as bonus readings: “Impressions of Goodness, Powerfulness, and
Liveliness from Discerned Social Events” (1981, with Smith-Lovin), “Effects of Emotion Displays on
Social Identification” (1989), “Emotion Norms in Interpersonal Events” (1995, with Cassandra
Calhan), and “A Test of Symbolic Interactionist Predictions about Emotions in Imagined Situations”
(1999b).
Yet another structural symbolic interactionist winner of the Cooley-Mead Award is Lyn SmithLovin. Her award address, “The Strength of Weak Identities: Social Structural Sources of Self,
Situation, and Emotional Experience” (2007), is included as a bonus reading. Dawn Robinson’s
introductory address provides some background on Smith-Lovin’s accomplishments. An article coauthored by Robinson and Smith-Lovin, “Selective Interaction as a Strategy for Identity Maintenance:
An Affect Control Model” (1992), is included as a bonus reading.
The bonus readings also include a pair by Michael Carter on moral identities: “The Moral Self:
Applying Identity Theory” (2011, with Jan Stets) and “Advancing Identity Theory: Examining the
Relationshp between Activated Identities and Behavior in Different Social Contexts” (forthcoming).
Rounding out the Indiana School bonus readings are Mari Dagaz’s ethographic article
“Learning from the Band: Trust, Acceptance, and Self-Confidence” (2012), Peggy Thoits’ “RoleIdentity Salience, Purpose and Meaning of Life, and Well-Being among Volunteers” (2012), Mark
Walker and Freda Lynn’s “The Embedded Self: A Social Network Approach to Identity Theory”
(2013), and Dale Wimberly’s “Religion and Role-Identity: A Structural Symbolic Interactionist
Conceptualization of Religiosity” (1989).
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Iowa School Readings
Some may argue that the Iowa School of Symbolic Interactionism has been a dead end, but it’s
my dead end. My academic lineage (the succession of Ph.D. dissertation advisors) connects me to
Manford Kuhn (and, further back, to William James). My advisor, Clark McPhail, was a student of
Robert Stewart, who was a student of Kuhn.
The background reading about the Iowa School is Michael Katovich, Dan Miller and Robert
Stewart’s chapter in the Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism (2003).
Kuhn is most famous for the “Twenty Statements Test, ” a paper & pencil instrument that
asked people to give 20 answers to the question “Who Am I?” This is described in the first Iowa
School core article, Kuhn and Thomas McPartland’s “An Empirical Investigation of Self-Attitudes”
(1954). A follow-up article is his “Self-Attitudes by Age, Sex and Professional Training” (1960).
Some of the problems with the method are described in McPhail and Charles Tucker’s “The
Classification and Ordering of Responses to the Question ‘Who am I?’” (1972). (We will encounter
McPhail again during our week on Crowds, Behavior in Public and Social Movements, and his
exchange in ASR with Blumer over the meaning of Mead is included in the Great Debates section of
the course pack.)
Kuhn, the founder of the Iowa School, laid out his overview of SI in “Major Trends in
Symbolic Interaction Theory in the Past Twenty-Five Years” (1964), his Midwest Sociological Society
presidential address. I’ve included two more Kuhn essays as bonus readings: “The Reference Group
Reconsidered” (1964b) and “Kinsey’s View on Human Behavior” (1954), his insightful review of
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.
One of Kuhn’s students, Carl Couch, founded the “New Iowa School of Symbolic
Interactionism,” which pioneered laboratory experiments in social interaction (in the basement of
Seashore Hall in Iowa City). The most famous of these was the “openings” experiment, reported in our
final core reading, “The Elements and Structures of Openings,” by Dan Miller, Robert Hintz and
Couch.
A retrospective assessment of the experiment by two of its authors can be found in Hintz and
Miller’s “Openings Revisted: The Foundations of Social Interaction” (1995).
I’ve included three other Couch articles as bonus readings: “Symbolic Interaction and Generic
Sociological Principles” (1984), “Toward a Formal Theory of Social Processes” (1992), and “The
Nature of Social Pasts and Their Use as Foundations for Situated Action” (1992, with Michael
Katovich).
The final Iowa School bonus reading is Robert Stewart’s “What George Mead Should Have
Said: Explorations of a Problem of Interpretation.”
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Week 5: Self and Identity
For Blumer, what was distinctive about Mead’s approach to social life was his insistence that
people had selves. The self has continued to be important to interactionists although there has not been
agreement about how to conceptualize the self or how self relates to identity. Two major images are
self as process (e.g., conversation between “I’ and “me”) and self as object (since the self is object to
itself). Structural symbolic interactionist have also viewed the self as structure and as product of social
structure. For Goffman, the self was a character, a dramatic effect that may or may not be credited by
its audience. Recently, some symbolic interactionists have attempted to understand the self as
narratives situated in institutions.
Identities are usually seen as components of selves that are situated in interaction (the Chicago
School emphasis) and/or social structure (the structural SI emphasis).
What these various images have in common is that the self (and its constituent identities) are
like other social objects, i.e., they have no inherent meaning but are given meaning through social
interaction and modified through interpretation. All six core readings involve people’s attempts to give
meaning to selves/identities (their own or others) in the face of obstacles in their social environment.
Note the language in the articles’ titles: selves are “constructed,” “produced,” “worked on” and
“avowed,” but they are also “aggrandized,” “constricted,” and “contested.”
The first pair of core articles use the concept of “identity work,” which was developed in David
Snow and Leon Anderson’s “Identity Work among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and
Avowal of Personal Identities” (1987), which examines how homeless street people create identities
through “identity work,” or more specifically, “identity talk.” This AJS article came out of the same
study that produced their book Down on their Luck, the 1993 Cooley Award winner.
In “Confronting Deadly Disease: The Drama of Identity Construction Among Gay Men
with AIDS” (1990), Kent Sandstrom describes the identity work of building an “AIDS identity” in the
face of a number of interpersonal dilemmas resulting from being a person with AIDS. The article won
the 1989 Blumer Award.
The second pair of core articles focus the possibility of one identity dominating the self. Patti
and Peter Adler’s “The Gloried Self: The Aggrandizement and the Constriction of Self” (1989)
describes the creation of the “gloried selves” of the college basketball players, which were unintended
by the athletes themselves. The Adlers’ basketball ethnography also resulted in the book Backboards
and Blackboards (1991).
In “Self-Structure, Identity, and Commitment: Promise Keepers’ Godly Man Project”
(2002), Michael Armato and William Marsiglio also look at one master identity engulfing others, but
in this case (unlike the Adlers’) the creation of the master identity was the goal of the Promise Keepers
they studied.
The final pair of articles looks at the production of “institutional selves” through narratives
produced by organizations. In “Producing Institutional Selves: Rhetorically Constructing the
Dignity of Sexually Marginalized Catholics” (2001), Donileen Loseke and James Cavdendish
examine the creation of the “dignified self” by Dignity, a pro-gay Catholic organization. In the final
core reading, “Contested Selves in Divorce Proceedings” (2001), Joseph Hopper describes how
attorneys attempt to construct a “legal self” for their clients, who instead desire a “moral self.”
Doni Loseke’s important theoretical article on “The Study of Identity as Cultural, Institutional,
Organizational, and Personal Narratives” (2007) is included as a bonus reading and is a good
introduction to the innerconnected ideas of “narrative selves,” “institutional selves,” and “cultural
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narratives” (or “formula stories”). In brief, people’s tell stories about themselves (“personal
narratives”) that draw upon stories that exist in the larger culture (“formula stories”) and narratives
institutionalized at institutional and organizational levels. These cultural, institutional and
organizational narratives also constrain people’s storytelling about themselves.
The concepts of self and identity are discussed in the other two background readings, chapters
in The Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism (2003) by Andrew Weigert and Viktor Gecas (“Self”)
and Kevin Vryan, Patricia Adler and Peter Adler (“Identity”).
The bonus readings include additional articles by the authors of the core articles. Two other
articles from the Adlers’ basketball ethnography are “Intense Loyalty in Organizations: A Case of
College Athletics” (1988) and “From Idealism to Pragmatic Detachment: The Academic Performance
of College Athletes” (1985). Another piece by the Adlers, “Transience and the Postmodern Self: The
Geographic Mobility of Resort Workers” (1999), is from their ethnography of Hawaiian resort works,
I’ve also included two more articles from Hopper’s study of divorce, “The Rhetoric of Motives
in Divorce” (1993) and “The Symbolic Origins of Conflict in Divorce” (2001); Anderson’s article on
“Standing Out while Fitting In: Serious Leisure Identities and Aligning Actions among Skydivers and
Gun Collectors” (2010, with Jimmy Taylor); and Sandstrom’s article on “Redefining Sex and
Intimacy: The Sexual Self-Images, Outlooks, and Relationships of Gay Men Living with HIV/AIDS”
(1996).
Several of the bonus readings take a narrative/institutional self approach, which was pioneered
by Jaber Gubrium and James Holstein. An overview can be found in their book The Self We Live By:
Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World (2000). Three of their key articles are “Grounding the
Postmodern Self” (1994), “Individual Agency, the Ordinary, and Postmodern Life” (1995), and
“Narrative Practice and the Coherence of Personal Stories” (1998). A number of pieces using this
approach can be found in their collection Institutional Selves: Troubled Selves in a Postmodern World
(2001), including Hopper’s core reading, Susan Chase’s “Universities as Discursive Environments for
Sexual Identity Construction,” and Kathleen Lowney and Holstein’s “Victims, Villains, and Talk
Show Selves.” We will read another chapter from the book, by Loseke, during our week on social
problems.
Other bonus readings that take this approach include Leslie Irvine’s “‘Even Better Than the
Real Thing’: Narratives of the Self in Codependency ” (2000), Emily Kazyak’s “Disrupting Cultural
Selves: Constructing Gay and Lesbian Identities in Rural Locales” (2011), Douglas Mason-Schock’s
“Transsexuals’ Narrative Construction of the ‘True Self’” (1996), and Debora Paterniti’s “The
Micropolitics of Identity in Adverse Circumstances: A Study of Identity Making in a Total Institution”
(2000).
Four bonus articles focus on illness as a threat to the self: Kristin Barker’s “Self-Help
Literature and the Making of an Illness Identity: The Case of Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS)” (2002),
Kathy Charmaz’s “Identity Dilemmas of Chronically Ill Men” (1994), Susan Haworth-Hoeppner and
David Maines’ “A Sociological Account of the Persistence of Invalidated Anorexic Identities” (2005),
and Dennis Waskul and Pamela van der Riet’s “The Abject Embodiment of Cancer Patients: Dignity,
Selfhood, and the Grotesque Body” (2002).
Another four bonus articles address the self and sexualty: Christy Ponticelli’s “Crafting Stories
of Sexual Identity Reconstruction” (1999), King-to Yeung and Mindy Stombler’s “Gay & Greek: The
Identity Paradox of Gay Fraternities” (2000), and two by Dennis Waskul: “The Naked Self: Being a
Body in Televideo Cybersex” (2002) and “Cybersex: Outercourse and the Enselfment of the Body”
(2000, with Mark Douglas and Charles Edgley).
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The remaining bonus reading include three recent Blumer Award winners: Raymond GarrettPeters’ “‘If I Don’t Have to Work Anymore, Who Am I?’: Job Loss and Collaborative Self-Concept
Repair” (2009), Amy Leisening’s “Confronting ‘Victim’ Discourse: The Identity Work of Battered
Women” (2006) and Avi Shoshana and Elly Teman’s “Coming Out of the Coffin: Life-Self and DeathSelf in Six Feet Under” (2009).
Other bonus articles examine self processes among homeless pet owners (Irvine, Kahl & Smith
2012), Christian belly dancers (Kraus 2010b), contingent workers (Padavic 2005), Muslim college
students (Peek 2005), vacationers (Stein 2011), high school reunion attendees (Vinitzky-Seroussi &
Robert Zussman 1996), fantasy role players (Waskul & Lust 2004), sorority members (Hunt & Miller
1997), and relatives of murdered children (Martin 2010).
The bonus readings also include essays by Lonnie Athens on “The Self as Soliloquy” (1994)
and “Dramatic Self Change” (1995), and by Nobert Wiley on “The Self as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy”
(2003).
The final bonus reading is Helena Znaniecki Lopata’s “Self-Identity in Marriage and
Widowhood” (1973). In addition to being a noted sociologist and early interactionist herself, Lopata
was the daughter of Florian Znaniecki, co-author with W.I. Thomas, of the five-volume The Polish
Peasant in Europe and America, 1918-1920, which is a foundational work for American sociology.
Znaniecki is also the University of Illinois’ most famous sociology faculty member, and I was
fortunate to meet Lopata when she visted Illinois’ sociology department in the late 1990s. She died in
2003 at the age of 77.
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Week 6: Emotions
This week’s core readings all connect to the dominant symbolic interactionist approach to
emotions, which, borrowing from the dramaturgical perspective, views emotions as an aspect of
performance that people attempt to manage. The terms “emotion work,” “emotion management,” and
“emotional labor” are all used to describe this process. (Although some distinguish between these
terms, their usage is not consistent.)
The principal developer of the emotion management approach is Arlie Russell Hochschild, who
studied the emotion work of flight attendants and bill collectors for her book The Managed Heart
(1983). Our first core reading is her seminal AJS article “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social
Structure” (1979). The other core readings draw upon Hochschild’s insights, but also extend them in
interesting directions.
One of Hochschild’s claims is that organizations may demand emotion work from their
employees. The core reading that builds on this insight is Allen Smith and Sherryl Kleinman’s
examination of medical student’s emotional socialization in “Managing Emotions in Medical
School: Students’ Contact with the Living and the Dead” (1989). They argue that the emotion work
medical student engage in results in the reproduction of the perspective of modern Western medicine.
Two other articles co-authored by Kleinman are bonus readings: Barbara Stenross and Kleinman’s
“The Highs and Lows of Emotional Labor: Detectives’ Encounters with Criminals and Victims”
(1989) and Trudy Mills and Kleinman’s “Emotions, Reflexivity, and Action: An Interactionist
Analysis” (1988).
Michelle Wolkomir conducted her dissertation research on men in support groups wrestling
with the contradiction between being a Christian and being a gay man. One group, Accept, helped men
to reconcile these identities. The other, Expell, helped the men to become ex-gays. The study resulted
in her book, Be Not Deceived (2006). Our core reading from her study is “Emotion Work,
Commitment, and the Authentification of the Self: The Case of Gay and Ex-Gay Christian
Support Groups” (2001). Wolkomir suggests that emotion work may be important for understanding
social movement recruiting. Two other articles from her study are included as bonus reading for our
upcoming week on gender.
The third core reading on emotion work is Cahill and Robin Eggleston’s “Managing Emotions
in Public: The Case of Wheelchair Users” (1994). They bring attention to the interpersonal aspect of
emotion management. A companion article on stigma was a bonus reading during our week on the
dramaturgical perspective. Cahill’s article on the emotional socialization of mortuary students is a core
reading during our upcoming week on socialization.
Amy Wilkins’ “‘Happier than Non-Christians’: Collective Emotions and Symbolic
Boundaries among Evangelical Christians” (2008) looks at emotion work in an evangelical
Christian organization and shows how being happy isn’t just a feeling rule, but also an important
element of the group’s culture. We will read Wilkins’ article on emotional restraint among black
university men during our upcoming week on inequality (and another Wilkins’ article during our week
on gender).
Finally, Nancy Berns’ takes a social problems approach in her research on “closure,”
examining the creation of a new emotion and showing how the closure narrative becomes a culture
resource and creates a new set of feeling rules. In her Cooley Award-winning books Closure: The Rush
to End Grief and What It Costs Us (2011), she looks at the use of closure in a variety of institutions.
Her article “Contesting the Victim Card: Closure Discourse and Emotion in Death Penalty
Rhetoric” (2009) examines its use by proponents and opponents of the death penalty.
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A bonus article by Berns, “Shaping the Selves of Young Salespeople through Emotion
Management” (2005, with David Schweingruber), examines how emotion management can be used to
create selves. We build on Spencer Cahill’s concept of “emotional capital” (which we will read about
during our week on socialization) to describe how company managers engage in “emotion mining” to
locate untapped emotional capital and transform the selves of their salespersons.
A number of bonus readings focus on emotion management in the workplace. One of my
favorites is Arnold Arluke’s “Managing Emotions in an Animal Shelter” (1994), which shows how our
societal contradictions about the treatment of animals result in shelter workers having to engage in
emotion management. Other articles on workplace emotion management focus on bill collectors
(Sutton 1991), law firms (Lively 2000), service workers (Godwyn 2006), the criminal justice system
(Goodrum & Stafford 2003), actors (Orzechowicz 2008), victim-advocates (Kolb 2011), veterinarians
(Morris 2012), professional wrestling (Smith 2008), mixed martial arts (Vaccaro, Schrock & McCabe
2011), and social service workers (Copp 1998).
Three articles by Jennifer Lois are included as bonus readings. Two are from her study of a
search and rescue group (which we read about during our week on socialization): “Peaks and Valleys:
The Gendered Emotional Culture of Edgework” (2001) and “Managing Emotions, Intimacy, and
Relationships in a Volunteer Search and Rescue Group” (2001). The other is from her study on
homeschooling: “Role Strain, Emotion Management, and Burnout: Homeschooling Mothers’
Adjustment to the Teacher Role” (2006).
Two bonus readings are by Lori Holyfield: “Manufacturing Adventure: The Buying and Selling
of Emotions” (1999) and “Adventure as Character Work: The Collective Taming of Fear” (1997, with
Gary Alan Fine). Another pair are by Linda Francis: “Ideology and Interpersonal Emotion
Management: Redefining Identity in Two Support Groups” (1997) and “Laughter, the Best Mediation:
Humor as Emotion Management in Interation” (1994). And yet another pair are by Peggy Thoits:
“Managing the Emotions of Others” (1996) and “Processes in Emotional Socialization” (1989, with
Lauren Pollack).
Two bonus readings focus on boredom: Brissett and Snow’s Boredom: Where the Future Isn’t
(1993) and Donna Darden and Alan Marks’ “Boredom: A Socially Devalued Emotion” (1999).
Amanda Gengler won the 2013 Mead Award for her unpublished paper, “‘Keep Your Hope,
Keep Your Faith’: Hope Work and Emotional Threat Management among Families of Seriously Ill
Children” (2013), which is included as a bonus reading.
Also included as bonus readings are another influential SI article on emotion, Susan Shott’s
“Emotion and Social Life: A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis” (1979), which appeared in AJS shortly
before Hochschild’s did, as well as two essays on emotion by Norm Denzin: “A Note on Emotionality,
Self, and Interaction” (1983) and “Emotion and Lived Experience” (1985).
Other bonus readings focus on women’s prisons (Greer 2002), celibate Christians (Creek
2013), abortion regret (Kimport 2012), edgework (Lyng 1990), celebrities (Harris & Ferris 2009), grief
(Lofland 1985), and college football (Zurcher 1982). Finally, David Franks’s chapter on “Emotions”
(2003) from the Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism overviews some of the SI research on emotions.
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Week 7: Doing Things Together
In his 1986 collection Doing Things Together, Howard S. Becker writes that:
Louis Wirth used to tell my cohort of graduate students at the University of Chicago that
sociology studied what was true by virtue of the fact that people everywhere lived in groups.
That definition seemed trivial and still would, if its implications were not so persistently
ignored. We soon learned that it was not trivial because, taken seriously, it meant that you
could not take seriously a lot of other commonly accepted ideas. Seeing things as the
product of people doing things together makes a lot of other views less plausible and less
interesting.
“Doing things together” describes the symbolic interactionist way of thinking about social
organization as people fitting their lines of action together because of their ability to take each other’s
perspectives within shared systems of meaning. Both background readings, Herbert Blumer’s “Society
as Symbolic Interaction” (1969) and Becker’s “Culture: A Sociological View” (1982), lay out a
version of this argument.
My favorite sociological book and the inspiration for my thinking about social organization is
Becker’s Art Worlds (1982), in which he shows how art is a group production made possible by
conventions that facilitate some forms of collective action while making others more difficult. The first
chapter is based on our first core reading “Art as Collective Action” (1974).
Three Becker bonus readings are related to Art Worlds. “Art Worlds and Social Types” (1976)
and “Arts and Crafts” (1978) are two other articles that were incorporated into the book. “‘Art Worlds’
Revisited” (1990) is a reflection on the book and how it came to be.
The final Becker bonus reading is “A Dialogue on the Ideas of ‘World’ and ‘Field’” (2006)
between Becker and Alain Pessin.
The second core reading is by one of Becker’s most prominent students, the renowned urban
ethnographer Elijah Anderson. “The Cosmopolitan Canopy” (2004), from the book of the same
name, discusses spaces in Philadelphia that offer respite from the caution and suspiciousness that
characterize much of city life—and are a theme in Anderson’s earlier work.
Anderson’s dissertation research resulted in the classic Chicago ethnography A Place on the
Corner (2nd ed., 2003), which Anderson reflects on in “Jelly’s Place: An Ethnographic Memoir”
(2003).
Anderson’s next two books, Streetwise: Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community
(1991) and Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (2000), are
based on his ethnographic research in Philadelphia. Two articles from this research, “Sex Codes and
Family Life among Poor Inner-City Youths” (1989) and “The Emerging Philadelphia African
American Structure” (2000), are included as bonus readings. We’ll read another during our week on
deviance.
The most recent Anderson bonus readings are an article on “The Iconic Ghetto” (2012) and a
report from an “exploratory ethnography” with three other ethnographers that emerged from the
cosmopolitan canopy research: “The Legacy of Racial Caste: An Exploratory Ethnography” (2012,
with Duke Austin, Craig Lapriece Holloway & Vani Kulkarni).
Gary Alan Fine is one of the most prolific interactionists. Topics of his research have included
urban legends, Little League baseball, historical reputations, mushroom hunters, and meteorology
stations. The article I’ve selected as his core reading, “The Culture of Production: Aesthetic Choices
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and Constraints in Culinary Work” (1992), is from his study of restaurants, which resulted in the
book Kitchens (1996).
The Fine bonus readings include two others related to his kitchen research: “Organizational
Time: Temporal Demands and the Experience of Work in Restaurant Kitchens” (1990) and “The
Presentation of Ethnic Authenticity: Chinese Food as Social Accomplishment” (1995, with Shun Lu).
(Fine’s article on learning to cook is included as a socialization bonus reading.) Two other bonus
readings concern Fine’s recent research on meteorology: “Shopfloor Cultures: The Ideoculture of
Production in Operational Meteorology” (2006) and “Ground Truth: Verification Games in
Operational Meteorology” (2006). The final empirical articles are one from his Little League research,
“Small Groups and Culture Creation: The Idioculture of Little League Baseball” (1979), and another
on “Secrecy, Trust, and Dangerous Leisure: Generating Group Cohesion in Voluntary Organizations”
(1996, with Lori Holyfield).
The Fine bonus readings also include his MSS presidential address, “Dust: A Study in
Sociological Miniaturism” (2003, with Tim Hallett), and two theoretical pieces on social organization:
“Negotiated Orders and Organizational Cultures” (1984) and “On the Macrofoundations of
Microsociology: Constraint and the Exterior Reality of Structure” (1991).
The final Fine-related bonus reading is Roberta Sassatelli’s “A Serial Ethnographer: An
Interview with Gary Alan Fine” (2009).
Stefan Timmermans is the world’s premier medical ethnographer. Our fourth core reading,
“Suicide Determination and the Professional Authority of Medical Examiners” (2005), is based
on the three years of observing medical examiners perform autopsies that resulted in his book
Postmortem (2006). One of his bonus articles, “The Cause of Death vs. the Gift of Life: Boundary
Maintenance and the Politics of Expertise in Death Investigations” (2002), is also from this research
project.
Two others, “When Death Isn’t Dead: Implicit Social Rationing during Resuscitative Efforts”
(1999) and “Saving Lives or Saving Multiple Identities?: The Double Dynamic of Resuscitation
Scripts” (1996), are from his dissertation research on CPR, which resulted in the book Sudden Death
and the Myth of CPR (1999).
Stefan’s latest book (with Mara Buchbinder), Saving Babies?: The Consequences of Newborn
Genetic Screening (2012), is based on a three-year ethnographic study of newborn genetic screening.
Two bonus readings from that study are their articles “Patients-in-Waiting: Living between Sickness
and Health in the Genomics Era” (2010) and “Newborn Screening and Maternal Diagnosis: Rethinking
Family Benefit” (2011).
The fifth core reading is my own “Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude? The Role of
Positive Thinking in Door-to-Door Sales” (2006). This article is derived from my dissertation
research, which uses a Becker-inspired approach to understanding the social organization of door-todoor salespersons. Another article from my door-to-door sales research, “Doing Money Work in a
Door-to-Door Sales Organization” (2001, with Nancy Berns), is included as a bonus reading. Another
piece from the project was a bonus reading during emotion week.
A major strand of SI thinking about social organization is derived from Anselm Strauss’ book
Negotiations (1978). Originally called “negotiated order,” this perspective now goes by the name
“processual order” and is associated with the concept of “social world.” The basic idea is that “as
actors with varying interests, ideologies, or commitments confront problematic situations, they
continuously engage in interaction strategies such as negotiation, cooperation, manipulation, the
formation of coalitions, or coercion in order to forge solutions that further their individual and
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collective interests. The outcomes of these processes become sedimented into social orders (especially
informal norms, routines, or definitions of situations), but these orders themselves are created,
maintained, and changed over time by action processes such as those listed above. Furthermore, this
processual ordering is embedded in larger sets of contextual conditions that both constrain and enable
the participants' interaction” (Ulmer 1998, p. 251). In other words, people create social organization
through their interactions (e.g., negotiations) and this social organization serves as the environment for
future interactions, which may in turn alter this organization.
Jeffery Ulmer has used this perspective to examine criminal sentencing for his book Social
Worlds of Sentencing: Court Communities Under Sentencing Guidelines (1997). The final core
reading, “The Use and Transformation of Formal Decision-Making Criteria: Sentencing
Guidelines, Organizational Contexts, and Case Processing Strategies” (1998) by Ulmer and John
Kramer, is from this research.
Three other Ulmer articles related to criminal sentencing are included as bonus readings: “Trial
Judges in a Rural Court Community: Contexts, Organizational Relations, and Interaction Strategies”
(1994), “The Organization and Consequences of Social Pasts in Criminal Courts” (1995), and “The
Localized Uses of Federal Sentencing Guidelines in Four U.S. District Courts: Evidence of Processual
Order” (2005). Another bonus reading is Ulmer’s collaboration with Mindy Bradley-Engen, “Social
Worlds of Stripping: The Processual Orders of Exotic Dance” (2009).
I’ve also included a number of bonus readings that use a negotiated order/social worlds
approach. Four of these are from a 1982 special issue of Urban Life on negotiated order: Lawrence
Busch’s “History, Negotiation, and Structure in Agricultural Research,” Peter Hall and Dee Ann
Spencer-Hall’s “The Social Conditions of the Negotiated Order,” David Maines’ “In Search of
Mesostructure: Studies in the Negotiated Order,” and Anselm Strauss’ “Interorganizational
Negotiation.”
Some other theoretical essays in this tradition are Maines’ “Social Organization and Social
Structure in Symbolic Interactionist Thought” (1977), Strauss’ “A Social World Perspective” (1978),
Peter Hall’s “Interactionism and the Study of Social Organization” (1987), and Hall & McGinty’s
“Policy as the Transformation of Intentions: Producing Program from Statute” (1997).
The bonus readings also include three empirical articles in the processual order tradition by
Mark Dirsmith and his colleagues: Michael Fischer & Dirsmith’s “Strategy, Technology, and Social
Processes within Professional Culture: A Negotiated Order, Ethnographic Perspective” (1995), Onker
Basu, Dirsmith & Parveen Gupta’s ASR article “The Coupling of the Symbolic and the Technical in an
Institutional Context: The Negotiated Order of the GAO’s Audit Reporting Process,” and John Russell,
Dirsmith & Sajay Samuel’s “Stained Steel: ESOPs, Meta-Power, and the Ironies of Corporate
Democracy” (2004). Another bonus reading in this tradition is Lisa Bogardus’ “The Bolt Wars: A
Social Worlds Perspective on Rock Climbing and Intragroup Conflict” (2012).
Also among the other bonus readings are three famous ASR articles on aligning actions: Marvin
Scott and Stanford Lyman’s “Accounts” (1968), John Hewitt and Randall Stokes’ “Disclaimers”
(1975), and Stokes and Hewitt’s “Aligning Actions” (1976).
Another bonus article is David Owen Gardner’s 2003 Blumer Award winning paper, “The
Portable Community Life: Mobility and Modernization in Bluegrass Festival Life” (2004).
Finally, bonus readings are a collection of interesting articles about people doing things
together: two articles by Margarethe Kusenbach on neighborhoods, “Patterns of Neighboring: Practing
Community in the Parochial Realm” (1996) and “A Hierarchy of Urban Communities: Observations
on the Nested Character of Place” (2008); two articles by Antony Puddephatt on chess, “Chess Playing
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as Strategic Activity” (2003) and “Incorporating Ritual into Greedy Institution Theory: The Case of
Devotion in Amateur Chess” (2008); Melinda Milligan’s “Interactional Past and Potential: The Social
Construction of Place Attachment” (1998); Ara Francis’ “The Dynamics of Family Trouble: MiddleClass Parents Whose Children Have Problems” (2012); Adam Isaiah Green’s “Playing the (Sexual)
Field: The Interactional Basis of Systems of Sexual Stratification” (2011); and Angus Vail’s “The
Commodification of Time in Two Art Worlds” (1999).
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Week 8: Socialization
Howard S. Becker, in his seminal article on “Becoming a Marihuana User” (1953), claims that:
[T]he presence of a given kind of behavior is the result of a sequence of social
experiences during which the person acquires a conception of the meaning of the
behavior, and perceptions and judgments of objects and situations, all of which make
the activity possible and desirable. Thus, the motivation or disposition to engage in the
activity is built up in the course of learning to engage in it and does not antedate this
learning process. For such a view it is not necessary to identify those “traits” which
“cause” the behavior. Instead, the problem becomes one of describing the set of changes
in the person’s conception of the activity and of the experience it provides for him.
The articles for this week apply this interactionist understanding of socialization as the learning of
shared understandings that make social action possible.
The first three core articles examine socialization among children and adolescents. In their
article, “Socialization to Gender Roles: Popularity among Elementary School Boys and Girls”
(1992) Patti Adler, Steven Kless, and Peter Adler show how elementary school children socialize each
other to act as boys and girls are supposed to act. The article is from the Adlers’ project that resulted in
their book Peer Power: Preadolescent Culture and Identity (1998). I’ve included two bonus readings
from this project: “The Carpool: A Socializing Adjunct to the Educational Experience” (1984) and
“Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Preadolescent Cliques” (1995).
Arnold Arluke is the leading interactionist researcher on human-animal interactions. His article
“Animal Abuse as Dirty Play” (2002) examines abuse of animals by adolescents as a way of
appropriating adult culture. This article from Symbolic Interaction was followed by a commentary by
Spencer Cahill, “Beastly Bodies in Human Hands, Heads, and Hearts: Reflections on Animal Abuse as
Dirty Play,” which is included as a bonus reading. Also included is “Learning the Scientist’s Role:
Animal Dissection in Middle School” (1997) by Dorian Solot and Arluke. Arluke’s research on animal
cruelty is collected in his book Just a Dog: Understanding Animal Cruelty and Ourselves (2006).
The final core article on adolescent socialization is Gary Alan Fine’s “Games and Truths:
Learning to Construct Social Problems in High School Debate” (2000), which is based on his study
of high school debate teams described in the book Gifted Tongues: High School Debate and
Adolescent Culture (2001). In addition to providing an interesting look at socialization into an
adolescent subculture, the article also introduces the social constructionist approach to social problems,
which we will later examine in detail. Two Fine articles are included as bonus reading: another article
from this project, “Adolescence as Cultural Toolkit: High School Debate and the Repertoires of
Childhood and Adulthood” (2004), and an article from his restaurant research, “Occupational
Aesthetics: How Trade School Students Learn to Cook” (1985).
Lynda Lytle Holmstrom, David Karp and Paul Gray have published a series of articles on the
anticipatory socialization of prospective college students. Their core reading, “Why Parents Pay for
College: The Good Parent, Perceptions of Advantage, and the Intergenerational Transfer of
Opportunity” (2011) examines what parents think about the cost of their children’s college education.
Three other articles from their project, including as bonus readings, are: “Leaving Home for College:
Expectations for Selective Reconstruction of Self” (1998), “Why Laundry, Not Hegel?” (2002), and
“Of Roots and Wings: Letting Go of the College-Bound Child” (2004).
Interactionist research on socialization has not been limited to childhood, as Becker’s
marihuana article demonstrates. Early interactionist research by Everett Hughes, Becker and other
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Hughes students examined professional socialization. A more recent article in this tradition is Spencer
Cahill’s “Emotional Capital and Professional Socialization: The Case of Mortuary Science
Students (and Me)” (1999), which focuses on emotional socialization. Another article from the same
project, “The Boundaries of Professionalism: The Case of North American Funeral Direction” (1999),
is a bonus reading.
Cahill’s early research focused on childhood socialization. Three articles from this research are
included as bonus readings: “Self Definition: The Case of Gender Identity Acquisition” (1986),
“Children and Civility: Ceremonial Deviance and the Acquisition of Ritual Competence” (1987), and
“Fashioning Males and Females: Apperance Management and the Social Reproducton of Gender”
(1989).
The final core reading, Jennifer Lois’ “Socialization to Heroism: Individual and
Collectivism in a Voluntary Search and Rescue Group” (1999), is based on her participant
observation in a search and rescue group working in a mountainous Colorado county. Her research
resulted in the book Heroic Efforts (2003) and two additional journal articles, which are included as
bonus readings for our week on emotions.
Another interactionist who began his career examining childhood socialization is Norman
Denzin. Two of his key articles, “The Genesis of Self in Early Childhood” (1972) and “Play, Games
and Interaction: The Contexts of Childhood Socialization” (1975), are included as bonus readings.
Three other articles round out the bonus readings: Allison Hicks’ “Role Fusion: The
Occupational Socialization of Prison Chaplains” (2008), Ralph LaRossa and Cynthia Sinha’s
“Constructing the Transition to Parenthood” (2006), and Adie Nelson’s “The Things That Dreams Are
Made On: Dreamwork and the Socialization of ‘Stage Mothers’” (2001).
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Week 9: Inequality
One regular criticism of symbolic interactionism is its supposed inability to adequately deal
with inequality and a related constellation of key sociological concepts—social structure, social
stratification, power and so on. While many interactionists would dispute this claim, it does seem to be
the case that interactionists’ contributions to these areas have not been widely recognized. Or, as Scott
Harris puts it: “interactionists have not fully displayed the unique and significant contributions they
can make to the study of inequality” (Harris 2001, p. 458). Over the next two weeks, we’ll be reading
recent interactionist studies of inequality. Although this week’s topic is inequality and next week’s is
gender, many of the articles for both weeks take an intersectional approach.
The first two core articles make the case that interactionism can contribute to understanding
inequality. Schwalbe, Godwin, Holden, Schrock, Thompson & Wolkomir’s “Generic Processes in the
Reproduction of Inequality: An Interactionist Analysis” (2000) is an attempt to discover the titular
“generic processes” through a qualitative meta-analysis of qualitative research on inequality. Other
articles by Schwalbe and Wolkomir are among next week’s bonus readings.
In his article “What Can Constructionism Contribute to the Study of Inequality? The Case
of Marriage and Beyond” (2001), Scott Harris argues for applying an interpretive constructionist
approach to inequality with examples from his dissertation research on marital inequality, which
resulted in the book The Meanings of Marital Equality (2006). Three other articles related to his book
are included as bonus readings: “The Social Construction of Equality in Everyday Life” (2000),
“Studying Equality/Inequality: Naturalist and Constructionist Approaches to Equality in Marriage”
(2003), and “Challenging the Conventional Wisdom: Recent Proposals for the Interpretive Study of
Inequality” (2004). The course pack also includes two other bonus readings by Harris: “Status
Inequality and Close Relationships: An Integrative Typology of Bond-Saving Strategies” (1997) and
“What Is Family Diversity? Objective and Interpretive Approaches” (2008).
Edward Morris, whose ethnographic research in an urban Texas middle school resulted in the
book Learning the Hard Way: Masculinity, Place, and the Gender Gap (2012), is the author of our
third core reading “‘Tuck in that Shirt!’ Race, Class, Gender, and Discipline in an Urban School”
(2005). Two other articles from this project, “From ‘Middle Class’ to ‘Trailer Trash’: Teachers’
Perceptions of White Students in a Predominately Minority School” (2005b) and “‘Ladies’ or
‘Loudies’?: Perceptions and Experiences of Black Girls in Classrooms” (2007b), are included as bonus
readings. Another two Morris bonus readings come from his research in a rural school: “‘Rednecks,’
‘Rutters,’ and ‘Rithmetic: Social Class, Masculinity, and Schooling in a Rural Context” (2008) and
“Repelling the ‘Rutter’: Social Differentiation among Rural Teenagers” (2012). A final Morris bonus
reading is his methodological reflection “Researching Race: Identifying a Social Construction through
Qualitative Methods and an Interpretive Perspective” (2007).
The next core reading is from Amy Wilkins, whose research on happiness among evangelical
Christians we read during our week on emotions. This week’s core article by Wilkins is “‘Not Out to
Start a Revolution’: Race, Gender, and Emotional Restraint among Black University Men”
(2012). Two other articles by Wilkins on black college students, “Becoming Black Women: Intimate
Stories and Intersectional Identities” (2012b) and “Stigma and Status: Interracial Intimacy and
Intersectional Identities among Black College Men” (2012c), are included as bonus readings. We’ll
read our final Wilkins core reading next week.
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Our fifth core reading takes us from school to the workplace, viz., David Embrick and Kasey
Henricks’ study of racial epithets at a baked goods company, “Discursive Colorlines at Work: How
Epithets and Stereotypes are Racially Unequal” (2013). An article from Embrick’s dissertation on
diversity in U.S. corporations, “The Diversity Ideology in the Business World: A New Oppression for
a New Age” (2011), is a bonus reading.
Embrick is a student of the prolific scholar of race Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, who uses interview
data from surveys of college students and Detroit residents to understand racism. I’ve included four
articles from this research as bonus readings: Bonilla-Silva and Embrick’s “Are Blacks Color Blind
Too? An Interview-Based Analysis of Black Detroiters’ Racial Views” (2001), Bonilla-Silva’s “The
Linguistics of Color Blind Racism: How to Talk Nasty about Blacks without Sounding ‘Racist’”
(2002), Bonilla-Silva, Amanda Lewis and Embrick’s “‘I Did Not Get that Job Because of a Black
Man…”: The Story Lines and Testimonies of Color-Blind Racism” (2004), and Bonilla-Silva and
Embrick’s “‘Every Place Has a Ghetto…’: The Significance of Whites’ Social and Residential
Segregation” (2008). A final bonus reading from Bonilla-Silva is his article with David Dietrich, “The
Sweet Enchantment of Color-Blind Racism in Obamerica” (2011).
Our final core reading is an unpublished paper by Abdi Kusow and Mohamed Eno, “Narrating
Social Stratification: The Construction of Social Stratification and Inequality in Somalia,” which
Abdi will be joining us to discuss. Three bonus readings by Abdi in the course pack are “Beyond
Indigeous Authenticity: Reflections on the Insider/Outsider Debate in Immigration” (2003),
“Migration and Racial Formations Among Somali Immigrants in North America” (2006), and “Racial
and Religious Contexts: Situational Identities among Lebanese and Somali Muslim Immigrants”
(2006, with Kristine Ajrouch).
Herbert Blumer wrote one of the earliest interactionist analyses of race, “Race Prejudice as a
Sense of Group Position” (1958). I’ve included that article as a bonus reading along with an earlier
Blumer article on segregation, “Social Science and the Desegregation Process” (1956), and a pair of
articles discussing Blumer’s contribution, Stanford Lyman’s “Interactionism and the Study of Race
Relations at the Macro-Sociological Level: The Contribution of Herbert Blumer” (1984) and Pamela
Perry’s “White Universal Identity as a ‘Sense of Group Position’” (2007).
Perry has two other article among the bonus readings: “White Means Never Having to Say
You’re Ethnic: White Youth and the Construction of ‘Cultureless’ Identities” (2001) and “Relational
Understanding and White Antiracist Praxis” (2009, with Alexis Shotwell).
Another bonus reading that looks back to Mead, Blumer and the Chicago School is Ruth
Horowitz’s “Inequalities, Democracy, and Fieldwork in the Chicago Schools of Yesterday and Today”
(2001).
The bonus readings include a pair of articles that describe interactionist theoretical approaches
to inequality: Leon Anderson and David Snow’s “Inequality and the Self: Exploring Connections from
an Interactionist Perspective” (2001) and Michael Sauder’s “Symbols and Contexts: An Interactionist
Approach to the Study of Social Status” (2005).
The bonus readings also include four by Adia Harvey Wingfield: “The Modern Mammy and
the Angry Black Man: African American Professionals’ Experiences with Gendered Racism in the
Workplace” (2007), “Racializing the Glass Escalator: Reconsidering Men’s Experiences with
Women’s Work” (2009), “Are Some Emotions Marked ‘Whites Only’? Racialized Feeling Rules in
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Professional Workplaces” (2010), and “Getting Angry to Get Ahead: Black College Men, Emotional
Performance, and Encouraging Respectable Masculinity” (2013, with Brandon Jackson).
Kristie Ford’s “Doing Fake Masculinity, Being Real Men: Present and Future Constructions of
Self among Black College Men” (2011) rounds out the articles on black college men.
Another bonus reading is Alice Fothergill’s Blumer Award-winning paper “The Stigma of
Charity: Gender, Class, and Disaster Assistance” (2003).
Additional bonus readings include two on public transportation—Danielle Raudenbush’s “Race
and Interactions on Public Transportation: Social Cohesion and the Production of Common Norms and
a Collective Black Identity” (2012) and Eva Swyngedouw’s “The Segregation of Social Interactions in
the Red Line L-Train in Chicago” (2013).
The remaining bonus readings are: Lori Kendall’s “Meaning and Identity in ‘Cyberspace’: The
Performance of Gender, Class, and Race Online” (1998), Alexandra Murphy’s “‘Litterers’: How
Objects of Physical Disorder Are Used to Construct Subjects of Social Disorder in a Suburb” (2012),
Debbie Storrs’ “Whiteness as Stigma: Essentialist Identity Work by Mixed-Race Women” (1999),
Mimi Schippers’ “Doing Difference/Doing Power: Negotations of Race and Gender in a Mentoring
Program” (2008) and Clovis White and Peter Burke’s “Ethnic Role Identity among Black and White
College Students: An Interactionist Approach” (1987).
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Week 10: Gender
Symbolic interactionism is potentially an excellent perspective for making sense of how gender
is socially constructed, how people develop and enact gendered identities, and how gender is
maintained and resisted in everyday interaction. Like much of the discipline, SI has failed to live up to
that promise until quite recently. Hopefully, the articles collected for this week, most from the past 10
years, point toward a stronger interactionist future in the field of gender
The first two core articles focus on gender in the workplace. The first is Christine Williams’s
“Shopping as Symbolic Interaction: Race, Class, and Gender in the Toy Store” (2006). Her
ethonographic research in a pair of toy stores resulted in the book Inside Toyland (2006) as well as the
bonus reading “Inequality in the Toy Store” (2004).
Williams is the author of the classic article “The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men
in the ‘Female’ Professions” (1992) and its recent follow-up, “The Glass Escalator, Revisited: Gender
Inequality in Neoliberal Times” (2013), both included as bonus readings. The bonus readings also
include number of readings on gender in the workplace by Williams and her frequent collaborators
Kirsten Dellinger and Patti Giuffre: “Boundary Lines: Sexual Harassment in Restaurants” (Giuffre &
Williams 1994), “Makeup at Work: Negotiating Appearance Rules in the Workplace” (Dellinger &
Williams 1997), “Not Just Bodies: Strategies for Desexualizing the Physical Examination of Patients”
(Giuffre & Williams 2000), “The Locker Room and the Dorm Room: Workplace Norms and the
Boundaries of Sexual Harassment in Magazine Editing” (Dellinger & Williams 2002), “Wearing
Gender and Sexuality ‘On Your Sleeve’: Dress Norms and the Importance of Occupational and
Organizational Culture at Work” (Dellinger 2002), “Masculinities in ‘Safe’ and ‘Embattled’
Organizations: Accounting for Pornographic and Feminist Magazines” (Dellinger 2004), and “‘No
Retribution for Being Gay?’: Inequality in Gay-Friendly Workplaces” (Giuffre, Dellinger & Williams
2008).
The second workplace article is “‘There Oughtta Be a Law Against Bitches’: Masculinity
Lessons in Police Academy Training” (2002) based on field work at a police acadamy by our own
Ana Prokos (who co-authored with her major professor, Irene Padavic). Padavic is also the article of
the 1991 Symbolic Interaction article “The Re-Creation of Gender in a Male Workplace,” which is
included as a bonus reading.
The remaining four core readings make a connection between gender and sex(uality). Symbolic
interactionists have been advancing the argument that human sexuality is socially constructed for over
half a century and have used this insight to conduct some excellent research. An early formulation of
the interactionist view of sex comes from Manford Kuhn’s 1954 review essay “Kinsey’s View of
Human Behavior,” which was a bonus reading during week 4:
A symbolic interactionist view of sex would go something like this: Sex acts, sexual objects,
sexual partners (human or otherwise) like other objects toward which human beings behave
are social objects; that is they have meanings because meanings are assigned to them by the
groups of which human beings are members, for there is nothing in the physiology of
[humans] which gives any dependable clue as to what pattern of activity will be followed
toward them.
Two of this week’s bonus readings provide good background information on interactionism’s
research on sex: Chad Heap’s fascinating bonus reading “The City as a Sexual Laboratory: The Queer
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Heritage of the Chicago School” (2003), which includes information on the W.I. Thomas sex scandal;
and Ken Plummer’s “Queers, Bodies and Postmodern Sexualities: A Note on Revisiting the ‘Sexual’ in
Symbolic Interactionism” (2003). Another bonus reading by Plummer is “Generational Sexualities,
Subterranean Traditions, and the Hauntings of the Sexual World: Some Preliminary Remarks” (2010).
Our first core reading connected to sex is Laura Carpenter’s “Gender and the Meaning and
Experience of Virginity Loss in the Contemporary United States” (2002), which came out of
Carpenter’s dissertation research interviewing people about their virginity “loss.” This research also
produced the book Virginity Lost (2005) and the bonus readings “The Ambiguity of ‘Having Sex’: The
Subjective Experience of Virginity Loss in the United States” (2001). Further research on the topic
resulted in the bonus reading “Like a Virgin… Again?: Secondary Virginity as an Ongoing Gendered
Social Construction” (2001).
The next core reading is “Women and Their Clitoris: Personal Discovery, Signification,
and Use” (2007) by Dennis Waskul, Philip Vannini and Desiree Wiesen. The researchers used
anonymous notebooks to study the meanings women give their clitorises. Some of Waskul’s other
research on sex can be found among the bonus readings for week 5.
The final two core readings examine men doing gender through sexuality. David Grazien looks
at young single men doing masculinity in “The Girl Hunt: Urban Nightlife and the Performance of
Masculinity as Collective Activity” (2007).
Amy Wilkins examines how Goths and Christian men perform their masculinity in
“Masculinity Dilemmas: Sexuality and Intimacy Talk among Christians and Goths” (2009), the
third of her articles we’ve read. Wilkins’ triple-site ethnographic dissertation research also resulted in
the book Wannabees, Goths, and Christians (2007) and two bonus readings, “Puerto Rican Wannabes:
Sexual Spectacle and the Making of Race, Class, and Gender Boundaries” (2004) and “‘So Full of
Myself as a Chick’: Goth Women, Sexual Independence, and Gender Egalitarianism” (2004).
The background reading is Mary White Stewart’s chapter on “Gender” (2003) from the
Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism.
I’ll begin rounding up the many excellent bonus articles in the course pack with articles
connected to two very successful concepts with roots in interactionism. The first of these is “doing
gender,” which was introduced in Candace West and Don Zimmerman’s “Doing Gender” (1987) and
further developed in West & Fenstermaker’s “Doing Difference” (1995) and West & Zimmerman’s
“Accounting for Doing Gender” (2009).
The other is the concept of “sexual scripts,” which was developed by two SI fellow travelers,
William Simon and John Gagnon. A pair of Chicago School sociologists who were hired by the Kinsey
Institute, they co-authored the influential book Sexual Conduct (1973). Gagnon later was involved in
the National Health and Social Life Survey, which resulted in the books The Social Organization of
Sexuality (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael & Michaels 1994) and Sex in America (Michael, Gagnon,
Laumann and Kolata 1995). Both books have a distinctive social constructionist perspective, which is
unusual for a report based on survey research. I’ve included three overviews/retrospectives of William
and Gagnon’s work: Gagnon’s “The Explicit and Implicit Use of the Scripting Perspective in Sex
Research” (1991), Simon and Gagnon’s “Sexual Scripts: Origins, Influences and Changes” (2003) and
“John H. Gagnon and William Simon’s Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sex. A 25th
Anniversary Retrospective by the Authors” (1999).
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Another bonus article of note is by Iowa State faculty member Sharon Bird. Sharon doesn’t
self-identify as an interactionist, but her paper “Welcome to the Men’s Club: Homosociality and the
Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity” (1996) seems congrunent with the perspective.
A number of interactionists have multiple articles among the bonus readings. Beth Montemurro
published two articles from her study of wedding showers: “‘You Go ’Cause You Have to’: The Bridal
Shower as a Ritual of Obligation” (2002) and “Add Men, Don’t Stir: Reproducing Traditional Gender
Roles in Modern Wedding Showers” (2005). A more recent article by Montemurro is “Getting
Married, Breaking Up, and Making Up for Lost Time: Relationship Transitions as Turning Points in
Women’s Sexuality” (forthcoming).
We encountered Michelle Wolkomir during our week on emotions when we read about her
study gay and ex-gay Christian support groups and during our week on inquality, when we read her
collaboration with Schwalbe et al. on generic processes in the reproduction of inequality. This week’s
bonus readings by Wolkomir include two more from her study of gay/ex-gay support groups,
“Wrestling with the Angels of Meaning: The Revisionist Ideological Work of Gay and Ex-Gay
Christian Men” (2001) and “‘Giving It Up To God’: Negotiating Femininity in Support Groups for
Wives of Ex-Gay Christian Men” (2004); her article “‘You Fold Like a Little Girl’: (Hetero)Gender
Framing and Competitive Strategies of Men and Women in No Limit Texas Hold Em Poker Games”
(2012); and her collaboration with Michael Schwalbe, “The Masculine Self as Problem and Resource
in Interview Studies of Men” (2001). Schwalbe, who was Wolkomir’s major professor, also published
an important article titled “Male Supremacy and the Narrowing of the Moral Self” (1992).
Adina Nack published two articles from her study of women with STDs: “Damaged Goods:
Women Managing the Stigma of STDs” (2000) and “Bad Girls and Fallen Women: Chronic STD
Diagnoses as Gateways to Tribal Stigma” (2002).
Edward Sumerau, who conducted research in a LGBT church, published “‘That’s What a Man
Is Supposed to Do’: Compensatory Manhood Acts in an LGBT Christian Church” (2012) in Gender &
Society. Another paper, “Accomplishing Organizational Manhood: LGBT Christians’ Social
Construction of a Masculine Organizational Culture,” co-won the 2012 Blumer Award, but is yet
unpublished.
Sinikka Elliott’s contributions to the bonus readings are: “Parents’ Constructions of Teen
Sexuality: Sex Panics, Contradictory Discourses and Social Inequality” (2010); “The Performance of
Desire: Gender and Sexual Negotiation in Long-Term Marriages” (2008, with Debra Umberson); and
“‘We Want Them to Be as Heterosexual as Possible’: Fathers Talk about Their Teen Children’s
Sexuality” (2011, with Nicholas Solebello).
Emily Kane has published two articles from her research on how parents think about the gender
of their children: “‘No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That!”: Parents’ Responses to Children’s
Gender Noncomformity” (2006) and “‘I Wanted a Soul Mate’: Gendered Anticipation and
Frameworks of Accountibility in Parents’ Preferences for Sons and Daughters” (2009).
The final multiple-article author is Mindy Stombler, who has published two articles on
fraternity “little sister” programs: “‘Buddies’ or ‘Slutties’: The Collective Sexual Reputation of
Fraternity Little Sisters” (1994) and “Sister Acts: Resisting Men’s Domination in Black and White
Fraternity Little Sister Programs” (1997, with Irene Padavic).
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A number of bonus readings focus on the connection between gender and sexual behavior: Jenn
Dunn’s “Defining Women: Notes Toward an Understanding of Structure and Agency in the
Negotiation of Sex” (1998); Paul Rasmussen and Lauren L. Kuhn’s “The New Masseuse: Play for
Pay” (1976); Laurel Richardson’s ASR article “Secrecy and Status: The Social Construction of
Forbidden Relationships” (1988); Carol Rambo Ronai’s “Turn-Ons for Money: Interactional Strategies
of the Table Dancer” (1989); Elizabeth Sheff’s “Polyamorous Women, Sexual Subjectivity and
Power” (2005); and David Snow, Cherylon Robinson, and Patricia McCall’s “‘Cooling Out’ Men in
Singles Bars and Nightclubs: Observations on the Interpersonal Survival Strategies of Women in
Public Places” (1991).
Another set of bonus readings are on doing/constructing/reproducing masculinity/femininity:
Dana Berkowitz’s “Consuming Eroticism: Gender Performance and Presentations in Pornographic
Establishments” (2006); Jason Eastman’s “Rebel Manhood: The Hegemonic Masculinity of the
Southern Rock Music Revival” (2012); Matthew Ezzell’s “‘Barbie Dolls’ on the Pitch: Identity Work,
Defensive Othering, and Inequality in Women’s Rugby” (2009); Molly George’s “Making Sense of
Muscle: The Body Experiences of Collegiate Women Athletes” (2005); and Reuben A. Buford May’s
“Of Mice, Rats, and Men: Exploring the Role of Rodents in Constructing Masculinity Within a Group
of Young African American Males” (2004).
The remaining bonus articles cover a wide range of topics: Kerry Daly’s Time, Gender, and the
Negotiation of Family Schedules” (2002); Kylan Mattias de Vries, Kylan Mattias’ “Intersectional
Identities and Conceptions of the Self: The Experience of Transgender People” (2012); Amy
Denissen’s “Crossing the Line: How Women in the Building Trades Interpret and Respond to Sexual
Conduct at Work” (2010); Asia Friedman’s “Believing Not Seeing: A Blind Phenomenology of Sexed
Bodies” (2012); Elaine Bell Kaplan’s “Doing Care on the Run: Family Strategies in the Contested
Terrain of Gender and Institutional Intransigence” (2010); David Maines & Monica Hardesty’s
“Temporality and Gender: Young Adults’ Career and Family Plans” (1987); Janice McCabe’s “Doing
Multiculturalism: An Interactionist Analysis of the Practices of a Multicultural Society” (2011); Krista
McQueeney’s “‘We Are God’s Children, Y’all’: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Lesbian- and GayAffirming Congregations”; Elena Neiterman’s “Pregnant Bodies in Social Context: Natural,
Disruptive, and Unrecognized Pregnancy” (2013); Steven Ortiz’s “Using Power: An Exploration of
Control Work in the Sports Marriage” (2006); Michael Ramirez’s “‘My Dog’s Just Like Me’: Dog
Ownership as a Gender Display” (2006); Martin Silverstein’s “Justice in Genderland: Through a
Parole Looking Glass” (2006); William Spencer’s “The Transformation of Gender into Conversational
Advantage: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach” (1989); Laurel Richardson Walum’s “The Changing
Door Ceremony: Notes on the Operation of Sex Roles in Everyday Life” (1974); and Kristen Yount’s
“Ladies, Flirts, and Tomboys: Strategies for Managing Sexual Harassment in an Underground Coal
Mine” (1991).
Finally Mary White Stewart’s chapter on “Gender” (2003) from the Handbook of Symbolic
Interactionism overviews some SI research on gender.
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Week 11: Deviance, Violence and Social Control
What is the relationship between symbolic interactionism and the study of crime and deviance.
According to Jeffery Ulmer in his article, “Demarginalizing Symbolic Interactionism” (2003) (a bonus
reading from week 1), SI “permeates” criminology:
As any good criminology textbook can show, the seven major criminological theories are strain theory, social disorganization theory, differential association theory, opportunity theory, social control theory, labeling theory, and, more recently, self control theory and routine activities theory. Of these seven, five are either directly influenced by symbolic interactionism or share common roots and key pragmatist assumptions: social disorganization, differential association, social control, opportunity, and labeling…. This is no accident, since symbolic interactionism and the sociological study of crime have common roots in the classic Chicago school.
On the other hand, much of criminology, with its focus on why people become criminals, appears to
ignore SI’s key insights. In his interview with Julius Debro (1970) (included as a bonus reading for
week 2), Howard S. Becker claims that his SI approach to deviance (labeling theory) represents
“complete continuity with the rest of sociology.”
[However, criminologists] accepted the commonsense notion that there must be something
wrong with criminals, otherwise they wouldn’t act that way. They asked “Why do people go
into crime? Why don’t they stop? How can we stop them?” The study of crime lost its
connection with the mainstream of sociological development and became a very bizarre
deformation of sociology, designed to find out why people were doing bad things instead of
finding out the organization of interaction in that sphere of life. I had approached the problem
differently, the way I’d learned to do in studying occupations.… So I approached deviance as
the study of people whose occupations, one might say, was either crime or catching criminals.
Much SI research on crime and deviance has followed Becker in attempting to understand
criminals and deviants in terms of the same generic principles—role-taking, impression management,
and so on—as anyone else. Deviants are viewed as having “careers,” and deviant acts themselves are
viewed as situated accomplishments by self-directed actors. SI researchers have attempted to
understand the meanings of criminal/deviant behavior for the people involved in them, e.g., deviant
actors, victims, agents of social control, moral entrepreneurs.
Since the difference between a deviant act and a non-deviant act is how it has been defined,
another SI strand of work has focused on how some acts become defined as deviant. This approach can
be seen in the social problems readings we will read for week 12.
One of the most important SI scholars of crime is Lonnie Athens, whose research is based on
in-depth interviews with violent criminals. His findings are reported in two books, The Creation of
Dangerous Violent Criminals (1989) and Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited (1997). Our first
core reading is his article “Violent Crime: A Symbolic Interactionist Study” (1977), which lays out
an elegant theory about the connection between interpretations of situations that could result in
violence and the selves of the potential violent criminals. Six other Athens articles are included as
bonus readings: “The Self and the Violent Criminal Act” (1974), “Character Contests and Violent
Criminal Conduct: A Critique” (1985), “Dominance, Ghettos, and Violent Crime” (1998), “One Man’s
Story: How I Became a ‘Disorganized,’ Dangerous Criminal” (2004, with Randy Starr), “Violent
Encounters: Violent Engagements, Skirmishes, and Tiffs” (2005), and “Human Subordination from a
Radical Interactionist’s Perspective” (2010).
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Athens’ perspective is evaluated in Ian O’Donnell’s bonus reading, “A New Paradigm for
Understanding Violence? Testing the Limits of Lonnie Athen’s Theory” (2003).
The next core reading, “Peaceful Warriors: Codes for Violence Among Adult Male Bar
Fighters” (2013) by Heath Copes, Andy Hochstetler; and Craig J. Forsyth, is another example of
excellent research that seeks to understand a crime by learning what it means to the criminals. Copes,
Hochstetler and their colleagues have published a large number of works in the criminal interview
genre. The bonus readings include 14 of these on such topics as violent crime—“The ‘Code of the
Street’ and the Generation of Street Violence in the UK” (Finoa Brookman, Trevor Bennett,
Hochstetler & Copes 2011), “Street Codes as Formula Stories: How Inmates Recount Violence”
(Brookman, Copes & Hochstetler 2011), and “‘That’s Not Who I Am’: How Offenders Commit
Violent Acts and Reject Authentically Violent Selves” (Hochstetler, Copes & Williams 2010)—auto
theft/car jacking—“Streetlife and the Rewards of Auto Theft” (Copes 2003), “‘Drive It Like You Stole
It.’: Auto Theft and the Illusion of Normalcy” (Michael Cerbonneau & Copes 2006), “The Key to Auto
Theft: Emerging Methods of Auto Theft from Offenders’ Perspective” (Copes & Cherbonneau 2006),
and “Getting the Upper Hand: Scripts for Managing Victim Resistance in Carjackings” (Copes,
Hochstetler & Cherbonneau 2012)—drug use—“Rock Rentals: The Social Organization and
Interpersonal Dynamics of Crack-for-Cars Transactions in Louisiana, USA” (Copes, Craig Forsyth and
Rod Bruson 2007) and “‘We Weren’t Like No Regular Dope Fiends’: Negotiating Hustler and
Crackhead Identities” (Copes, Hochstetler & Patrick Williams 2008)—online piracy—“Transferring
Subcultural Knowledge On-Line: Practices and Beliefs of Persistent Digital Pirates” (Thomas Holt &
Copes 2010)—crime and gender—“Situational Construction of Masculinity among Male Street
Thieves” (Copes & Hochstetler 2003) and “Gender, Identity, and Accounts: How White Collar
Offenders Do Gender When Making Sense of Their Crimes” (Paul Klenowski, Copes & Christopher
Mullins 2011)—co-offender interaction—“Opportunities and Decisions: Interactional Dynamics in
Robbery and Burglary Groups” (Hochstetler 2001)—and crime sprees—“Sprees and Runs:
Opportunity Construction and Criminal Episodes” (Hochstetler 2002).
Another accomplished symbolic interactionist in the criminal interview genre is Bruce Jacobs,
who has published articles on selling drugs—“Drug Dealing and Negative Reciprocity” (1998), “Crack
to Heroin? Drug Markets and Transition” (1999) and “Crack Dealing, Gender and Arrest Avoidance”
(1998, with Jody Miller)—car jacking—“Carjacking and Copresence” (2012) and “Carjacking,
Streetlife and Offender Motivation” (2003, with Volkan Topalli and Richard Wright)—criminal
retaliation—“Managing Retaliation: Drug Robbery and Informal Sanction Threats” (2000, with Topalli
& Wright), “A Typology of Street Criminal Retaliation” (2004), “Gender, Streetlife and Criminal
Retaliation” (2004 with Mullins & Wright), and “Bounded Rationality, Retaliation, and the Spread of
Urban Violence” (2010 with Wright)—robbery—“Stick-Up, Street Culture, and Offender Motivation”
(1999, with Wright), “Moralistic Street Robbery” (2008, with Wright), “Serendipity in Robbery Target
Selection” (2010)—and snitching—”Snitching and the Code of the Street” (2003 with Richard
Rosenfeld & Wright 2003).
One of the most famous articles on the motives of criminals is David Luckenbill’s “Criminal
Homicide as a Situated Transaction” (1977), which relies on analysis of police records (not interviews
with criminals). Another Luckenbill bonus reading in this vein is his “Generating Compliance: The
Case of Robbery” (1981), which relies on both police records and interviews with offenders and
victims.
Other bonus articles on the rationale for and accomplishment of criminal acts include
“Constructing Coercion: The Organization of Sexual Assault” (2005) by Brian Monahan, Joseph
Marolla and David Bromley; “Up It Up: Gender and the Accomplishment of Street Robbery” (1998)
by Jodi Miller; “Gang Fights versus Cat Fights: Urban Young Men’s Gendered Narratives of
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Violence” (2010) by Jennifer Cobbina, Toya Like-Haislip and Miller; “Character Contests and
Dispute-Related Offenses” (2003) by Gini Deibert and Terance Miethe; “‘They Say that You Are a
Danger but You Are Not’: Represntations and Construction of the Moral Self in Narratives of
‘Dangerous Individuals” (2006) by Gill Green, Nigel South and Rose Smith; “The Management of a
Mugging” (1977) by Robert Lejeune; and “‘We Have to Take These Guys Out’: Motivations for
Assaulting Incarcerated Child Molesters” (2009) by Rebecca Trammell and Scott Chenault.
“Shifts and Oscillations in Deviant Careers: The Case of Upper-Level Drug Dealers and
Smugglers” (1983) by Patti and Peter Adler exemplifies the career approach to deviance. The paper is
from Patti’s dissertation research, which resulted in her book Wheeling and Dealing (1993, 2nd ed).
Another article from this study, “The Irony of Secrecy in the Drug World” (1980), is included as a
bonus reading.
Also included among the bonus readings are three articles from the Adlers’ recent research on
self-cutting, which resulted in the book The Tender Cut (2011)—“Self-Injurers as Loners: The Social
Organization of Solitary Deviance” (2005), “The Demedicalization of Self-Injury: From
Psychopathology to Sociological Deviance” (2007) and “The Cyber Worlds of Self-Injurers: Deviant
Communities, Relationships, and Selves” (2008). The remaining Adler articles are their classic piece
on children who smoke marijuana, “Tinydopers: A Case Study of Deviant Subculture” (1978); their
article on “The Irony of Secrecy in the Drug World” (1980) and their essay on “The Deviance Society”
(2006).
Three bonus readings on criminal careers are David Luckenbill and Joel Best’s “Careers in
Deviance and Respectability: The Analogy’s Limitations” (1981), Ken Levi’s “Becoming a Hit Man:
Neutralization in a Very Deviant Career” (1981), Luckenbill’s “Deviant Career Mobility: The Case of
Male Prostitutes” (1986), and David Brown’s “The Professional Ex-: An Alternative for Exiting the
Deviant Career” (1991).
The next core reading, Elijah Anderson’s “The Social Ecology of Youth Violence” (1998), is
from his extensive ethnographic research in Philadelphia. Although not explicitly theoretical,
Anderson draws upon many interactionist themes, including the idea that deviant behavior is
understandable within the deviant actors’ meaning system (“the code of the street”) and the role of
impression management in producing violence. A related bonus article by Anderson, “The Code of the
Streets” (1994), was published in The Atlantic Monthly. His book The Code of the Street (2000) is the
second of his three Philadelphia ethnographic books.
One of the implications of labeling theory is that social control may create more deviance. This
is illustrated in the core reading by Kathryn Fox, “Reproducing Criminal Types: Cognitive
Treatment for Violent Offenders in Prison” (1999), which uses an institutional selves approach to
show how criminal selves may be created by prison treatment programs. Two other Fox articles,
“Changing Violent Minds: Discursive Correction and Resistance in the Cognitive Treatment of Violent
Offenders in Prison” (1999b) and “Ideological Implications of Addiction Theories and Treatment”
(1999c) are bonus readings.
Just as crime is a situated accomplishment, so is victimization. This is illustrated in the next
core reading, Jennifer Dunn’s “Innocence Lost: Accomplishing Victimization in Intimate Stalking
Cases” (2001). Two other readings by Dunn are bonus readings: “What Love Has to Do with It: The
Cultural Construction of Emotion and Sorority Women’s Responses to Forcible Interaction” (1999)
and “Vocabularies of Victimization: Toward Explaining the Deviant Victim” (2010).
Other bonus readings on victimization include: “On Being Mugged: The Event and its
Aftermath” (1973) by Robert Lejeune and Nicholas Alex; “On Being Stalked” (1998) by Robert
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Emerson, Kerry Ferris and Carol Brooks Gardner; “The Batterer’s View of the Self and Others in
Domestic Violence” (2001) by Sarah Goodrum, Debra Umberson, and Kristin L. Anderson;
“Rethinking Victimization: An Interactional Approach to Victimization” (1990) by James Holstein and
Gale Miller; “Defining, Excusing and Justifying Deviance: Teen Mothers’ Accounts for Statutory
Rape” (1999) by Joanna Gregson Higginson; and “Compliance Under Threat of Severe Punishment”
(1982) by David Luckenbill
Another set of bonus readings focus on policing, including three by Bruce Jacobs on
undercover drug officers: “Undercover Drug-Use Evasion Tactics: Excuses and Neutralization”
(1992b), “Undercover Social-Distancing Techniques” (1994), and “Contingent Ties: Undercover Drug
Officers’ Use of Informants” (1997). Other areticles on policing are “The Social Context of Police
Lying” (1991) by Jennifer Hunt and and Peter K. Manning; “‘I Don’t Prevent Crime, I Prevent Calls’:
Policing a Negotiated Order” (1992) by Albert Meehan; and “‘The Dog You Deserve’: Ambivalence in
the K-9 Officer/Patrol Dog Relationship” (2006) by Clinton Sanders.
The bonus readings also include a pair by Joel Best on the social organization of deviants—
“The Social Organization of Deviants” (1980, with Luckenbill) and “Crime as Strategic Interaction:
The Social Organization of Extortion” (1982)—a pair by Robert Emerson on deviance and social
control in the context of roommate troubles—“Responding to Roommate Troubles: Reconsidering
Informal Dyadic Control” (2008) and “From Normal Conflict to Normative Deviance: The MicroPolitics of Trouble in Close Relationships” (2010)—and a pair by Jeffery Ulmer on commitment to
deviance—“Revisiting Stebbins: Labeling and Commitment to Deviance” (1994) and “Commitment,
Deviance, and Social Control” (2000).
Other remaining bonus readings are “Devils in Disguise: The Contribution of Positive Labeling
to “Sneaky Thrills” Deliquency” (2004) by Timothy Brezina and Amie Aragones; “A Criminogenic
Market Structure: The Automobile Industry” (1975) by Harvey Farberman; “Learning to Watch Out:
Prison Chaplains as Risk Managers” (2012) by Allison Hicks; “Teenage Satanism as Oppositional
Youth Subculture” (1995) by Kathleen Lowney; “Playful Deviance as an Urban Leisure Activity:
Secret Selves, Self-Validation, and Entertaining Performances” (2003) by David Redmon;
“Constructing Clean Dreams: Accounts, Future Selves, and Social and Structural Support as
Desistance Work” (2011) by Alexes Harris; and Gresham Sykes and David Matza’s classic ASR
article “Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency” (1957).
Finally, Nancy Herman-Kinney’s chapter on “Deviance” (2003) from the Handbook of
Symbolic Interactionism gives an overview of the labeling theory perspective.
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Week 12: Social Problems
The social constructionist approach to social problems addresses the meanings of social
conditions. It examines why certain troubling conditions (but not others) become defined as social
problems—through the process of “claimsmaking”—and what sort of problems they are defined as.
Herber Blumer anticipated this approach in his article “Social Problems as Collective
Behavior” (1971). However, the principal developers of it were Malcom Spector and John Kitsuse in a
series of articles that culminated in their 1977 book Constructing Social Problems. The three seminal
articles by them included as bonus readings are “Toward a Sociology of Social Problems: Social
Conditions, Value-Judgments, and Social Problems” (1973), “Social Problems: A Re-Formulation”
(1973), and “Social Problems and Deviance: Some Parallel Issues” (1975).
The two background readings, both by Joel Best, provide a good history and overview of the
perspective. The first is a review essay on Spector and Kitsuse’s book, “Constructing the Sociology of
Social Problems: Spector and Kitsuse Twenty-Five Years Later” (2002). The second is Best’s chapter
on “Social Problems” (2003) in the Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism.
The core readings by Best illustrate the application of the social constructionist approach to two
different problems. “‘Road Warriors’ on ‘Hair-Trigger Highways’: Cultural Resources and the
Media’s Construction of the 1987 Freeway Shooting Problem” (1991) addresses the short-lived
problem of freeway shootings. The second article, Kathe Lowney and Best’s “Stalking Strangers and
Lovers: Changing Media Typifications of a New Crime Problem” (1995), focuses on a problem
with a longer life-span, but one which underwent a redefinition before becoming institutionalized.
Both articles are incorporated into Best’s 1999 book Random Violence: How We Talk About New
Crimes and New Victims.
The Best bonus readings are “Rhetoric in Claims-Making: Constructing the Missing Child
Problem” (1987), “The Razor Blade in the Apple: The Social Construction of Urban Legends” (1985,
with Gerald Horiuchi), “Too Much Fun: Toys as Social Problems and the Interpretation of Culture”
(1998), “Floral Entrepreneurs: Kudzu as Agricultural Solution and Ecological Problem” (1998, with
Lowney), “The Apparently Innocuous ‘Just,’ the Law of Levity, and the Social Problems of Social
Construction” (2000), “Prize Proliferation” (2008), and “Methods of Execution as Institutional Fads”
(2008, with Megan Denver and Kenneth Hass).
Nancy Berns provides the next core reading, “Degendering the Problem and Gendering the
Blame: Political Discourse on Women and Violence” (2001), from her dissertation research on
domestic violence in popular media and discourse. This research resulted in her 2004 book Framing
the Victim: Domestic Violence, Media, and Social Problems. Two more articles from this research are
included in the course pack as bonus readings: “‘My Problem and How I Solved It’: Domestic
Violence in Women’s Magazines” (1999 and “‘When You’re Involved, It’s Just Different’: Making
Sense of Domestic Violence” (2007, with David Schweingruber). Her other bonus reading is “The Pet
Grief Industry: Framing the Problem of Pet Death” (2013).
One possible result of social problems claimsmaking is the creation of types of people,
potential identities that people can voluntarily or involuntarily take on. The remaining three core
readings examine the development and application of three such identities: the battered woman, the
gifted child, and the ADHD adult.
Donileen Loseke’s “Lived Realities and Formula Stories of ‘Battered Women’” (2001) is a
chapter in Jaber Gubrium and James Holstein’s collection Institutional Selves: Troubled Selves in a
Postmodern World, which also contained Joseph Hopper’s article on divorced selves we discussed
during our week on self and identity. Like Hopper’s chapter, Loseke’s chapter shows how an
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institution (the battered women’s support group) pressures people to adopt a particular identity (the
“battered woman”). Loseke also explores why some women resist adopting the formula story of the
“battered woman” as their identity.
Two of Loseke’s bonus readings are also about the social problem of battered women: “Lived
Realities and the Construction of Social Problems: The Case of Wife Abuse” (1987) and “The Social
Construction of Deviance: Experts on Battered Women” (1984, with Spencer Cahill). Her three other
bonus readings are: “Appealing Appeals: Constructing Moral Worthiness, 1912-1917” (1995, with
Kirsten Fawcett), “‘The Whole Spirit of Modern Philanthropy’: The Construction of the Idea of
Charity, 1912-1992” (1997), and Examining Emotion as Discourse: Emotion Codes and Presidential
Speeches Justifying War” (2009).
Another bonus reading about battered women is Jennifer Dunn’s “‘Victims’ and ‘Survivors’:
Emerging Vocabularies of Motive for ‘Battered Women Who Stay’” (2005). Dunn’s other bonus
article is “Abortion and Adoption: ‘Choosing Life’ and the Problem of Regret” (2013)
Peter Conrad and Deborah Potter’s “From Hyperactive Children to ADHD Adults:
Observations on the Expansion of Medical Categories” (2000) examines the social construction of
ADHD in adults, a form of medicalization. Conrad, author of Identifying Hyperactive Children: The
Medicalization of Deviant Behavior (1976) and Deviance and Medicalization. From Badness to Sickness
(1992, with Joseph Schneider), is one of the key scholars involved in developing the concept of the
medicalization of deviance.
A number of bonus readings focus on medicalization: Adam Rafalovich’s “The Conceptual
History of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Idiocy, Imbecility, Encephalitis and the Child
Deviant, 1877-1929” and “Relational Troubles and Semioffiicial Suspicion: Educators and the
Medicalization of ‘Unruly’ Children”; John Rosecrance’s “Compulsive Gambling and the
Medicalization of Deviance” (1985); and Josh Rossol’s “The Medicalization of Deviance as an
Interactive Achievement: The Construction of Compulsive Gambling” (2001). In addition, I’ve
included my recent book chapter with Michelle Horstmeier, “The Evolution of Internet Addiction”
(2012), which looks at how the social problem category “Internet addiction” has already changed
meanings several times during its short history.
The final core reading is Leslie Margolin’s “Goodness Personified: The Emergence of
Gifted Children” (1993), about the construction of the “gifted child” and the category’s connection to
ideas about race, class and gender.
Gary Alan Fine and his students have published a number of interesting articles on the social
construction of historical memory and reputation. A number of these were republished in Fine’s 2001
book Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial. I’ve included
several of these as bonus readings in the course pack: “Fictional Figures and Imaginary Relations: The
Transformation of Lolita from Victim to Vixen” (1996, with Todd Bayma), “Reputational
Entrepreneurs and the Memory of Incompetence: Melting Supporters, Partisan Warriors, and Images of
Presidents Harding” (1996), “Scandal, Social Conditions, and the Creation of Public Attention: Fatty
Arbuckle and the ‘Problem of Hollywood’” (1997), “Main Street on Main Street: Community Identity
and the Reputation of Sinclair Lewis” (1998, with Amy Campion), “John Brown’s Body: Elites,
Heroic Embodiment, and the Legitimation of Political Violence” (1999), “Tricky Dick and Slick
Willy: Despised Presidents and Generational Imprinting” (2002, with Emily Eisenberg), and “Erasing
the Brown Scare: Referential Afterlife and the Power of Memory Templates” (2007, with and Terence
McDonnell). Finally, Fine’s student Lisa-Jo van den Scott captured the 2011 Blumer Award for her
(not yet published) paper “Collective Memory and Social Restructuring: Inuit Shamanism from the
Light into the Shadows.”
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I’ve also included two more of Fine’s papers in the course pack: “Naturework and the Taming
of the Wild: The Problem of ‘Overpick’ in the Culture of Mushroomers” (1997) and his Society for the
Study of Social Problems (SSSP) Presidential Address “The Chaining of Social Problems: Solutions
and Unintended Consequences in the Age of Betrayal” (2006). Kitsuse also provides a SSSP
Presidential Address on “Coming Out All Over: Deviants and the Politics of Social Problems” (1980).
The most significant debate within the constructionist perspective on social problems—“strict”
vs. “contextual” constructionism—began with Steve Woolgar and Dorothy Pawluch’s article
“Ontological Gerrymandering: The Anatomy of Social Problems Explanations” (1985). Their position,
“strict constructionism,” has not carried the day.
The remaining bonus readings include a pair by Brian Monahan and R.J. Maratea on media
coverage of crime: “Crime Control as Mediated Spectacle: The Institutionalization of Gonzo Rhetoric
in Modern Media and Politics” (2013) and “Breaking News on Nancy Grace: Violent Crime in the
Media” (2013). Also included are Ann Herda-Rapp’s “The Social Construction of Local School
Violence Threats by the News Media and Professional Organizations” (2003), Leslie Irvine’s “The
Problem of Unwanted Pets: A Case Study in How Institutions ‘Think’ about Clients’ Needs” (2003),
Noah Fritz and David Altheide’s “The Mass Media and the Social Construction of the Missing
Children Problem” (1987), Jeffrey Kidder and Isaac William Martin’s “What We Talk about When We
Talk about Taxes” (2012), Helena Lopata’s “Social Construction of Social Problems of Time” (1984),
Nicole Rafter’s “Claims-Making and Socio-Cultural Context in the First U.S. Eugenics Campaign”
(1992), Thomas Vander Ven’s “The Community Construction of the Underage Drinker” (2005), and
Karen Weiss and Corey Colyer’s “Roofies, Mickies and Cautionary Tales: Examining the Persistence
of the ‘Date-Rape Drug’ Crime Narrative.”
The final bonus reading, co-authored by our department’s own Betty Dobratz with Stephanie L.
Shanks-Meile, and Danelle Hallenbeck, is about the social construction of the Ruby Ridge, Idaho,
confrontation between federal law enforcement and white supremacists: “What Happened on Ruby
Ridge: Terrorism or Tyranny?”
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Week 13: Crowds, Behavior in Public and Social Movements
This, our final week of readings, is a bit of a hodgepodge, but that is in keeping with the history
of the sociological domain called “collective behavior.” Sociologists have an unfortunate habit of
employing what we might call “theoretical gerrymandering”: developing different explanations for
behavior in different settings. All too often behavior sociologists examine closely is considered
amenable to sociological explanation, while behavior that, for various reasons, goes unexamined may
get dismissed as somehow antisocial or irrational (ignoring that all behavior is social and rationality is
locally situated).
This has resulted in the area of “collective behavior,” which has included such purported
phenomena as social movements, crowds, mobs, panics, riots, gossip, fads, fashion, hysteria,
scapegoating, moral panics, urban legends, and disaster behavior. The intellectual rationale for
grouping these together is the claim (usually not empirically examined) that they consist of behavior
that takes place in ambiguous situations without clear norms.
However, once sociologists have bothered to investigate any of these phenomena, they have
found that people are guided by the same sorts of social processes that guide their behavior elsewhere.
For instance, during the prominent social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, sociologists, many quite
sympathetic to these movements, began to research them. They found that social movement
participants were not irrational nor were they riff-raff (two previous stereotypes). The result has been a
vibrant field of sociological study.
Symbolic interactionism’s most prominent contribution to the study of social movements has
been the introduction of Goffman’s frame analysis as a way of conceptualizing cognitive elements of
social movement mobilization and participation. Frame analysis made the leap into the scholarship of
social movements via our first core reading, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and
Movement Participation” (1986), by David Snow, E. Burke Rochford, Steven Worden, and Robert
Benford. (According to a 2005 editor’s comment in American Sociological Review, the article is one of
only 18 ASR articles to be cited over 500 times. It now has over 1,000 citations.)
I’ve included four bonus readings by Benford related to frame analysis. Two are empirical
pieces: “‘You Could Be the Hundredth Monkey’: Collective Action Frames and Vocabularies of
Motive within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement” (1993) and “Frame Disputes within the Nuclear
Disarmament Movement” (1993). The other two are frame analysis overviews: “An Insider’s Critique
of the Social Movement Framing Perspective” (1997) and “Framing Processes and Social Movements:
An Overview and Assessment” (2000, with David Snow).
Snow’s chapter on “Social Movements” (2003) in the Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism is
the social movements background reading. The social movements bonus articles by Snow are “Social
Networks and Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment” (1980,
with Louis Zurcher & Sheldon Ekland-Olson) and “The Outcomes of Homeless Mobilization: The
Influence of Organization, Disruption, Political Mediation, and Framing” (2000, with Daniel Cress).
Another framing article included as a bonus reading is Valerie Jenness’ “Social Movement
Growth, Domain Expansion, and Framing Processes: The Gay/Lesbian Movement and Violence
against Gays and Lesbians as a Social Problem” (1995), which bridges the gap between social
movement and social problems scholarship; Natalia Ruiz-Junco’s “‘Losing Neutrality in Your
Everyday Life’”: Framing Experience and Activist Identity Construction in the Spanish Environmental
Movement” (2011); and Shoon Lio, Scott Melzer; and Ellen Reese’s “Constructing Threat and
Appropriating ‘Civil Rights’: Rhetorical Strategies of Gun Rights and English Only Leaders” (2008).
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Another core article related to social movements is “Identity Talk in the Peace and Justice
Movement” (1994) by Scott Hunt and Benford. It reflects another key SI focus: the construction of the
identities of social movement participants. Patrick Mooney and Hunt’s Rural Sociology article, “Food
Security: The Elaboration of Contested Claims to a Consensus Frame” (2009), is included as a bonus
reading.
Another bonus article on social movement identities is Stephen Valocchi’s “Activism as a
Career, Calling, and Way of Life” (2012).
The final social movements core article is Eric Bonds’ Blumer Award-winning paper
“Strategic Role Taking and the Political Struggle: Bearing Witness to the Iraq War” (2009),
which examines the strategies of social movement activists who traveled to Iraq during the buildup to
the Iraq War.
The study of crowds has an even more checkered history and some of the principal villains
have been interactionists. Especially notable was Herbert Blumer’s contention in a 1939 book chapter
that people in crowds engage in “circular reaction” rather than “symbolic interaction.”
In his book Myth of the Madding Crowd (1991), Clark McPhail critiques Blumer and other
armchair crowd theorists, demonstrating a lack of empirical support for their claims. Blumer is the
focus of his article “Blumer’s Theory of Collective Behavior: The Development of a Non-Symbolic
Interaction Explanation” (1989), which I’ve included as a bonus reading. McPhail’s background
reading, the “Collective Behavior” chapter (2003, with Charles Tucker) in the SI Handbook, provides
an overview of SI crowd research.
Another early critic of uninformed crowd theorizing was Carl Couch, whose 1968 article
“Collective Behavior: An Examination of Some Stereotypes” anticipated later crowd research. In a
1997 festschrift for Couch, McPhail’s article “Stereotypes of Crowds and Collective Behavior:
Looking Backward, Looking Forward” describes Couch’s prescience.
A final bonus reading on sociology’s poor record of crowd research is my own “Mob
Sociology and Escalated Force: Sociology’s Contribution to Repressive Police Tactics” (2000).
I’ve included two core readings by McPhail, who was my major professor. “The Crowd and
Collective Behavior: Bringing Symbolic Interaction Back In” (2006) was the address given upon
the occasion of his winning SSSI’s George Herbert Mead Award. It summarizes his career of crowd
research culminating in the large-scale multi-observer data collection that we carried out while I was a
graduate student. A second McPhail article, “From Clusters to Arcs and Rings: Elementary Forms
of Sociation in Temporary Gatherings” (1994), is a nice overview of elementary forms of crowd
behavior.
Three bonus articles by McPhail are “Student Walkout: A Fortuitous Examination of
Elementary Collective Behavior” (1969); “The Dark Side of Purpose: Individual and Collective
Violence in Riots” (1994), his Midwest Sociological Society Presidential Address; and “Collective
Locomotion as Collective Behavior” (1986, with Ron Wohlstein) an interesting experiment that was
published in ASR.
Erving Goffman’s work presents another possibility for studying what he called “gatherings,” a
topic of his book Behavior in Public Places (1963). The final core reading is Kerry Ferris’ “Seeing
and Being Seen: The Moral Order of Celebrity Sightings” (2004), which draws from Goffman’s
work on public-place encounters.
Bonus readings in the Goffmanian tradition are Snow, Louis Zurcher, and Robert Peters’
“Victory Celebrations as Theater: A Dramaturgical Approach to Crowd Behavior” (1981) and “Safe
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Conduct: Women, Crime, and Self in Public Places” (1990) by Goffman student Carol Brooks
Gardner.
Two bonus articles by Ferris focus on celebrity stalking: “Through a Glass, Darkly: The
Dynamics of Fan-Celebrity Encounters” (2001) and “Threat Management: Moral and Actual
Entrepreneurship in the Control of Celebrity Stalking” (2005).
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Bonus Articles: Essays by Interactionists on the Discipline of Sociology
The course pack includes a bonus section of 23 essays about various aspects of the discipline of
sociology, including six by Howard Becker and five by Joel Best.
Howard S. Becker’s first contribution is his famous SSSP Presidential Address, “Whose Side
Are We On?” (1967) which begins with the question “To have values or not to have values.”
The “modest” in Becker and Bernard Beck’s “Modest Proposals for Graduate Programs in
Sociology” (1969) is ironic since one of their suggestions is the Matriculation Degree Award Plan:
“Every student shall be awarded the Ph.D. on entrance into the program of graduate study. This degree
cannot be revoked. Students may remain in residence for three years at maximum, after which they
must leave; but they may leave at any time before and need never show up at all.” Although few of the
ideas in the essay may ever be put into practice, it is successful in laying bare how the structure
graduate school may conflict with its ostensible purposes.
In another essay on “Graduate Education” (1987), Becker offered piano lessons as a model for
graduate education.
Becker is known for his clear writing, which he advocates in “Freshman English for Graduate
Students: A Memoir and Two Theories” (1983). He later wrote a trilogy of books on conducting and
writing social science research: Writing for Social Scientists (1986), Tricks of the Trade: How to Think
about Your Research While You’re Doing It (1998), and Telling About Society (2007).
Although written in 1979, Becker’s “What’s Happening to Sociology?” highlights trends that
remain relevant today, especially the fragmentation of the discipline and its effects on graduate
education, the disciplinary status system, and academic life. Finally, Becker’s “What Should Sociology
Look Like in the (Near) Future?” is a contribution to a Contemporary Sociology symposium on the
future of the discipline. Becker takes the question literally, arguing that sociologists should better use
visual material in communicating their findings, since, among other reasons “The highly ritualized,
formulaic journal article is an incredible impediment to thought and communication.”
Joel Best brings a sharp sense of humor to his essays on the discipline and its foibles. In
“Giving It Away: The Ironies of Sociology’s Place in Academia” (2001), he argues that in spite of
sociology’s low standing, it has become influential by spinning off other disciplines that use its
insights: “It seems as though every time sociologists develop something that looks like it could turn a
buck, we get rid of it.”
In, “Social Progress and Social Problems: Toward a Sociology of Gloom” (2001), his MSS
presidential address, Best addresses sociologists’ avoidance of acknowledging progress and sets out
four paradoxes by which progress raises, rather than diminishes, concern about social problems. In
“Killing the Messenger: The Social Problems of Sociology” (2003), his SSSP presidential address he
does a social problems analysis of sociology itself as the social problem.
Since Michael Buraway’s presidency of the ASA, sociologists have been debating “public
sociology” and several journals have published symposia on the topic. Joel’s article “Why Don’t They
Listen to Us? Fashion Notes on the Imperial Wardrobe” (2004), an entry in Social Problems’
symposium, offers some practical advice for bringing attention to sociological texts.
Finally, Joel and I wrote an article called “First Words: Do Sociologists Actually Use the
Terms in Introductory Textbooks’ Glossaries?” This was the first in my trilogy of articles
demonstrating the gap between introduction to sociology textbooks and published sociological
research. The other two are “Looking for the Core in the Wrong Place” (2005) and “The Madding
Crowd Goes to School: Myths about Crowds in Introductory Sociology Textbooks” (2005).
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Another essay related to teaching is Scott Harris’ “Are Instructors Who Have ‘Practical
Experience’ Necessarily Superior to Those Who Don’t?” (Harris 2008).
Two other essays are from a special issue of The American Sociologist on informal graduate
school socialization. The entire issue is worth reading, but I’ve included the two articles by noted
interactionists: Patti and Peter Adler’s “The Identity Career of the Graduate Student: Professional
Socialization to Academic Sociology” (2005) and Gabrielle Ferrales and Gary Alan Fine’s “Sociology
as a Vocation: Reputations and Group Cultures in Graduate School” (2005). The Ferrales & Fine piece
provoked a critical response from Antony Puddephatt, Benjamin Kelly and Michael Adorjan on
“Unveiling the Cloak of Competence: Cultivating Authenticity in Graduate Sociology” (2006).
The presidential address is often used to discuss trends within sociology. The final readings are
six such addresses: Norm Denzin’s MSS presidential address “The Sociological Imagination
Revisited” (1990), which includes a take-down of C. Wright Mills; Lynn Smith-Lovin’s Southern
Sociological Society address “Core Concepts and Common Ground: The Relational Basis of Our
Discipline”; the Adlers’ MSS address “Of Rhetoric and Represntation: The Four Faces of
Ethnography” (2008); and three addresses by presidents of the Pacific Sociological Society. These are
Lynn Lofland’s “Is Peace Possible?: An Analysis of Sociology” (1990), Thomas Scheff’s “A Vision of
Sociology” (1997), and David Snow’s “The Value of Sociology” (1999).
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Appendix: Asking Good Questions about Journal Articles
Here are some of my thoughts about asking good questions about journals articles. I offer them
to help you to prepare discussion questions for class, but perhaps they will also be useful as your read
the articles yourselves.
One of the keys to asking good questions about a journal article is to understand what choices
the author(s) have made. This becomes easier the more articles you read since you can see the variety
of approaches they take. These choices are important to understand since ultimately you will be
making choices about what to research, how to conduct the research and how to report your findings.
One of the choices the authors of the articles in this class have made was to work from a
symbolic interactionist framework or use concepts from the symbolic interactionist toolkit. This raises
the questions like:
What is distinctly interactionist about this article? How might other sociologists approach this
topic?
The purpose of theory is to simplify. Any theoretical perspective directs our attention to some
aspects of the phenomena while telling us, implicitly or explicitly, that other aspects are
epiphenomenal, less important, or should be bracketed out of the analysis. In other words, every
perspective has blind spots. This raises questions like:
What were the benefits of the interactionist approach to this study? What did it find that a study
with a different perspective might have missed?
Are their shortcomings to the article due to its interactionist orientation?
Would this article have been stronger if it had used the concept of [false consciousness, latent
function, habitus, panopticon, etc.]?
Authors of these articles also made choices to use particular interactionist concepts or
approaches instead of others. This raises questions like:
The author of this article claims to have undertaken a constructionist analysis. Did the article
take an objectivist or interpretive constructionist approach? How did that decision affect the
article’s analysis and conclusions?
Common interactionist conceptualizations of the self include social objects, processes,
structures, and dramatic effects. Which of these did the author of this article use to
conceptualize the self? How might have other conceptualizations contributed to the analysis?
A typical sociology journal article includes sections on methods, findings and conclusions. The
methods section describes how the author(s) conducted the research; it’s supposed to convince the
reader that the study’s design and implementation led to findings that can be trusted and prepare the
reader for the type of findings that will be presented. The findings in a quantitative article are typically
presented as a table of numbers decorated with little stars and daggers. A qualitative article often
includes the authors’ assertion of what they found supported by examples from field notes or
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transcripts or other supporting data. The conclusions section interprets those findings to argue that (1)
the study uncovered something interesting about the phenomena in question and/or (2) the paper
developed some theoretical (or methodological) tool that would be of use beyond this particular study.
The authors have convinced someone, i.e., editors and reviewers, that all of these assertions and
arguments hang together well enough for the article to be published, but you need to make these
judgments yourself. You might conclude that the article is seriously flawed, or that you would have
liked some more evidence, or that the authors’ brilliance blew your mind.
This raises questions like these:
How did the author’s choice to [interview one type of person but not another, do ethnography
in this setting instead of another one, etc.] affect the findings [for better or worse]?
How did the authors’ presentation of the findings contribute to [or detract from] the strength of
their argument? Could it have been improved?
Are you convinced that the evidence in the article supports the authors’ conclusions? If not,
what went wrong?
Is the paper’s conceptual innovation a useful development? Or just new jargon to confuse
graduate students?
Is there something useful here that you can use in your own research?
Discussion questions need to be tailored to the details of the article. It helps if you have some
specific reason for asking the question so that if nobody takes it up, you can follow up with “The
reason I asked that question is because….”
— David Schweingruber
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