Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION

Editor: NORMAN K. DENZIN Institute of Communications Research University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Managing Editor: MARK NIMKOFF University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Editorial Assistants:

UMA PIMPLASKAR MICHAEL ELAVSKY JACK BRATICH University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

VOLUME 23

JAI PRESS INC. Stamford, Connecticut

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS David L. Altheide

School of Justice Studies Arizona State University

Leon Anderson

Department of Sociology and Anthropology Ohio University

Ronald Burns

Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Texas Christian University

Phillip W. Davis

Department of Sociology Georgia State University

David R. Dickens

Department of Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Patrick G. Donnelly

Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Dayton

Andrea Fontana

Department of Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Karen E. Hayden

Department of Sociology Merrimack College

C. W. Kaha

Communication Department Millikin University

Michael A. Katovich

Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Texas Christian University

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LISTOF CONTRIBUTORS

Helena Znaniecka Lopata

Department of Sociology Loyola University Chicago

David R. Maines

Department of Sociology and Anthropology Oakland University

Michael ]. McCallion

Department of Pastoral Resources and Research Archdiocese of Detroit

Bernard N. Meltzer

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Central Michigan University

Dan E. Miller

Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Dayton

Gil Richard Musolf

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Central Michigan University

Jeffrey E. Nash

Department of Sociology and Anthropology Southwest Missouri State University

Patrick F. Palermo

Office of the Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs University of Dayton

Frances G. Pestello

Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Dayton

Fred P. Pestello

Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Dayton

Stanley L. Saxton

Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Dayton

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List of Contributors Robert Schmidt

Department of Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Dee Ann Spencer

College of Education Arizona State University

Paul Tibbetts

Department of Philosophy University of Dayton

Mary K. Walstrom

Department of Speech Communication University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

REFEREES David L. Altheide

James A. Holstein

Leon Anderson

John Johnson

Lonnie Athens

Michael A. Katovich

Michael Brown

Mary Beth Krouse

Rodney Buxton

Cathy Malkin

Patrick Cannon

Bill Meltzer

Kathleen C. Charmaz

Dan E. Miller

Celeste M. Condit

Robert S. Peinbanayagam

Justine Coupland

Fred P. Pestello

Nikolas Coupland

Angela R. Record

Steve Dandaneau

Paula Saukko

Brenda Donnelly

Jonathan Sterne

Maude Falcone

Kathleen Stewart

Andrea Fontana

Robert L. Stewart

John George

Lisa M. Tilmann-Healy

Kath Hayden

Jeffrey T. Ulmer

Regina Hewitt

Brian de Vries

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HE MADE US LONESOME W H E N HE WENT IN MEMORY OF A TRUE PRAGMATIST

Michael A. Katovich

I'll see your face in the sky above. In the tall grass. In the ones I love. You're gonna' make me lonesome when you go.

--(Bob Dylan) Stan Saxton's life ended suddenly on the morning of April 6th, 1999. I found out about it through a phone message left by Dan Miller on my office answering machine. The evening before he died, Stan had left me a phone message on the same machine. He was in his office, putting the finishing touches on the paper he had intended to present at the Midwest Sociological Society meetings, just two days away. I was planning on calling him when I got the message from Dan. Even now, many months after his death, I still feel that I owe him a phone call. The following papers in this section pay homage to Stan; as a man, thinker, husband, father, administrator, and most of all, friend. Most interactionists are more familiar with Stan the person rather than Start the writer or thinker, but those of us who knew him well and considered him as a friend were profoundly influenced by his thoughts, deeds, and written words. Stan was not driven to publish for the sake Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 3-7. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

MICHAEL A. KATOVICH of publishing. He was, however, driven by a perceived necessity to participate in a pragmatic tradition as he understood it through the writings of Peirce, Dewey, Mead, and James. He made his written contributions with others who shared his understanding of how this pragmatic tradition could be used to understand the complexity of the human condition (see Couch, Saxton, and Katovich 1986; Miller, Katovich, and Saxton 1997). Even though Stan left behind an impressive written record, as the subsequent papers allude to, he shared his most sophisticated and systematic thoughts about the pragmatic tradition with undergraduate students in his classes, and especially in his Social Problems class. His goal was to merge his version of a critical pragmatism with C. W. Mills' (1959) famous description of a sociological imagination. I doubt that anyone in Sociology could teach a better Social Problems class than Stan, and as Carl Couch would say, "I'm not bragging, just stating a fact!" In this class, Stan framed his discussion of a critical pragmatism by focusing on issues of agency, responsibility to the community, the difference between privilege and rights, and distinctions between pragmatic and dogmatic individualism. Stan's brand of critical pragmatism maintained attention to conflictual class systems while stressing the hopeful promise that people from divergent class backgrounds could work in concert to solve problems. In this way, his critical pragmatism resembled Saul Alinsky's (1971) version of a contained radicalism, whereby solutions to social inequality assume the permanence of a capitalistic system. Stan brought this perspective to the classroom. He was not going to change ideological thinking, but would provide compelling motives to learn about social problems for the purpose of trying to solve them. Basically, Stan taught from the perspective that students would be able to benefit from attending to the problems of others and attempting to solve these problems. He tailored these thoughts to a particular clientele, those who would eventually occupy elite positions in the American hierarchy. He charged himself and other interactionists to educate a young population who would eventually be in positions to make decisions that would have an impact on their own, and many others' social worlds. He had hope that he could persuade a young elite population to identify problems and solve them "once and for all." As with the pragmatists, Stan used the concept of agency to locate human beings in the center of problematic social worlds. While many humans are part of worlds that have problems created for them, all humans are part of an ongoing solution to the problems that confront them. The task is not to debate who is responsible for the problems as much as it is to create a conversation about how people will attempt to solve the problems in concert, so that the solution does not lead to other problems in the future. Having experienced a tremendous amount of success in teaching these ideas to undergraduates, Stan had outlined a sequence of written projects that would serve the purpose of communicating his ideas in writing to his academic peers and fellow interactionists. Just days prior to his death, he had been working on a revision

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of "The Promise of Pragmatism," with Fran Pestello. Stan considered "The Promise of Pragmatism" to be a lead-off to his written agenda, which would take him into his retirement. In this paper, Pestello and Saxton lay out the groundwork for an interactionist study of human agency, and point to how such a study can apply to deviance. While studying deviance from an "alternative" perspective (to positivism) is hardly new among interactionists, Pestello and Saxton go a step further by locating this study in the context of an "idealistic realism" as informed by the writings of Emerson, Jefferson, and pragmatists such as Peirce. In so doing, Pestello and Saxton link resistance to authority as part of our cultural heritage with reasoned alternatives to authoritative (and non-pragmatic) rules. Deviants and deviance symbolize efforts to correct what some perceive to be systematic errors. As we approach the twenty-first century, Pestello and Saxton call for a shared and reasoned dialogue that will allow people in concert to determine the efficacy of perceptions about systematic errors, and about perceived corrections to these errors. While the Pestello and Saxton piece is Stan's final statement, he did provide a legacy in words and deeds that will live forever. Miller, Pestello, and Donnelly, writing as the successors to Stan as Chairmen of the Dayton Sociology and Anthropology Department, reflect on how Stan transformed a parochial and lethargic place into one of the University's most vibrant and respected departments. The transformation required a person who could establish and maintain a vision without becoming an egomaniac or being threatened by individuals who could help materialize the vision. Stan saw as real the possibility that people could engage in serious business while establishing rich and beneficial relationships in the process (see Katovich and Saxton 1984). Miller, Pestello, and Donnelly describe Stan as unwavering in his faith to create serious and human friendly work environments, but flexible in his interpersonal relationships. He had an iron will but a soft heart, and he never strayed from his perceived mission: to bring in the best and brightest faculty possible to show students that their lives and their environments can be improved through systematic attention to their social worlds. He wished to provide his faculty and students a perspective that would make their lives worth more than "a gnat's ass." What Stan had in mind was the creation of a critical mass of citizen scholars who could begin to have a positive impact on their surrounding community. Stan's notion of the citizen-scholar (Saxton 1993) is perhaps the most fruitful way to remember him as a man and thinker. Basically, Stan wanted the citizen-scholar to go into urban worlds and do research on local communities that made up these worlds. But Stan also felt that this scholar had to address concerns that went beyond local mad regional issues. Maines and McCallion, keying off of Saxton's call for such citizen-scholarship, identify a version of Stan' s critical pragmatism. Maines and McCallion locate Stan's perspective in the activism (and agency) of Chicago School sociologists and in the tradition of a revised Alinsky approach. The authors show how this perspective can address the pervasive problems of

MICHAEL A. KATOVICH urban metropolitan inequality and describe the citizen-scholar as a pragmatic investigator of state, and even national politics. A fruitful goal of citizen-scholarship links the political machinations of the state and nation to local and regional spheres. Tibbets locates Stan's emphasis on the importance of citizen-scholarship in a more academic context. He describes Stan's vision of what a social science should be and what it should accomplish in contrast with Edward Wilson's recent criticism of the standard social science model. Pitting Stan against Wilson helps us consider the breadth and depth of Stan' s faith in science, as well as in symbolic interactionism. Following Mead (1936) Stan did not view a scientific understanding of the social as contradicting a humanistic understanding (see Kohout 1986; McPhail and Rexroat 1980). Rather, Stan viewed the understanding of social life as involving systematic inquiry into the processes and developments that impact human beings as they make sense of their own and others' lives. Tibbets notes that critics such as Wilson who emphasize the biologic over the social, fail to grasp how human beings create enduring and obdurate meanings for their biologic being as they integrate themselves into social worlds. Drawing on Stan's personal account of his own struggle with a life threatening illness, Tibbets shows how Stan's scientific explanation of his experience with illness and his recovery occurred in conjunction with Stan's integration of self with others in his immediate social world. The biologic matters only when it becomes incorporated into shared spheres of meaning. Sadly, Stan's account of his struggle with a potentially fatal illness must suffice as we try to deal with his sudden and untimely death. Perhaps the very same things that he described in his account, his love for his family, his need to feel part of this family, and his orientation to himself as a social actor all came to him as he took his final breath. We cannot know what he was thinking. But we can know what others think and feel for him. In the final paper, Palermo pays a personal tribute to Stan, as a friend and colleague who touched so many people in such deep and profound ways. Drawing on his expertise of nineteenth century rural life, Palermo sees Stan the citizen-scholar as a small town intellectual who concerned himself with establishing a better place for himself and for the community in which he lived. As with other great small town intellectuals in the nineteenth century, Stan was a product of the small town who nevertheless thought big and dreamed even bigger. He had hope and never surrendered this hope to the pervasive cynicism and detached irony of this day and age. He knew what he could do and what he couldn't do, and could quickly discern the potential of others. He challenged us to draw upon this hope, to be strong enough to make such hope endure and not to give into the petty politics and trite indifference that can so often intrude on our interpersonal lives. He would not hesitate to chastise a friend or colleague who did not keep the faith in the social or who would trivialize important issues, but neither would he hesitate to show his friends and colleagues how much he loved and

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respected them. He saw each of us as vitally connected to the other so that fate of one essentially means the fate of us all. I can emphasize Stan's faith in human connection through a personal account. When my father died in 1981 I was teaching, literally, at University of Dayton. I had just gotten out of class and returned to my office when Start, who was Chair of the Department at the time, broke the news to me. I don't remember much after that, but I know that Stan took me to the airport and saw me to the gate. After the funeral, I realized Stan had purchased a round trip ticket for me. When I mentioned this to him later on with the intention of paying him back, he shrugged and made that face of his, the face that says there are more important things in life than whatever it was that I was talking about. "You pay me back by helping out others," was all he would say. Now, some eighteen years later, I have that lonely feeling that sticks around way too long once it settles in; that feeling that Stan always helped make go away. Stan would say that we can make these feelings go away, but we need help. We need to help each other. The world has one less great man, and symbolic interaction has one less great believer, but we go on. Dylan's words come back to me; Stan has made me lonesome since he went. It is up to us to remember him as he would have liked to be remembered--as a man who sought the truth and held out hope that it would enrich our lives.

REFERENCES Alinsky, S. 1971. Rules for Radicals. New York: Randon House. Couch, C. J., S. L. Saxton, and M. A. Katovich (eds.). 1986. Studies in Symbolic Interaction: The Iowa School (Volumes A and B). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Katovich, M. A., and S. L. Saxton. 1984. "Rich Relationships: A Social-Psychological Essay." Pp. 81-94 in The Changing Family, edited by S. L. Saxton, P. Voydanoff, and A. Zukowsky. Chicago: Loyola University Press. Kohout, F. 1986. "George Herbert Mead and Experimental Knowledge." Pp. 7-25, in Studies in Symbolic Interaction: The Iowa School, edited by Carl J. Couch, Stanley L. Saxton, and Michael A. Katovich. Greenwich, Conneticut: JAI Press. McPhail, C., and C., Rexroat. 1980. "Mead vs. Blumer: The Divergent Methodological Perspectives of Social Behaviorism and Symbolic Interactionism?' American Sociological Review 44: 449-467. Mead, G. H. 1936. Movements of Thought in in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, D. E., M. A. Katovich, and S. L. Saxton, Jr. (eds). 1997. Constructing Complexity: Symbolic Interaction and Social Forms. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Mills, C. W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Saxton, S. L. 1993. "Sociologist as Citizen-Scholar: A Symbolic Interactionist Alternative to Normal Sociology." Pp. 232-250 in A Critique of American Sociology, edited by T. Vaughn, G. Sioberg, and L. Reynolds. Dix Hills, NY: General Hall.

RENEWING THE PROMISE OF PRAGMATISM TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF DIFFERENCE

Frances G. Pestello and Stanley L. Saxton

PREFACE

About five years ago, Stan Saxton and I were talking in his office. He was excited about a book he had read by Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy. He was particularly taken by West's notion of "prophetic pragmatism." Stan had the feeling that sociology had lost a sense of hope, and he wanted to write about it. He invited me to join him on this project. One thing he wanted, in his words was, "a site." A place to talk about this lost hope. I teach a course in deviant behavior and had become captivated by Robert Bogdan's notion of acceptance, which he writes about in Freak Show. I had the idea that deviance research was incomplete because it only talked about rejection. I suggested to Start that we use deviance as a place to develop our ideas about prophetic pragmatism. Thus began our project. Stan and ! spent many hours talking over coffee at the University of Dayton's student union. As we did, the modest project mushStudies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 9-29. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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roomed, resulting in several presentations at the Midwest Sociological Society's annual meetings, the Couch-Stone Symposium, and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction's annual meetings. The paper grew and changed. About two years ago, we presented an earlier version of this paper called, "Knitting the Social Fabric: Deviance, Acceptance, Tragedy, Prophecy." It was well received by the audience. Buoyed by the positive response, we gave a copy to Mike Katovich and Horst Helle. They read it and we met over lunch to talk about the paper. Although they both liked some of the ideas in the paper, neither liked the concept of prophetic pragmatism. Horst, in particular, felt that prophecy came with a lot of baggage that detracted from the paper. It was challenging to imagine where a paper should go, if its main concept is flawed. After a few weeks of despair, our hope returned. If prophecy wouldn't work, we would think of another word that would better capture our ideas. The promise of pragmatism was born. In early February, Stan and I sent the paper to Norm Denzin for consideration. By mid-March, we had received encouraging reviews. Early April is a busy time at the University of Dayton. We were preparing for the end of our spring semester and the Midwest Sociological Society's annual meetings. Although we didn't think we would have much time to work on the paper until the semester ended, we agreed to meet briefly on April 7 to discuss the reviews and formulate a plan. On the morning of April 6, Stan died suddenly following a faculty meeting. His last words to me were about this project and our anticipated meeting. Stan was a passionate man. He loved his friends. He was inspired by pragmatism. He thought symbolic interactionism was a sociology that made sense. This paper reflects Stan's beliefs about sociology. He saw the promise in people and nurtured it.

INTRODUCTION The seeds of pragmatic thought were planted in eighteenth century America. They are revealed through stories of extraordinary people revolting against British tyranny. George Washington is fashioned to be an inspired leader successfully defeating the British against all odds. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, documents which recognized the equality of human beings, the need for restraint of government, and the notion of inclusion as guiding principles for American society. Americans see themselves as a people equal to the task of resisting tyranny, exploring a vast land and constructing a nation from an untamed continent. These great aspirations and accomplishments offer fertile ground for the birth of hope and ambition so central to the American cultural mythology. Enlightenment ideas and the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead translated the romance of Ameri-

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can culture into pragmatism, the great American contribution to philosophy. The capability of human beings to think through and act purposively to overcome obstacles is the core premise of pragmatism. Human activity is organized and judged in terms of its consequences. People, individually and collectively, are not prisoners of their pasts. They are subject to reconstruction, which will lead them in new directions. Pragmatists argue that human beings are pulled by their intentions as much as they are pushed by the conditions of their pasts, or constrained by the situations in their presents. By using creative intelligence, humans are capable of breaking with the contingency of conditions that do not serve their purposes. They construct their futures (Emerson 1837). Pragmatism and American Sociology emerged first at Harvard University and later at the University of Chicago. In particular, Chicago proved to be a fertile place for both the development of pragmatist thought and a distinctive sociology, using pragmatism as its foundation. The four central principles of this approach to human beings are: (1) the centrality of human agency; (2) the socially-embedded process of self-reflective learning; (3) science as the means of producing useful knowledge; and (4) democracy as the arrangement required to give voice and recognition to the self. When the philosophical principles of pragmatism are brought to the empirical study of human activity, they prove to be both promising and problematic because social life is "messy." This paper uses the study of deviance to focus on the ways in which sociologists, particularly interactionists, use the study of deviance to focus on the processes of exclusion. The guiding principles of pragmatism, however, suggest the importance of studying the processes of inclusion for understanding a more complete response to differences among human beings. In the following pages, we develop this theme.

AGENCY The great American champion of agency was Ralph Waldo Emerson. He believed in the ability of human beings to chart their own destiny. In his essays on the American Scholar (1837) and Self Reliance (1841), Emerson clearly articulated the power of the human intellect and the capacity of thinking human beings to deal with uncertainty and overcome obstacles. In this vein, Emerson (1837) wrote: 1 Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be a unit;--not to be reckoned one character;not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong ... We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. Like Emerson, John Dewey (1948, p. 194) saw activity as central to human experience:

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F.G. PESTELLO a n d S.L. SAXTON Individuality in a social and moral sense is something to be wrought out. It means initiative, inventiveness, varied resourcefulness, assumption of responsibility in choice of belief and conduct. These are not gifts but achievements. As achievements, they are not absolute but relative to the use that is to be made of them. And this use varies with the environment.

W h e n G. H. M e a d (1934, p. 138) applied p r a g m a t i s m to the study of h u m a n activity, the focus of his analysis b e c a m e the self as the repository of experience, author of action, and reflective guide for the future. ... it is necessary to rational conduct that the individual should thus take an objective, impersonal attitude toward himself, that he should become an object to himself. For the individual organism is obviously an essential and important fact or constituent element of the empirical situation in which it acts; and without taking objective account of itself as such, it cannot act intelligently or rationally. Herbert B l u m e r (1969), the translator o f M e a d ' s thought for sociology, further e m p h a s i z e d the self as the center of his analysis of the person interpreting relevant objects and plans of action. The importance of self is that it gives h u m a n b e i n g s the ability to organize and control their o w n actions with reference to the perspective of others. This creative self, as both M e a d and B l u m e r conceptualize it, is a creator of action. It is not released from some preformed idea, cognitive structure, or p r e d e t e r m i n e d factor. H u m a n activity is not j u s t action, but j o i n t action, in which multiple h u m a n b e i n g s construct or fit their lines of action together. It is the j o i n t or social act which is the centerpiece for society. ... Each participant necessarily occupies a different position, acts from that position, and engages in a separate and distinctive act. It is the fitting together of these acts and not their commonality that constitutes joint action .... Their alignment does not occur through sheer mechanical juggling, as in the shaking of walnuts in ajar, or through unwitting adaptation, as in an ecological arrangement in a plant community. Instead, the participants fit their acts together first by identifying the social act in which they are about to engage and, second, by interpreting and defining each other's acts in forming the joint act. By identifying the social act or joint action the participant is able to orient himself; he has a key to interpreting the acts of others and a guide for directing his action with regard to them (1969, pp. 70-71). More recently, A n s e l m Strauss (1993, p. 13) has developed the m o s t complete Interactionist statement o n agency in regard to his "theory of acting." W h i l e e m p l o y i n g this theory Strauss (1993, p. 48) translates "pragmatist philosophical assumptions into interactionist sociological assumptions." He e m p l o y s these assumptions to develop an action theory, using trajectory (line of action) as his central concept. For Strauss, action is thoroughly c o n t i n g e n t (life is problematic), social (action is w i t h i n the context of interacting others), processual (trajectories are always c h a n g i n g and adapting), and empirical (observable and therefore subject to scientific analysis). As a corollary to Strauss, E m i r b a y e r and M i s c h e (1998, p. 963) conceptualize h u m a n agency "as a temporally e m b e d d e d process of social e n g a g e m e n t ,

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informed by the past...oriented to the future and the present." The "chordal triad of agency" is the centerpiece of their theoretical analysis. Social actors negotiate the structural, cultural, and relational contexts through the ongoing interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment. They analytically decompose the central features of agency--influences of the past and projections of the future--as elements of the ongoing emerging present. 2 This work supports our contention that the full promise of pragmatism has yet to be realized in sociological formulation. When philosophical analysis meets the empirical work of sociology there are two important consequences for the study of agency. First, it is necessary to see the agent as an actor with a history and a future. These features of agency are summarized in the notion of self as the product of past experiences and relationships, as well as anticipated experiences and relationships. Second, the actor is immersed in a social context. Thus, action is always a process of defining and negotiating contingencies bounded by the place in which one is embedded. The situation within which action unfolds influences the possibilities and dilemmas an agent will face. However, even under the most extreme conditions of repression, when agency would seem to be most problematic, people act to serve their purposes. The major consequence of the meeting between sociology and philosophy is the experience of uncertainty and openness of action and the unanticipated consequences of action. In other words, the empirical world obliges us to enter the messiness of uncertainty and the openness of social life. Deviance is one of the messy features of social life. It shapes and constrains the courses of action available for social actors. Agency is central to interactionist treatments of deviance. Social actors construct and respond to perceived and manifest differences in self and other. These differences have implications for social interaction, People actively create their identities, both deviant and conventional. Those who respond to differences also have choices. They can marginalize difference, seeing it as a barrier to interaction; or they can incorporate difference into their relationships. They can accommodate it in the sense of "making room for it"; or they can see it as an enhancement to interaction.

PROCESS Experience is a key idea for pragmatism. John Dewey (1948 [1963], p. 474) observes, [s]ociety is the process of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas, emotions, values are transmitted and made common. To this active process, both the individual and the institutionally organized may truly be said to be subordinate. The individual is subordinate because except in and through communicationof experience from and to others, he remains dumb, merely sentient, a brute animal. Only in association with fellows does he become a conscious centre of experience. Organization,which is what traditional theory has generallymeant by the term Society or State, is also subordinate because it becomes static, rigid, institutionalized

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F.G. PESTELLO and S.L. SAXTON whenever it is not employed to facilitate and enrich the contacts of human beings with one another.

Society is dynamic. The promise of pragmatism is that there are possibilities to be explored. This reflects D e w e y ' s sense of progress. Dewey believed that process could be progressive. Progress was not inevitable, but he did anticipate that social life would improve. Unanticipated consequences and change are the essence of human organization and individual experience. This flexible and constructed conceptualization of experience lays the foundation for the interactionist approach. Mead emphasized that experience was mediated through language. People do not directly know "the world of objects," but filter it through a veil of language. Objects, including the self, are constructions of purposeful applications of symbols to social situations. Symbols are alive. They call out a response in social actors. The conceptualization of social objects matters and can change. The essence of this interpretive developmental approach to social life is process. Society and social life are always projects under construction. Mead's (1929, 1932) theory of time and the past are important for understanding the implications of pragmatism for his social psychology. Temporality is an integral component of social life. Remembered pasts and anticipated futures shape how people enact and experience the present. It is through time that social life is framed. There is always a before and yet to come, but we experience life in the present. Pasts are not objective, but always reconstructed (or remembered) pasts. As Blumer noted, pasts are significant only when we bring them to the present. Blumer (1969) incorporated Mead's ideas into his statement on society as symbolic interaction. The essence of his statement is that human activity is always a process which is jointly or socially created. It means that the human individual confronts a world that he must interpret in order to act instead of an environment to which he responds because of his organization ... human group life consists of and exists in, the fitting of lines of action to each other by the members of the group (Blumer 1969, pp. 15-16). This conceptualization depicts the world as simultaneously obdurate and mutable. The flow of experience has to be examined and understood from the point of view of the actor. In this sense, activity, agency, and experience are intertwined and continuously evolving. Temporality, as Mead conceived it, is at the heart of process. Maines, Sugrue, and Katovich (1983) drew upon Mead's notions of temporality to identify four dimensions of the past. One important dimension is the symbolically reconstructed past, "to use Mead's phrases 'what it was' is established through the 'what it is'" (Maines et al. 1983, p. 163). This is the idea that social actors remember, reconstruct, and interpret the past to make it useful for the present.

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Another dimension is a social structural past. "The past structures and conditions the experiences found in the present" (Maines et al. 1983, p. 163). This conditioning creates limits and probabilities for the present, but does not determine it. In this way pasts establish possibilities and probabilities for the present. A third dimension that we key on is the implied objective past. Particular events must have occurred to bring us to a particular present. For instance, we must have been born. We were born in a particular place. We went to school. We lived in particular places. We access these events through memory. It is in this sense that it is implied. Past events, small and large, are the material that shape experience in the present. The final component is the notion of the mythical past. These are pasts that are useful creations. They are made up and are not tied to previous events in the way that implied reality is. Though created in heads, mythical pasts can have real consequences for current and future action. The importance of process in the construction of social life is central to both pragmatists and interactionists. Time is the vehicle by which social life proceeds. There is never an end-point to social life. There is always another moment to be filled. Temporality is also central to Emirbayer and Mische's (1998) discussion of agency. Agency is, at least in part, iterational. One component of such iteration is "the selective reactivation by actors of past patterns of thought and action as routinely incorporated in practical activity, thereby giving stability and order to social universes and helping to sustain identities, interactions and institutions over time" (Emirbayer and Mische 1998, p. 971). This suggests that we reconstruct past experiences to shape current activity. A second component is the projective element. Social actors imagine possible future courses of action. People reconfigure and transform possible futures based on their hopes, fears, and desires. Social actors are capable of transforming the way they have done things so that they will bring about the future that they anticipate. Social actors are never locked into a line of action. A third component of their conceptualization of human agency is the practical-evaluative element. People make judgments about possible trajectories, evaluating them both practically and normatively for desirability. This, however, is a continual process, because there are always new and unconsidered demands, demands which reconfigure potential trajectories. The pragmatic commitment to process documents how agency unfolds across time. All identities, both deviant and conventional, are created and maintained in a social context. These contexts retard and facilitate the reconstruction of difference. When researchers enter contexts, they locate selves in time and place. In so doing, they find a more fluid connection between selves in interaction with others within and between social situations. Deviant identities, once created, can create barriers for assuming a more conventional, connected social life. Temporality and process have profound implications for social science methodology. If social life is a complex intertwining of multiple lines of action that are

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constructed, dissolved, and reconstructed, then a science of social life needs to capture this complexity and ambiguity. This presents special challenges for the scientific method.

SCIENCE The historical context within which pragmatism was developed was ripe with commitment to science as a means of solving problems not the least of which was the liberation of the minds and activity of "ordinary people" from repressive authority. In this way, Thomas Jefferson embraced science. He used scientific thinking in his farming experiments. He demonstrated the mind of a naturalist as he helped prepare Merriwether Lewis for gathering specimens and making carefully documented observations of flora and fauna as he explored the West. In his last letter, Jefferson expressed his hope for science. He wrote that: [t]he general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankindhas not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately,by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others (t 826).3 Science as a method to understand and solve problems was well established by the tum of the nineteenth century. Charles Sanders Peirce was also committed to observation and science as methods of knowing. He offered (1878, p. 6) this observation and rule: our idea of anythingis our idea of its sensibleeffects; and if we fancy that we have any others we deceive ourselvesand mistakea mere sensationaccompanyingthe thoughtfor a part of the thought itself. [Hisfamousrule is] considerwhat effects, that might conceivablyhavepractical bearings, we conceive the object of our conceptionto have. Then, our conceptionof these effects is the whole of our conceptionof the object. Peirce (1878, p. 12) ends this work with a statement about science: How to give birth to this vital and procreative idea which multipliesinto a thousandforms and diffuses themselves everywhere, advancingcivilizationand makingthe dignity of man, is an art not yet reduced to rules,but of the secret of which the historyof scienceaffords some hints. Peirce was committed to observables (behavior not sensations) as the source of clarity and consequences of thinking. He saw clear thinking and truth (science) as the means of a civilization that advanced humankind. For Peirce, science is no more nor less than a community activity for the production of a more civilized and loving community (West 1989). Dewey developed the features of science that marked the pragmatist position on the correlation between experience and science. Scientific work must produce

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explanations or understandings that are consistent with e x p e r i e n c e to be useful. The adoption of p o s i t i v i s m and quantification as the prevailing approach to m e t h o d in the social sciences contradicts the pragmatist c o m m i t m e n t to experie n c e ( W e s t e r b r o o k 1996). Sjoberg, Gill, Littrell, and W i l l i a m s (1997, pp. 78-79) m a k e the f o l l o w i n g points: ... Dewey's commitment to science and the experimental method is grounded in his emphasis on experience. Yet Dewey's view of science differs markedly from that of the British empiricists or the positivists. He could not and would not accept the atomistic individualism that undergirded the scientific method as propounded by, say, John Stuart Mill. (further) ... Dewey does not sever science from ethics or facts from morals. The moral and empirical orders are of the same coin and bound to one another in complex fashion. M e a d (1936), too, saw the i m p a c t o f science on the h u m a n intellect. S c i e n c e was a tool w h i c h harnessed the intellect so that h u m a n beings could address problems. S c i e n c e addresses a central d i l e m m a for society to be orderly and stable and yet change. S c i e n c e p r o v i d e s a m e t h o d o f progress. That is where science comes in to aid society in getting a method of progress. It understands the background of these problems, the processes out of which they have developed; and it has a method of attacking them. It states the problem in terms of checked processes; and then it has a test of the suggested solution by seeing whether those processes can continue or not. That is as valuable--in a certain sense more valuable--a contribution of science as any of its immediate results that we can gather together. This sort of method enables us to keep the order of society and yet to change that order within the process itself. It is a recognition that intelligence expresses itself in the solution of problems (Mead 1936, p. 366). B l u m e r further d e v e l o p e d w h a t he saw as the appropriate m e t h o d o l o g y for social scientists. His a p p r o a c h was consistent with the pragmatists' attention to experie n c e and process. B l u m e r advocates a scientific stance, but one that is deeply e m b e d d e d in h u m a n experience. H e also r e c o g n i z e s the p r o b l e m s o f d e v e l o p i n g a science o f h u m a n social behavior. B l u m e r (1969, p. 35) also notes: Let me begin by identifying the empirical social world in the case of human beings. This world is the actual group life of human beings. It consists of what they experience and do, individually and collectively, as they engage in their respective forms of living; it covers the large complexes of interlaced activities that grow up as the actions of some spread out to affect the actions of others; and it embodies the large variety of relations between the participants. The early pragmatists v i e w e d science as a process for solving p r o b l e m s finding out w h a t works. T h e y did not grant science a sacred status. K n o w l e d g e p r o d u c e d by this m e t h o d was not " T r u t h , " but j u d g e d by its usefulness for solving problems. Scientific k n o w l e d g e was not fixed but under construction, always subject to redefinition with the p r o d u c t i o n o f m o r e k n o w l e d g e . Pragmatists w e r e m o r e clear about their purposes than sociologists or interactionists. T h e y e n v i s i o n e d science as a m e a n s to create a m o r e egalitarian, b e n e v o -

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lent, and loving community. For the study of difference, science should be used not only to understand the ways in which differences are marginalized and the consequences of marginalization, but also the ways in which people transcend difference to create inclusive, egalitarian relationships. Blumer and other interactionists encouraged a method that was qualitative and anti-positivist. Interestingly, Blumer and his followers are opposed to formulating hypotheses and testing them to see if they "work" or if the information is "useful" (see Kohout 1986, for a discussion of the pragmatist approach to hypothesis testing). They encouraged ethnographies, grounded theory and immersion in social activity as the ways to study and understand differences in the experience of social life. Their effort is to understand experience. Implied, but not directly stated in their approach, is the consequence of understanding the life world of social actors as important, contributing members. The implicit project is to give voice to all actors because they are important, contributing members to society. This approach is necessary for the study of democracy, which has not been a part of the larger sociological project. It is to this issue that we now turn. DEMOCRACY It is important to distinguish between democracy in the political/governmental sense from the interpersonal sense. Democracy as a means of managing the distribution of power and wealth and accounting for the protection and welfare of citizenry is the foundation of democracy in the political/governmental sense. Pragmatists, particularly Dewey, are interested in democracy as a political form. However, the pragmatic analysis of democracy is broader and more inclusive. At its core is the analysis of inclusive, reciprocal, social and interpersonal relationships as the environment within which individual development is achieved. This form of interpersonal association and organization is seen by pragmatists as the form of relationships wherein both individual rights are protected and individual development is fostered. However, individuals are embedded in communities. The person and the social environment are inseparable; thus, the individual must be understood as both product of, and contributor to, the community. Dewey in particular believed that democratic relationships were the best because they produce the most benevolent way to connect persons in purposeful activity and create responsive communities (Etzioni 1996). Pragmatists provided the groundwork for thinking about how individuals developing themselves, would achieve a common or collective good. Central to much pragmatist writing is the need for free flow of information and ideas, a healthy suspicion of authority, and the participation of all members in the creation of society. Dewey, (1940, pp. 223-224) in particular, championed democracy as a solution to the problem of individual and social development. Without full participation in society, the full development of self would be thwarted.

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... Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. Belief in the Common is a familiar article in the democratic creed. That belief is without basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth, and family, of material or cultural wealth...The democratic faith in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has. The democratic belief in the principle of leadership is a generous one. It is universal. It is belief in the capacity of every person to lead his own life free from coercion and imposition by others provided right conditions are supplied.

Democracy is a means for liberating individuals to address, experiment with, and solve the problems that face society, so that social good will be enhanced. Dewey saw democracy as an ideal yet to be fully realized. The core of Mead's writings explicates the process by which autonomous, agentic selves emerge. Mead had a faith in democracy as a progressive ideal, which was both consistent with and undergird his theory of society (see Shalin 1988). Mead's conceptualization of interacting selves creating and constructing social worlds is democratic to its core. He addressed the broader implications of his work and its connection to democracy in both his writings and social activism. However, the democratic threads of pragmatism were not explicitly brought into sociology through symbolic interactionism. Although Blumer's work has a democratic flavor in his discussions of joint action, he wants us to understand action and its meaning from the perspective of actors. He fails to explicitly take up the democratic project. The analysis of democracy has been relatively unimportant to interactionists. Persons in relationships are continually negotiating similarities and differences that are sources of solidarity and disintegration in their relationships. This process of negotiating differences and similarities is ubiquitous in social life. Difference has been investigated by sociologists as a source of alienation and conflict, which leads to negative consequences for both self and others. Deviants are marginalized, ostracized, and repressed. Once marginalized, they strike out against society and those who oppress them. The democratic project suggests that those marginalized and others have the potential to reconstruct society by talking and acting through their differences to find a way to realize the common good (Shalin 1988). Democratic relationships provide the best model for negotiating these differences. Through democratic relationships, people are heard and included. Some interactionist research and theorizing are useful for understanding democratic forms of relationships. Couch and his students have done a number of studies of the representative constituent relationship (see Couch and Weiland 1986). Hall (1985, 1997) has studied and theorized about power and policy implementation processes. Strauss (1993) also offers a discussion of policy arenas and the place of science in policy analysis. But, unfortunately, his discussion is not focused on the implications. Curiously, none of these authors speak directly to the

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importance of their analysis for democratic relationships or institutions. In effect, interactionism neglects to study democracy in its big or small forms, with the possible exception of Joas (1996, p. 237) who has recently developed an analysis of creative action, in which democracy is central. The normative core of constitution theories is the idea of self-determination, as this idea expresses the desire of the actors to endorse their social orders as if these were the work of the actors' own will. However, the idea of self-determinationmust be made more specific by naming the individual and collective actors who should enjoy the right of self-determinationand by delimiting the extent and the criteria for self-determination.By linking it to aspects of differentiation theory, the abstract idea of self-determinationcan be turned into a theory of democracy. The question as to the causes, agents and effects of democratization processes and of the institutional structures of democratic societies or of a democratic world thus becomes the central axis of theory formation...a constitution theory can undoubtedly be said to be seriously deficient if it fails to provide not only a normative clarification of the democratic ideal but also empirical clarification of the causes and effects of democratization processes. All central premises o f pragmatism are faithfully reproduced in Symbolic Interactionist perspective except for the concern for democracy. This neglect has implications for the ways in which we define and study issues. In the next section, we develop a sociology of difference that more fully incorporates the promise of pragmatism.

DEVIANCE, ACCEPTANCE, PROBLEMS AND PROMISE W e contend that the study of deviance provides a partial picture to the processes human beings employ to respond to differences that present barriers or stumbling blocks to interaction. Sociology, in general, and interactionists, in particular, have concentrated on the negative interpretation of difference, and the processes which lead to exclusion (see Bogdan and Taylor 1987; Gamson 1995). Understanding exclusion is an important piece, but misses a range o f responses to differences that are possible. G o f f m a n ' s work on stigma (1963), for example, demonstrates how discrediting stigmas creates barriers for full participation in social life. Stigmas can also be hidden, providing the possibility o f discrediting o n e ' s identity based on pretense. Other researchers look at the rejection of misfits, and how misfits and those with whom they interact manage rejection. Katz (1989) provides but one example with his analysis of the "hardmen" and "bad asses." These men pursue evil and meanness as the defining component o f their identity. They are rejected, in part, because of their social identities, but they seize upon and make their own the rejection that they experience. Although their meanness may begin as artful, sadistic play, it becomes ever more serious as miscreants come to "mean" their behavior and evil identities.

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Aho (1994) approaches the issue of rejection by crafting a sociology of the enemy. Enemies, like deviants, are rejected and defined as evil. Enemies present a paradox because evil is inseparable from good. Enemies bind social actors. He suggests that enemies have both a subjectively constructed and objectively real quality (Aho 1994). In his treatise, Aho (1994) is grappling with the actual and potential for collective violence in modern societies. His work parallels work on deviance, but is more explicitly captivated by evil and its tragic consequences for human societies than most deviance researchers. Historically, social science and much of sociology stripped social actors of the power to do evil, thus, avoiding agency. Marginality was a result of pathologies in bodies, psyches, or communities. Deviants were tragic actors victimized by structural, personal, or social forces beyond their control, which led them to be victimizers of others (see Gottfredson and Hirschi 1993, for a recent example of this approach). Interactionists reject this kind of determinism. They agree that people are rejected through the labels applied to them, sometimes unfairly, but they also acknowledge that people can embrace and willingly enact the identities implied in the labels applied to them (Katz 1988). They want to confront the fact that human beings socially construct and enact evil. Interactionists, drawing upon their pragmatist roots, challenge deterministic, static approaches to deviance, because they make misbehavior a mystery. Deviant actors had been stripped of agency and the social dimensions of their behavior in much social analysis. Interactionists demonstrated that deviance, like normality is the product of social interactions, constructed over time, in conjunction with willing and unwilling others. To be controlled, someone has to do the controlling; to be deviant, others must cast you out; to be "normal," others must look past your indiscretions. Thus the construction of deviance became as important as deviant action. By conceptualizing deviance as an interactive process, interactionists both clarified deviance, and complicated the moral view of social actors (Becker 1963, p. 206). Goffman (1963), Becker (1963), Adler and Adler (1985), Katz (1988), Aho (1994), Snow and Anderson (1993), and Bogdan (1988), to name a few, have taken us into the worlds of the stigmatized. By doing so, they advance our understanding of exclusion, the ways in which people become marginalized from conventional activity, and their active participation in the processes of rejection (Goffman 1963; Becker 1963). Agency is central to these portrayals. Actors pursue unconventional, deviant, sometimes self and other destructive courses of action. In the process, they are creating selves. They are shaped by their social situation but not determined by it, even though as social actors they sometimes feel that situations are "causing them" to engage in particular self destructive acts. Becker (1963) investigates the world of jazz musicians to demonstrate the breadth and power of this analysis. Jazz musicians play unconventional music and lead unconventional lives. He challenges us to think more broadly about deviance and how one moves to the margins both by the actions they take and the actions others take in coordination with them. The entertainment metaphor makes it clear

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that actions have audiences. One must decide to whom to play. Schlock will appeal to a broad, commercially-viable audience. Jazz will be less popular, but more true to the art form and the audience of jazz aficionados. There are consequences for choosing either audience. In these presentations, it is never clear who is the insider and who is the outsider. One is both. Social activity is woven together. One is simultaneously in the know and ignorant. Deviants actively construct a social world in which they are an integral and accepted part, but by choosing their audience they are excluded from and marginal to other social activity. Interactionists, although often misunderstood, have made this interrelationship between insiders and outsiders explicit. As they did, they made deviants more human, less distant, and more accessible. If we could not identify with their worlds, we, at least, had a glimmer of understanding. Implicitly informed by pragmatist thought, interactionists explored the depersonalization of ostracism, alienation, and marginalization. Interactionist deviance researchers articulated and demonstrated the ways in which social actors devalue difference, creating almost insurmountable barriers to interaction. This is the problematic side of difference. We reject, ostracize and make socially real differences. Interactionists encouraged us to empathize with and understand the world of deviants, trying to make it and them less alien. In this sense, their work also demonstrated the promise of pragmatism. Others with difference became more human and less strange. Snow and Anderson (1993) show us how the homeless cope with their marginality with regard to residence. Adler and Adler (1985) take us into the complex and clandestine world of the drug dealer. Katz (1988) takes us into the world of violent criminals and shows us the process by which people become cold-blooded killers. Although the approach to difference championed by interactionists is more accurate, it, too, is incomplete because it implicitly assumes the rejection of difference by focusing on exclusion (Bogdan and Taylor 1987). There is the tendency to locate evil in the rejection by others and not in sews actions. It is true that social actors can make profoundly real the most insignificant differences. Thomas was right in his assertion that situations or things or differences that we define as real are real in their consequences. If we choose to stigmatize difference, it can have tragic consequences. These consequences sociologists have frequently demonstrated. We do reject differences and make those differences into master or identifying characteristics that dominate a person's identity (Becker 1963). Rejection, however, is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Social groups are capable of minimizing or ignoring even the most blatantly obvious differences, making them irrelevant to social interaction. We are far less clear on how this happens. In fact we write as if it never does. Odd, mean, different, bad people are marginalized, but never included. The processes of exclusion are clear in our writings, but the processes of acceptance and inclusion are themselves treated as atypical and uninteresting. This is unfortunate, because the pragmatic principle of democracy would suggest that this is an essential social response to difference.

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Bogdan (1988) has explored the presentation of differences in circus sideshows. He finds that the presentation and response to difference is complex and surprising. There were two ways in which difference was presented in sideshows. The first is most akin to our current conceptualization of deviance. In the exotic mode, exhibits were dehumanized, devalued, and presented as inferiors. Differences between the exhibit and the audience (normals) were magnified. The humanity, social status, and accomplishments of the exhibit were emphasized in the aggrandized mode. Profound differences were minimized and the exhibits' normalcy, in all other ways, was touted (1988, pp. 104-111). At the end of his analysis, Bogdan (1988, p. 269) makes the following observation: ...Outside the boundaries of the freak show many so-calledoddities had neighbors and family; they loved and were loved, were accommodating and accommodated, were respectful and respected. In addition, while freak show participants were not on the highest rung of the amusement world's own stratification system, they were a welcomed and taken-for-granted part of that culture. Indeed, from the life histories of freak show exhibits we might learn more about how blatantly different human beings are included into the human community, which knowledge could, if taken to heart, call forth a new direction in the study of human difference: a sociologyof acceptance. There are few places of which we are aware, in which sociologists have seriously explored and tried to define the characteristics and processes of acceptance. An exception is the work of Bogdan and Taylor (1989) who try to do this in their research on the relationships between partners (care-takers) and profoundly disabled persons. They found that caretakers actively constructed a sense of humanness in their charges by attributing thinking (even though it was not visibly expressed), seeing individuality in other, viewing other as a reciprocating social actor, and giving other an integral social place. In a later brief piece, they further develop the idea of acceptance in which others acknowledge deviance without stigmatization or moral degradation. They suggest that acceptance is rooted in caring relationships (see Bogdan and Taylor 1987, 1989). Biklen (1992) has also provided insight into the possibilities of acceptance in his study of families of children with disabilities. He demonstrates that "in some families children with disabilities have become full participants in family life" (Biklen 1992, p. 1). They are integral to family activities, rather than marginalized. He learns from these families the principles of inclusion and considers the ways in which these principles might be extended to other social institutions. Inclusion is central to this process. In their study of Jewish rescuers during the Nazi occupation of Europe, 0liner and Oliner (1988) explore what led people to rescue Jews, frequently at great risk to themselves. They did not find that rescuers were dramatically different than their comparison group of non-rescuers on most dimensions. Rescuers were, however, able to connect with Jews as human beings in ways that non-rescuers were not. They transcended the marginalization that was advocated for Jews in Nazi

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occupied Europe. This connection with the Jews had one of three foundations. The rescuer knew the person they aided. The rescuer had Jews as friends and comrades and felt compelled to aid other Jews. The final rationale was an expansive, inclusive, more democratic view of humanity (Oliner and Oliner 1988). Oliner and Oliner (1995, p. 6) also provided a methodology whereby they compared a sample of rescuers with a sample of nonrescuers; that is, persons who had lived in the same geographical areas during that period but had not rescued Jews. Two of the significant differences between these groups were the degree to which rescuers felt attached to those around them and the degree to which they felt obligated toward diverse other groups. More typically than nonrescuers, rescuers described their family relationships as very close and their parents as caring models. More typically than nonrescuers, too, they made Jewish friends even when both groups had similar opportunities for doing so in their schools, neighborhoods, and places of work. And more typically than nonrescuers, rescuers expressed a sense of commitment to the broader society and rejected ethnocentric attitudes while emphasizing their psychological similarity to diverse groups: rich and poor, Jews and Gypsies.

In this light, Aho (1994, p. 176) raises a question similar to the one we are asking here: how can we talk and write about hope? He does this by grappling with the tragedy of evil. What peace activism [we might substitute the study of deviance] requires is a careful thinking through of what routinely, hence unconsciously, is said about peace [deviance], the enemy [deviants/stigmatized], war [social control/punishment], evil [badness], and heroism [acceptance]. This in turn necessitates our attending to the'two wayness' of these words, to their richness of connotation... If we truly wish to be in a world of peace, we must choose our words thoughtfully and utilize a language appropriate to our goal.

Hope begins with the recognition of our interconnection with others and our feelings of remorse and shame at the understanding that we have harmed others who are, after all, like us (see Braithwaite 1989, on reintegration).

Table 1.

The Problematics of Difference

Self Inclusion Other Inclusion

Exclusion

Exclusion

Accepting Accommodating Normalizing

Enabling Sheltering

Deviant Identity

Disintegration of Relationship

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CONCLUSION Difference does not elicit a singular response. It is a complex social phenomenon. Given the history of deviance literature, we would expect to find high quality studies of excluding processes and we do (e.g., Lemert 1951; Gamson 1995). However, we also found a few examples of high quality analyses of inclusion processes. These studies clearly demonstrate the ways in which people transcend difference. This paper honors the promise of pragmatism by making a case for the study of difference, which explicitly incorporates inclusion processes, as well as exclusion processes. Table 1 illustrates the central dimensions and the directions of our conclusions. The confrontation of difference creates relational choices that face both self and other. Self and other are continually negotiating and renegotiating the integrative and disintegrative terms of their relationship. Table 1 depicts these choices. 4 The interesting cells in this table are the ones in which self's and others' negotiations are at odds over a central feature of difference. When self acts to transcend difference, these efforts are rejected. On the other hand, others can act inclusively to work past differences, and self can reject those efforts. This would seem to be similar to current discussions over enabling of deviance by intimates. The other two cells of the table show those cases in which self and other are in substantial agreement over the construction of difference and its meaning for their relationship. Rejection is the case of true deviance, in which the label fits and self owns up to it. This leads to marginalization. Democratic caring relationships are those in which self and others work to transcend the stigmatizing, discrediting feature of difference in the relationship Katz (1988) suggests that deviance is creative action. Its novelty makes deviance challenging and exciting. However, responses to difference can also be creative. Joas (1996) argues this point more globally, in his recent work on the creativity of action. W e can artfully construct our actions. Sometimes we construct our action in a fashion designed to exclude or create social barriers. Other times, however, we act in ways designed to transcend differences and melt the social barriers between self and others. The postmodernists never tire of repeating the idea that rigid consensus stifles the creative potential of difference. Yet this creative potential is also wasted if the difference exists free of any tension because none of the parties any longer feels bound to that which is specifically its own, because none experiences the Other as a potentially salutary provocation, a stimulus to serious self-transformation,and because all orientation towards a possible consensus---evenif it is only a consensus on agreeing to differ--has disappeared (Joas 1996, p. 257). To further understand the "creativity of action," we return to the four theoretical elements of the pragmatic promise: agency, process, science, and democracy.

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In pragmatism, actors are always purposefully weaving their way through the uncertainties of life. This approach has a number of implications for the study of difference. First, all members of society encounter influences of varying strength and consequence. And all are responsible for defining how to use these influences to serve their purposes and cope with their life situation. Therefore, a pragmatic approach is reluctant to conceptualize the person as a victim. The wisdom of this rejection of victimization is that futures remain rife with possibilities. The funnel of betrayal that labeling theory is famous for documenting is descriptive of what has happened. It is not certain, however, that what has happened will continue to happen. Courses of action and identities can change. Relationships always have the potential for reconstruction. That is, they can create a funnel of opportunity, as well as one of betrayal. Wuthnow (1991) makes a case for compassion in social life. In a later work, he reports on the ways in which people band together for purposes of supporting each other through troubling times. He finds that people in small groups use these associations to make connections with others, although he also raises the concern that these inclusive groups may alter our notion of both community and spirituality (Wuthnow 1994). While agency offers insight into how futures are creatively constructed, the pragmatist commitment to process documents how agency unfolds across time. Identities constructed on differences are created and maintained in a social context. These contexts retard and facilitate the reconstruction of difference. When researchers enter contexts, they locate selves across time and place. In so doing, they find much more fluid connection between selves in interaction with others within and between social situations. Ebaugh (1988) documents the difficulty of extricating one's self from a deviant identity. Others sometimes object to dramatic identity changes and resist self-transformation. However, she also documents how deviants accomplish these transformations with the support of others. Sometimes this requires abandoning one audience and adopting one that will be more supportive of the identity change. Ulmer (1994) too demonstrates the difficulty of exiting a deviant group and the resistance one will experience from deviant others as they try to exit in his work on motorcycle gangs. Pragmatists view science as a method for solving problems and finding out what works. They did not grant science a sacred status. Knowledge produced by this method was not "Truth," but judged by its usefulness for understanding and solving problems. Scientific knowledge was subject to redefinition with the production of more knowledge. Pragmatists were more clear about their purposes than symbolic interactionists. They envisioned science as a means to create a more benevolent, egalitarian, and loving community. For our purposes, the study of difference, science should be used not only to understand the ways in which difference is marginalized and the consequences of marginalization, but also, the ways in which people transcend difference to create inclusive relationships. For example, Biklen (1992) demonstrates the ways in which schools can develop programs that include disabled stu-

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dents. Karp (1996) explicates the ways in which depressed people and their significant others come to live with depression rather than defeat it. Braithwaite (1989) explores the reintegration of criminals and the power of shame. It is amazing how important the analysis of democracy was to pragmatists and how unimportant the analysis of democracy has been to symbolic interactionism, particularly those who study deviance. Persons in relationships are continually negotiating similarities and differences that are sources of solidarity and disintegration in their relationships. This process of negotiating differences and similarities is ubiquitous in social life. Difference has been investigated by sociologists as a source of alienation and conflict, which leads to negative consequences for both self and others. Deviants are ostracized. Once marginalized, they strike out against society. A key point of this paper is the identification of processes that will produce more promising outcomes which transcend division and difference. Democractic, caring relationships must be at the heart of such analyses. Through such relationships, people are heard and included. In this paper, we have used the study of difference to explore how interactionists might draw more fully on their pragmatist roots. We have suggested that interactionists, by abandoning the pragmatist commitment to democracy, were unable to develop a sociological version of the promise of pragmatism for the study of difference. This promise suggests that social actors can manage difference in such a way that it does not destroy relationship. As sociologists, we can use our skills and training to identify and understand these processes. Although we use difference as a place to explore these issues, we think that our arguments have implications for symbolic interactionism and more generally for sociology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Kathryn Szudy and Valerie Martin for their invaluable library assistance. We appreciate the secretarial assistance of Robin Heil in preparing this manuscript and Nancy Terrell for her editorial assistance. We also appreciate the helpful comments of Steve Dandaneau, Brenda Donnelly, Maude Falcone, Dan Miller, Fred Pestello and anonymous reviewers at Studies in Symbolic Interaction. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the Midwest Sociological Society's annual meetings in Des Moines, Iowa, April, 1997.

NOTES 1. StanSaxton retrieved this quote, along with the 1837 source from a web page sponsoredby the USA Library. The 1837 citation was provided on this web page, but, as far as we know the page number was not. 2. Although these authors provide an important analysis, one could argue that their approach is too temporal and not focused enough on how place shapes and constrains agency.

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3. As with the quote from Emerson, this quote from Jefferson's letter was also found on the USA Library web site, without reference to a page number. 4. Two dimensional tables are limited to demonstrating the time ordering and complexity of process analysis. They inevitably simplify and provide a point-in-time representation of dynamic processess. However, they are useful for highlighting key elements of the model and providing at least a partial picture of our notions.

REFERENCES Adler, P., and P. Adler. 1985. Wheeling and Dealing: An Ethnography of an Upper-Level Drug Dealing and Smuggling Community. New York: Columbia University Press. Aho, J. A. 1994. This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Becker, H. S. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press. Biklen, D. 1992. Schooling Without Labels. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Blumer, H. 1969. Symbolic Interaction: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bogdan, R. 1988. Freak Show. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bogdan, R., and S. Taylor. 1987. "Toward a Sociology of Acceptance: The Other Side of the Study of Deviance." Social Policy 18: 34-39. . 1989. "Relationships with Severely Disabled People: The Social Construction of Humanness." Social Problems 36: 135-149. Braithwaite, J. 1989. Crime, Shame, and Reintegration. New York: Cambridge University Press. Couch, C., and M. Weiland. 1986. "A Study of the Representative Constituent Relationship." Pp. 375-92 in Studies in Symbolic Interaction: The Iowa School, edited by C. J. Couch, S. L. Saxton, and M. Katovich. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Dewey, J. 1940. "Creative Democracy: The Task before Us." Pp. 220-228 in The Philosopher of the Common Man: Essays in Honor of John Dewey to Celebrate His Eightieth Birthday, edited by S. Ratner. New York: Greenwood. . 1948 [1963]. Reconstruction in Philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press. Ebangh, H. R. F. 1988. Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Emerson, R. W. 1837. "The American Scholar." In Emerson Essays and Lectures. Library of America (Website). Emirbayer, M., and A. Mische. 1998. "What is Agency." American Journal of Sociology 103: 962q024. Etzioni, A. 1996. "The Responsive Community: A Communitarian Perspective." American Sociological Review 61 : 1-12. Gamson, W. A. 1995. "Hiroshima, the Holocaust, and the Politics of Exclusion." American Sociological Review 60: 1-21. Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gottfredson, M. R., and T. Hirschi. 1993. A General Theory of Crime. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hall, P. 1997. "Meta-Power, Social Organization, and the Shaping of Social Action." Symbolic Interaction 20: 397-419. .1985. "Asymmetric Relationships and Processes of Power." Pp. 308-344 in Foundations of Interpretive Sociology: Original Essays in Symbolic Interaction. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Jefferson. T. 1826. "Last Letter, Hypothesizing Liberty." Thomas Jefferson. Library of America USA (Website).

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Joas, Hans. 1996. The Creativity of Action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Karp, D. 1996. Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection and the Meanings of lllness. New York: Oxford University Press. Katz, J. 1988. Seductions of Crime. New York: Basic Books. Kohout, F. 1986. "George Herbert Mead and Experimental Knowledge." Pp. 7-25 in Studies in Symbolic Interaction: The Iowa School, edited by Carl J. Couch, Stanley L. Saxton, and Michael A. Katovich. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Lemert, E. M. 1951. Social Pathology: A Systematic Approach to the Theory of Sociopathic Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill. Maines, D. R., N. M. Sugrue, and M. A. Katovich. 1983. "The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead's Theory of the Past." American Sociological Review 48: 161-174. Mead, G. H. 1929. "The Nature of the Past." Pp. 235-242 in Essays in Honor of John Dewey, edited by John Coss. New York: Henry Holt. .1932. The Philosophy of the Present. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. . 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1936. Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oliner, S. P., and P. M. Oliner. 1995. Toward a Caring Society: Ideas into Action. Westport, CT: Praeger.

.1988. The Altruistic Personality. New York: The Free Press. Peirce, C. 1878. "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." Popular Science Monthly (January): 286-302. Sjoberg, G., E. Gill, B. Littrell, and N. Williams. 1997. "The Reemergence of John Dewey and American Pragmatism." Studies in Symbolic Interaction 21: 73-94. Shalin, D., 1988. "G. H. Mead, Socialism, and the Progressive Agenda." American Journal of Sociology 23: 913-51. Snow, D. A., and L. Anderson. 1993. Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People. Berkeley: University of California Press. Strauss, A. 1993. Continual Permutations of Action. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Ulmer, J. T. 1994. "Revisiting Stebbins: Labeling and Commitment to Deviance." Sociological Quarterly 35: 135-157. West, C. 1989. The American Evasion of Philosophy: The Genealogy of Pragmatism. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Wuthnow, R. 1991. Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . 1994. Sharing the Journey: Support Groups andAmerica's New Quest for Community. New York: The Free Press.

SPOTS ON A GNAT'S ASS, GOOD SOLDIERS, AND SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENTS STAN SAXTON'S PRAGMATIST APPROACH TO SOCIOLOGY

Dan E. Miller, Fred P. Pestello, and Patrick G. Donnelly

Most academics build their careers and establish reputations in the traditional manner, through research and publications. Certainly, this is not the only way to secure a place in the lore of academia. Some are great teachers who gather a large following of students. Still others get involved in professional organizations. While Stan Saxton had a respectable record of publications, 1 was a masterful teacher, and a marvelous critic, 2 his notable contributions to sociology came through his organizational work as a chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Dayton. After his tenure as chair, Stan 3 continued to be a visible and moral corporate actor in the university, in professional associations, and in academia. 4 His ability to employ sociological knowledge to Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 31-42. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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organizational processes that worked to the advantage of sociology was truly remarkable. His clear vision based on a strong sense of justice was inspirational. Stan's success as an organizational player occurred during a period of transition for the University of Dayton. Up to 1977 the university was primarily a teaching institution and parochial in its orientation. When Stan was hired as chairperson in that year, a new administration aimed to make the university a leader in Catholic higher education. Stan's charge was to bring the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in line with the larger project. He found himself in the right place with the right set of circumstances to realize his vision of a sociology department, a vision that fit the conditions of work and the expectations of a private, Catholic university. At the time of Stan' s arrival, the department lacked cohesion. Even with heavy teaching loads, faculty seldom lingered in their offices. Interpersonal communication was civil between faculty members, but infrequent. There was far too much reliance on part-time faculty to cover the curriculum. Stan's intention was to establish an active, intellectual community by hiring the fight kind of faculty members, provide them with the materials necessary to do their work, negotiate a common purpose, put them together, and observe what happened. He wanted a department with a strong, humanistic commitment to teaching, research, and service. The new department was to have faculty who identified either with a conflict or interactionist perspective and who had a pragmatist bent toward solving social problems. In order for the department and its faculty to be identified as legitimate by the university and the local community, faculty members were expected to do empirical research. However, this empiricism was not to be confused with the quantitative positivistic science done by major research universities. Rather, the empirical work primarily, though not exclusively, would be qualitative in nature, culminating with processual and historically based knowledge based on thick descriptions rather than the thin, point-in-time descriptions generated through most quantitative analyses. Most importantly, he wanted sociologists with a passion for the discipline and a strong sense of social justice. In the eight years Stan served as department chair eight new faculty were hired, each fitting the noted requirements. These new hires came from good graduate programs, though not necessarily from top rated departments. More importantly, they were students of highly respected scholars who shared many of the values being implemented in the reorganized department. Expectations for these new faculty members were ambitious. They were to be productive scholars, good teachers, involved in University and community service, moral Corporate actors, and willing to take positions of leadership when those opportunities arose. In time the transformation occurred. Scholarly productivity increased dramatically. An increasing number of papers were being read at scholarly meetings. Research grants were being written and funded. Faculty publications increased from only a few to a substantial number of books and journal articles. The department gained academic respect both inside and outside the University. Department

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members were being selected to serve on important boards and committees in the university and in the Dayton community. In the second year of Stan's tenure a major curriculum revision was undertaken. The new curriculum established Social Problems as the major entry-level course. Courses were organized in terms of micro, meso, and macro processes and structures. Central features of the new curriculum included an urban problems orientation and a major student research sequence culminating in a Senior Seminar that focused on social problems in the local community. Advising was decentralized, new student organization was formed, and a faculty-student lounge was established in order to facilitate interaction and the development of community within the department. All these actions were based on Stan's sense that community exists as a consequence of interaction in rich and healthy social relationships (Katovich and Saxton 1984). These changes worked. The number of sociology majors steadily increased, and a sense of belonging and solidarity developed among faculty and students which continues to this day. Stan's idea of creating a benevolent and nurturing community in which sociology could be practiced and learned, though not revolutionary, was a welcome addition to a university dedicated to these principles.

PRAGMATISM

AND

HUMAN

AGENCY

If a person spent any time in Stan's office s/he couldn't help but notice all the books on pragmatism. There they were--Mead, James, Dewey, and Peirce-prominently displayed on the top shelf, and they had been read. It is one thing to read pragmatism, but Stan practiced it. The central premises of pragmatism formed the basis of most of his purposive actions with respect to sociology and social organization. These premises include: (1) the primacy of human agency; (2) the fact that humans engage in self-regulating, purposive behavior directed toward solving problems; (3) the belief that science is the most beneficial way of producing valid, useful knowledge; and (4) the necessity of participation in social organization for the development of self (Pestello and Saxton 1999). For Stan it was axiomatic that humans organize their actions self consciously in order to overcome obstacles and solve problems that confront them. He understood that humans are not just victims of present circumstances or past actions, but that they are able to consciously plan and act in ways that can improve their lot in life. When humans organize their actions in concert with others, they can and do construct social situations and social organizations that serve mutual interests. Start never saw complex social organization as the enemy, but rather as an untapped resource just waiting for the right people to get involved. After all, it is through social interaction that healthy social relationships and benevolent communities are formed.

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Stan had little patience for fatalistic or deterministic explanations of human behavior. He understood that there is always hope. His notion of hope was based on a temporal distinction central to pragmatism. Whereas most social scientific conceptions of human action are based on the past experiences of the person (e.g., socialization theories and behaviorism), for pragmatists human action is organized as much by the future as by the past. As Stan often repeated, humans are pulled by their intentions as much as pushed by present and historical conditions. However, more than good intentions are necessary. People need a good sense of desired outcomes (or projected futures) and how to get to that desired state. Routinely, humans identify impediments to desired outcomes, generate accurate descriptions of the situation, and take action in order to overcome those problems. Of course, sociologists do this, too. For Stan it was only reasonable to use scientific knowledge in this process. Start understood that complex organizations and organizational processes could work for people. It gave them authority and the ability to control certain aspects of their life. In addition the organization itself gained wealth, power, and authority with successful purposive actions. He thought it was self-defeating to not get involved in social organizations. For him this was where the action took place. There was nothing mystical about it, just complex, coordinated, purposive action. Start understood that holding a position in an organization provided a person with the authority to make decisions that would affect self and others. He felt that organizational people just as well could be moral corporate actors with a strong sense of social justice and an understanding of how to develop healthy communities. He did not agree with Weber (1947) that rational social organization necessarily defeated these purposes. Stan had hope. He thought that sociologists should help people make sense of the impediments to desired outcomes in their lives, and to offer possible solutions when asked. He believed that sociologists occupy a unique position in contemporary society and with that position comes a responsibility. Sociologists have the necessary analytical tools, a sociological imagination (Mills 1959), and the time and ability to study social relationships and community. For Stan it simply followed that fellow sociologists had a moral obligation to help solve society's problems, not as detached, free-floating intellectuals, but as scholars involved in the community (Saxton 1993). As a pragmatist, Stan believed that knowledge of interaction processes, social relationships, and community was best attained through empirical, testable science (Mead 1938). With clear, precise descriptions of social conditions and situations, obstacles to desired outcomes can best be known. Then, courses of action can be proposed (hypothesized) and tested through reflexive action. Like the pragmatists before him, Stan saw science, and specifically social science, as a rational and workable method to construct an egalitarian and benevolent community.

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SOCIOLOGIST AS CITIZEN SCHOLAR Many of Stan Saxton's thoughts on the practice of sociology at most institutions are found in his 1993 article, "Sociologist as Citizen Scholar: A Symbolic Interactionist Alternative to Normal Sociology." It served as a call to organize sociology, indeed academia, differently--to better serve the needs of our students, our institutions, and our communities. This paper is revolutionary in its strong implications for how departments of sociology should be structured and administered, and for how those departments should act. Start begins by noting that in the Handbook of Sociology, Neil Smelser (1988) describes the way sociological knowledge is produced at research institutions. It is a positive science that provides "objective facts" and rationalizations for use by its clients, usually government agencies, but also global corporations. For Smelser, sociology had conceptual and methodological expertise needed by government agencies, foundations, and the corporate elite. Smelser felt that sociology departments and sociologists should forge symbiotic relationships with these entities. By doing this and employing the model of quantitative positivism to produce necessary facts and rationalizations sociology would be more readily accepted as legitimate, thus protecting and, perhaps, expanding its funding sources. Start noted that while Smelser's reasoning was sound, most sociologists were not located in research universities. Rather, they practiced their craft in more modest settings, at liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and in community colleges. The resources and conditions of work at these institutions seldom are amenable for the type of research typically practiced at major research universities~ Even so, Stan argued that highly significant, systematic, and organized scholarship was possible outside research universities, but only by recognizing significant organizational distinctions. Sociologists outside large research universities tend to be teaching scholars, "who serve the interests and needs of students and [those of] the academic and local communities" (Saxton 1993, p. 232). Considering the differences between serving the interests of the state and corporate elite by research universities versus the interests of students, the academy, and local communities, Start encouraged his readers to mount a challenge to "normal sociology." This new paradigm would be based on research that was useful for actors to improve conditions in local communities and, thus, to improve one's own conditions of living. He maintained that research that identifies problems and suggests possible solutions should be adopted (Bellah et al. 1985, 1991). In order to accomplish this new form of sociology Stan thought that alternative research methodologies and new forms of theory construction must be supported. He believed that professional organizations, academia, and community leaders would come to recognize the legitimacy of questions appropriate for qualitative and interpretive research methodologies.

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Symbolic interaction, with its focus on agency and outcomes, appeared to Stan as the best perspective for accomplishing this challenge to normal sociology. For him the model example of the citizen-scholar was Symbolic Interaction's founder, Herbert Blumer. Blumer was a highly regarded teacher, an exemplary scholar, a withering critic, and an administrator who built one of the most distinguished sociology departments in the world. In addition to all.this, he was an active citizen who received acclaim as a labor mediator: The citizen-scholar approach is based upon four principles. First, sociologists should study local social structures and processes with the idea that the fruits of the research may enhance the quality of life. Second, "the community becomes a research site for theoretically informed, empirical research projects organized with the objective of creating a higher quality of community life" (Saxton 1993, p. 244). Third, the theories and research methods employed recognize that social relationships and community are constructed through the purposive actions and interactions of people. Fourth, Stan believed that research should not be detached from one's life. Rather, it must be integrated with one's teaching and community involvement. In order to realize the citizen-scholar vision, Stan believed that it should be enacted at the department level: Ideally, an effectivestrategywouldbe for departmentsof sociologyto abandontheir loosecollections of individual scholarspursuingtheir own individual intellectual interests in favorof a more collectiveenterprise that provides more systematicknowledgeof local settings. Given the atomizednature of mostacademicdepartments, a coordinated,cooperativeapproachis not likely to exist. Members of departments of sociologycould make significantcontributions to the informationrequired to understand local socialissues and problemsbetter. Departmentsof sociologycouldprovideinformationalservicesthat combinethe generalknowledgeof the discipline with specializedknowledgeof the localcommunityfor purposesof improvingthe community's quality of life (Saxton 1993,p. 246). The department of sociology at Dayton was to become a test case for Stan's vision.

DEPARTMENTAL FOCUS ON COMMUNITY Several years after Stan stepped down as chair, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology was asked by the Dean of the College to consider reincorporating the Social Work Program into the department. Neither the sociology nor the social work faculty wanted the department to adopt the social work program simply as an appendage--as another bureaucratic dimension. Instead, an agreement was reached to develop a program that would fully incorporate each faculty into a unified whole. A unifying focus was necessary. The department developed a proposal promoting community as the organizing concept for the newly merged units

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(Pestello et al. 1996). This focus was consistent with the University's mission of service to the community and critic of society. Stan was responsible for developing the "Research and Scholarship" component of that proposal. Drawing from his work on the citizen scholar, he identified four underlying principles behind a commitment to research in the community. First, many community problems exist that call for change. Work leading to a deeper understanding of these problems can contribute to a higher quality of life for all community members. Second, the scientific method is the most effective approach to the development of valid understanding of community problems. The department supported qualitative and interpretive methods as well as quantitative techniques in examining these problems. The third principle Stan identified notes the possibility of making intelligent interventions in social processes and structures to increase the quality of community life. Recognizing the difficulty of creating deliberate social change, the proposal argued that valid data could shape the negotiations among different community interests and positively affect policy decisions. The fourth principle deals with the requirements of effective social intervention on the community level. A full command of the literature on a particular social problem is an important but insufficient component of intervention plans. Thickly contextualized and complex understandings of local conditions and circumstances, the history of the community, and its political structure arid rituals are required before any kind of success can be expected. Of course it was expected that the research generated locally would contribute to the broader sociological literature on social problems and community. In addition to the switch to a substantive focus on community, the "Research and Scholarship" section of the proposal called for a more radical switch in methods. The citizen scholar approach was designed on an economy of scale to integrate teaching, research, and service into an integrated whole. By proposing manageable individual and team research, with faculty and student collaboration, the goal was to generate knowledge about community problems with faculty, students, and the community benefiting from the activity. Teaching, research, and service to the community could be accomplished in the research act. Over the last eight years, Stan's work demonstrated his commitment to this program. He participated in two community-based research projects. One collaborative project focused on the impact of parental involvement in their children's education. In this research he identified obstacles to parental involvement. Based on his interviews with teachers, administrators, parents, and students he helped design a program to increase parental involvement. This program was partially successful after the first year, increasing parental involvement at the elementary school level, but not at the upper levels where routines had been established. In the other project he and a group of students studied how a religious community could be established in contemporary society.

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Stan brought his message to all who would listen. He taught two sections of Social Problems per term. In his classes he encouraged his students to recognize the world as it is, and that they could make a difference in enhancing the quality of life in their communities. He sponsored numerous independent studies each term, and had an informal student research seminar running continually. He challenged his students to lead a considered life, to be aware of the rewards, the difficulties, and the potential obstacles they face in their social relationships and career development. He warned them of "dangerous individualism," and of "the perseverance and intensification of class bifurcation". He naturally assumed that the sociological imagination, sociological concepts, and understandings would be helpful to them throughout their lives. He implored his students to "do good work for themselves and for their communities or they wouldn't amount to a spot on a gnat's ass." Every year the sociology department at UD ranks at or near the top in terms of the number of students taught per faculty member. We teach a lot of students. This is not due to some junior faculty teaching extremely large sections and other faculty members carrying light loads. Everyone teaches about the same number of students, including Stan, who was for several years the most senior member of the department. Stan not only pulled his weight in student numbers, but he was an incredibly gifted and influential teacher. He had a strong following among students and an outstanding reputation throughout the university, a reputation that was well deserved. For many students their education wouldn't be complete without taking Saxton's Social Problems course. In many respects Stan's relationships with students was inspirational. He engaged them, inviting them into the conversation--to become full participants in intellectual pursuits. It was clear that he cared deeply about his students, spending endless hours talking with them, inviting them to his house for dinner, meeting them on their turf, and always listening to them. He allowed them to express themselves--to find their voice. This is not to say that Stan did not take strong stands on issues. He did. His take on it was that sociology couldn't be successful merely by standing in front of a classroom talking to students. The students must become engaged in the enterprise. Any good social psychologist would agree. Perhaps the most notable thing about Start was that he engaged his students (and everyone else for that matter) in dialogue, always welcoming them "into the conversation" as equals. This practice of engaging people in conversation--inviting them to participate in the processes of interpersonal, community, and intellectual life was the main point for Stan. Reading and dreaming about these things were merely phases in the social act. Action was required, and a major requirement of community is that its members must interact with each other. Stan's pragmatism and humanism are clearly exemplified in his work, and all his work focused on how to develop healthy communities, healthy social relationships, and healthy selves.

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HIRE WISELY A N D TURN THEM INTO "GOOD SOLDIERS" Although teaching is the most important faculty activity at a comprehensive university like Dayton, Stan realized that service within the institution also is vitally important. In one respect he simply felt that faculty members owe it to the organization that employs them. More significantly, Start argued that sociologists too often failed to be sociological about their universities and their own place within them. Faculty service, although shunned by many, has implications for career advancement as well for departmental well-being. Any basic sociological analysis should make this point obvious. Stan was painfully aware of the widely publicized closings of a few sociology departments in the early 1980s. As he said many times in person and at least once in print "on too many campuses few would care, or perhaps even notice if the sociology department was eliminated." Fearing an administrative slippery slide into oblivion Stan argued that sociology departments must work to ensure that they are not marginal to their college or university. More specifically, he thought that sociology faculty should get involved in the intellectual, governing, and administrative processes within the university. As a reflexive sociologist he understood that a major bargaining strategy is to make oneself a valuable, if not indispensable commodity. By being a "good soldier" and doing one' s fair share of committee work outside of the department, individual faculty members, and by inference sociologists and their departments, gain visibility, credibility, and respect. Colleagues and administrators see the significance of the contributions made by the individual, by sociologists, and by sociology departments. By situating oneself appropriately and getting appointed to important positions in the college and university, service work allows the faculty to protect the interests of their department and to use sociological knowledge pragmatically. The impressions made by individual sociologists and sociology departments follow from the interactions between sociologists, colleagues, and administrators. Many important decisions within the academy are made by committee. Administrators seldom make critical decisions alone and without counsel. They consult and rely on the recommendations of the select individuals and committees within the institution. Representatives from one's department must be part of these conversations for the department to fair well. Stan did more than his fair share of committee and administrative work, and he did it well. He was a major moral voice within the university. Although he could and often did argue vigorously, even those who disagreed with him noted that he brought keen insights and questions to the debate. One always knew where Stan stood on an issue. He loved to challenge conventional thinking and complacency if for no other reason than to ensure against the onset groupthink. Stan was,

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indeed, a good soldier. He wrote passionate letters to the Dean, the Provost, and the President of the University conceming pending policies or worrisome trends. Administrators knew that in his heart he cared deeply for the university and its mission. His ideas and opinions carried considerable weight. Faculty members hired over the past twenty-two years have gone on to take important leadership roles in the department, college, the university, and the local community in such positions as Associate Dean, Faculty Senators, Task Force Directors, Program Directors, Board Members and chairs of important committees. Sociologists now sit on several boards of directors of community agencies and act as consultants in local govemmental and non-governmental organizations. Why has this department thrived during Stan's tenure as Chair and beyond? We believe it is because Stan began a pattem of hiring wisely and persuading the faculty to be "good soldiers." Stan used this deeply ironic term completely without irony. He truly believed in duty, honor, and justice. Stan initiated a pattern of hiring that continued past his Chairmanship. All new faculty must fit with the mission of the university and the mission of the department. He was swayed neither by trendy theories nor heavily promoted data analysis techniques. Hiring procedures were based on substantive, theoretical, and methodological specialties that would contribute to the direction the university and the department was taking. Stan's acid test was to ask how the new hire would make the department better. As chair he established the practice (often used) that, if the department was not satisfied with a pool of candidates, then no hiring would be done. The search would begin, again, the following year. During the recruitment process Stan was not shy in promoting candidates who might show him up. Without exception he would clearly state, "I refuse to hire anyone who isn't brighter than I am." Whether this ever occurred is open to question, but he sincerely believed what he said. That said, Stan did not suffer fools or showboats kindly. He argued for good colleagues and against perceived prima donnas. Once again, the measure was the goodness of fit between the candidate and the department. Stan understood that healthy communities require citizens who interact with each other, and who form complex, interdependent relationships with each other. Departmental citizens must cooperate and pull their own weight. Few things infuriated Start more than university faculty members whom he thought were ripping off the system, the free riders who do not do their fair share of the work in all areas including participating in the life of the institution. It was Stan's contention that we are hired to teach well, do sound scholarship, and perform service to the university and to the community. The better these things are accomplished the more impact sociology has on the university, the community, and the students. The Sociology Department at the University of Dayton was well served, not only by Stan's direct participation, but also by the model for the sociology department and the practice of sociology that he established. He implored departmental

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colleagues to get involved in the conversation. He encouraged participation in committee and administrative work. He was instrumental in getting people placed in important positions, and he was generous with his time giving sound advice and support. Stan understood that everyone benefited from each other's service. His intention was to construct a benevolent and nurturing community in which sociology would stand out. It was basic sociology to Stan.

NOTES 1. The publication record includes three edited volumes (Saxton, Voydanoff, and Zukowski 1984; Couch, Saxton, and Katovich 1986; Miller, Katovich, and Saxton 1997), and several incisive articles on research methods (Saxton and Couch 1975; Saxton 1982; Katovich, Saxton, and Powell 1986). 2. Most of the criticism is in the oral tradition of symbolic interactionists. However, the reader can refer to his critical essay on the future of symbolic interaction (Saxton 1989). 3. The authors could not use the name "Saxton" to refer to Stan. It did not read well. Everyone who ever met Stan and talked with him, knew him as Stan. We will keep with this informal usage out of respect for him and for his ability to engage people on a personal level. 4. Stan's organizational skills were evident in several arenas. He was a founding member of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (Saxton 1997), and served as its President in 1995/1996. In addition, Stan was actively involved in the Midwest Sociological Society, serving on numerous committees. His organizational finesse was, perhaps, most notable when he served as ramrod in the New Iowa School writing projects (Saxton 1995).

REFERENCES Bellah, R., R. Marsden, W. Sullivan, A. Swidler, and S. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart• Berkeley: University of California Press• . 1991. The Good Society. New York: Knopf. Couch, C. J., S. L. Saxton Jr., and M. A. Katovich. (eds.). 1986. Studies in Symbolic Interaction: The Iowa School (Volumes A and B). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Katovich, M. A., and S. L. Saxton, Jr. 1984. "Rich Relationships: A Social-Psychological Essay." Pp. 81-94 in The Changing Family, edited by S. L. Saxton, P. Voydanoff, and A. Zukowsky. Chicago: Loyola University Press. Katovich, M. A., S. L. Saxton, Jr., and J. O. Powell. 1986. "Naturalism in the Laboratory." Pp. 79-88 in Studies in Symbolic Interaction: The Iowa School, Vol. A, edited by C. J. Couch, S. L. Saxton, and M. A. Katovich. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press• Mead, G. H. 1938. Philosophy of the Act. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, D. E., M. A. Katovich, and S. L. Saxton, Jr. (eds). 1997. Constructing Complexity: Symbolic Interaction and Social Forms. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press• Mills, C. W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Pestello, F. G., D. E. Miller, S. L. Saxton, Jr., and P. G. Donnelly. 1996. "Community and the Practice of Sociology." Teaching Sociology 24: 148-156• Pestello, F. G., and S. L. Saxton, Jr. 1999. "The Promise of Pragmatism: Towards A Sociology of Difference." Studies in Symbolic Interaction 00: 00-00. Saxton, S. L., Jr. 1997. "SSSI: Outsiders Become Established•" Symbolic Interaction 20: 169-176. • 1995. "The Couch Project•" Symbolic Interaction 18: 269-283.

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.1993. "Sociologist as Citizen Scholar: A Symbolic Interactionist Alternative to Normal Sociology." Pp. 232-250 in A Critique of Contemporary American Sociology, edited by T. Vaughn, G. Sjoberg, and L. Reynolds• Dix Hills, NJ: General Hall. . 1989. "Knowledge and Power: Reading the SI Journal." Studies in Symbolic Interaction 10: 9-24. • 1982. "How to Do What Simmel Did." The Wisconsin Sociologist 19: 4. Saxton, S. L., P. Voydanoff, and A. Zukowsky. (eds.). 1984. The Changing Family: Chicago: Loyola University Press. Saxton, S. L., Jr., and C. J. Couch. 1975. Recording Social Interaction. Pp. 255-262 in Constructing Social Life: Readings in Behavioral Sociology from the New Iowa School, edited by C. J. Couch and R. A. Hintz. Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing Company. Smelser, N. J. 1988. Handbook of Sociology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Weber, M. 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: The Free Press•

URBAN INEQUALITY AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF CHURCH-BASED INTERVENTION

David R. Maines and Michael J. McCallion

We offer here an exceedingly brief treatment of an extraordinarily complex matter. Our topic is the metropolitan structure of American urban areas, and our problem is how to reduce the extent of inequality among the sectors of those areas. This problem clearly is an instance of what Farberman (1991, p. 485) called "the great policy issues of the day," and we follow Farberman's lead in proposing the framework of critical pragmatism that focuses on action processes and political economy as a way of addressing it. In a sense, we seek to add purposive political action to Strauss' (1993) depiction of ordering processes. We pursue these matters by drawing on Saxton's discussion of the citizen-scholar in which we find the impulse for political activity within the scholarly agenda. We then locate that impulse in pragmatism and in a variety of case-exemplars among Chicago School sociologists, finally resting in the work of Saul Alinsky as a proponent of urban restructuring and enfranchisement. Our substantive case study is the Detroit metropolitan area, in which is found all the typical features of American urban areas, and the potential for congregation-based coalitions as a political force. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 43-53. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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D.R. MAINES and M.J. McCALLION PRAGMATISM

AND

THE CITIZEN

SCHOLAR

The vast majority of social scientists eventually come to consider seriously how scholarship and citizenship might be combined in a way that knowledge production and consumption can be configured to improve human group life (Britt 1992). Stanley Saxton, to be sure, was among those who put their minds to such matters, in the course of which he wrote about the role of the "citizen-scholar" (Saxton 1993). To Saxton, such persons are participants in helping to solve social problems. They are aware of their obligations to intellectual pursuit and their obligations to democratic processes. They resist the natural self-interest that is inherent in legitimated scholarly curiosity, and in that resistance they attempt to create communal, cooperative bonds of intellectual work that would serve the needs of local communities. Like others before him, Saxton calls for the citizen-scholar to conduct research relevant to local communities and other contexts of human habitation, and he finds the impulse and rationale for such work in pragmatism (see also Pestello and Saxton, this volume). For over a century, pragmatism has been developed as an action theory that conceptualizes individual and societal phenomena as social processes, or, as Becket (1986) puts it, as people "doing things together." The relevance of pragmatism to the citizen-scholar agenda rests in three core assumptions of the perspective (Maines 1997). First, as just noted, human group life is composed of ongoing activity. Whatever we find in human societies exists as various forms of activity, ranging from minds and selves to social structures and cultures. To analyze those forms, we therefore should see them as constituted of human activity. Second, the most basic, pervasive, and consequential form of human activity is communication. Symbols, especially highly abstract ones, are uniquely constitutive of human societies, and therefore humans transact their forms of conduct in and through communicative representations. This condition is definitive of the species, and thus not to consider communication is to miscast to some extent the phenomena under inspection. The third area of relevance lies in the concept of "situation." The pragmatist contention is that all social life is situated and that situations themselves contain properties of their own that confront people upon entering them although people may or may not take those properties into account in forming their conduct. This view was explicitly worked out by W. I. Thomas (1966 [ 1927]) in what he called situational analysis and that Blumer (1990) developed in his analysis of industrialization. Thus, while situations can vary in scale, from the interpersonal to the international, the generic condition of human activity as situated activity remains. The roots of Saxton's citizen-scholar are found not only in pragmatism's core concepts and propositions but in its practical and moral concerns. Pragmatism has always maintained a strong concern for the nature of a healthy society, and its advocates regarded adjustive reconfigurations of relationships and resources as the essential processes out of which community enfranchisement emerges. Early

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instances of this approach are seen in the activities associated with Hull House in Chicago. Using pragmatist ideas, women such as Jane Addams, Edith Abbott, and Julia Lathrop sought to contribute to solutions of problems stemming from immigration, racial oppression, industrial exploitation, and various kinds of social disorganization. These were the "applied pragmatists." The "intellectual pragmatists" such as John Dewey and G. H. Mead became involved in Hull House and similar activities, out of which came a version of critical pragmatism similar to what today would be a merging of interactionism and social work (see Segalman and Chaiklin 1979; Johnson 1997). While Saxton appropriately selects Herbert Blumer as his exemplar of the citizen-scholar, it is evident that a version of critical pragmatism, with its dual focus on action and intervention, was part of the collective attitude of several generations of Chicago School sociology. Albion Small was deeply concerned with social injustices brought forth by capitalism, and he was explicit in his disregard if not contempt for barriers between purely intellectual and applied sociology (Small 1896, p. 564). W. I. Thomas (1927) likewise developed the theoretical aspects of situational analysis hand in hand with his analysis of the juvenile court system and the problem of juvenile delinquent recidivism. Robert Park served as the first President of the Chicago Chapter of The Urban League, and Louis Wirth (1931) was instrumental in articulating the agenda for clinical sociology and its relation to pragmatist thought. Throughout his career, Wirth also broadcast a series of radio programs on a variety of pressing issues such as welfare, taxes, housing, and national health insurance. Add to these instances Blumer's work in the areas of labor arbitration, developing nations, and civil rights, and it is easy to understand the import of Saxton's recommendations for a renewed citizenship among sociologists. The link connecting Saxton's concerns and our work on the role of the church in the Detroit metropolitan area is found in the legacy of Saul Alinsky and Robert Park (see Reitzes and Reitzes 1992). Alinsky studied under Park as an undergraduate and as a graduate student under Burgess and Clifford Shaw. Out of these studies he acquired the fairly common Chicago concern for urban communities and their problems. For our present purposes, we accept the Reitzes' excellent analysis the relations between Alinsky's activism and Park's urban sociology, and move to focus on a few of its relevant aspects. First, there is the recognition that communities do not stand alone but exist inside social structures and other more encompassing social arrangements. Second, however true such embeddedness may be, community residents can have limited, truncated, or completely myopic views and understandings of their own community lives. Members, that is, may well not understand their relationships to larger structural arrangements. Third, interventions such as that of the community organizer must at a minimum create a new and more relevant community awareness, and, fourth, resources must then be mobilized to alter existing arrangements for purposes of improving community life. Democratic processes of civic partici-

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pation, as was clear both to Park (Maines, Bridger, and Ulmer 1996) and to Alinsky (Reitzes and Reitzes 1992, p. 12), are at their heart political economic, intergroup relationships. The adjustments in relationships and resources that contribute to community improvement, accordingly, must come through those same 3rocesses.

THE ECOLOGICAL SITUATION OF METROPOLITAN DETROIT In the past half century, urban areas have been becoming more internally differentiated. Regions within metropolitan areas--neighborhoods, economic zones, governmental sectors, recreational areas, and so forth---have become increasingly dissimilar from one another and display greater inequality and less collective consciousness than in previous eras. This characterization of urban metropolitan areas is well accepted among social scientists, and it represents a new form of settlement pattern called the multinucleated metropolitan region (Gottdiener 1994, p. 5; see also Palen 1997, Ch. 6). The processes leading to American metropolitan transformations are fairly well known. The early economic and governmental centers, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, attracted large populations that resulted in concentrated urban centers. The consequent economic structures and accompanying immigration processes promoted class diversity and solidification, which then contributed to early patterns of suburbanization. Innovations in transportation technologies-streetcars, trains, and automobiles--supported by federal and state housing and road subsidies, facilitated the movement of additional populations beyond urban borders. All of these processes have contributed to ecological patterns typical of large Northern metropolitan areas entailing central city decline and increasing suburban affluence. Accompanying the decline of core cities has been the emergence of a new urban form that Garreau (1991) has termed "edge cities." These areas now represent the economic centers of metropolitan areas, and are found fifteen to thirty miles from the once dominant central business districts. They are difficult to define, because they are not organized the way cities typically have been. They lack definable boundaries, and are not legal units, but instead are constellations of private property governed not by elected officials but by corporate boards. As Palen describes edge cities, they "are privately managed city-states controlled by an oligarchy" (1997, p. 145). Metropolitan Detroit is an exaggerated instance of central city decline and edge city development (Hill 1996; Sugrue 1996). In the last fifty years, Detroit's central city population has halved, from 1.8 million to under one million today, while the suburban population has increased to nearly four million. And, Detroit's edge cities--Fairlane, Troy, Auburn Hills, Farmington Hills--exert increasing power

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in the metropolitan economy, certainly as much as Detroit itself exerted in the 1950s. Measured by population, employment, housing, and business development, the economic center of the metropolitan area is in northwest Oakland county (the adjacent county to the north), not Detroit. This pattern results from two dominant factors: geography and transportation. Like many American cities, Detroit has large amounts of land surrounding it, meaning that it has expanded horizontally. Typically, cities in this geographic situation expand faster than their populations. Metropolitan Los Angeles in the last fifty years increased its population four-fold but its territory twenty-fold. Chicago increased its population by four percent in the last twenty years but its territory by nearly fifty percent. However, since 1970, Detroit has increased its land by nearly thirty percent, but its population has decreased by seven percent, indicating that this metropolitan area is building suburbs and towns that its population does not need (Orfield 1999). For example, for every 100 homes built on farmland in Brighton (a far western suburb), it meant that 67 homes became abandoned in Detroit. In its a typical scenario, Farmington Hills (a closer suburb to city) residents bought the Brighton homes (which are further yet from the the city), Livonia residents bought the Farmington Hills homes, Redford residents bought the homes for sale in Livonia, and Detroiters moved to Redford, leaving 67 empty houses in Detroit (O'Brien 1999). With respect to the matters of transportation, Richard Hill writes that "Politically, edge cities are the achievement of a highway lobby forged around automobile production, federally financed freeways, cheap gasoline, suburban new home construction, and shopping malls" (1996, p. 3). Indeed, Detroit expansion is a direct consequence of expressways and the automobile. With Interstate 80 to the south of the metropolitan area, Interstate 75 running north and south, Interstate 94 connecting Detroit to Chicago and the west, and several other connecting expressways located within the metropolitan area (I-696, 1-10) and Michigan cities to the west (I-96), businesses and suburban residents find it easy to get from one area to the next without being dependent on Detroit itself. And, as Garreau (1991) explains, the economics and geography of the parking lot dictates much of automobile use. Surface lots, which consume more space, are far cheaper to construct than either elevated or underground parking areas. These patterns, as Garreau (1991, pp. 145-178) and others argue, reflect class more than race, even in Detroit which is a highly racially divided area. Edge city blacks, that is, are more similar to edge city whites in terms of income, education, attitudes, and lifestyle than they are to working class or poor blacks. The decisive factors affecting metropolitan life, therefore, tend to be associated with socioeconomic class more than anything else. In this regard, it is important to note the class variation among suburban communities. The newer, outer ring communities tend to be the most affluent. In the Detroit area, these would include Troy, Rochester Hills, Auburn Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Northville, and similar areas, while the older, inner ring suburbs would include Redford, Warren, Ecorse, Royal Oak,

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Taylor, and Ferndale. The differences between these two suburban rings are striking. Average housing prices for Bloomfield Hills in 1990 were $457,000; Orchard Lake, $376,000; West Bloomfield, $188,000--all outer ring areas. Among the inner ring was Royal Oak at $30,000, Ecorse at $28,000, Femdale at $42,000, and Taylor at $52,000. Per capita income shows similar differences: Bloomfield Hills is the highest at $78,000 and Ecorse is among the lowest at $10,000 (Hill 1991, pp. 6-7). Like other metropolitan areas in the country, the situation is that older suburbs are beginning to feel the stress and strain of greater needs and fewer resources. Officials of these older suburbs are feeling the strain of a weakening tax base, a decrease of the median household income, and an increase in the age of the population. Nationally, 20 to 30 percent of residents live in low tax-base inner suburbs and satellite cities that are looking more like central cities each year. Indeed, the inner ring suburbs, those on the edge of the city boundaries, are likely to experience more intense social instability than central cities because these communities lack diverse and stable resources to pay for local services. Central cities at least have a significant downtown tax base to help pay for police and social service, universities, transit systems, and pop culture attractions. Another 20 to 40 percent of the U.S. metropolitan population lives in middle class and developing suburbs with low tax bases. These include second-ring cities and townships as well as rapidly developing communities. These communities lack a sufficient tax base to support the needs of increasing households, growing student populations, traffic congestion, and groundwater pollution arising from large-scale septic sewer problems. Myron Orfield writes, when the populations of the low tax-baseinner-ring suburbs, satellite cities and middle-class developingcommunitiesare added to that of the central city, which typicallyrepresentsabout 20 to 40 percent of a region's population, the total number of residents disadvantaged by regional polarizationcomesto well over 65 percent--and often up to as high as 85 percent. In the Detroitregion, the figure is about78 percent" (1999, p. 3c). The stable affluent places that we think are the suburbs really make up only about 15 to 30 percent of the population of most U.S. metropolitan regions. They enjoy high tax bases and few social needs; they also receive a disproportionate share of the region's highway and sewer and infrastructure spending. That is, they dominate the region's economic growth. To better understand all of this, we need to look at two social and economic indicators in the Detroit region: property-tax base and job growth. In doing so, a clear picture emerges of the diversity and polarization of the suburbs. Overall, where social needs are greatest, the property-tax base is comparatively low. Regionally, the average property-tax base per household in 1996 was $56, 231, compared with $17,833 for the city of Detroit. Twenty-four suburban cities had average property tax bases per household lower than $40,000. These included

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suburbs in Macomb County, such as Mount Clemens ($38,844) and Rosevitle ($43,973); inner suburbs such as Hazel Park ($28,295) and Inkster ($19,756). At the other end of the spectrum, 20 communities had property tax bases per household of more than $100,000. Among the highest were Bloomfield ($148,070), Troy ($127,721), and Orchard Lake Village ($321,650). As Orfield writes, "between 1986 and 1996, the average property-tax base per household jumped 30.8 percent. Yet property tax base decreased in the city of Detroit by 8.4 percent. And in 14 cities, the property-tax base declined more than that. Most of the affected cities are near Detroit, or are middle-class developing communities in Monroe and Northern St. Claire counties. On the other hand, increases occurred where property-tax bases were already high, as in Grosse Ile, Plymouth Township, and Grosse Pointe Farms" (1999b, p. 4c). This disparity is repeated when job growth is examined. In the Detroit region in 1995, there were 55 jobs per 100 persons, a 14.3 percent increase from 1985. However, 23 cities, including Detroit, lost jobs in this period. The greatest job losses often occurred in inner-suburban ring and satellite cities. Wyandotte went from 40.7 jobs per 100 persons n 1985 to 37.3 jobs 10 years later; Pontiac dropped from 94.5 to 78.9 jobs per 100 persons. By contrast, often cities with the most jobs per capita in 1985 experienced the greatest percent increase in jobs over the 10 year period, cities already affluent. For example, Troy went from 112.2 to 147.3 jobs per 100 persons; Bloomfield Hills from 186.6 to 274.7. And job projections for the region show no significant departure from this pattern of disparity.

INTERVENTION PROCESSES We have depicted the ecological situation of metropolitan areas like Detroit as one of declining central cities and their inner ring suburbs at the expense of outer ring and edge city political economic advantage. Along side this situation, however, is one in which inner ring community residents tend to identify more with outer ring communities than they do with Detroit city. Much of the basis of these "identification with" processes, as Stone (1962) might have seen it, pertains to racial antagonisms and their polarization between Detroit and its suburban areas. With this form of consciousness, it has been difficult for inner ring residents and decision makers to see their common political economic situation with Detroit. Accordingly, as Blumer (1949) argued long ago, such common interests are insufficient to mobilize collective action on the basis of those interests. In short, it is an awareness context situation cast in Marxian terms. Myron Orfield (1997), a five-term Minnesota State legislator, has dealt with these same problems in Minneapolis and other cities. As he puts it, the issue is how to get the state and less affluent communities to stop subsidizing the affluent communities through state laws allocating tax revenues. The current situation is that outer ring communities, because of their higher aggregate incomes, can sup-

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port local services with a lower tax rate and high tax base and because of their edge city affiliations they can attract businesses. Other communities, however, have only tax abatement strategies to attract businesses, but the price is a lower tax base that decreases their ability to pay for local social services. This kind of economic localism for inner ring suburbs perpetuates competitive relationships and contributes to overall decline of the region. The solutions to regional problems, thus says Orfield and others, are regional in scope, which means that the state must be brought in as an actor in promoting tax sharing. Orfield found in Minneapolis that the 400 regional churches were an effective resource for change. Church leaders had access to large congregations that constituted sentiment pools and voters. Collectively mobilized, they brought political and moral pressure to bear on state representatives, who together with coalitions of state authorities were able to get regional tax sharing legislation passed by the Minnesota state legislature. The end result of this legislation was that the inequality among metropolitan areas was reduced from ratio of 12 to 1 to about 5 to 1. When these reductions in inequality are accomplished, subsequent studies have shown, the entire region benefits and renders it more competitive with other regions in the country in terms Of attracting business and in standards of living. These processes of attempting to create regional coalitions are now underway in Detroit. The Metropolitan Organizing Strategy for Enabling Strength (MOSES), itself an urban-suburban multi-racial coalition of fifty churches in the Detroit area, in collaboration with the ArChdiocese of Detroit has become the mediating organization for gathering together congregations from the metropolitan area to address problems of urban sprawl. They are using a variety of strategies, including providing access to over two dozen web sites on the negative regional impact of urban sprawl, forming coalitions with other advocate organizations such as the National Conference for Community and Justice, Southwest Alliance for Neighborhoods, and several local universities, and sponsoring a special issue of The Michigan Catholic on Detroit urban sprawl and its solutions which goes to the 1.5 million catholics in southeast Michigan. In addition, the Archdiocese of Detroit retained Myron Orfield and his research organization to conduct a study of the Detroit area problems (Orfield t999a). MOSES and the Archdiocese have brought in 0afield to speak to coalition members and local pastors as a way of defining the problems to be addressed. These meetings, which grow exponentially as coalition members bring in additional advocates, are attended primarily at this point (Summer 1999) by Detroit and inner ring community residents, who obviously are the ones who must form the basic, functioning regional coalition. They cut across religions--Episcopalians, Catholics, Jews, Baptists, Lutherans, Unitarians--and include environmentalists and academics. Church leaders are instructed to mobilize their own pastoral networks to involve additional pastors, and each is mandated to educate and activate their local congregations. They seek to accomplish this, as Offield found to be effective in his earlier efforts, by defining urban issues (taxes, land use, infrastruc-

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ture) as issues of justice, faith, and theology. Good believers, they argue, are agents of social change and humanity. With approximately 3.5 million people in Detroit and the inner ring suburbs, accounting for about two-thirds of the Detroit metropolitan area and one-third of the state of Michigan, the goal is to build sufficient congregation-based pressure to persuade state legislators to enact tax revisions that benefit the entire region rather than merely selected affluent communities. As Orfield expresses it, For decades, many organizations, academics and politicians have preached the gospel of metropolitanism. Metropolitan regions facing their futures together have less racial and economic segregation, stronger central cities and superior economic growth. To achieve this, regional polarization needs a strong, multifaceted, regional response. Such reform is positively, although not always easily, attainable in any metropolitan region. Once residents recognize that suburban communities are not a monolith of shared needs and experiences, and are not all wealthy with few social needs, low tax-base communities--the Inksters, Wyandottes, Rosevilles, and Burlingtons--can identify each other as allies in regional reform and begin to work together for a stronger, more stable region (1999b, p. 4c).

C O N C L U D I N G REMARKS In concluding our rather truncated examination of urban inequality and its possible solutions, we note that there are a variety of models for the citizen-scholar. One is represented by the generic postmodernist, who theorizes cultural configurations as texts and political intervention as acts of providing new readings of those texts that might emancipate readers. We find such proposals inadequate on the grounds that they are encased wholly within intellectual discourse and stand little chance of being translated into action that might change the conditions of living. Another model is the applied sociologist, perhaps engaging in evaluation research. This approach, oriented as it is toward evaluating program outcomes, is better suited to affect the lives of those covered by the program, but it has no systematic link to political economic decision making. That is, the research itself may well not be acted upon by decision makers and thus becomes of little use. While these are legitimate models, we do not think that they are what Saxton had in mind in his writing about the citizen-scholar. Rather, he imagined something more along the lines of participatory action research (Reason 1994). In this approach, there is the goal of producing information and knowledge useful for groups, especially when those groups operate under conditions of being semienlightened and act on the basis of limited liability, to use a Morris Janowitz term. This approach, accordingly, tries to empower those groups by redefining "the ways in which the establishment monopolizes the production and use of knowledge" (Reason 1994, p. 328). In a word, participatory action research involves adult literacy in which local members come to be able to redefine their situations and, to borrow one of Herbert Blumer's metaphors, through which the veils of power are lifted and a new consciousness is established. Moreover, Saxton's citi-

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zen-scholar would participate in the very groups whose functioning is inside the processes one wishes to alter. Scholarship and citizenship are merged and intertwined in this mode, meaning that learning, teaching, and practical politics are configured into an overall style of work rather than separated into disjointed steps or stages. These, we think, are the ways consistent with a critical pragmatism that merges values, research competence, education, and practical politics in pursuit of community enfranchisement and a healthier society. The approach of any instance of this critical pragmatism, however, is clearly a function if the problems addressed. In the case of metropolitan inequality, Saxton's unswerving focus on local communities would prove rather limited, because while an array of problems are experienced locally they are generated and perpetuated by processes that extend beyond those localities. Urban problems in contemporary America are primarily regional in character, and thus their solutions must be regional to be effective. This is one of the lessons that Peter Hall (1995) has taught us regarding educational policies. And, it has for some time been a message that Harvey Farberman has been sending us. One does not have to abandon the unique insights of pragmatism or interactionism to recognize the decisive effects of political economic processes. Quite the opposite. If the unyielding pragmatist focus on action processes means anything at all, it at least means that the adjustive relationships that G. H. Mead was so concerned about are to be put into motion through action. And if Saxton's insights are to be useful, those modes of action would include political activities and research competence aimed at human enfranchisement.

REFERENCES Becker, H. 1986. Doing Things Together. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Blumer, H. 1949. "Group Tension and Interest Organization." Pp. 1-15 in Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting, Industrial Relations Research Association. . 1990. Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gmyter. Britt, D. 1992. "Applied Sociology." Pp. 103-106 in Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by E. Borgatta and M. Borgatta. New York: Macmillan. Farberman, H. 1991. "Symbolic Interaction and Postmodernism: Close Encounter of a Dubious Kind." Symbolic Interaction 14: 471-488. Garreau, J. 1991. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Anchor Books. Gottdiener; M. 1994. The New Urban Sociology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hall, P. 1995. "The Consequences of Qualitative Analysis for Sociological Theory: Beyond the Micro Level," The Sociological Quarterly 36: 397-423. Hill, R. 1996. "Detroit and Osaka: Urban Life in the USA and Japan." Michigan Sociological Review 10: 1-17. Johnson, J. 1997. "Working to Stop Angry Men and Their Careers in Violence." Applied Behavioral Science Review 5: 59-66. Maines, D. 1997. "Interactionism and Practice." Applied Behavioral Science Review 5: 1-8. Maines, D., J. Bridger, and J. Ulmer, 1996. "Mythic Facts and Park's Pragmatism: On PredecessorSelection and Theorizing in Human Ecology" The Sociological Quarterly 37:521-549.

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O'Brien, B. 1999. "Why MOSES Worries About Urban Sprawl" The Michigan Catholic June 18: 14c. Orfield, M. 1997. Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. .1999a. Detroit Metropolitics. A Report to the Archdiocese of Detroit. Detroit, MI. . 1999b. "Detroit Metropolitics" The Michigan Catholic, June 18: 3c-4c. Palen, J. 1997. The Urban World. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pestello, F., and S. Saxton. 2000. "Renewing the Promise of Pragmatism: Towards a Sociology of Difference." Pp. 9-28 in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 23, edited by N. Denzin. Stamford, CT: JAI Press. Reason, P. 1994. "Three Approaches to Participative Inquiry." Pp. 324-329 in Handbook of Oualitative Research, edited by N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Reitzes, D., and D. Rietzes. 1992. "Saul Alinsky: An Applied Urban Symbolic Interactionist." Symbolic Interaction 15: 1-24. Saxton, S. 1993. "Sociologist as Citizen-Scholar: A Symbolic Interactionist Alternative to Normal Sociology." Pp. 232-251 in A Critique of Contemporary American Sociology, edited by T. Vaughan, G. Sjoberg, and L. Reynolds. Dix Hills, NJ: General Hall. Segalman, R., and H. Chaiklin (eds.). 1979. "Symbolic Interaction and Social Welfare." Special issue of Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 6: 1-143. Small, A. 1896. "Scholarship and Social Agitation" American Journal of Sociology 1: 564-582. Stone, G. 1962. "Appearance and the Self." Pp. 86-118 in Human Behavior and Social Processes, edited by A. Rose. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Strauss, A. 1993. Permutations of Action. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Sugrue, T. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thomas, W. I. 1966 [1927]. "Situational Analysis: The Behavior Pattern and the Situation." Pp. 154167 in W. L Thomas on Social Organization and Social Personality, edited by M. Janowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wirth, L. 1931. "Clinical Sociology" American Journal of Sociology 37: 49-66.

H O W RELEVANT IS THE CONCEPT OF THE "BIOLOGIC INDIVIDUAL" TO SOCIOLOGY?

Paul Tibbetts

In this paper I examine Stanley Saxton's vision of sociology (hereafter, SVS), by reexamining it in the light of Edward Wilson's (1998) recent criticisms of the so-called Standard Social Science Model (or, SSSM, to use Wilson's abbreviation). I begin by examining two specific claims of Wilson regarding SSSM: (1) the relative independence of biological and sociological levels of analysis and explanation; and (2) the assumption of SSSM that the basic unit of sociological analysis is not individual behavior but the dynamics of group interaction. I then examine the extent to which SVS subscribed to these claims supposedly associated with SSSM and, in turn, the alternative epistemology proposed in SVS. To conclude, I consider the potential relevance of case-studies in cognitive neuropsychiatry to symbolic interactionist (SI) concerns.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 55-63. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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WILSON'S CRITIQUE OF THE SSSM Wilson (1998, pp. 182-183) is highly critical of SSSM. This "sovereign doctrine of twentieth-century social theory" rests on two interrelated claims, the second of which he finds more problematic. First, "culture" is defined as the system of symbols and meanings that together shape minds and institutions. The second claim associated with SSSM is more contentious. Here, the concept of culture is characterized by Wilson (1998, p: 188) as, an independentphenomenonirreducibleto elementsof biologyand psychology,thus the product of evolution and historical antecedents. Accordingly, for Wilson, SSSM has it backward: Human minds do not create culture; culture is the product of our biology and culture. Going one step further, Wilson (1998, p. 188) claims that not only our culture but even our human nature is grounded at an even deeper level by our biology and genetics (however, Wilson does recognize that culture can select out preferred genetic traits; e.g., altruism or aggressiveness). For Wilson (1998, p. 186), sociologists' failure to recognize this is largely due to their being "biophobic--fearful of biology and determined to avoid it." One might ask why biology has, in fact, been such a minor player in SSSM. Perhaps a clue comes from American psychology during its behaviorist period, which lasted until an interest in cognitive factors resurfaced in the 1960s (Gardner 1985). Skinner's (1953, p. 37) position was representative: Not enough is known regarding animal, let alone human, neurobiology to integrate such considerations with more behavioral studies. Direct information about the [neurological] link is, however, seldom available... At the moment we have no way of directly altering neural processesat appropriatemomentsin the life of a behavingorganism. Skinner proposed that until adequate neural models of learning, language, memory, and so on, are available, focus on observed associations between inputs and responses. In other words, for behaviorists treat the central nervous system (CNS) as an opaque, black box. Skinner suggested that perhaps in a 100 years enough will be known to get inside the box so we can model the internal processing. Meanwhile, ignore the (neuro)biology and systematically record the reinforcement contingencies of operant behavior under controlled conditions. Rather than being biological and internal, these observed variables for Skinner (1953, p. 36) "lie outside the organism, in its immediate environment and in its environmental history." While it might be unusual to cite Skinner in a defense of sociology, he is providing a reasoned response to Wilson's biophobic criticism of SSSM. Ignore the

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neurobiology until the neural linkages between environmental/cultural inputs and (human) agents' responses are modeled in sufficient detail to be integrated into sociological explanations. The Biologic Individual Wilson's second criticism of SSSM is that it is too preoccupied with group behavior at the expense of the biologic individual. As an example of this, Wilson (1998, pp. 186-187) quotes at length from the sociologist James Coleman (1990): the principled task of the social sciences is the explanation of social phenomenon, not the behavior of single individuals. In isolated cases the social phenomenon may derive directly, through summation, from the behavior of individuals, but more often this is not so. Consequently, the focus must be on the social system, whose behavior is to be explained. This may be as small as a dyad or as large as a society or even a world system, but the essential requirement is that the explanatory focus be on the system as a unit, not on the individuals or other components which make it up.

In response to Wilson, if by "abstract" is meant, "out of context" or "conceived apart from concrete relationships," then which is more abstract, the isolated biologic individual or contextualized social events? Even the adjective isolated in isolated biologic individual is misplaced. Given the evolutionary, genetic, and environmental histories that define each species and its members, the so-called "biologic individual" is itself a fiction because it has no obvious reference! To quote Simmel (1950, pp. 4-6), Let us grant for the moment that only individuals "really" exist. Even then, only a false conception of science could infer from this "fact" that any knowledge which somehow aims at synthesizing these individuals deals with merely speculative abstractions and unrealities, Quite on the contrary, human thought always and everywhere synthesizes the given into units that serve as subject matter of the sciences. [The concept of] collective phenomena--and therefore of society in general...is certainly an abstract concept. But each of the innumerable articulations and arrangements covered by it is an object that can be investigated and is worth investigation. And none of them consists of individual existences that are observed in all their details.

Similarly, Durkheim (1938, pp. 102-104), argued that: society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group .... Consequently, every time that a social phenomenon is directly explained by psychology [or biochemistry], we may be sure that the explanation is false.

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RESPONSES T O W I L S O N Consistent with his reductionist program, Wilson claims that genuine explanations of social phenomena will not occur so long as sociologists insist on the relative autonomy of their subject matter, namely, social interactions. Interestingly, Wilson never does provide an argument that the social is analyzable into individual phenomena. In fact, Wilson may be one of the last theorists alive who still takes seriously the positivism and reductionism of the Unified Science movement of the 1930s-1950s. Saxton (1989, p. 10) was very clear where he stood on the one-explanatory-model-for-all-the-sciences dogma. Given such an unnecessarily restrictive explanatory model, "the unified science thesis must be abandoned" in favor of the search for alternative epistemologies. Who would not find contentious the claim of Hempel and Oppenheim (1948, p. 157) that, "explanation in biology, psychology, and the social sciences has the same structure as in the physical sciences?" Or that the logic of explanation of physics and chemistry (i.e., deductive-nomothetic (D/N) explanations) are applicable to all scientific inquiry (1948, p. 156). Besides the need for alternative epistemologies, a second response by Saxton is that we sometimes simply need to immerse our selves in the uniqueness of an on-going interaction to understand its unfolding dynamics. By focusing too narrowly and too quickly on deducing causal explanations of individual phenomena from law-like universals (the D/N ideal of the Unified Science movement) we lose the uniqueness of social interactions. As Saxton and Hall (1987, p. 65) remarked, [We should] take human experience on its own terms; then we can contribute to the collective understanding of experience. Our task is to interpret existing knowledge and, through interpretation, create new meaning and alternatives for human activity.

Being too preoccupied with causal, reductive explanations, we thereby preclude understanding whatever interesting associations might be initially hidden and which may only emerge over time (Miller, Katovich, and Saxton 1997a, 1997b). This does not mean we are uncritical but simply remain open to the social phenomenon's nuances. As Saxton (1989, p. 18) remarks, Until we become imbedded in a substantive arena of social life and stay there long enough to be experts on that topic, the novelty of each situation is overwhelming. We end up, therefore, writing interesting descriptive articles about what we have seen... Perhaps we must stay in one place long enough for the uniqueness of that setting to wear off before we can see the robust patterns which require theoretical treatment. 1

Consistent with this methodological stance, Saxton (Pestello and Saxton 1997, p. 7) wrote, "the empirical world obliges us to enter the messiness of uncertainty and the openness of social life." Continuing Pestello and Saxton (1997, p. 10) note that:

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If social life is a complex intertwining of multiple lines of action that are constructed, dissolved, and reconstructed, then a science of social life needs to capture this complexity and ambiguity. This presents special problems for the scientific method. The a b o v e SI e p i s t e m i c f r a m e w o r k , with its m o r e holistic reconstruction o f social p h e n o m e n a o f S V S , stands in m a r k e d contrast to the relatively anemic reductionism o f the unified science ideal. It is little wonder, then, that Saxton (1984, pp. 101-102) w o u l d c o n c l u d e that, When policy makers seek information that will enlighten their debate and decisions, who can provide credible data? Who will mount program effectiveness evaluations? Will it be those adopting an HS [humanistic science] or a P [positivistic] stance? These are the questions that impact upon the ability of sociology to contribute to social enlightenment and in turn to a more humane quality of life... In another forum, though on a similar note, Saxton (Tibbetts and Saxton 1989, p. 15) argued that: The work of symbolic interactionism better serves humanity than the work produced by those subscribing to the unified science thesis. G i v e n this critique of positivism, w h y does this reductive strategy persist in the social sciences? Saxton h y p o t h e s i z e d that there was m o r e to it than the unified science ideal of a H e m p e l and O p p e n h e i m . As he (Saxton 1993, pp. 233-234) o n c e w r y l y observed, The persistence of positivism is not the consequence of scholarly debates concerning the theoretical adequacy or validity and reliability of current resemch efforts. Instead, quantitative positivism is a consequence of external influences and the protection of funding interests... Sociology as a positive science, or normal sociology, primarily serves political interests and dominates the discipline. A f t e r m a k i n g this observation, Saxton (1993, p. 246) then c o n c l u d e d that: My central thesis has been that normal [reductionistic] sociology must be challenged on theoretical and empirical grounds. Sociologists whose work does not conform to normal sociology must take an active role in reshaping the nature of social knowledge and, ultimately, the existing power arrangements within the discipline. On the So-Called Biologic Individual W h i l e s y m b o l i c interactionists h a v e t h e m s e l v e s r e c o g n i z e d they h a v e said little regarding the h u m a n b o d y in its strictly b i o l o g i c a l sense (Saxton, Pestello, and Pestello, 1998, p. 4 ) - - t h a t is, the sort o f technical accounts one w o u l d find, and e x p e c t to find, in m e d i c a l school texts ! - - t h e y h a v e not ignored its existential and

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social significance. It is therefore interesting to contrast W i l s o n ' s concept of the "biologic individual," where the emphasis is on biological science and the eventual reduction to neurochemistry, with the following interactionist account of "embodiment." In Saxton, Pestello, and Pestello (1998, p. 6), the focus is on S a x t o n ' s first-person account of the " w o u n d e d body. ''3 Such an account opens up a whole n e w d i m e n s i o n to h u m a n agency and experience. For example, u p o n being admitted to the hospital, but before h i s life-saving surgery, Saxton (Saxton, Pestello, and Pestello, 1998, p. 19) wrote, I became pensive with the first realization that what was wrong (whatever it was) might be dangerous. It began to seep into my awareness that the fond memories of my youth and richness of my current life might not continue... I did not think of dying as much as I thought about--"this just might not work out" and as I recall "it might not work out" was not a frightening thought--you know scared like when you think the plane is going down, the pit of your stomach feeling--that kind of fear ...in fact I quietly accepted the possibility of, this might be it...! At this point Saxton (Saxton, Pestello, and Pestello 1998, p. 23) referred to himself as, "little more than a single identity b e i n g r e s p o n d i n g to the d e m a n d s of the present...a sick person...very vulnerable." Still, after his surgery, S a x t o n ' s social identity gradually b u t f i r m l y reasserts itself. For example, he talks about his religious and f a m i l y - m e m b e r identities. Regarding the former, he wrote (Saxton, Pestello, and Pestello 1998, p. 28), I needed cultural tools to deal with this unexpected experience of uncertainty and suffering and the spirituality of the Catholic tradition is what I found to be useful. It gave me something to do which reduced my fear, it allowed me to enter into the experience as one member of the many who had walked these steps before. I became one more member of the community of suffering. C o n c e r n i n g his social identity, Saxton (Saxton, Pestello, and Pestello 1998, pp. 23-24) observed, I needed members of my tribe near me, surrounding me, touching me. Members of my tribe were my wife and my children...no one else would do... For me it was necessary to have those who I could completely rely upon and trust around me because I had to reply upon them and trust those around me so completely. However, being vulnerable is not so bad if your own are there to help you. At least that is how I experienced it. In contrast with W i l s o n ' s relatively asocial biologic individual, defined b y genetic and e n v i r o n m e n t a l contingencies, S a x t o n ' s concept of agency is n o t h i n g if not social. In one particularly self-reflective question from a lifetime of such quest i o n s - - S a x t o n raised the existential question, " W h e r e are the bOundaries around the self and self-agency to be d r a w n ? " His answer (Saxton, Pestello, and Pestello 1998, p. 25) is in terms of "social situations with differing social organizational

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characteristics occurring within a particular set of historical circumstances." So much for the socially- and situationally-isolated biologic individual.

CONCLUSION In his publications as well as in more informal, personal discussions, Saxton frequently expressed interest in broadening social scientists' intellectual horizons. It was not my impression that he thought the complexities of human existence could be captured by any one disciplinary focus. Notwithstanding the criticisms earlier of Wilson's biological individual, it would indeed be surprising if our neurology played no role in the ways social life is "constructed, dissolved, and reconstructed," to use Saxton's language (Pestello and Saxton 1997, p. 10). We also need to be "liberated from too narrow a technical focus" in our understanding of human behavior (Saxton and Hall 1987, p. 65). Symbolic Interaction (SI) is valuable because it provides an alternative to the positivist preoccupation with explanation, prediction, and control. What is missing is the interactionist alternative: "How meanings are assigned to experience" (Saxton and Hall 1987, p. 58). SI is not alone with such matters. A relatively recent research area also concerned with how humans make sense--or fail to make s e n s e - - o f their situations and actions are the cognitive neurosciences, particularly cognitive neuropsychiatry. Here the focus is on a dimension to the human condition infrequently found in the SI literature, namely, the systematic study of "the social behavior and subjective experiences of people who suffer from mental disorders" (Halligan and Marshall 1996, p. vii). SI is obviously concerned with both the experiential and interactional dimensions of how humans come to define and redefine themselves. Still, how could interactionists not find relevance in the following anti-positivist remarks by Halligan and Marshall (1996, p. viii) to a series of empirical case studies of the mentally infirmed: [One] aim of this book is to bring to life the essence and character of the [clinical] patient's experience and behavior, so often lost in third-person "academic descriptions," i.e., to reduce the discrepancy between formal presentations of the psychiatric illness and the experience of the actual patient struggling to make sense of the consequences of their illness. I end with a challenge, a throwing down of the gauntlet, as it were. Let us imagine a hypothetical research agenda where SI theorists looked carefully at the research results of the cognitive neurosciences (e.g., as documented in Halligan and Marshall 1996; Parkin 1996; Rugg 1997). The question is: What explanatory and methodological consequences would that have for sociology in general--and for SI and SVS in particular? That is, if SI were to integrate the research questions and case-study findings documented by clinical neuropsychiatry with their own, more macro, interactional concerns, how would the research program and the subject matter of SI be affected? Radically? If s o - - a s might very well be the c a s e - -

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would this enhance or obscure, promote or supersede, our understanding of how humans construct and deconstruct meanings? Consideration of such case studies could have a number of desirable effects: First, it would effectively neutralize W i l s o n ' s criticism that sociologists ignore biology, given the "neuro" in neuropsychiatry! Second, such clinical studies would considerably broaden the research program of SI to include the cognitively disabled and how these people construct and reconstruct their worlds. A n d what could be more humanistic than this! Third, our understanding of a phenomenon sometimes require we look at what happens when it is dysfunctional. As Parkin (1996, p. 1) observes, "one o f the easiest ways to understand how a system works is to observe what happens when it goes wrong." Perhaps consideration o f how the mentally impaired construct their worlds would open up new horizons of research in the SI literature as did research on stigma and deviance half a century ago! Last, there is the intellectual challenge o f seeing to what extent SI categories and models of meaning construction c a p t u r e - - o r fail to c a p t u r e - - t h e chaotic worlds of the cognitively infirmed as they struggle to make sense of their condition. Commenting on one of his patient' s grappling with his s e l f - i d e n t i t y - - a matter not without interest to S I - - O l i v e r Sacks (1990, pp. 110-111) wrote that, We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative--whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs and lives, a "narrative', and that this narrative is us, our identities... If we wish to know about a man, we ask "what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. When, due to brain damage, the circuits responsible for this self-narration break down, we have a patient described by Sacks as: Unable to maintain a genuine narrative or continuity, unable to maintain a genuine inner world, [where one is] driven to the proliferation of pseudo-narratives in a pseudo-continuity, pseudo-worlds peopled by pseudo-people, phantoms. To determine the extent to which an SI account of the self, self-narration, and self-identity can make sense o f this individual's world would clearly be a challenge. Additionally, it is a worthy humanist application of C. W. Mills' "sociological imagination." From nearly twenty-five years of dialogue with Stan Saxton as a colleague and friend, I have no doubt he would unhesitatingly have stepped forward to this challenge.

REFERENCES Coleman, J. 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Durkheim, E. 1938. The Rules of Sociological Method. New York, NY: The Free Press. Gardner, H. 1985. The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. New York, NY: Basic Books.

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Halligan, P., and J. Marshall (eds.) 1996. Method in Madness: Case Studies in Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press. Hempel, C., and P. Oppenheim. 1948. "Studies in the Logic of Explanation." Pp. 151-166 in Readings in the Philosophy of Science, edited by B. Brody and R. Grandy. New York, NY: Prentice-Hall. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. New York, NY: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Miller, D. E., M. A. Katovich, and S. L. Saxton. 1997a. "Closings." Pp. 279-283 in Constructing Complexity: Essays in Honor of Carl Couch, edited by D. E. Miller, M. A. Katovich, and S. L. Saxton. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. .1997b. "Introduction." Pp.ix-xii in Constructing Complexity: Essays in Honor of Carl Couch, edited by D. E. Miller, M. A. Katovich, and S. L. Saxton. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Parkin, A. 1996. Explorations in Cognitive Neuropsychology. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Pestello, F. G., and S. L. Saxton. 1997. "The Promise of Pragmatism: Toward a Sociology of Difference." An unpublished paper presented at the Midwest Sociological Society Annual Meetings, April, 1997. Rugg, M. (ed.) 1997. Cognitive Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Sacks, O. 1990. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Essays. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Saxton, S. L. 1995. "The Couch Project." Studies in Symbolic Interaction 18: 269-281. .1993. "Sociologist as Citizen-Scholar: A Symbolic Interactionist Alternative to Normal Sociology." Pp.232-250 in A Critique of American Sociology, edited by T. Vaughn, G. Sjoberg, and L. Reynolds. Dix Hills, NY: General Hall. . 1989. "Knowledge and Power: Reading the Symbolic Interaction Journal Texts." Studies in Symbolic Interaction 10: 9-24. Saxton, S. L., and P. M. Hall. 1987. "Two Social Psychologies: New Grounds for Discussion." Studies in Symbolic Interaction 8: 43-67. Saxton, S. L., F. H. Pestello, and F. P. Pestello. 1998. "Making Sense of Uncertainty and Suffering: A Personal Account." An unpublished paper presented at the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) Annual Meetings, Aug. 22, 1998, San Francisco, CA. Simmel, G. 1950. The Sociology ofGeorg Simmel. New York, NY: The Free Press. Skinner, B. F. 1953. "The Empirical Case for a Science of Behavior." Pp. 29-40 in The Nature and Scope of Social Science, edited by L. Krimmerman. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Tibbetts, P., and S. L. Saxton. 1984. "Semantic Grids and a Humanistically-Oriented Sociology." Sociological Inquiry 54: 98-102. Wilson, E. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York, NY: Knopf

REFLECTIONS STAN SAXTON AND THE SMALL TOWN COMMUNITY

Patrick F. Palermo

Stan Saxton was my friend, my very good friend. My remarks are not dispassionate and I make no effort at detachment, but I will try to be honest, a virtue Stan deeply respected. My observations are not even comprehensive. I knew Start during his years at the University of Dayton, a period covering less than half his life. While we worked together on any number of papers, my knowledge and understanding of symbolic interaction and his scholarship are limited. So what can I say about Stan that is meaningful, that pays tribute to his character and life? Well, he was my friend and colleague. I knew him well, loved, and respected him. That will have to be enough. As I thought about Start, I saw him more and more as the epitome of the small town intellectual. For many, such a label---Start hated labels--conjures up provincialism and a narrow perspective. I don't mean anything of the kind. For me, at one time an American historian of community, the tradition of intellectuals in small towns includes a rich and varied life of community and family, of curiosity and almost inexhaustible tolerance, of knowledge and wonder, of pragmatism and idealism (I recognize these as integral to each other), of individualism and social Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 65-68. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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commitment, and of deep loyalties combined with a readiness to stand against convention, mean conformity, and smug authority. Having read this paragraph, Stan would have cocked back his head in mock horror--eyes popping--and responded with an obscenity, or with a great roar of laughter, or both. And no, I'm not portraying Stan as Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But for all his skepticism, Start would have taken the concept seriously and heard me out. It was one of his great gifts. He took ideas and those who offered them seriously. So I continue my search for the authentic Stan in the American tradition of the small town intellectual. Start was rooted in family and community. He remained close to his parents and his brothers throughout his life. Several times a year Stan returned to his childhood home to hunt, fish, tinker with his dad, enjoy the home his mother had created, and socialize with extended family. Anyone who knew Start recognized how much he treasured his wife Ginny, his family of four daughters and, before his death, grandchildren. While family was at the center of his personal life, family was also essential to his professional and public life. His family, especially Ginny, gave Start the freedom to enter the world but always return safely home. In their living room, there is a photograph of Stan and Ginny with babies. Stan smiles out at the world while Ginny sits exhausted. My point is not ideological or a criticism. Simply, Stan knew full well that he could plan adventures (even do some of them); work hard at his teaching and scholarship; socialize with friends, colleagues, and students; and be an active leader in his discipline, in the community and at the University because there was always Ginny, family, and home. Community is the extension of family in small towns as well as, I might add, urban, ethnic neighborhoods. While Stan enjoyed cosmopolitan experiences, he would not have lived in a large city. Essentially, Stan's professional career took place in small town settings. He went to college in La Crosse, attended graduate school in Iowa City, and taught at schools located in Fort Collins, Cedar Rapids, and Dayton! His professional affiliation was primarily with a small group of scholars who at conventions acted at least in some ways like a small town fraternal organization out on the town. Stan was not the estranged, alienated intellectual/scholar suffering the creation of grand ideas and scholarship in isolation. At heart, Stan's scholarship was always personal and social, Stan loved ideas and they came alive for him in conversation and through collaboration. Carl Couch was his mentor and colleague who introduced him to symbolic interaction, and it was with Carl and their colleagues in the "Iowa School" that Stan's ideas and scholarship flourished. Stan was an exciting and generous collaborator. The project would begin with reading, research, and conversation. At some point Stan would begin to write, and volumes would pour out of his typewriter and, later, computer. The first time we worked together, he slammed seventeen pages on the table and said it was my turn. After editing, reorganization, and revision, I retumed four pages to him fearful of his reaction. He made some comments, but thought it was fine. Always impatient to get started, he would

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write furiously page after page of a first draft, we would discuss it, and it was my job to edit and revise. The barriers between personal and professional and scholarship and friendship completely disappeared without any sacrifice of candor and honesty. Stan's very attraction to symbolic interaction as a way of understanding and measuring social behavior was, I think, based on his own background. While I admit to simplification here, I see Start squarely within the tradition that went from main street (religion, not business) to street corners where early social scientists and social workers combined their experience in nineteenth century communities with systematic observation to study the social dynamics of urban, ethnic society. As I understand it, symbolic interaction emerged within the context of a vibrant intellectual atmosphere at the University of Chicago, whereby sociology, social behaviorism, and pragmatism merged. While my reasoning may be faulty, I am sure that Stan saw his link with this Chicago tradition, and was reflecting on pragmatism and community. Start had moved away from experimentation, the worn out argument of the scientific claims of the social sciences, and efforts to develop grand theories to explain the sweep of civilization. He had become more interested in the intellectual pursuit of ideas, ideals, and their place in the world around him. No matter what stage of his career, Start was constant in his readiness to serve as the intellectual gadfly. Like the small town newspaper editors who were often the most public intellectuals in their communities, Stan used ideas to prick the pretensions of those in power or with authority. At the University of Dayton at least, he sent long memos, often resembling the jeremiads of the Puritan ministers, to administrators. Before I rose to become an Associate Provost, and consequently, a target for these missives, Stan would send me a first draft. I would reply that he could not send it, and he would respond, "I know. I know." One or two edits later, the memo, tempered but still sharp in tone, would go off through campus mail. Stan was equally ready to challenge the thinking of his colleagues and his students. As a leader on campus, he was ready to take an unorthodox position and question the orthodoxy of others. To prove his point, Stan was given to dramatic gestures that seldom worked, but did cause momentary excitement before being forgiven and forgotten, In his classes, Stan had a tendency to swear--he always warned students of this inclination on the first day of class--as he assaulted what his students accepted as social truth. Neither his peers nor the students resented Stan's willingness to take issue with what he saw as conventional thinking based on habit and not reflection. Quite the opposite, Stan was popular among his colleagues and students flocked to his courses. For anyone who knew Stan, the reasons for his popularity and this affection are not hard to understand. As already mentioned, Stan was a wonderful conversationalist who was ready to argue and debate deep into the night with both peers and students. He listened carefully to what people had to say and was open to

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changing his mind. Stan respected students and they loved him for it. I never heard Stan disparage students singularly or as a group, something that cannot be said for all veteran faculty. He was always honest with students in recognizing the merits of their work and criticizing the limitations of their performance. Beyond all this, Stan was a person of such good will, good humor, and warmth that people were delighted to be with him. Stan loved university life, and it was here that he best displayed the characteristics of the intellectual in the small town tradition. Like all intellectuals, Stan made ideas central to his life as work and play. While ideas were always at the core of his scholarship as a sociologist, Stan saw ideas, especially as he grew older, as more than instruments of his discipline. Ideas, for Stan, took on a life of their own, extended beyond disciplines, and transcended the difference between the professional and personal, and, again, between work and play. This became especially true after his near fatal illness in 1992. These characteristics Stan shared with all intellectuals, but he was distinctive in one critical way. Unlike intellectuals who self-consciously define themselves as separate both as individuals and as a class and remove themselves from community, Stan thrived in community. Ideas were alive with social meaning and served as the currency of social discourse for him. Stan was fascinated with the public intellectual typified by Dewey, Beard, Addams, and others during the first part of the twentieth century. Like them, Stan believed in community and the possibilities for improvement based on the sharing and understanding of powerful ideas. He had deep loyalties to and confidence in the University of Dayton, but this never prevented him from serving as critic and demanding that we as a community meet the test of ideas and ideals. When Edmund Wilson, the great critic and one of the foremost intellectuals of the twentieth century, returned to his boyhood home in upstate New York late in life, he was isolated and lonely. He had removed himself from his circle of cosmopolitan intellectuals while not recapturing the community of his childhood. On the day Stan died, I returned to my office from the hospital about one-thirty in the afternoon feeling this sense of isolation and loneliness. Almost immediately, two of Stan' s colleagues in sociology showed up to ask if we could reserve the chapel for the end of the day to remember Stan. By 2:00 p.m., the chapel was reserved and an announcement had been sent over the University's interuet. No other announcement was possible in so short of time. Nevertheless, at 4:30 p.m., over two hundred faculty, students, and staff had gathered as a community to grieve for and share their memories of Stan. We honored him as someone who made anyone who knew him feel part of something very special. And in this way, we will never forget him.

ATTITUDES AND PLATITUDES" POSTMODERNISM AND INTERACTIONIST THOUGHT

David R. Dickens

There seems to be a kind of natural history concerning the reception of new conceptual innovations in contemporary social theory. It consists of three identifiable stages. At first the new concept receives virtually unqualified praise from enthusiastic advocates who hail it as the definitive solution for a variety of formal and substantive conundra. In the second stage, the concept is denounced by vociferous critics who attack both its novelty and its contribution. Those dimensions of the concept that are recognized as new are ridiculed as either trivial or wrong-headed, while whatever is conceded to be potentially useful in some manner is dismissed as simply a restatement in obscure jargon of what is already known in more familiar terms. Finally, in the third stage a sort of moderation between the extremely positive and extremely negative views of the new concept is achieved. More nuanced assessments begin to appear and, perhaps more importantly, attempts are made to employ the new concept in substantive research, moving beyond the purely programmatic essays (both pro and con) regarding its utility. My goal in this paper is to address the relationship between postmodernism and interactionist thought in sociology. My view of this relationship in terms of the Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 71-82. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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putative natural history outlined above is that the reception of postmodernism among interacfionists is perched somewhat precariously between the second and third stages. While many researchers are presently incorporating various aspects of postmodernism into their substantive and theoretical work, others appear stuck in what seems to me to be an excessively defensive posture, producing polemics characterized to a disturbing degree by superficial scholarship, ad hominem attacks, and strawman arguments. To state the matter crudely, while early postmodern enthusiasts may be accused of oversimplification, their critics (interactionists and non-interacfionists alike) offer second-order simplifications, relying as they do on either a small number of secondary sources or selective quotations from the Big French Four (Bandrillard, Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault) often taken out of context, a particularly grievous sin for interactionists. It is not my intention, however, to inaugurate yet another round of polemics. Rather I hope to provide a more nuanced account of the postmodernism-interactionist relationship, and suggest how both might be productively employed to produce a more fruitful analysis of contemporary society. My analysis is based on the notion that any useful discussion of the concept of postmodernism in sociology should differentiate among three analytically distinguishable dimensions of the concept (see Dickens and Fontana 1994). As a substantive-theoretical term, postmodernism refers to changes in the nature of contemporary advanced societies at both the macro- and the micro-levels. At the macro-level, it refers to structural transformations in advanced societies and cultures of sufficient volume and depth as to deserve a new epochal designation: postmodernity. Different theorists focus on different institutions and mechanisms, but most visible among them are the increasing prominence of consumption in advanced economies and the dramatic impact of contemporary mass media, especially new information and communications technologies such as television and the computer. At the micro-level postmodernism is concerned with the effects of these, and other, structural transformations on social interaction and the formation of selves and personal identities. As a methodological approach, postmodernism is associated with epistemologies and interpretive strategies developed primarily in French structuralist and post-structuralist thought, especially semiotics and deconstructionism. The defining feature of postmodern research methods is their incorporation of techniques from literary and textual criticism, applying these to a wide variety of social phenomena and cultural objects. The third dimension of postmodernism, its normative aspect, concerns the ethical and political implications of the postmodern critique of knowledge and action, for researchers as well as for the individuals and groups they study. The primary issues in the normative debates concerning postmodernism are the conditional nature of all knowledge claims and the problematic relationship between knowledge and power.

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In their assessments of postmodernism, interactionists have addressed each of the dimensions I have outlined here, although to varying degrees. Postmodern interactionist enthusiasts such as Denzin (1991, 1992) and Patricia Clough (1992a) place a great deal of emphasis on the role of mass media but for the most part interactionist critics do not address directly the macro-level aspect of postmodernism's substantive-theoretical dimension, stemming largely from the overall relative neglect of large-scale historical and structural contexts in their work. There is, however, a great untapped potential here for interactionists to address these sorts of issues by revisiting the work of some of their pragmatist predecessors (see Shalin 1993). An interesting example of this type of work may be found in a recent paper by a German sociologist, Kurt Luscher (1990), who argues for the relevance of Mead's notion of the "objective reality of perspectives" for analyzing structural changes in contemporary advanced societies. Micro-level analysis has, of course, always been a central focus of interactionist theory and research. The seminal ideas of early interactionists such as George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley remain in the forefront of current sociological debates concerning the nature of the self and interaction, even as these ideas are challenged and modified by followers and critics alike. In regards to changes in the nature of everyday interaction the classic contribution by interactionists is Cooley' s analysis of the displacement of primary group relations by more impersonal secondary group relations in modern societies. For postmodernists the increasingly impersonal nature of social interaction in modern societies has become even more abstract in contemporary, postmodern times with the ascending prominence of electronically-mediated forms of interaction. The French theorist Jean Baudrillard (1983) represents the extreme view with his totalizing thesis that the social realm has "imploded" into an undifferentiated mass, rendering all meaningful interaction obsolete. Most postmodernists, however, do not go that far, focusing instead on the transformative, and often deleterious, effects on social interaction of the reduced relevance of physical co-presence and the radical alteration of space-time relations fostered by electronically-mediated forms of communication (see Denzin 1992; Chayko 1993; Gottschalk 1995). The new communications and information technologies are a major Source of the great increase in indirect (as opposed to face-to-face) social relationships that Calhoun (1992) refers to as tertiary group relations, where interaction is mediated by machines: Many of these same technologies also alter space and time to an extent where the very notion of reality becomes problematic (Chayko 1993). Despite their radical nature, however, these postmodern concerns seem to me to be best understood as an extension, in some ways quantitative and in others qualitative, of the classical interactionist position, rather than as a rejection of it, as some interactionist critics imply. At a purely theoretical level, the differences between interactionist and postmodernist conceptualizations of self and identity formation are more difficult to reconcile. While the interactionist view is based on the pragmatistic notion of

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reflexive continuity, the model for the postmodern self is derived from Saussure's synchronic conception of language, emphasizing discontinuity and difference. If approached from a more substantive sociological angle, however, differences between the interacfionist and the postmodernist view of the self are potentially less prohibitive. From the interactionist side, Mead's account of the context in which self or identity formation takes place emphasizes what he calls "generalized social attitudes": without social institutions of some sort, without the organized social attitudes and activities by which social institutions are constituted, there could be no fully mature individual selves or personalities at all (Mead 1934, p. 262).

But Mead also recognized the potentially disruptive effects of the increasingly complex nature of modern societies, as does Blumer, who makes the same point methodologically when he refers to the heightened difficulties of applying stabilized meanings to interpret social behavior in "our changing society" (Blumer 1969, p. 135). Substantively interpreted, the seemingly scandalous statements regarding the self by the postmodern French theorists, such as Lyotard's (1984) claim that the self "does not amount to much" and Foucault's (1973) announcement of the impending "disappearance of man" also may be seen as registering concern, albeit in more dramatic fashion, with the way in which contemporary societal complexity has reached the point where rational, autonomous selves and stable identities become radically problematic. This interpretation provides the basis for the distinction made by sociological postmodernists between the rational, institutional, modernist self and the fragmented, emotional, postmodernist self (see Gergen 1991; Denzin 1993; Gottschalk 1993). These researchers and others do not so much deny the existence of the self as they seek to re-situate it in light of the destabilizing tendencies they detect in contemporary mass-mediated societies. While some interactionists continue to deny the postmodern critique of the self altogether, others are seeking a more constructive rapprochement both in theory and in concrete research practice. A particularly interesting theoretical example may be found in a recent essay by Michael Schwalbe (1993), who developes a novel re-interpretation of Goffman for analyzing the self in contemporary context. More concretely, Gubrium and Holstein (1994) provide an intriguing analysis of how the radically polysemic nature of the postmodern self may be empirically described through the first-hand study of everyday interpretive practices. A common, constructive thread that ties together the work of researchers like Denzin, Chayko, Gottschalk, Schwalbe, and Gubrium and Holstein is that all seem to agree with Schwalbe that "it is more useful to examine the conditions under which the self now exists than to worry about what those conditions are called" (1993, p. 339).

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The methodological debates over postmodernism focus almost exclusively on the analytical technique that is virtually synonymous with interactionist research: ethnography (see Dickens 1996a). Because of this, interactionist criticisms of postmodem, or what others call new or experimental, ethnography (see Marcus and Fischer 1986; Clifford and Marcus 1986) have been especially polemical. Interactionist critics have raised a number of important issues, but three in particular stand out. The first concerns the implications of the so-called postmodern crisis of representation for what James Clifford (1983) calls "ethnographic authority," referring to the objective, scientific status of ethnographic reports. Questioning the objective status of ethnographic reports is relatively noncontroversial among contemporary sociological interactionists insofar as few (if any) endorse the extreme scientistic view of ethnography found in classical anthropology. There is a concern, however, that here the postmodern critique, based as it is on the deconstructionist approach in literary theory, goes too far, reducing the status of the ethnographic account to a wholly arbitrary one where "anything goes." Yet the overwhelming majority of postmodern ethnographers go to great lengths to situate their accounts in terms of contemporary historical, cultural, or ideological contexts (such as late capitalism, consumer culture, or racist and sexist ideologies) that shape their interpretations (see Clough 1992a; Denzin 1992; Gottschalk 1995). What might be termed the conditional relativity of postmodern ethnographies is aptly expressed by Clifford: Whereas the free playof readings may in theorybe infinite, there are, at any historicalmoment, a limited range of canonical and emergentallegories availableto the competentreader [and writer]... These structures of meaning are historicallybounded and coercive.There is, in practice, no "free play" (in Cliffordand Marcus 1986, p. 110). The second issue raised by postmodern ethnographic critics and practitioners concerns the ethnographer's status as author of his or her accounts. Again borrowing heavily from deconstructionist criticism, the postmodern critique here emphasizes the constructed nature of ethnographic reports, thereby challenging the ethnographer's privileged standpoint as author (see Clifford and Marcus 1986; Clough 1992a). This subjective critique of ethnographic authority is, of course, well known in more conventional terms as the problem of reflexivity and has long been recognized by interactionists as an important issue. Their criticism here however, is that, if taken to an extreme, the postmodern critique leads to a kind of methodological paralysis (see Geertz 1988; Dawson and Prus 1993). But the point of postmodem ethnography is not to deny the possibility of ethnographic representation; even Derrida, arguably the most radical of the postmodern critics, has claimed repeatedly that we can never get beyond representation. Rather, the task according to experimental ethnographers is to explore new ways to represent the encounter with others.

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These researchers are developing a variety of strategies for constructively dealing with the postmodern challenge to ethnographic authority. To mention only a few of the more interesting ones, Norman Denzin's (1988, 1989, 1991) interpretive interactionism focuses on "those life experiences, called epiphanies, which radically alter and shape the meanings persons give to themselves and their life projects" (1991, p. 60); Laurel Richardson (1991, 1992) employs unconventional (for social science) narrative literary styles to tell "collective stories" that "display an individual's story by narrativizing the experiences of an historically situated social category" (1991, p. 36); Patricia Clough (1992a, 1992b) develops a post-structuralist feminist social criticism that deconstructs the "oedipal logic" of ethnographic realism; and Angela McRobbie calls for "identity ethnographies" that examine "how people see themselves, not as class subjects, not as psychoanalytic subjects, not as textual subjects, but as active agents whose sense of self is projected onto and expressed in an expansive range of cultural practices, including texts, images, and commodities" (1992, p. 730). These studies, and others like them, together share the characteristics of what George Marcus approvingly describes as a "messy text:" its "messy, many-'sited'ness, its contingent openness as to the boundaries of the object of study .... its concern with position, and its derivation/negotiation of its analytical framework from indigenous discourse" (1994, p. 567). Messy texts blur the boundaries of conventional ethnographic formats and practices to produce unexpected connections and thus new descriptions of old, and new, realities (Marcus 1994; Dickens 1996b). The third issue regarding postmodern ethnography concerns what is variously termed its textual hermeticism or the problem of texts without contexts. Interactionist critics here charge their postmodern-oriented counterparts with stretching the notion of ethnography beyond credibility in their textual studies of films and other cultural products (Dawson and Prus 1993). As texts without contexts (Johnson and Altheide 1991) these sorts of studies lack the epistemic authority of more conventional forms of ethnography. Insofar as postmodern textual studies like Denzin's (1991) analyses of Hollywood films do not provide the sort of micro-level contextualization (such as audience reception) favored by conventional interactionists, this criticism has some merit. However, Denzin and others doing similar work (see Clough 1992a) do seek to situate their interpretations within larger historical and ideological contexts. Thus, one could tum the context criticism against the interactionists themselves for operating with an excessively restricted notion of context, rendering their own work susceptible to the charge of "texts without enough context." Interactionists would no doubt respond that they want to avoid reducing the persons they study to the role of cultural dopes, but interpretation in any event is always risky business and, as interactionists themselves rightfully point out with regard to their own ethnographic practices, that should not prevent us from trying. Perhaps a less contentious way of dealing with this issue, and with the question of postmodern ethnography in general, would be to abandon the putative distinc-

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tion between modernist ethnography and postmodern textual studies altogether in favor of a more finely tuned view (see Atkinson 1990). As even a cursory review of the literature would reveal, some of the most illuminating studies, such as Dick Hebdige's (1979) study of punks and Janice Radway's (1984) work on romance novels, combine conventional ethnographic techniques with more postmodern textual analyses. More important, then, than the facile taxonomic issue of whether it is ethnography (modern) or textual criticism (postmodern) are the questions, "what does the text do?" and "how well does it do it?" Interactionist criticisms of postmodernism's normative dimension, the ethical and political implications of the postmodern critique, are most often framed in terms of the performative contradiction between its alleged relativism and its criticisms of the ethical and political views of others (Dickens 1996c). Postmodernists are here accused of either breezily dismissing normative issues altogether or illegitimately reducing them to merely textual concerns (see Dawson and Prus 1993; Shalin 1993). However, with the possible exception of Baudrillard, whose nihilistic comments are a major source of ammunition for critics, the major French figures in the postmodern movement all have attempted to deal with this issue at great length: Derrida in his extended encounter with the French ethical philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas (see Derrida 1984), and in a recent essay on the politics of friendship (Derrida 1988); Foucault in his reflections on Kant's famous "What Is Enlightenment?" essay (Foucault 1984), as well as in his later work on the care of the self (Foucault 1986), and in interviews conducted toward the end of his life (Foucanlt 1988); and Lyotard in just about everything he has written since The Postmodern Condition, especially Just Gaming (Lyotard and Theband 1985), The Differend (Lyotard 1988a), Peregrinations (1988b) and Heidegger and "the Jews" (Lyotard 1990). This is not to say that it might not be the case that the theory cannot take one where one wishes to go ethically and politically (see McGowan 1991). But it does seem to me that any serious evaluation of postmodern thought on this vitally important point should address the ways in which the major sources of its ideas have attempted to deal with the issue, and I have seen almost no references to any of the citations listed above in the work of interactionist critics. Among postmodern-oriented sociologists, there is an equally robust strand of commentary, best represented in the work of Zygmunt Bauman, that emphasizes the positive potential of the postmodern critique for ethics and politics. After demonstrating the normative inadequacies of what he calls the legislative concept of reason in modernist thought, Bauman (1987) calls for a postmodern ethics that is less categorical, more humble, and more sensitive to differences and local contingencies. Bauman's conception of postmodern ethics is further spelled out in a provocative recent work (Bauman 1993) where he argues for the primacy of personal moral responsibility, simultaneously rejecting the universalist pretensions of modern Reason and easy-going amoral postmodern relativism.

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A similarly impressive argument for a postmodern ethic is contained in the work of Steven Seidman (1991, 1994) who argues for a postmodern reorganization o f social knowledges that are justified in terms of pragmatic criteria such as "What do knowledges do? What ends or purposes do they serve?" (1994, p. 326). For Seidman, embracing the postmodern linkage between knowledge and power leads not to a cynical nihilism but to a renewed hope for a more humane society, cogently expressed in a powerful statement from his recent book, Contested

Knowledge: These are not dreams of an unencumbered, unrestrained self or society; they are hopeful imaginings of a human habitat that is respectful of differences, values expanded choices, offers increased options for social bonding and community formation, and encourages spirited efforts at negotiating just institutions and common social spaces (1994, p. 327). By highlighting the historically and contextually situated nature of knowledge and politics, S e i d m a n ' s approach exhibits strong parallels with the moral theory of classical pragmatism. If there is one point that, overall, best summarizes the traditional interactionist complaint against postmodernism, it is that the postmodern critique appears to undermine any and all claims to truth, leading to the epistemologically and politically irresponsible conclusion that "anything goes." Yet, as I have tried to demonstrate in the preceding discussion, this is an exceedingly uncharitable interpretation of what the postmodernists are trying to do in their substantive sociological work (also see Dickens and Fontana 1994). In his eloquent introduction to Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986), an enormously influential anthology on postmodern ethnography, Clifford provides what is perhaps the clearest expression of the postmodern stance here in two passages on ethnography that are worth quoting at some length: Ethnographic truths are thus inherently partial--committed and incomplete. The point is now widely asserted--and resisted at strategic points by those who fear the collapse of clear standards of verification. But once accepted and built into ethnographic art, a rigorous sense of partiality can be a source of representational text... [A]cute political and epistemological self-consciousnessneed not lead to ethnographic self-absorption, or to the conclusion that it is impossible to know anything certain about other people (1986, p. 7). The rigorous partiality I have been stressing here may be a source of pessimism to some readers. But is there not a liberation, too, in recognizing that no one can write about others any longer as if they were discrete objects or texts? And may not the vision of a complex, problematic, partial ethnography lead, not to its abandonment, but to more subtle, concrete ways of writing and reading, to new conceptions of culture as interactive and historical? (1986, p. 25). The most sustained articulation of the postmodern view that truth and objectivity are situated, partial accomplishments, however, is found in recent feminist theorizing. In a seminal paper, Donna Haraway succinctly summarizes the feminist

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critique in a way that clearly ties together its epistemological and ethical components: Objectivity turns out to be about particular and specific embodiment and definitely not about the false vision promising transcendence of all limits and responsibility. The moral is simple: only partial perspectivepromises objectivevision. All Western cultural narratives about objectivity are allegories of the ideologies governing the relations of what we call mind and body, distance and responsibility. Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see (1988, pp. 582-583). Providing a judicious assessment of the postmodern-interactionist relationship is an important task at this stage of the debates, but it is not solely my intention here to offer a point-by-point response to interactionist criticisms of postmodern thought. I also want to suggest that we might more constructively turn our attention to an emerging line of work I have labeled elsewhere as postmodern-oriented cultural studies (see Dickens 1996b) as a way of enhancing the usefulness of both postmodernism and symbolic interactionism in contemporary social inquiry. As is well known, cultural studies has existed as an identifiable intellectual movement since the mid-1960s when the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded at Birmingham University in England to develop new theoretical and methodological approaches for the study of popular culture (see Dickens 1994). What I refer to as postmodern-oriented cultural studies is a result of the broadening of the Birmingham School's synthesis of non-reductionisfic Marxist theoretical orientations (especially those of Gramsci and Althusser) and interactionist ethnographic research techniques to include postmodem analytical strategies, such as Foucauldian discourse analysis and semiotic and deconstructionist textual criticism, as well as an expanded substantive focus on race, gender and sexual orientation. This richer, more complex version of cultural studies is defined by Lawrence Grossberg as "concerned with describing and intervening in the ways texts and discourses (i.e., cultural practices) are produced within, inserted into, and operate in the everyday life of human beings and social formations" (1989, p. 114). The underlying rationale for contemporary cultural studies, recognized by postmodernists and interactionists alike, is the dramatically expanded significance of mass-mediated culture in shaping the structure and meaning of everyday life. Because of the complex nature of the changes brought about by the introduction of new informational and communications technologies such as television and the computer, postmodern-oriented cultural studies suggests a concrete research program that is multiperspectival (Kellner 1992), consisting of three interrelated components: structural analyses of the contexts in which cultural texts are produced; textual analyses of cultural objects and their meanings; and micro-level analyses of lived cultures and experiences (Johnson 1987; Denzin 1992; Kellner 1992). Research focusing on the structural contexts emphasizes the historical,

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particularly the political-economic, dimensions of culture and their ideological content. A number of recent studies have documented the political-economic origins of postmodern consumer culture (see Lash and Urry 1987; Harvey 1989; Featherstone 1991), while others have examined its ideological nature (see Goldman and Dickens 1984; Kellner 1992). Textual analyses of cultural objects and their meanings focus on the ideological effects of individual texts in reinforcing or challenging widely held ideas concerning topics such as class, race and ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Studies of this type mobilize a number of reading strategies such as semiotics, deconstrnctionism, and psychoanalysis to analyze a broad variety of cultural texts including films (Denzin 1991, 1993; Clough 1992a), television (Fiske 1987), literature (Radway 1984; Clough 1992a), music (Grossberg 1988), advertisements (Goldman 1993; Goldman and Papson 1994), and scientific texts (Clough 1992b). Micro-level analyses of lived cultures and experiences examine the complex ways in which individual and group identities are formed in increasingly mass-mediated contexts. These studies focus substantively on the effects of new technologies such as computers and video games (see Chayko 1993; Gottschalk 1995), as well as on mass media representations in contemporary film, television, music, and literature (see Denzin 1992; Fiske 1987; Hebdige 1979; McRobbie 1984; Radway 1984) on individual and group subjectivities. Methodologically, works of this type endorse a wide variety of approaches ranging from the more conventional ethnographies of the early Birmingham School (see Dickens 1994) and the re-introduction of life histories (see Denzin 1992) to more postmodemist ways of representing the experiences of others (see Clough 1992a; Richardson 1992). Despite their intemal differences these approaches, and others like them (see Marcus 1994), share McRobbie's concern that "we somehow move away from the binary oppositions.., between text and lived experience, between media and reality, between culture and society. What is now required is a methodology, a new paradigm for conceptualizing identity-in-culture, an approach which takes as its starting point the relational interactive quality of everyday life and which brings a renewed rigor to this kind of work by integrating into it a keen sense of history and contingency" (1992, p. 730). The careful reader will recognize that it has not been my aim to trash interactionist critics of postmodemism. Rather, by critically assessing their claims while also outlining the multi-faceted approach of contemporary cultural studies, which I believe overcomes the textualist limitations of many postmodernist works as well as the contextual timidity of much interactionist research, I hope to have provided some useful suggestions for moving beyond the increasingly sterile debates over postmodernism. Were we to focus our attention instead on examining, and producing ourselves, works of the sort currently being done in cultural studies (as many interactionists are already doing), I think we would find that the differences between postmodemism and symbolic interactionism are greatly outweighed by their commonalities.

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CASTRATO: PREDETERMINED TO FLUID SELF OR A DIALOGUE/PERFORMANCE SCRIPT INTENDED TO INFORM GARFINKEL ABOUT THE POSSIBILITIES OF GENDERING

Andrea Fontana and Robert Schmidt

PERFORMERS: Andrea 1 Fontana as Farinelli Robert Schmidt as a sociological commentator Professor D. as himself A n u n k n o w n member of the audience

SCENE I.

THE STAGE AT THE OPERA

Farinelli, il castrato, appears in full regalia in front of the overfilled opera house (Farinelli 1994). 2 The gold-gilded boxes and ornate columns match in splendor Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 83-91. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All fights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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ANDREA FONTANA and ROBERT SCHMIDT

the gowns and jewels of the madams waiting anxiously for Farinelli to sing. Farinelli surveys the crowd from behind his mask and plumed helmet. He is wearing a black suit sequined with gold, starkly contrasting with the heavy white make up of his face and the bright red of his full lips. He motions to maestro Porpora and the orchestra strikes a tune. The murmuring suddenly becomes hushed. Then heaven opens its doors, Farinelli opens his mouth and begins to sing, with a voice only the gods could have conceived:3 "Lascia ch'io pianga..." (Handel 1711). Farinelli finishes the aria, the curtains draw. S C E N E II.

(A SOCIOLOGICAL

CONFERENCE

ROOM)

Sehmidt: (at the podium, wearing a blue blazer, khaki trousers, penny loafers and a red and blue striped tie): (Shouting): CASTRATO!!! CASTRATO!!! Fontana: (rushing into the room): Si, si, sono un castrato, yes, I am a castrato. Like many boys in Italy, just past the year seventeen hundred I became the victim of the times and the religious beliefs of my country. Think of those days, Louis XIV, the roi soleil, was nearing the end of his reign. Peter the Great ruled Russia and George I was soon to be the king of England. Italian opera was the rage of Europe--operas by Scarlatti and Vivaldi were extremely popular and Handel was the darling of London. The mother church was tolerant of music, well, of certain kinds of music, but one certainly could not have women singing in church or, for that matter, on the stage. Our voices were used instead, the voices of prepubescent boys, the clear high notes of sopranos before adolescent testosterone changed them into low baritones or strong tenors. And those of us that were so lucky (lucky?) to have a great deal of talent were changed to preserve those beautiful high notes. A warm bath in perfumed water, a drink or two of sweet Italian wine, a sleepy feeling and a very sharp knife, and suddenly we were sopranos for life. But what sopranos! Our lungs matured in our male chest reaching a stronger, deeper, more voluptuous voice and a range beyond belief. We combined the best of the female and the male voices. Sehmidt: This is a story about sex and gender. Castrati were natural born males whose testicles were removed, thereby halting the production of male sexual hormones, hindering the development of the larynx, and preserving their ability to sing soprano. They grew as a living contradiction of Garfinkel's dichotomous understanding of gendering practices (male/female) by being members of both sexes but belonging to neither. Professor D: (he moves center stage, his attire is in stark contrast with Schmidt; he is wearing baggy, khaki shorts, sandals and a rumpled, white dress shirt, open at the collar): You must understand that Garfinkel's emphasis on dichotomy in gendering practices is meant to help Agnes appear as a "true" female. Garfinkel was taken by Agnes's physical appearance and created a melodramatic story to

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help convince the audience that Agnes was a female, not a between-sex anomaly or pervert (Denzin 1990). Here we have a young, attractive female-shaped being, suffering from feminine testicularization, that is, having a scrotum and a penis along with an otherwise female body. She wishes to be recognized as a female, attributing her penis to a quirk of fate. After many hours of interviewing the UCLA physicians agree to perform an operation, removing scrotum and penis and creating an artificial vagina. 4 Garfinkel creates a fairy tale-like story: Agnes succeeds against societal odds and stakes her 'natural' claim to be a female. To help Agnes succeed, Garfinkel creates a hierarchical dichotomy of sex in which female (or male) is normal, 'natural,' and Agnes, along with the rest of society, looks upon this dichotomization of sexedness as "objective, institutionalized facts, that is, moral facts 5 (Garfinkel 1967, p. 122). Sehmidt: You are right! In his study of an "intersexed person"--Agnes, Garfinkel tells his readers that "societies exercise close controls over the ways in which the sex composition of their own populations are constituted and changed" (Garfinkel 1967, p. 116). Professor D: No argument on this point, cutting young boys's testicles is certainly a way to control the sexedness of the population. But Garfinkel goes on to say: "This composition is rigorously dichotomized into the "natural," that is, moral entities of male and female...Changes in the frequency of those moral entities can occur only through three legitimate paths: birth, death, and migration ''6 (Garfinkel 1967, p. 116). Garfinkel goes on to present a fourfold table that shows population sexed dichotomously as either male or female. Those falling in the "normatively prohibited" (1967, p. 117) boxes where male intersects female face societal degradation and sanctions. Sehmidt: Where would Garfinkel have placed Farinelli and hundreds of other testosterone non-producing young Italian castrati? Fontana: I am different. Not only I was castrated but I was born into a noble family. Porporino, Cafarelli and all of the others, they were poor. But when all of us, as teenagers, were sent to the conservatorio, we were all treated like princes. And we received very rigorous musical training from the maestro. This set us apart from other singers of the day; back then basso and baritone voices were considered gruffy and unpleasant, tenors were used for the roles of old men and the women, the virtuose, ah!! What a joke! Some cities, like Bologna and Venice, disobeyed the Pope's edict and let the women sing on the stage but they were no real singers, they had no training. Often they got the job because they were the lover of an important patron of the arts, like Giulia di Caro who had the undying love of the Spanish Viceroy, but was called by all "La madonna del bordello." It was none less than Benedetto Croce who said that 'virtuosa' and 'prostitute' were synonyms (Heriot 1974, p. 29). We were so superior musically, and yes, we were different. They cut our testicles and mother church looked the other way. Of course it was illegal to do that to

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us so they said that we fell off a horse or were attacked by a pig. The church could not openly acknowledge us, for castration was illegal, and since eunuchs were forbidden from marrying so were we. To feel better they called us 'musici' instead of 'castrati,' some of us pretended to be falsetto singers rather than castrati, and, oh it was funny, some of the women in order to get singing parts pretended to be castrati who were pretending to be women. The Germans went as far as providing us with medical certificates saying we suffered from a medical ailment called

cryptorchidism. Goethe said that we, the castrati, should replace all actors on the stage because, since our life was a stage, we were already the best actors and could play both male and female roles. Professor D: Garfinkel continually told us that Agnes was no sexual deviant, that she considered herself a natural female and wished to rectify a cruel error of nature. Similarly, according to Garfinkel, individuals with ambiguous sex wish to achieve either maleness or femaleness. In fact Garfinkel seemed very concerned about the "morality" (natural, normal) of sex--one is either male or female. If by an anatomical irregularity, one happens to be in between, one ardently seeks to become one or the other, thus conforming with the rules of society and therefore being "moral." Not only Agnes was no "in between" but neither was her boyfriend, Bill, since any hint o f positive feeling toward cross sexual behavior on their part would have rendered them "immoral." In fact, Agnes often stated that she felt disgust for homosexuals and transvestites. And, for Garfinkel, it was very important to maintain secrecy about one's contradictory genitalia and to attempt to "pass" as a woman. Sehmidt: The fact is that not all people accept sex as a dichotomous choice. Some individuals look upon sex as a fluid dimension, due to changes in their lives caused by social conditions or due to a genetic difference. In the case of castrati the determining cause was the Catholic church's stern opposition to allow women to sing in public (Heriot 1974). This opposition lead a number of mostly lower class parents, especially in Southern Italy, to have their boys castrated and afterward to sell them to maestros who would train the boys for the stage or for the church choir, filling the roles and the voices of females. Professor D: (as if listening to the audience) An aberration of the distant past you say? Please remember that the last castrato, professor Alessandro Moreschi died in 1922. Some of his recordings are available, he was known as the "Soprano of the Sistine Chapel", and was Pope Pius X's director of music. Schmidt: At times the continuum relating to sex is not caused by social events but is due to genetic occurrences. The Y chromosome determines maleness, however we are all embryologically programmed as females until the genes on the Y chromosome trigger a change. At times it is nature itself that creates the conditions for a fluid self. Nature does not always operate dichotomously. Genetics texts list several dozens sexual conditions (McKusick 1994) which call into questions the duality of sex. Among individuals so affected we have hermaphrodites, possess-

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ing both ovaries and testicular tissue, usually with ambiguous external genitalia;

pseudohermaphrodites, with external genitals which are opposite that of their gonadal sex, or are ambiguous, or abnormal (Mange and Mange 1990). Some men may have too many sex chromosomes (XXY) and have Klinfelter syndrome, which leads them to develop breasts, small testes, an inability to produce sperm, and an increased secretion of female hormones (Stine 1989). P r o f e s s o r D: The fluidity of sex is nothing new. Foucault in 1978 (1980 English trans., p. vii), in introducing the memoirs of a ninenteenth century French hermaphrodite shows a perfect blend of genetic and societal causes. Up to the seventeenth century, according to Foucault, hermaphrodites, when they reached adulthood, could choose to stay with the sex they had been assigned or switch to the other quite legally. Until they had made a commitment to either sex they were free to engage in sexual acts with whomever they wanted; it was only after they had committed one way or the other, that laws restricted their sexual behavior. This lead Foucault to ask the question: " D o we truly need a true sex?" (Foucault 1980). It w a s n ' t until the medicalization of society in the eighteenth century that freedom of sexual choice for hermaphrodites was removed and what had been seen as fluidity of sex now became seen as "error" of nature and surgery was used to correct it. Fontana: In a way, our difference made us more attractive. Wealthy women and aristocratic ladies came to see us and loved us; at first it was our voices that made them swoon but then they were attracted by us. W e were beautiful and our sex drive was as strong as ever and we were safe, since we were sterile and the safe sex was exhilarating to them. Consolino had a torrid affair with a society lady and did not even have to hide it; he just visited the lady dressed in one of his stage costumes and the husband never suspected a thing! A t other times it was the noblemen, the patrons, the cardinals, who fell in love with us and became our protectors. Most of us dressed at times as males and at times as females, as our mood struck us and depending on whom we wanted to seduce. But some dressed as women all the time, like Porporino, who was more graceful than any lady I have ever know. Well, of course we laughed at Marianino, who was over six feet tall and was too gangly to be feminine. Balzac wrote a story about the true tale of the French sculptor Sarassin (in Heriot 1974, p. 27), who fell madly in love the castrato Zambinella and refused to believe he was not a woman. Finally, Zambinella's protector, Cardinal Cicognara, grew annoyed at the insistence of the Frenchman and had him assassinated. S e h m i d t : Garfinkel informed us, and his defenders repeated over and over (Hilbert 1991) in responding to Denzin's essay (1990) on Harold and Agnes, that he was not interested in the "story" but in the "methods" used by members of society to routinely "pass" and construct reality. But, as Denzin pointed out, to get to the methods one has tO create a story. Garfinkel tells a story, a 'moral' story about Agnes, her feeling of always having been a woman, her penis as a cruel trick of

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nature, about her boyfriend Bill as a John Waynish male. It would seem that, while Garfinkel claims to treat facts as social accomplishments, in Agnes's case he is quite satisfied to believe at face value whatever Agnes tells him. Garfinkel is pleased with the fact that Agnes is flattered when he opens doors for her or guides her across the street while holding her arm, and the fact that she acts and behaves like a 'real' woman. Professor D: To quote Denzin "the appearance of the thing is the thing" (Denzin 1990, p. 200). Thus, Garfinkel in believing what he sees, or perhaps what he wants to see, becomes his own "cultural dope," taken in by Agnes's account to pass and normalize her ambiguous sexedness. In fact, Garfinkel's famous appendix in which Agnes returns to the scene and casually drops the line that she was really a natural born male who took estrogen is not only a further instance of successful passing (which it is) but is also a member's admission (Agnes) that she was, for a while, both a male and a female with mixed feelings as well as mixed genitalia. Moreover, one must a s k , if secrecy was so paramount as Garfinkel holds, why would she casually tell him about her dabbling with female hormones? A m e m b e r of the audience (shouting with exasperation): This isn't fair! How can you hold Garfinkel accountable for postmodern sensibility? The article on Agnes was written over thirty years ago! Schmidt: Garfinkel stands here for all ethnomethodologists. Yes, the article is old but his followers reiterated Garfinkel's principles just a few years ago, while accusing Denzin of missing the point of Garfinkel's essay (Hilbert 1991), that is, that Garfinkel was not interested in the substance of Agnes's story (topics), but in the methods used by her to pass as a woman (resources). But they neglect to see that Garfinkel made himself invisible and did not mention at all that in analyzing Agnes's story, in order to uncover her resources for passing, he used resources o f his own, that is, he relied on his own membership in the world, filled with his own beliefs, values, and biases, to sift through Agnes' s story. Professor D: Ah! Dear audience, this is the flaw that mars all of ethnomethodology, not only Garfinkel's essay on Agnes--in studying the methods by which members of society construct and maintain social reality we, qua researchers, employ are own resources. This is inevitable for we are a part of the very universe we seek to study and thus not a flaw per se. But ethnomethodologists tend not to be self-reflexive about articulating their own frame of references, and therein lies the flaw. Fontana: We weren't secretive about who we were, some of us were more modest, but many others were not so modest; imagine being in Rome, down the fashionable via Veneto, you would have seen, in the words of Anne Rice: "young castrati come and go, some boldly done up in luxuriant female dress, others slinking about like beautiful cats in the beguiling severity of clerical black, their fresh complexions and lovely hair drawing eyes to them everywhere" (Rice 1982, p. 348). Goethe, in his The Flight to Italy (1999, orig. 1883), tells us that when the

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Roman carnival arrived, many castrati would dress as courtesans and swagger about with one breast bared, taking licenses with both men and women. Some castrati were quite impudent. None less than Casanova reports about his adventure in a cafe in Rome: "an abbe with an attractive face walked in. At the appearance of his hips, I took him for a girl in disguise, and so I said to the abbe Gamma; but the latter told me that it was Bepino della Mamana, a famous castrato. The abbe called him over, and told him, laughing, that I had taken him for a girl. The impudent creature, looking fixedly at me, told me that if I liked he would prove that I was right, or that I was wrong" (Heriot 1974, p. 54). Schmidt: Garfinkel is telling more than a story about Agnes or looking for Agnes's methods of passing. As Denzin (1990) has noticed, Garfinkel is drawing a model of society, a society in which what is important is important is passing as a 'normal' member of society, eliminating discrepant messages, upholding the dichotomy of sexedness, subscribing to the stable routines of interaction. Garfinkel ironically, and I ' m sure, unwittingly, is much closer to his one time mentor, Talcott Parsons, than he would like to be. With his use of fourfold tables, 7 a clear drawback to the master, he sketches a very stable society, which does not allow for differences. In fact, normalcy is equated with morality. Garfinkel does not seem to notice that in postmodern society, (and, seemingly, even in the early days of seventeenth century Europe), routines are often ephemeral and that stability and secrecy about one's core self are not the norm. This is not a society interested in the propriety and morality of the status quo; we are not interested in managing our self so that only stable and socially appropriate behaviors are shown by us. We tend to wear our postmodern self on the outside, just as Madonna does with her underwear. Professor D: The castrati, as unusual individuals, teach us, in Garfinkel's own words, about what is normal. But Garfinkel's mistake was to assume that unusual people would dearly desire to be normal, which for Garfinkel included a stable moral society with a dichotomous division of sexes. Castrati teach us, instead, that if you are not considered "normal," if you are called castrato, eunuch, evirato, musico, or even monster, you don't have to be secretive about yourself and try to "normalize" your sexedness. Instead, you do away with sexual dichotomies, you become a two-sexed person and live the lives of both. As for the charge of immorality, were the Pope and his cardinals morally correct when they rejected women from music and then created the castrati for their pleasure, only to publicly reject their existence? Fontana: We lived at a time when masculinity was very important and society took that away from us. But the physical mutilation took away more than our testicles, it removed the constrain to be men at all times. We played both male and female roles in opera, we wore elegant suits and resplendent gowns, we had both male and female lovers in our bed. We were who we wanted to be, as the mood struck us; we experienced the whole of life.

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S e h m i d t : Castrati h a d to r e c o n c e p t u a l i z e their s e n s e o f self, their p r e d e t e r m i n e d s e l f h a v i n g b e e n t a k e n a w a y to p r e s e r v e the h i g h n o t e s o f their v o i c e s . T h e y did n o t s e e k stable r o u t i n i z e d social structures, t h e y did n o t s e e k to b e c o m e m a l e s o r f e m a l e s , t h e y l i v e d in b e t w e e n , in an e v e r - c h a n g i n g social process. S c h m i d t a n d P r o f e s s o r D: (together): T h e i r s e l f b e c a m e fluid. A s the curtain falls F a r i n e l l i ' s v o i c e is h e a r d in the distance, d r o p p i n g a s h o w e r o f g o l d e n h i g h n o t e s u p o n the audience: "Cara, cara s p o s a . . . " ( H a n d e l 1711).

ACKNOWLEDGMENT An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Cultural Studies session of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction yearly meeting, San Francisco, CA, August 1998.

NOTES 1. Please note that Andrea is a masculine name in the Italian language (where names are masculine, feminine and neutral), while it has become a feminine name among Americans, unaware that not all Italian names ending in A are feminine. This misunderstanding has created all sorts of semi-comical misunderstandings for the author, from receiving free hosiery samples in the mail to being referred to "her" in book reviews. 2. Ferinelli has been chosen to represent the castrati, due to the recent popular movie about his life. This is not a reading of the movie itself. Choosing one person rather than speaking generally about castrati, gives more 'realism' to the script. 3. The goods of postmodern technology. To recreate the voice of a castrato, which can span a nonhuman three and a half octaves, two singers's voices were melded together technologically for the film and the soundtrack, that of a soprano and that of countertenor (Lionnet 1993). 4. We cannot reproduce the whole story of Agnes here, please read Garfinkel (1967) and Denzin (1990). 5. While Garfinkel never explicitly explains its use of "moral," it seems clear that he is using it in a Durkeimian sense, that is, members of society upholding proper" values hold society together and thus "moral." 6. We believe Garfinkel is pointing out that these three are the only "natural" ways to change the frequency of males and females in a society, with birth and immigration adding to the number and death and emigration reducing the number. 7. Please remember that Garkinkel was Parson's student and learned the master's use of fourfold tables in describing society, the famous one being: AGIL--A-adaptation to environments; Ggoals to be attained; I-integration among societal parts', and L-latent problems in society. As a graduate student at UCSD (early seventies) I witnessed Bennett Berger ask Talcott Parsons, who was lecturing at the time:" why is your world always composed of fourfold tables?" Parsons looked nonplussed. Later, I commented to Bennett; "He never answered your question!" Bennett remarked: "He never answered it when Bendix and I posed it in an article (Berger with Bendix 1971).

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REFERENCES Berger M. B., with R. Bendix. 1971. "Images of Society and Problems of Concept Formation in Sociology." Pp. 258-287 in Berger, Looking for America: essays on youth, suburbia, and other american obsessions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Denzin, N. 1990. "Harold and Agnes: A Feminist Narrative Undoing." Sociological Theory 8(2): 198-216. Farinelli. 1994. Stephan Films. Alinea Films and Le Studio Canal Plus. Foucault, M. 1980. "Introduction" to Hercule Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite. Translated by Richard Mc Dougall. Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press Limited. Garfinkel, H. 1967. "Passing and the Managed Achievement of Sex Status in an Intersexed Person." Pp. 116-85 in Studies in Ethnomethodology, edited by H. Garfinkel. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goethe, J. W. yon. 1999 [1883]. The Flight to ltaly. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Handel, Georg-Friedrich 1711. "Lascia ch'io pianga" from the "Air de Almirena" in the opera Rinaldo. Heriot, A. 1956. The Castrati in Opera. New York: Da Capo Press. Hilbert, R. 1991. "Norman and Sigmund! Comment on Denzin's "Harold and Agnes." Sociological Theory 9(2): 264-268. Rice, A. 1982. Cry to Heaven. New York: Ballantine Books. Lionnet, J. 1993. Libretto for Fafinelli, I1 Castrato. Auvidis Travelling Compact Disc. Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Mange, A., and E. J. Mange. 1990. Genetics: Human Aspects. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc. McKusic, V. 1994. Mendellian Inheritance in Man. Catalogue of Human Genetics and Gentics Disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Stine, G. 1989. The New Human Genetics. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Publishers.

"HAVE A NICE DAY!" PHATIC COMMUNION AND EVERYDAY LIFE

Bernard N. Meltzer and Gil Richard Musolf

INTRODUCTION A b o u t s e v e n t y - f i v e y e a r s a g o , B r o n i s l a w M a l i n o w s k i ( 1 9 4 3 ; f i r s t e d i t i o n 1923) coined the phrase "phatic communion"

(from the Greek

phatos, s p o k e n ) . B y this

p h r a s e M a l i n o w s k i r e f e r r e d to: ...the use of language in pure social intercourse; when the object of talk is not to achieve some aim but the exchange of words almost as an end in itself....A mere phrase of politeness...fulfills a function to which the meaning of its words is almost completely irrelevant. Inquiries about health, comments on weather, affirmations of some supremely obvious state of things--all such are exchanged, not in order to inform, not...to connect people in action, certainly not in order to express any thought (pp. 312-313).

And: Are words in phatic communion used primarily to convey meaning, the meaning that is symbolically theirs? Certainly not! They fulfill a social function and that is their principal aim, but they are neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 95-111. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4 95

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B.N. MELTZER and G.R. MUSOLF the listener. Once again we may say that language does not function here as a means of transmission of thought (p. 315, emphasis added).

Subsequently, other scholars (chiefly linguists) have characterized phatic communion (sometimes termed "phatic communication" ) as follows: "making conversation for the sake of it" (Burton 1980), "language for the sake of maintaining rapport" (Crystal 1987), "talk...where speakers' relational goals supersede their commitment to factuality and instrumentality" (Coupland and Coupland 1992). I Moreover, since much of everyday conversation comprises phatic elements, popular designations abound, such as: "just being sociable," "casual conversation," "small talk," "chewing the fat," "shooting the breeze," "shmoozing," "yakking," and "chit-chat." Linguists have found Malinowski's concept a productive source of theoretical formulations and research enterprises. Much of their recent work has centered upon the consideration of politeness, chiefly the strategies for maintaining face for oneself and others. In contrast, most sociologists and social psychologists, with the very notable exception of Erving Goffman, have virtually ignored the subject. 2 Although some sociologists have studied conversational openings and closings--which typically entail phatic utterances they have tended to consider the phatic function only indirectly, incidental to other aspects. Examples of such studies are those by Miller, Hintz, and Couch (1975); Leichty (1986); Schegloff (1988); and Sacks (1995), in which no explicit mention of phatic communion is to be found. It is no surprise, therefore, to find that the term "phatic communion" is absent from the vocabulary of sociology. We find the foregoing facts especially puzzling in tight--as will be shown later--of the contribution phaticity makes to the fundamental sociological question, "What is the nature of the social bond?" or, as Goffman put the question, "How does social reality sustain itSelf? ''3 That Goffman addressed the subject of phatic communion (although never using the term itself) is readily evident. His key concerns, power and ceremony, subsumed the analysis of etiquette, of the ritual order. The phatic element is, of course, part of the ceremonial order of encounters. Moreover, Goffman, familiar with the field of linguistics (in which he published papers), recognized that some linguists were engaged in projects paralleling his own. Thus, his many relevant writings on the interaction order figure prominently in this paper. 4 This paper adopts as its analytical perspective an explicit focus upon the phatic element in social interaction. In doing so, it attempts to fill-in some of the lacunae in the sociological treatment of phatic communion through a survey of noteworthy conceptual and empirical writings, primarily by linguists. The survey seeks to integrate the mutually-insulated treatments in the voluminous linguistics literature and the scant sociological literature on the topic. We begin with various conceptions about the nature of phaticity, touching upon both consensually-accepted and debated characteristics, as well as upon such derivative concepts as interaction rituals and politeness. Next, we consider its social significance, describing its

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general and specific functions in social life. We then deal with contextual influences upon its modalities, examining ideas and empirical findings about the effects of diverse social and cultural elements upon phatic communion. Finally, we suggest some aspects of both its dependence upon and impact upon macro phenomena. THE NATURE

OF PHATIC

COMMUNION

We have seen that the defining features of phatic communion have been conceptualized as: (a) its non-referential character and (b) its emphasis on social ties. What other, subsidiary characteristics have been noted? This section offers answers to this question. Goffman (1971, p. 93) asserts, "From the fact that greetings are found among many of the higher primates, as well as in any number of preliterate societies and all civilized ones, it would be easy to conclude that something like access rituals are universally found in societies" (emphasis added); (also see Miller and Hintz 1997, p. 93). At least two scholars (Hymes 1974; Crystal 1987), however, have challenged the universality of phatic communion: Crystal (1987, p. 11), claims that in some groups (including the Paliyans of southern India and the Aritama of Colombia) members say little and prefer silence; Hymes (1974, p. 127) makes a similar statement about the Wishram Chinook of the Columbia River. However, Senft (1995) questions these claims and calls for further research on the matter. Malinowski's neologism emerged from his study of meaning in non-literate languages, especially among the Trobriand Islanders. This source limited his focus, perforce, to face-to-face conversations. Most linguists have followed his lead by treating phatic communion as, exclusively, a speech phenomenon. Quirk (1962, p. 59), for example, writes of "a use of language which relates only to speech, to spoken and not written language." On the other hand, McArthur (1992) and Crystal (1987) indicate that phatic expressions are conventional in the salutations and farewells of letters ("Dearest friend," "Sincerely yours") and in commercial greeting cards. Also, some scholars (e.g., Pavlidou 1994) have included telephone conversations within the purview of phatic communion, and e-mail, obviously, is a recent medium. We see no compelling reason for restricting the concept solely to speech; however, as Crystal (1987, p. 178) points out, "the immediacy of speech makes it ideal for social or 'phatic' functions." Hayakawa (1947, p. 62) expresses a somewhat similar view, pointing out that breaking bread together, playing games together, and working together are ways of establishing communion, "but talking together is the most easily arranged of all these forms of collective activity." As we earlier suggested--and shall later show in some detail--phatic communion functions to affirm and reaffirm social bonds. This use of language, Wardhaugh (1993, p. 171) astutely asserts, "serves humans much like 'grooming

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behavior' serves many animals," bringing them together and helping to maintain social relationships. In a similar vein, Chaika (1982, p. 32) tells us that phatic expressions are akin to patting dogs on the head as a way of letting them know we care. Malinowski (1943) and many linguists (e.g., Steible 1967; Marsh 1989) equate phatic communion with polite, friendly speech, which implies tie-binding consideration of the feelings of others. As we shall show in the next section of this paper, polite conversation has recently become the focus of much scholarly work on phatic communion. Schneider (1988), in fact, equates phaticity with politeness. It is clear, however, that while politeness manifests itself on both the communicative and non-communicative levels, phaticity is found only on the former level. Encompassed by such speech---again, according to Malinowski and s o m e linguists---is idle gossip, in the sense of "free, aimless social intercourse" (1943, p. 313 ). However, Schneider ( 1981) argues that gossip must be excluded from phatic communion because much gossip is, inescapably, intended to be referential, or informative (thereby violating a defining characteristic of phaticity). It would appear to us, on the other hand, that specific instances of gossip may be considered phatic to the extent that they foreground relational goals. Thus, a distinction can be made between aspects of the use of utterances that may be referred to their function as phatic communion and aspects that may be referred to their referential function. 5 Numerous depictions of phatic utterances are available. Such expressions are typically formulistic or stereotyped 6, composed of cliches and platitudes, noncommittal or perfunctory, minimally self-involved, avoidant of comments that are too personal, given to saying what one is expected to say, and marked by subordination of literal or "real" meaning. This last characteristic implies the presence of two levels of meaning, the semantic and the situational, surface, or apparent meaning. The parallel with irony and with such exchanges of insults in black-American society as "the dozens," "signifying," or "joning" is evident: the surface meaning is not intended to be taken seriously. Given this feature of phatic communion, second-language listeners often face the same problems of comprehension as they may with idiomatic words and phrases (e.g., does one offer a full reply to an acquaintance's "How are you today"?). Clearly, phatic communion requires--as in any effective communication--that the listener share the speaker's i n t e n d e d meaning, that interactants participate in a process of mutually sustaining a definition of the situation. As Goffman (1969, p. 9) puts the matter: Indeed, the very senseof a messagedependson our tellingwhetherit is conveyed,for example, seriously, or sarcastically,or tentatively,as an indirect quotation, and in face-to-facecommunication this "framing"informationderives fromparalinguisticcues such as intonation, facial gestures, and the like--cues that have an expressive,not semantic,character.

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Although we have, thus far, dealt only with the verbal medium of phatic communion, one need hardly be reminded that substitutes for verbalisms are to be found in handshakes, smiles, hugs, kisses on or past cheeks, slightly prolonged eye contact, and the like. Also, various writers (e.g., Laver 1975; Lyons 1977) have considered such paralinguistic, kinesic, proxemic, and visual accompaniments as involuntary eye-movements, gestures, posture, and tone of voice. As we indicated earlier, Goffman (1967), too, stressed the importance of glances, gestures, and positionings--along with verbalizations--in meeting ritual requirements that signal willingness to interact. This discussion of the features of phaticity would be incomplete if we omitted mention of what Haverkate (1988, p. 399) terms "pseudo-phatic communion." This refers to instances where "the speaker pretends to achieve no other aim than displaying a socially appreciated form of interactional behavior, while, in actual fact, his behavior serves to reduce negative face effects in [an] ultimate request." Haverkate cites the example of greeting a friend with a compliment and, later, requesting a favor. Somewhat similar conduct is described by C. Wright Mills (1951) in his discussion of fake-friendly sales techniques in the pseudo-Gemeinschaft he calls "the great salesroom," or the marketplace. Hochschild's (1983) depiction--inspired, she acknowledges, by Mills' writings--of the ever-smiling, but self-estranged, airline attendants' emotion work also exemplifies the manipulative use of phatic expression. We need hardly indicate that everyday life in today' s society is marked by a surfeit of such use. The literature, understandably, is replete with negatively-valued aspects of phaticity. Pejoratives like "dissimulative," "inauthentic," "insincere," "vacuous," "banal," "idle gossip," "idle discourse," "small talk," "chit-chat," "cocktail chatter," "a mere exchange of words," and similar characterizations--on both the scholarly and popular levels trivialize and derogate such discourse. In this connection, Strong (1988) asserts that the central argument in much of Goffman's work, the ceremonial order of the encounter, the etiquette that can be observed in most social occasions, is far from being a trivial matter. Referring to this etiquette (which is inclusive of phatic behavior), Goffman (1971, p. 64) writes: [Interactionrituals] are amongthe mostconventionalizedand perfunctorydoingswe engagein and traditionally have been treated by students of modern society as part of the dust of social activity, empty and trivial....[W]heneveran individual rubs up against another, he is likely to say hello or excuse me. Surely it is time to examine "Hello" or "Excuseme," or their equivalent. Moreover,...conversationalencounters of the more extended kind are typically opened and closedby these devices, if not built up in terms of them. In the past generation several linguists (Laver 1975; Marsh 1989; Cocchi 1992; Coupland and Coupland 1992) have, also, warned against minimizing its social importance. Our next section discusses the more positively-valued aspects of phatic communion.

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SIGNIFICANCE

OF

COMMUNION

One of its defining characteristics--the establishment or maintenance of social ties, however tenuous--constitutes the major social importance of phatic communion. This characteristic has been specified in several ways by various writers: language for the purpose of creating social contact (Jakobson 1960; Schneider 1981; Marsh 1989; Akindele 1990); utterances that aim to bond hearer to speaker (Malinowski 1943); ritual courtesy that attests to civility and good will (Goffman 1971; Edwards 1976); speech that acknowledges someone's existence (Edwards 1976; Coupland and Coupland 1992); and such specifications by Goffman (1976) as conventionalized acts in which one portrays regard for another to that other and ceremony that affirms basic social arrangements and ultimate doctrines about humans and their world. Although both sociologists and anthropologists have long been aware of this relationship between ritual and social solidarity, their attention to phatic communion has been indirect and minimal rather than explicit and detailed. Several component functions come into play in the various stages of encounters. Laver (1975) writes of three such functions in just the opening phase of interpersonal encounters: (1) a propitiatory function, by defusing the potential hostility engendered by silence in situations where speech is conventionally expected; (2) an exploratory function, by allowing the participants to develop what Goffman (1959) terms a working consensus about their encounter; and (3) an initiatory function, by enabling the participants to collaborate in getting the interaction underway. All of these functions facilitate what Rommetveit (1974) designated the "architecture of intersubjectivity," which is necessary to communication. Needless to say, however, openings often comprise the entirety of encounters. For Goffman (1971, p. 63), the bonding function of greetings (and other "ritual offerings") is suggested in the following statement: When..,one individual provides a sign of involvementin and connectedness to another, it behooves the recipient to show that the messagehas been received, that its import has been appreciated,that the affirmedrelationshipactuallyexistsas the performerimplies,that the performerhimseffhas worth as a person, and finally, that the recipienthas an appreciative,grateful nature. In the closing phase of encounters, phatic communion serves, as Laver (1975) indicates, to mitigate a potential sense of rejection. It does so in two ways: (1) by enabling a cooperative parting, in which appropriate reassurance from the person who is leaving assuages any feelings of rejection by the person being left; (2) by consolidating the relationship through emphasizing the enjoyable nature of the encounter, mutual esteem, the promise of a continuation of the relationship, asser-

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tion of mutual solidarity, and the like (p. 231), illustrated by the comments "As usual, it's been good talking to you. Let's do lunch someday." Leichty's (1986, p. 233) studies of social closings among dyads found that ending statements typically include elements quite similar to those just listed, namely: (1) summary statements of cognitive or affective material from the interaction, (2) continuity statements affirming the endurance of the relationship beyond the present, (3) well-wishing statements, (4) statements justifying the ending of the encounter, and (5) positive vs. negative statements. Goffman (1963, p. 79) felicitously sums up the phatic character of many closings: ...when [conversationalencounters] come to be terminated, a supportive ritual will...occur, namely some sort of farewell display performedduring teave-taking....Theinterpretation is standard: the goodbyebringsthe encounterto an unambiguousclose, sumsup the consequence of the encounterfor the relationship, and bolstersthe relationshipfor the anticipatedperiod of no contact. It is clear, then, that phatic communion enables "the detailed management of interpersonal relationships during the psychologically crucial margins of interaction" (Laver 1975, p. 217). That is, it facilitates a psychologically comfortable transition from silence to interaction, and then back to silence (p. 233). Thus, phatic utterances are messages that serve to initiate, prolong, or terminate communication. Idle talk, chit-chat, and gossip tend to provide the content of those medial phases of interactions that are marked predominantly by phaticity. In the course of such conversations--and, in fact, of other conversations--participants may employ what Goffman (1981, p. 28) calls "keep-going signals" in order to perpetuate the encounter: "Gee, gosh, wow, hmm, tsk, no!" When the chief aim of conversation is not to exchange information but to keep the conversation going, participants may interpolate bits of information, but sociability tends to outweigh referential remarks. Running through all phases of encounters, of course, is another function of phaticity: the communication of indexical information about the identities and attributes of the interactants (see Laver 1975). Such information influences the nature of the particular interaction and of any ensuing action. It is when we are on either the giving or receiving end of offenses against the rituals of phatic communion that we are most likely to become cognizant of their tie-binding role. That people generally feel obliged to avoid silence in situations of co-presence has long been noted. In an ethnocentric (and classist) statement, Malinowski (1943, p. 313) asserted: "To the primitive mind, whether among savages or our own uneducated classes, taciturnity means not only unfriendliness but directly a bad character." Similarly, Akindele (1990, p. 3) finds that, among the Yoruba, failure to greet another in appropriate contexts tends to induce bad feelings, especially among close friends and relatives, to the extent that it can give rise to suspicion of sorcery or witchcraft. In most societies, of course, this failure to

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break silence in "sociability" contexts generally leads to such designations as "rudeness," "social error," "unfriendliness," "unsociability," "egregious behavior," "snub," or "cut," and to such feeling-responses as distance, alienation, distrust, dislike, fear, or ill will--not to mention puzzlement, at times, about the source of the offender's omission. As Hintz and Miller (1995, p. 360) state: "When routine greetings are not constructed, there is a sense of absence, even alarm. 'What's wrong?' 'Could I have said something?'" Chaika (1982, p. 32), Goffman (1981, p. 150), and Sacks (1995, vol. 2, p. 360) have, also, treated this matter. Of course, many of us have had the experience of avoiding the necessity of greeting someone--or even of refusing to shake hands with someone--with whom we do not wish, at least at a given time, to associate. On such occasions, the phatic function of the avoided or refused token is, certainly, clear to us. Our comments on the discourteous acts of withholding phatic utterances lead directly into considerations of "face," a concept that lies at the heart of theories of interaction ritual and of politeness (see, e.g., a collection of papers edited by Coulmas 1980). Drawing heavily upon Goffman's work, Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) define politeness as the maintenance of face, the avoidance of embarrassment of oneself and other co-present actors. Most of their studies explore numerous strategies for avoiding face-threatening acts (FTA). Using tape-recorded conversations in three different languages (English, Tzeltal, and Tamil), they develop what they consider universal FTA strategies, such as the following: attend to the listeners' interests, wants, needs, and goods; use in-group identity markers; joke; make offers or promises; assume or assert reciprocity; include listeners in joint activity. As we shall note in part of the next section, other politeness scholars (e.g., Coupland, Coupland, and Giles 1991) have considered FTA strategies involving such specific groups as the elderly.

CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON PHATIC COMMUNION What kinds of situations, relationships, and other constraints impinge upon phatic events? This question falls within the domain of pragmatics, defined by Crystal (1980) as the study of language from the standpoint of the user, particularly the choices she/he makes, the constraints she/he encounters in using language in social interaction, and the effects this use of language has on the other interactants. We turn now to a consideration of this matter. 7 Cross-cultural studies have revealed some differences in the use of phatic language, An analysis of telephone calls in Greece and Germany (Palidou 1994), for example, found that Greeks are twice as prone to employ phatic expressions than Germans. Further, while Greeks tend to use phatic utterances regardless of possible threats to face, Germans incline toward such language chiefly in order to reduce face threats connected with the reason for the call. Other studies (Tannen

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1980, 1981) report that Greeks are more disposed than Americans toward both indirectness and involvement in conversation. Additional cross-cultural (e.g., Silva 1980; Byrnes 1986; Godard 1977) and intensive single-culture studies (e.g., Bazzanella 1988; Ghiga 1989) have been reported. Also, social class subcultural influences on phatic language are reported by Meltzer (1994, p. 297n.) in a study of a poverty-stricken village in the Dominican Republic: [There is a special response] to the common greeting, "How are you?"("g Como estd?"). Rather than politely replying "Very well" ("Muy bien")...most villagers simply say, "struggling [to survive]" ("luchando"), "Alive" ("Vivo"), "Regular" ("Regular"), or some similar statement. As one 60-year-old...man observed, "Only the rich are 'very well'" ("Solamente los ricos estdn

"muy bien'.")

Another contextual element is that of the prior relationship between interactants. Linguists disagree on some aspects of this issue. While Wardhaugh (1985) holds that much of the dialogue between closely-bonded participants tends to be phatic in nature, Marsh (1989) expresses the common view that small talk (used synonymously with phatic communion) takes place only between strangers. Schneider (1988, p. 287) leans toward the latter view in his assertion that "[a]s a rule, the share of phatic elements in a conversation decreases, the closer the interpersonal relationship." This less restrictive view comports with our everyday experiences and observations: we may exchange superficial, uninvolved greetings and farewells with both a bartender and a friend, but, in the time between greeting and farewell, our talk with the friend is more likely to be serious and referential than mere "talk for the sake of talk." The immediately preceding sentence can serve to introduce the point that the marginal phases of discourse--openings and closings--are generally considered most productive of phatic communion (see Laver 1975; Burton 1980; Schneider 1981). Hence, the literature on our subject abounds in studies of these phases. Many of these concern the impact of statuses and roles upon modes of phatic discourse. Among the Yoruba, for instance, the type and structuring of greetings are, according to Akindele (1990, p. 2), affected by age, gender, and occupation. Thus, conventionally, younger persons initiate greetings in deference to older persons. (For a similar pattern, among the Kiswahili, see Omar 1991; and for a study touching upon Italian gender differences in phatic expressions, see Bazzanella 1988.) Probably the most comprehensive set of studies of the phatic element in conversations involving older people has been completed by J. and N. Coupland and their various associates (Coupland, Grainger, and Coupland 1988; Coupland, Coupland, and Giles 1991; Coupland and Coupland 1992; Coupland, Robinson, and Coupland 1994; and many others). Using a politeness perspective, Coupland, Coupland, and Giles (1991) list several "interactional goals" of elderly people: (1) (minimally) to elicit engagement and a range of positive responses from an indi-

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vidual interlocutor, from praise ("I lead quite a busy life although I'm eighty-six") to sympathy ("I'm not very well these days; I'm seventy"); "(2) to stake a claim, at the intergroup level, for owed respect, attention, or care..."; (3) to enact a set of relative evaluations, for example of the life position of an elderly speaker in relation to other elderly people...or to other reference individuals or groups; (4) to defuse a potentially threatening situation...; (5) relatedly, to transfer age from the implicit to the explicit agenda, thereby defusing the threat imposed by uncertainty; (6) to try to come to terms with the balance between one's own chronological age and contextual age, and reduce one' s own uncertainty about present states and future possibilities (pp. 71-72). These goals enter the picture in discourse relating to age identity, age disclosure, intergenerational encounters, doctor-patient visits, and other situations. For example, studies have been conducted of the responses elderly patients make to "How are you?" greetings by physicians (Coupland and Coupland 1992), the presence of "face" elements even in such instrumental, transactional encounters as medical consultations (Coupland, Robinson, and Coupland 1994), and the facethreatening character of requests, criticism, expression of thanks, and apologies (Coupland, Grainger, and Coupland 1988), Laver (1975, 1981) has written intensively about the effects of relative social status (and power) on phaticity in England. He begins his insightful discussion by differentiating self-oriented comments, (referring to the speaker, e.g., "This heat is too much for me"), other-oriented comments (referring to the listener, e.g., "How was your weekend?"), and neutral comments (referring to neither, e.g., "It' s a nice day"). He then proceeds to delineate the following patterns of opening remarks in symmetrical and asymmetrical status relationships: (a) When a non-solidary inferior speaks first to an acknowledged superior-"upwards" interaction--s/he tends to employ the self-oriented category of comments, but not the other-oriented. The inverse is true in "downwards" interaction, the non-solidary superior using the other-oriented category when initiating conversation. Thus, "convention seems to support a position where the superior is prepared to 'invade' the psychological world of the inferior,...but does not expect the inferior to intrude upon his..." (Laver 1975, p. 224). This latter statement is supported by Goffman's (1963, p. 74) assertion, "Often greetings will...affirm a differential allocation of status, specifically attesting that the subordinate is willing to keep his place." (b) Speakers, regardless of relative social status, are on "safe," uncontroversial, unassertive ground when they use the neutral category (Laver 1975, p. 224). (c) If the relationship is solidary, the speaker (whether inferior, superior, or equal in social status) has a free choice of category (p. 223). Laver (1975, 1981) also observes that "territoriality" is a constraint (at least in Great Britain and America) on who initiates an exchange of phatic utterances. A participant who is moving toward a stationary other, regardless of the physical site, tends (unless there are overriding special reasons) to begin the exchange. 8

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Several reasons underline this likely pattern, according to Laver: (1) The speaker recognizes that, in a sense, the static listener is in a closer psychological relationship with the immediate territory than s/he is, and that in a way the listener can be deemed the "owner" of the territory; (2) S/he acknowledges his/her awareness of the fact of his/her "invasion" of the other' s space; (3) S/he declares, in effect, that his/her intentions are pacific, and offers a propitiatory token; and (4) By implicitly inviting the other to participate in verbal interaction, the speaker asserts a claim to sociolinguistic solidarity with the listener. SUMMARY

AND

CONCLUSION

This paper has directed explicit attention to a subject that sociologists have tended to treat implicitly: phatic communion. Our survey of writings on phatic communion has considered the character of this taken-for-granted, everyday phenomenon, including its probable universality, its occurrence in various vehicles of communication (face-to-face speech, telephone messages, letters, and e-mail), its overlap with gossip (in the sense of idle discourse), its bi-level meaning, its paralinguistic equivalents and accompaniments, and pseudo-phatic acts. We have then directed attention to the positively-valued aspects of phatic communion, that is, its function in affirming and reaffirming the social bond, touching upon this function in conventional openings, closings, and medial phases, and pointed out the implications of snubs, or cuts. Moreover, we have shown the close connections between, on the one hand, face-saving strategies and, on the other, processes of phatic communion, interaction ritual, or politeness. In the penultimate section of this paper, we have dealt with situational influences on phatic communion, describing findings of cross-cultural studies and a social-class study, considering the question of whether phaticity prevails to a greater extent in exchanges among strangers and acquaintances or among friends, and reporting studies on the effects of various social attributes upon phatic exchanges. We conclude by suggesting that phatic communion carries implications for the micro-macro link. In the past generation, various sociologists have commented upon a trend of convergence between the micro and macro levels, which we now briefly review. 9 Two edited volumes on the subject (Helle and Eisenstadt 1985 and Alexander et al. 1987) conclude that we must recognize "the connection between large-scale societal structures and the everyday experiences of individuals" (Helle and Eisenstadt 1985, p. 7). Similarly, Brown and Levinson (1987) hold that interpersonal interaction seems to be both determined by and a determinant of various aspects of large-scale social facts. Putting the matter in a somewhat different way, Munch and Smelser (1987, p. 358) assert: [M]icro theories invariably involve definite assumptions about the macrocontent in which interactional processes are embedded (and therefore have a macrocomponent) and...macrothe-

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ories invariably involve assumptions about individual motivation and interaction (and therefore have a microcomponent).

Still another way of characterizing the link is provided by Collins (1987), who conceives macrostructures as comprising aggregations of micro-encounters and contends that every micro-encounter takes place within macrostructures that have emerged from previous aggregations of micro-encounters. (For additional views in the same vein as the preceding ones, see Duranti and Goodwin 1992 and Giesen 1987.) Finally, while it is true that Goffman was not particularly interested in the macro world, he clearly acknowledged the power of the ties between it and the micro world (see Strong 1988). Seeing a "loose coupling" between the interaction order and the larger social order, he asserts (1961, p. 8): An encounter provides a world for its participants, but the character and stability of this world is intimately related to its selective relationship to the wider one. The naturalistic study of encounters, then, is more closely tied to studies of social structure on one hand, and more separate from them, than one might at first imagine.

Looking, first, at the impact of the structural or institutional order on the interaction order, Goffman (1961) points to language and cultural knowledge that interactants draw upon, as well as the influence of status, authority, seniority, gender, class, and ethnic background, which are selectively filtered in and out of encounters (see Layder 1977, pp. 215-219, for an excellent discussion of this topic). Describing this relationship as the reproduction of the macro-order by the microorder, Giddens (1984, p. 69) argues: "The fixity of institutional forms does not exist in spite of, or outside, the encounters of day-to-day life but is implicated in those very encounters." Our preceding section on "Contextual Influences on Phatic Communion" provides several illustrations of this claim. Turning now to the reverse side of the picture, it is necessary to indicate that students of face-to-face encounters, in general, and phatic communion, in particular, have tended to overlook this aspect of the micro-macro link. However, some scholars have shown greater awareness in the matter. Nisbet (1966, p. 98), for example, paraphrases Simmel, arguing that "dyads, triads, and other timeless, constitutive elements of the social bond...have a profound effect upon the direction of change and the structures of the larger associations in society." The dyad and the triad are "the molecular elements of society." More recently, Maines (1979, p. 527) has commented similarly: [S]ocial structure should also be regarded as a dependent variable,...can be examined as a product of interaction, and...is created, maintained, and changed through interaction processes." Another scholar, writing from a similar perspective, specifically indicates the role of politeness:

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[P]oliteness...is basic to the production of social order, and a precondition of human cooperation, so that any theory which provides an understanding of this phenomenon at the same time goes to the foundations of human social life (Gumperz 1987, p. xiii).

Goffman (1983) provides us with a concrete instance of a connection between the interaction order and social structures, showing how a face-to-face gathering gave rise to a broad social movement. He recounts how a steel-band carnival that began as a multi-ethnic block party in the Notting Hill area of London ended up in the inception of the political organization of London's West Indians. Thus, what started as an annual Bank Holiday social affair eventually became a politically self-conscious social movement. Summing up, we can say that phatic communion plays a significant part in the processes that keep people together in groups; and, reciprocally, larger social processes are important in shaping the form and content of phatic communion. If this is indeed the case, sociologists should feel doubly impelled to study phatic communion.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT W e t h a n k Robert L. Stewart, Bill Meltzer, C a t h y Malkin, and the a n o n y m o u s referees w h o s e critical c o m m e n t s o n an earlier v e r s i o n appreciably i m p r o v e d this paper.

NOTES 1. La Barre (1954) and Austin (1962) use the term "phatic" in ways that depart from the more common usage. La Barre uses "phatic communication" to refer to the expression of feeling (through poetry, for example), while Austin provides the following cumbersome and obscure definition of his "phatic act": ...the act of uttering certain vocables or words, i.e., noises of certain types belonging to and as belonging to a certain vocabulary, in a certain construction, i.e., conforming to and as conforming to a certain grammar, with a certain intonation, etc. (p. 92, emphasis in original). 2.

To illustrate, an excellent treatment of eighteen modes of conversation--Perinbanayagam's

Discursive Acts (1991)--makes no explicit reference to phaticity. 3. As Stewart (1998) expresses it, "How do people manage to live and act together?" 4. In a sense, "phatic communion" and "interaction rituals" are almost synonymous. Both designate expressive elements in discourse. However, while "phatic communion" embraces only efforts to build and maintain social ties, Goffman's (1981, p. 20, emphasis added) term more broadly encompasses: "...a special class of quite conventionalized utterances, lexicalizations whose controlling purpose is to give praise, blame, thanks, support, affection, or show gratitude, disapproval, dislike, sympathy, or greet, say farewell, and so forth." 5. This statement can be linked to the more general view that "every communication has [both] a content and a relationship aspect..." (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson 1967, p. 62; also see Bateson 1958).

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6. Given the routinized character of phatic communion, such acts do not necessarily involve explicit indications to oneself of relational intentions. 7. We do not maintain that the structure of social situations and the normatively pertinent rituals determine the phaticity of an encounter. Rather, they exert influence upon this aspect. Whether interactants use phatic utterances, which ones they use, and how they respond to the use of such utterances by other participants--all depend heavily upon the ongoing construction of the act at every juncture in the encounter. Coupland and Coupland (1992) and Coupland, Robinson, and Coupland (1994) recognize this fluidity, presenting studies of the negotiation and monitoring of phafic comments and responses. 8. Sacks briefly describes another spatial element in phatic exchanges: One kind of interesting feature of the accomplishment of greetings-only interactions, where people are approaching each other on a street, in a hallway, etc. is the way in which parties are able to withhold doing greetings until they reach some space relative to each other so that they can do greetings....For the most part, people do it well, engineering that thing so that they do not pass each other face to face having ended the interaction....[F]or if one party starts a greeting at such a distance from the other as to involve that the other returns the greeting while they are still approaching each other, then more than greetings will perhaps have to be done (Sacks, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 192-193). Such calculation of spatio-temporai coordinates attests to the care actors take in the construction of encounter rituals. 9. The pervasiveness of phaticity at the interpersonal, or micro, level in everyday life should be borne in mind.

REFERENCES Akindele, F. 1990. "A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Yoruba Greetings." African Language and Culture 3: 1-14. Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. New York: Oxford University Press. Bateson, G. 1958. Naven, second edition. Pain Alto: Stanford University Press. Bazzanella, C. 1990. "Phatic Connectives as Interactional Cues in Contemporary Spoken Italian." Journal of Pragmatics 14: 629-647. Brown, P., and S.C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, P., and S. Levinson. 1978. "Universals in Language Phenomena: Politeness Phenomena." Pp. 56-310 in Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, edited by E.N. Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burton, D. 1980. Dialogue and Discourse. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Byrnes, H. 1986. "Interactional Style in German and American Conversation." Text 6: 189-206. Chaika, E. 1982. Language: The Social Mirror. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Cocchi, P. 1992. "Review of Small Talk: Analyzing Phatic Communion, by K.P.Schneider." Journal of Pragmatics 18: 373-393. Collins, R. 1987. "Interaction Ritual Chains, Power and Property: The Micro-Macro Connection as an Empirically Based Theoretical Problem." Pp. 193-206 in The Micro-Macro Link, edited by J.C. Alexander. Berkeley: University of California Press. Coulmas, F. (ed.). 1981. Conversational Routine. The Hague: Mouton. Coupland, N., J. Coupland, and H. Giles. 1991. Language, Society, and the Elderly. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.

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Coupland, J., and N. Coupland. 1988. "'How Are You?': Negotiating Phatic Communion." Language in Society 21: 207-230. Coupland, N., K. Grainger, and J. Coupland. 1988. "Politeness in Context: Intergenerational Issues (Review Article)." Language in Society 17: 253-262. Coupland, J., J.D. Robinson, and N. Coupland. 1994. "Frame Negotiation in Doctor-Elderly Patient Consultations." Discourse and Society 3: 89-124. Crystal D. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. . 1980. A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. London: Deutsch. De Vito, J.A. 1973. Language: Concepts and Processes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Duranti, A., and C. Goodwin (eds.). 1992. Rethinking Context." Laguage as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, A.D. 1976. Language in Culture and Class. London: Heinemann Educational Books. Ghiga, G. 1989. "Phatic Elements of Communication in Romanian Everyday Dialogues." Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 26: 45-52. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giesen, B. 1987. "Beyond Reductionism: Four Models Relating Micro and Macro Levels." Pp. 337355 in The Micro-Macro Link, edited by J.C. Alexander. Berkeley: University of California Press. Godard, D. 1977. "Same Setting, Different Norms: Phone Call Beginnings in France and the United States." Language in Society 6: 209-219. Goffman, E. 1983. "The Interaction Order." American Sociological Review 48: 1-17. . 1981. Forms of Talk. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. . 1976. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper and Row. . 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper and Row. . 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Harper and Row. . 1969. Strategic Interaction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. . 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York: Doubleday Anchor. .1963. Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press. .1961. Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of lnteraction. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. . 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Haverkate, H. 1988. "Toward a Typology of Politeness Strategies in Communicative Interaction." Multilingua 7: 385-409. Hayakawa, S.I. 1947. Language in Action. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Helle, H.J., and S.N. Eisenstadt (eds.). 1985. Micro-Sociological Theory: Perspectives on Sociological Theory, Vol. 2. Beverly Hills: Sage. Hintz, R.A., and D.E. Miller. 1995. "Openings Revisited: The Foundations of Social Interaction." Symbolic Interaction 18: 355-369. Hochschild, A. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feelings. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hymes, D.H. 1974. Foundations in Sociolinguistics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Jakobson, R. 1960. "Linguistics and Poetics." Pp. 350-377 in Style and Language, edited by T.A. Sebeok. Cambridge: MIT Press. La Bahe, W. 1954. The Human Animal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Laver, J. 198t. "Linguistic Routines and Politeness in Greeting and Parting." Pp. 289-304 in Conversational Routine, edited by F. Coulmas. The Hague: Mouton.

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1975. "Communicative Functions of Phatic Communion." Pp. 215-237 in Organization of Behavior in Face-to-Face Interaction, edited by A. Kendon, R.M. Harris, and M.R. Key. The Hague: Mouton. Layder, D. 1997. Modern Social Theory: Key Debates and New Directions. London: UCL Press. .1994. Understanding Social Theory. London: Sage Publications. Leichty, M.G. 1986. "Social Closings." Pp. 231-248 in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Supplement 2: The Iowa School (PartA), edited by C.J. Couch, S.L. Saxton, and M.A. Katovich. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .1968. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Maines, D.R. 1979. "Mesostructure and Social Process." Contemporary Sociology 8:524-527. Malinowski, B. 1943. "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages." Pp. 296-336 in The Meaning of Meaning, 6th edition, by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards. New York: Harcourt Brace. Marsh, D. 1989. Review of Small Talk." Analyzing Phatic Discourse, by K.P. Schneider. Regional English Language Journal 20:88-89. Meltzer, W.J. 1994. Tourism and the Development of Capitalism in a Dominican Village. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan. Miller, D.E., R.A. Hintz, and C.J. Couch. 1975. "The Elements and Structure of Openings." Pp. 1-24 in Constructing Social Life, edited by C.J. Couch and R.A. Hintz, Jr. Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing Company. Mills, C.W. 1951. White Collar: The American Middle Classes. New York: Oxford University Press. Munch, R., and N.J. Smelser. 1987. "Relating the Micro and Macro." Pp. 356-387 in The MicroMacro Link, edited by J.C. Alexander. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nisbet, R. 1966. The Sociological Tradition. New York: Basic Books. Omar, A.S. 1991. "Conversational Openings in Kiswahili: The Pragmatic Performance of Native and Non-Native Speakers." Kiswahili 58: 12-24. Pavlidou, T. 1994. "Contrasting German-Greek Politeness and the Consequences." Journal of Pragmatics 21:487-511. Perinbanayagam, R.S. 1991. Discursive Acts. New York: Aldine De Gruyter. Quirk, R. 1962. The Use of English. New York: St. Martin's Press. Rommetveit, R. 1974. On Message Structure: A Framework for the Study of Language and Communication. London: Wiley. Sacks, H. 1995. Lectures on Conversation, Volumes 1 and 2, edited by G. Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell. Schegloff, E.A. 1988. "Goffman and the Analysis of Conversation." Pp. 89-135 in Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order, edited by P. Drew and A. Wootton. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Schneider, K.P. 1988. Small Talk: Analyzing Phatic Discourse. Marburg: Hitzeroth. . 1981. "Topic Selection in Phatic Communion." Multilingua 6: 247-256. Senft, G. 1995. "Phatic Communion." Pp. 1-I0 in Handbook of Pragmatics, edited by J. Verschueren, J. Ostman, and J. Blommaert. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Silva, V.O. 1980. "Phatic Language: A Preliminary Contrastive Analysis between English and Spanish." Lenguaje y Ciencias 20:104-111. Steible, D.J. 1967. Handbook of Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library. Stewart, R.L. 1998. Living and Acting Together: An Essay in Social Psychology. Dix Hills, NY: General Hall. Strong, P.M. 1988. "Minor Courtesies and Macro Structures." Pp. 228-249 in Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order, edited by P. Drew and A. Wootton. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Tannen, D. 1981. "Indirectness in Discourse." Discourse Processes 4: 221-238. .

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FROM RADIO TO TELEVISION SPACE, SOUND, AND MOTION

C.W. Kaha

The medium of television can be viewed as text, as propaganda, as social commentary. Each of these approaches constitutes an extensive body of scholarship which seeks to articulate related paradigms and agendas. Viewing television as text, the postmodern scholar examines narrative structure, redundancy, closure, and semiotics. The Marxist perspective turns the investigation in another direction, challenging the scholar to expose the agenda inherent in the dominant ideology. In this context messages are understood as subversive attempts to confound and mislead. Television can be viewed as social commentary. The scholar investigates the way in which the medium portrays family life, violence, the political process, or childhood, to name a few possible topics. All of the approaches mentioned above focus on content: the story is examined for closure, the message is studied for its political impact, the ideology of the text is revealed, the social value of the commentary is challenged. In each case what is studied, regardless of whether it is a genre, or series, or a single episode, is a recognizable message. When the postmodernist argues that television usurps the real world, his stated position references specific televised events. When the scholar examines television as social commentary, specific shows are discussed, whether Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 113-124. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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they be family sitcoms or talk shows or another choice. Violent acts on television have been counted, references to sexual content have been counted, numbers of hours devoted to children's' programming have been counted. Each of these approaches requires referencing specific messages. Marshall McLuhan's agenda presents a viable alternative to the focus on content. McLuhan (1994) argued in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man that the medium is the message. If there is an ideology inherent in this catchphrase, it is that the medium alters one's experience of the world in ways that are not reducible to discussions of specific messages. Perhaps there have been few to follow in McLuhan' s footsteps because it is difficult to study the media as he did. His illusive probes were equally fascinating and confounding: television is cool and print is hot; the invention of a new technology turns the preceding technology into an art form. He offered one-liners rather than theories and questions rather than answers. Despite these difficulties, his approach stands in stark contrast to the dominant practice of analyzing media content. In the end, it is not that either approach, studying content or studying the medium, is the only right approach. There are clear advantages to both. It is true that the content of television informs, reveals, and conceals. A study of narrative, or an investigation of propaganda, or a focus on social commentary, provides insightful avenues of study. In turn, McLuhan's investigation of the medium as message provided insights that could not have been grasped in any other way. It is important to note that his approach was certainly not unique. Walter Ong (1982), Harold Innis (1972), and Elizabeth Eisenstein (1997) stand as strong examples of scholars who studied communication technology and helped to detail the ways in which those technologies have altered time, space and scale, as well as human interaction. There is an important difference between McLuhan and Ong, Innis, and Eisenstein. McLuhan's focus was on phenomenological details that are often overlooked. His colleagues focused on broader historical and economic questions. Borrowing from the traditions established by these scholars, McLuhan focused on the tacit details of specific technologies. In studying television, film, or print, for example, he examined phenomenological details, while paying little attention to content. The focus on the medium rather than the message offers promising rewards. New technologies alter how we experience language, self and other, as well as time and space. It is not simply a matter of understanding how we define these intertwined categories. Prior to our talk, prior even to our understanding, is the experience of self and other, space, time and movement. McLuhan attempts to call our attention to those fleeting experiential moments which technology alters in subtle and profound ways. This crucial level of experience can be easily lost when one turns to examine contextual elements of the message. An investigation of television which focuses on content forces one to pay close attention to verbal communication. In large part, content is communicated through talk. This approach can obscure one's understanding of television by overlooking a rich domain of relevant information. Video is capable of portraying

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the world as it has never before been presented: the camera alters time and space by introducing movement. According to Edmund Carpenter (1960) in "The New Languages," television "combines music and art, language and gesture, rhetoric and color. It favors simultaneity of visual and auditory images" (p. 165). The juxtaposition of sound and movement creates an experience reminiscent of film and yet different. As Herbert Zettl (1999) explained in Sight, Sound Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics, "the basic structural unit of television is quite different from that of film" (p. 230). "It is primarily the various aspects of motion that help us define the four-dimensional field in media aesthetics and also distinguish between the fundamental structural differences of television and film" (p. 225). In addition, film cannot be broadcast live into millions of homes. With television we are presented with striking pictures of the world, and those pictures can be viewed by millions simultaneously. According to Raymond Williams (1974), in Television: Technology and Cultural Form, "one of the strengths of television is that it can enter areas of immediate and contemporary public, and in some senses, private action more fully and more powerfully than any other technology" (p. 73). The pressing point is that this technology, independent of what is communicated through the spoken word, alters our perception of the world in radical ways. It is important to understand how video structures movement and sound in ways that can contrast, or highlight, or contradict, what is communicated via text on the screen. Williams (1974) wrote that "it is clearly not only a question of combination and development. The adaptation of received forms to the new technology [television] has led in a number of cases to significant changes and to some real qualitative differences" (p. 44). The scholar will benefit by attributing to video a power and an immediacy that creative artists intuitively understand. But the scholar must take the investigation a step further in order to more fully understand the degree to which the medium shapes one' s perception of the world. The scholar must ask what does it mean that video links image and sound through motion, As J. Mallory Wober (1988) points out in The Uses and Abuses of Television, "television provides as many and possibly as powerful acoustic images as it does visual ones" (p. 177). There are domains of thought and experience which cannot be captured in linguistic terms, as the works of artists and musicians have so eloquently shown us. As Rudolf Aruheim (1969) explained in Visual Thinking, "every visual pattern-be it that of a painting, a building, an ornament, a chair--can be considered a proposition which, more or less successfully, makes a declaration about the nature of human existence" (p. 296). Video provides visual propositions, tacitly challenging our spatial, tactile, and kinesthetic orientation. Visual propositions are first and foremost perceptual and experiential. "Verbal language is a one-dimensional string of words because it is used by intellectual thinking to label sequences of concepts," whereas "a pictorial image presents itself whole, in simultaneity" (Arnheim 1969, pp. 246-249). To limit thinking to propositional-linguistic form is to overlook the powerful way in which visual forms also create meaningful state-

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ments. According to Grodal (1997) "if the brain could only think and remember in a propositional-linguistic form, it would imply that the 'non-meaning' level of film and television only exist in the very process of perception and then was either thrown away or transformed into a propositional form" (pp. 70-71). Video offers a complex gestalt of space, sound and motion that is as significant as, perhaps more significant than, what is communicated through speech. A simple experiment may help to illustrate this point. Turn on your television and turn off the volume. If you have turned to a situation comedy or newscast you will be confronted with silent talking heads, and without the benefit of lip reading, the exercise may be frustrating. So change channels. You are looking for images rather than talking heads. Scenes from an HBO movie will suffice. A series of commercials will work as well and are easy to find. Look carefully at the fleeting images, the rapid movement of the camera, the way in which the eye is enticed. At first glance the fleeting images may appear meaningless without text or speech. J. Mallory Wober (1988) notes that "wordless television .... [is] a more difficult message system than is radio, as it may be easier to evoke one's own pictures to compliment sounds that are heard, than it is to supply words and hence ideas to pictures one encounters on the screen" (p. 184). Nevertheless, the visual patterns define a space, create a temporal rhythm, upset one's kinesthetic balance. "In film and television, distance and angle constantly shift. The same scene is shown in multiple perspective and focus. The viewer sees it from here, there, then over here; finally he is drawn inexorably into it, becomes part of it" (Carpenter 1960, p. 169). Video challenges the viewer to experience the world in ways simply not possible with books or radio, certainly impossible without mediating technology. This domain of experience will be misunderstood as long as scholarly work focuses on the text, message or content of television. The movement of the camera, the transformations of space, time, and corresponding juxtapositions with sound, are indeed a crucial part of the content. In Communication and Democracy, McCombs (1977) argues that television viewers are inundated with a much wider variety of information "...because television provides color, form and movement--all of which stimulate the visual cortex--as well as sound" (p. 142). But turning one's attention to the spoken message effectively pushes the transformations of space, sound, and movement into the background. Perhaps one way to understand Arnheim' s concept of visual propositions is through a closer analysis of foreground and background. A gestalt of foreground and background is necessary in order to render perception meaningful. According to Grodal (1997), "in gestaltist language, grouping means that the 'whole' is more than the sum of its parts" (p. 65). As one foregrounds or focuses on certain elements, other elements slip imperceptibly into the background. "One of the most elemental structural forces operating within the screen is the figure-ground principle. Depending on what you determine the figure to be, the ground will change accordingly (Zettl 1999, p. 99). This is equally true of spoken words and visual experience. If I

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attend to every individual word in your spoken sentence, I will be unable to understand the sentence as a meaningful whole. In order for the gestalt to emerge, something must be given up; perception demands that attention be drawn away from one element as it is drawn toward another element. The background is always there, providing the frame or context that supports the foreground. As long as one focuses on the foreground there does not appear to be any tension. The proposition, the point, the image, the message, is clear. But let the perceptual boundaries shift, and ambiguity emerges. The eye struggles to resolve the visual image, the ear struggles to identify the spoken words, to hear the musical theme. Disorientation results when one cannot distinguish between background and foreground. Each medium of communication establishes the foreground/background dichotomy in different ways. The creative arts explore this dichotomy in order to help the audience experience anew the boundaries that shape their perception. To make a statement about something, whether in words or images, dance or music, is to foreground certain elements in a way that pushes other elements into the background. What constitutes the background for television is very different from what constitutes the background for radio. Understanding this difference will help to illustrate the unique powers of video. "Media differences such as these mean that its not simply a question of communicating a single idea in different ways but that a given idea or insight belongs primarily, though not exclusively, to one medium, and can be gained or communicated best through that medium" (Carpenter 1960, pp. 166-167). Let us turn to examine radio shows that were then produced for television in the early fifties. When a presentation is communicated in a different medium, whether it be a novel presented as film or a live musical performance presented on audio tape, there is a wonderful opportunity to examine how the new medium alters the format. "Visual aids and gestures on television not only allow the elimination of certain words, but require a unique script. The ideal radio delivery stresses pitch and intonation to make up for the absence of the visual" (Carpenter 1960, p. 178). There were many radio shows that were produced for early television such as The Jack Benny Show, Gunsmoke, Don McNeil's T.V. Club, Burns and Allen, Dragnet, The Green Hornet, The Lone Ranger. In some cases the radio personality also became the star of the television series. Copies of these shows can be accessed at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City. Television in the fifties was profoundly different from the variety of wide screen experiences available today. Technologically the small black and white fuzzy screen offered little detail compared to today's versions. In terms of programming, in the beginning few understood the power of the medium. Many early shows produced for television were closer to radio in format, providing talking heads who read viewer' s letters and spoke their monologue into a microphone as if they were on radio. Television, as we know it, is a fairly recent invention. Nevertheless, careful comparison of radio and early television versions of those radio programs highlight essential differences between radio and the emergence of video.

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Foreground/background dichotomies can be illustrated by comparing a segment of the Green Hornet series titled "Bullets and Bluffs" (1945) which aired on radio, with the Green Hornet television premiere titled "The Silent Gun" (1966) which was broadcast on ABC. You need not be familiar with this particular series to gain insights regarding fundamental differences in radio and television. In the Green Hornet series a dashing young man named Brett assumed a hidden identity as the Green Hornet, protector of the public good. Only his valet, Kato, knew his real identity. When comparing the radio and the television segments, it is evident that the action is defined in very different ways. The radio version must rely on the ear and so carefully situates foreground and background according to auditory cues. McLuhan (1994) argued that the effects of radio are quite independent of its programming. In Understanding Media he wrote, "if we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures...All those gestural qualities that the printed page strips from language come back in the dark, and on the radio" (p. 303). The voice that explains the action is foregrounded against a background of ambient noise such as an opening door or footsteps indicating someone is entering the room. Transitions indicating a change of scene are crucial to the understanding of the story and utilize both music and voice. Because the audience relies entirely on the ear to understand the story, it is imperative that the action be limited to what can be explained in speech and sound. The human voice becomes the unifying theme which orients the ambient background of music and sound effects. The medium of radio imposes certain limits on what can be communicated. But this statement is true of any medium. Carpenter (1960) argued that "film, radio, television--are new languages, their grammars as yet unknown. Each codifies reality differently; each conceals'a unique metaphysics" (p. 162). Through the rich gestalt of ambient sound effects and intonation, with its heightened orality, radio communicates elements that cannot be conveyed through video. There was an inherent linearity to the story presented on radio, which was also quite evident in the early shows produced for television. Reliance on the ear required that the auditory portrayal of events follow in an orderly progression. Brett's voice guided listeners through the story. The voice of his valet, Kato, served as an interlocutor who requested explanations that helped the audience piece together the motives of the other characters. The medium of radio requires that the voice remain steadfastly in the foreground, because it is the voice that communicates the passage of events to the listening audience. It was not just that narrative structure at this point in time was adhering to established conventions. Narrative structure will be influenced by one' s choice of technology, in this case radio. As Walter J. Ong (1982) explained in Orality & Literacy, narrative structures differ for an oral culture compared to a print culture. The narrative structures of film differ from the narrative structures which have emerged in some of the more innovative television programming. The need for a distinct foreground and background as well as the need for a linear storyline reflected the constraints of

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radio; the reliance upon the ear resulted in a tacit understanding that an auditory cacophony would not help the audience to make sense of the sequence of events. The background gives definition to the foreground; the figure-ground dichotomy requires a ground from which figural elements can emerge. Listening carefully to radio shows of the forties and then comparing the television versions highlights the different ways in which each medium, radio and television, contexrealizes background and foreground. It is interesting to note that the storyline of these early television shows strictly followed the radio storyline. The story, characters, and personalities remained the same. The changes that are evident in moving from radio to television cannot be explained in terms of message or content. And in many cases the television version of a popular radio show, such as the Don McNeil Television Club broadcast on December 8, 1950, provides little adaptation for the new medium. Don McNeil handled television as if it were radio, and appeared most comfortable reading letters to the live studio audience. George Burns worries aloud in the television version of The Burns and Allen Show (1952) about how to respond to the camera. Though the characters and storyline remained unchanged, the way in which spatial and temporal elements were presented shifted dramatically in the transition from radio to television. In order to better understand this point, let us return to the radio version of The Green Hornet. If it is correct that with perception every figure requires a ground, then the narrator of The Green Hornet is foregrounded against something. The interesting question is what constitutes the background? When listening to music it is possible to distinguish between major and minor themes. In a comparable manner, radio conveys major and minor themes. In The Green Hornet, Brett narrates the action, identifying good guys and bad guys, announcing who has just entered the room, explaining to his valet, Kato, that both the police and the mobsters are after him. But all the while, other information is being communicated which entices the listener and stirs the imagination. Radio's power emerged from the varied uses of sound, the way in which the details of the scene are created; the auditory ambience provides the background for the voice of the narrator. Not only sound effects, but carefully placed musical elements serve to create an acoustic space that exists only for the ear. Acoustic space is profoundly different from visual space. As Carpenter and McLuhan (1960) explain in an article titled "Acoustic Space," "Auditory space has no point of favored focus. It' s a sphere without fixed boundaries .... There is nothing in auditory space corresponding to the vanishing point in visual perspective" (p. 68). Consider the intonation of voice, the musical transitions, the muted sound effects--all of this background for the foregrounded voice that leads the listener through the story. Turning to the television broadcast of The Green Hornet, the audience is presented with the same characters and dramatic plot. But with the addition of the camera, more liberties can be taken with how the story is communicated. It is not necessary to have a narrator explaining what is happening. In fact, there are sig-

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nificant moments in the premiere when there is no narration at all. It is easier to skip from scene to scene, because the eye can grasp additional information that could not be presented verbally. "We walk amid crowds, ride, fly or fall with the hero and if one character looks into the other's eyes, he looks into our eyes from the screen, for, our eyes are in the camera and become identical with the gaze of the characters" (Carpenter 1960, p. 169). One could argue that these differences merely reflect the differences between radio and television, that with the visual component there is less demand on the ear. But it is not just the case that the camera supports what is provided through sound. Rather, new complexities emerge as sound and vision are linked to create a sense of movement evident with early television. In an article titled "The Impact of Television on Space Conception," Edward Wachtel (1984) states that "television presents us with a world of disconnected spaces and times....Actions that normally take a year may be presented in an instant. Space and time are expanded, contracted, and fragmented..." (p. 171). With television, the reliance upon the ear gives way as the eye and the ear are joined through movement. The storyline is no longer dependent upon the foregrounded voice. The medium of video, even in its earliest black and white version, was unique insofar as it foregrounded not the voice nor the eye, but a new kind of movement which finks the eye and ear in a way strikingly different from ordinary experience. As Wober (1988) explains, "when...one sees portrayals of others and their posture and movement and one has some sense of immediacy of or involvement with the portrayed reality, one's own system of balance and position is called into play and interacts in a complex way with what one encounters..." (p. 166). Radio also indicates motion, contributing to a conception of space and time that exists in the mind of the listener. Through tempo and other descriptive elements the listener imagines that the characters are standing in a room, are running away, are caught in traffic, and so on. But this conception of time and space is created through auditory cues and remains imaginary. There is no synthesis of eye and ear, no visible juxtaposition of space and sound. In The Green Hornet television premiere (1966), Brett Green confronts the lone woman who will reveal crucial information, by looking intently into her eyes, stepping close to her, and taking hold of her arm--all simple yet powerful gestures that could not be communicated effectively over the radio. With television the eye and the ear do not work in isolation. As Brett Green looks intently into the frightened woman's eyes and takes hold of her arm, the tone of his voice communicates intensity. If not the voice, then other equally evocative musical elements communicate tempos and rhythms: the sound of running feet as the woman flees, the music that introduces a transition to a new scene. In ordinary life our urgent conversations are rarely followed with carefully scripted music. Caught up in the flow of events we rarely have an opportunity to step back and experience the way in which the tone and tempo of the auditory world contribute to the visual experience. One rarely has the opportunity to view the scene as a spectator. Even if psychological events push one into the passive role of spectator, there is no script, no

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accompanying frame of music and dialogue. The flow of everyday life washes over us. We see from one vantage point and are, whether we like it or not, part of the action. Three types of experience are being contrasted. There is the sound of radio with its imaginary space, the syntax of motion displayed through video, and the situated space and time of ordinary life. Each foregrounds different elements in unique ways. Radio foregrounds the spoken voice inviting the listener into an imaginary space of ambient sound effects. Video foregrounds motion which links the auditory and spatial in a syntax that organizes experience in ways not possible prior to video. The space and time of ordinary life cannot priviledge the ear as radio could, nor can ordinary life provide the rapid shift of multiple vantage points. Though it is true that television introduces new elements not possible with radio, this simple statement does not adequately capture the heart of the issue. Not only does television provide an experience which is not possible with radio, it also structures one's awareness of time, space, and sound in ways that are simply not possible in ordinary experience. In life one perceives the world from a fixed perspective. Rarely is there an omniscient vantagepoint from which to observe shifting or multiple scenes. One can be either here or there, but cannot jump instantly from one scene to another. In ordinary experience one does not orchestrate and script images to sound. One' s most profound experiences can be totally disrupted by the ringing of the phone. Heart felt memorable moments rarely come with appropriate musical accompaniment. In lived experience one is defined by a particular perspective, is constrained by the physical location of the body, and finds it quite difficult to omnisciently manipulate time and space. But television can do all of these things. One consequence is that it is possible to perceive and feel and think about the world in unprecedented ways: one can experience a world of motion in ways that were never before possible. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the emergence of film made it possible to capture the visible world in motion, but not with the instantaneous possibilities of live television. Shifting from an adventure format to a situation comedy, The Burns and Allen Show provides a different example of how producers handled the transition from radio to television. The radio version provided nonstop jokes between George and Gracie. There was no need for an omniscient narrator; the characters spoke directly to the audience. Commercials and story line were easily defined by the dialogue. Radio and television versions shared recognizable elements; music served to mark transitions in both mediums, and commercials were scripted into the show rather than being bracketted as a separate topic. It might seem, given the ongoing reliance on dialogue, that the television version of The Burns and Allen Show could be easily understood with one' s eyes either opened or closed, that the auditory component was all that was needed. But this was not the case. Comparing the television production of The Burns and Allen Show to the radio presentation of Maxwell House Coffee Time Starring Burns and Allen, it is evident that striking differences emerge, despite shared storyline and actors. The dif-

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ference centers around how information is communicated. In a straightforward way, television provides avenues of expression not available on radio. In one radio episode (1949) Gracie wishes to adopt Mickey Rooney, despite George's objections. One can only imagine the expression on George's face when he returns home to discover that Mickey has taken Gracie up on her offer. Though there is no need for an omniscient narrator to explain the action here, nevertheless attention is limited to one voice at a time. It is not possible to introduce additional characters or to offer digressions without confusing the audience. Comparing this radio program to a television episode titled "George Can't Get Any Peace" (1952), George continues to talk directly to the audience, though on screen he appears awkward at times. With television, the audience can see the movement of people. There are gestures and hugs and silly faces which support the jokes. In addition, there are elements that could never have been communicated via radio: George leaping into the pool in full dress, a crucial moment when he no longer seems awkward, the intricate funny dance between George and Gracie as they try and fail to establish a shared working space, Gracie's silent pantomime on the telephone in her attempt not to disturb George's work. The unique features of television alter what counts as information. This point can be illustrated by comparing the radio presentation of Dragnet with the early television production. The radio version, produced by NBC in the 1940s, incorporates sound effects and music to guide the listener through the story. The careful use of sound and repetition to support the narration of events allows for a storyline that moves forward in time and then backward to explain the current situation. The narrator explains the actions of the star Ben Romarro, speaking directly to the audience as if he were there sitting beside them. Careful attention to detail allows the listener to imagine the scenes, the characters, the action. It is informative to compare the sounds of the radio presentation with the sounds of the television production. In 1951, an episode titled "The Human Bomb" was televised by NBC. In this early version of television there was still the voice narrating the action, though that voice was portrayed through the thoughts of Ben Ramarro as he struggled to solve the dilemma of the man who threatened to blow up city hall. Music was also used to indicate shifts in scenes, just as it was in the radio presentations. But sound was no longer central. With the addition of visual images, the quality of television sound, compared to radio from the same period, diminishes. The ringing telephone does not command one's attention because it does not need to. And the television production allows for silence, as the visual scene engages the eye, which was unthinkable with radio. The linking of image and sound through motion heightens one's awareness of details that in ordinary life might be overlooked. Crucial scenes from the episode, "The Human Bomb," unwittingly announce the essential characteristics of what was, at that time, a new medium. Romarro's side kick must climb out on a high ledge to gain access to the room where the mad bomber waits to blow up the building. The plan is to surprise the bomber and grab the bomb before he has a

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chance to set it off. As the cop slips out the window he is warned to be careful because the wind is picking up. The scene of the cop on the ledge is in black and white. The sound of the wind whipping his baggy suit as he struggles to remain standing on the narrow ledge intensifies both auditory and visual components. The stark blending of sound and image reveals the power of the medium. There is another scene in this same episode that captures the exquisite rendering of space and sound. Romarro has succeeded in getting the bomb in his hands and now must rush it to a waiting bomb squad outside of the building. He runs down a long marble corridor holding the bomb before him in his hand. The music intensifies the majestic quality of the corridor which dwarfs the lone frantic figure. The camera shifts to the bomb squad and then shifts again to catch Romarro now descending the exterior steps as he stumbles and falls. There is no dialogue during this scene. The blending of the visual and auditory senses communicates more powerfully than words. Those scholars who have suggested that television cannot produce meaningful commentary fail to understand the essential features of the medium. Each technology foregrounds different elements. Radio foregrounds the spoken voice which guides the listener just as the book foregrounds text. As those who have studied oral and print cultures understand, the difference between these two approaches is profound. Television foregrounds neither speech nor text. Television foregrounds movement; it is a movement that links space and sound in unprecedented ways. As McLuhan (1994) explained in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, radio continued the oral culture, just as film borrowed from the book culture. But television neither continues the oral culture nor borrows from the book. Neither of these descriptive categories adequately captures the experience of television. The resulting syntax of motion renders the world both more accessible and more incomprehensible. Our perception of the world is shaped by access to an instantaneous sound and space which is different from the soundspace in which we ordinarily live. It is not that we are in danger of confusing the world with television, as some believe. Rather, if we understand how television shapes our perception of the world, by contrast we will be able to see our world more clearly. If we invented a new language, it could be presumed that the new words would help us to experience, and think, and communicate in ways distinctly different from our engagement with the old language. Because languages change and evolve very slowly, such radical breaks are seldom evident. But with television we have the advent of a new language. It allows us to experience, think, and communicate in ways distinctly different from the old language. Television replicates neither an oral nor a print culture. We must detail how the electronic culture differs from earlier oral and print cultures without simply borrowing terms from established categories. Television is kinetic. The result is a syntax of motion that links space and sound in unprecedented ways. The consequence will be different ways of seeing, thinking about, and categorizing our experiences.

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REFERENCES Amheim, R. 1969. Visual Thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bullets and Bluffs. Green Hornet. 1945. Carpenter, E. 1960. "The New Languages." Pp. 162-179 in Explorations in Communication: An Anthology. Boston: Beacon Press. Carpenter, E., and M. McLuhan. 1960. Acoustic Space. Pp. 65-70 in Explorations in Communication: An Anthology. Boston: Beacon Press. Don McNeil Television Club. 1950. Eisenstein, E. 1997. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, Vols. I and II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. George Can't Get Any Peace. The Burns andAllen Show. 1952. CBS. Grodal, T. 1997. Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition. New York: Oxford University Press. The Human Bomb. Dragnet. 1951. NBC. Innis, H.A. 1964. The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McCombs, M., D. L. Shaw, and D. Weaver eds. 1997. Communication and Democracy: Exploring the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda-Setting Theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. McLuhan, M. 1994. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Maxwell House Coffee Time Starring Burns and Allen. 1949. NBC. Ong, W.J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World. New York: Routledge. The Silent Gun. Green Hornet. 1966. ABC. Wachtel, E. 1984. "The Impact of Television on Space Conception?' Pp. 168-174 in Studies in Communication: Studies in Mass Communication and Technology. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Williams, R. 1974. Television: Technology and Cultural Forum. Fontana: Collins. Wober, J.M. 1988. The Use and Abuse of Television: A Social PsychologicaI Analysis of the changing Screen. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zettl, H. 1999. Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics. New York: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

MANAGING DISRUPTIONS AND MAINTAINING HUMOR O N LATE NIGHT TALK

Michael A. Katovich and Ronald Burns

George Herbert Mead (1934) argued that human communication is not merely a "conversation of gestures," but rather a sequence of adjustments and adaptations that two or more interactors respond to and make meaningful. When Mead wrote that the meaning is the response, he maintained that any utterance, gesture, or communicative bit is made significant in the process of communication and is established as significant as long as the interactors cooperate to sustain its processual meaning (see also Miller 1973). To Mead, communication requires ongoing cooperative and adaptive interchanges between two or more people who remain committed to the meanings that they have established. Mead, of course, remains a powerful influence for symbolic interactionists who wish to analyze conversational meanings as they emerge in the process of communicative discourse. However, even the most staunch of Mead's supporters recognize that he was unclear about some of the intricate complexities associated with human communication and adjustments that humans make while communicating (see e.g., Couch 1995; Denzin 1992; McPhail 1994). In particular, Mead Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 125-143. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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assumed that humans cooperated without much tension, and took for granted that continual adjustments and readjustments need to be made in order for communication to continue. Also, while he maintained that all discourse need be examined in the particular context in which it occurs, he left it up to analysts to demonstrate in detail how such contextualization works, or how contexts are indeed relevant to the process of responding to utterances, and in turn, to assigning meaning to utterances. Several analysts and students of communication who followed in Mead' s footsteps did attempt to deal with the intricacies of contextualized communication (Stone 1962; Couch et al. 1986). In particular, Goffman's (1974) statement on frames and how such frames are keyed, while not a direct or explicit response to Mead, remains influential to interactionists and can go beyond Mead's general thesis to take into account how adjustments and adaptations permit interactors to maintain the mood and tone of a communicative act in the face of problematic behaviors and tensions. One of Goffman's powerful contributions attended to how statements or indications of communication become "keyed" in the process of creating meaningful communicative frames. In practical terms, to key something is to bring a particular frame into primary focus, relatively isolated from other extraneous and potentially simultaneous frames. Keying also aligns the primary frame with ongoing and, presumably, shared expectations concerning the boundaries and temporal life of the frame. People involved in the communicative frame not only agree on what will be talked about, but make indications to selves and others about what each other can anticipate when talk commences and continues. When such anticipations or expectations are not met, frames become "busted" and communicators will attempt to re-key the conversation to make the communicative content agree with the contextual expectations. The expectations concerning how frames become relevant to interaction and are maintained by interactors involves, either implicitly or explicitly, considerations of a third party (Davis and Abelman 1983). Both Goffman and Mead assumed that two or more people engaged in any sort of communicative act not only take the roles of each other, but imagine the perspective of what Mead termed a "generalized other." This view takes into account the triadic arrangement between speaker, receiver, and audience. When an audience is present literally and explicitly, tensions arise when the audiences themselves anticipate particular communicative sequences between senders and receives that must also be taken into account as communicators interact. In effect, audiences either become trained or sophisticated enough to recognize when frames break down and when to anticipate re-keying, of some sort. Audience expectations are especially relevant in the context of mediated exchanges between senders and receivers (see Ang 1996, pp. 19-26). Communicative exchanges occur in frames that audiences recognize as self referential--or as indicating particular patterns that proceeded and will succeed the communicative exchanges (see Buxton 1987, p. 379). One particular

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mediated exchange, involving structured and scripted frames that nevertheless permit spontaneity involves a television host and guest (Timberg 1994). Host and guest engage in scripted talk as they basically re-invent the same frame in which previous hosts and guests engaged themselves. Audiences make references to previous communicative frames as they key on the ongoing exchanges taking place in the present frame. In the following pages we will examine two self referential frames on the Late Night With David Letterman show that broke down and required re-keying on the part of the host, guest, and audience. Each frame involved a disruption in the routine flow of late night talk and required emergent adjustments on the part of the host (Letterman). The adjustments served the practical purpose of re-keying the event as a conversation and an opportunity to provoke emotional responses (specifically, laughter) to this conversation. The adjustments also implied how dramatic disturbances invite coordinated responses on the part of host and staff to maintain a televiseable grammar against the threat of its disintegration, or to maintain what Goffman (1983) later called the interactional order. One disruption involved Madonna's March 31, 1994 appearance in which she not only used several profanities while making suggestive and lewd remarks, but overstayed her allotted guest time. The other involved Farrah Fawcett's June 9, 1997 appearance in which she appeared visibly distracted and under the influence of mind altering substances. Each disruption involved responses on the part of the host that contextualized the events as ways to provoke laughter, while maintaining a conversational rhythm between host and guest. As celebrities, the sexual interplay between host and guests and the subsequent disruptions became construed as news. In effect, the referential quality of the frames validated the celebrated identifies of the participants and their capacity to create news by being who they were (Gamson 1994). Newspapers and television news magazine formats reported on and replayed selected segments of the disruptions so that each became filtered through the media as emergent newsworthy events. As emergent news, the re-keyings became celebrated by national news coverage of the Madonna interview, and an appearance by Fawcett on the Howard Stern show. Both coverage and appearance provided accounts for the disruptions and provided formats for treating them as part of an emergent news net (Tuchman 1978).

DISRUPTING FRAMES In his much celebrated work on popular discourse in American culture, Boorstin (1961) coined the term pseudo event to refer to a cooperative and scripted act that only occurred in reference to some media coverage. Boorstin relied heavily on newspaper coverage of pseudo events, even though television had emerged as a dominant medium, and would soon be a provocative stage for many dramatic and

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mundane events, scripted and emergent (Meyrowitz 1985; Williams 1974). While we question the assertion that scripted events are "less real" than emergent and spontaneous events (cf. Williams 1989, pp. 40-42), Boorstin did alert us to one important mark of assigning importance to any contemporary event--whether or not it will receive television coverage in some format. Television has not only become the primary format for scripted and emergent events, but it has also become a central format for the time spent to watch, reproduce, and comment on such events (Heath 1990, pp. 278-279) Owing to the bias of television to entertain and amuse (see Postman 1984), producers and audiences have elevated some scripted events that occur on late night talk into a folk status (cf. Shibutani 1966, pp. 156-158 for a description of rumors as acquiring a folk status). People involved in the production of such scripted events not only cooperate to create them, but such events become subjects and objects of future talk and analysis both within and outside of other media events. In this light, television has provided a provocative stage for what we will term the self referential scripted event (cf. Crispin-Miller 1986, pp. 183-186), or a televised event that becomes a frame for additional coverage, collective talk, and future programming in other formats. Self referential scripted events emerge in the context of disruptions which apparently bust the frames of the original staged events. Such events become real or significant when the host keys forthcoming activity as contests of sorts, ranging from subtle verbal sparring to out-and-out physical conflict. Contemporary television programs that have staged activity for publicity and future commentary have become noteworthy for their violent outbursts (e.g., The Jerry Springer Show) and for the apparently unscripted reactions of guests when confronted with surprise revelations (e.g., The Jenny Jones Show). However, while these shows attract quite a bit of publicity, many of the encounters become contextualized in terms of a spectacle, and are normalized as "par for the course." The participants on these shows eventually become deemed as stereotypical, and disruptions become viewed as a commonplace narrative form (see Feuer 1991, pp. 195-196). Disruptions on late night talk are rare enough to stand out as contrary to the normalized narrative form. THE INTERACTIONAL LATE NIGHT

STRUCTURE TALK

OF

Since early TV, the Late Night talk format has become a staple of the post prime time and week night television schedule and has evolved into a taken-for-granted structure with expected occurrences and patterns of interaction (cf. Calsamiglia et al. 1995). Its basic structure involves five segments. First, the monologue establishes a relationship between the host and studio audience as well as the host and viewing audience as mediated by the camera. Second, the interlude serves as a

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buffer between the monologue and introduction of guests, and involves various skits and shticks that define the comedy of the show (Oppliger and Sherblom 1990). Third, the conversation represents the centerpiece of the show whereby a celebrity guest and the host interact (Timberg 1987). Fourth, the musical spot provides a stage for a contemporary popular group or singer to perform a hit single. Finally, the sign off closes the segment with an interactional benediction (Timberg 1994). We are interested in the social form of the conversation segment, which has defined the popular televised scripted event. Talk between a guest and host constitutes an image of a focal dyad, or a two person interactional encounter appearing at the center of a televised format. Although the conversation segment portrays, for the most part, the guest-host dyad, incorporation of a third party exists as an everpresent possibility (Auter and Davis 1991). As the audience and camera become established within the texture of the show, there is always the possibility of a grammatical transformation, or the use of the camera, audience responses, staff interjections, or props to convey additional or alternative impressions regarding the dyadic conversation between host and guest. Grammatical transformations occur when the sidekicks interject comments, the host incorporates the camera, or the audience appears as either verbal or non verbal commentators on the conversation. Such transformations usually do not threaten the apparent seamlessness of the event, and even become necessary segues that allow for different camera angles, shots, and televiseable displays. The transformations occur in a controlled rhythm and pace enough so that they become taken-for-granted aspects of the conversation. Each transformation becomes quickly resolved so that the focal dyad is easily and smoothly restored to the center of the televised screen. The technical success of maintaining the dyadic conversation amid various changes involves what Emerson (1970) called a "nothing unusual" sequence of acts. What has the potential to seem noticeably different and even bizarre becomes grounded in an established framework, where guest and host cooperate to maintain the routine grounds of this event. This dyadic cooperation requires a maintaining pretense awareness (Glaser and Strauss 1964)--or an unsaid agreement that the conversation is like any other in everyday life. Audiences in the studio and at home accept this pretense as well, and watch appreciatively for emergent disclosures and humor, suspending their disbelief and suspicions about the contrivances of such talk.

MADONNA'S

APPEARANCE

Madonna's appearance on Letterman's show received a great deal of publicity. Letterman himself had set up the appearance on a number of occasions by joking about her sex life and making allusions to promiscuous behavior. Thus, when she

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finally made her entrance, after Letterman introduced her as a star who has "slept with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry," the host had already broken the conventional social frames of late night talk. After the host tried to (unsuccessfully) cajole Madonna into kissing a studio audience member and transforming the dyad into an implicit triad, Madonna told him that "you are a sick .... , I don't know why I get so much .... ." Such profanities prompted the following exchange: Letterman: Madonna: Letterman: Madonna: Letterman: Madonna: Letterman:

You realize this-You' re twisted. is being broadcast, don't you? Yeah (both appear to be laughing nervously) Well, you can't be talking like that. What? I said, oh never mind.

As the interview progressed, Letterman and Madonna actively keyed the talk frame as a contest, with each taking turns insulting the other, and laughing. The flow of the interview became interrupted by Madonna's profanities which seemed to embarrass Letterman to the point that he responded by loudly censuring her (Gross and Stone 1964). However, Madonna accounted for the disruptions by reminding Letterman that he had invited such behavior by being "obsessed" with her sex life. Madonna not only engaged in the ritualized play, but drew upon the popular assumption that Letterman's show typically delves into "the ironies and absurdities of ordinary experience" (Buxton 1987, p. 382). Madonna's behavior, however apparently outrageous, managed to feed into the playful spirit of the show. Despite disruptions in the flow, Madonna and Letterman fluidly resumed their conversation and continued on with their ritualized play. They created an impression of serious contest about shared absurdity. Letterman: So what are you doing in New York City...are you buying an NBA team... Madonna: No. Letterman: Is that just a rumor? Madonna: Yes. Letterman: Untrue rumor? Madonna: Isn't that an oxymoron--an untrue rumor? Letterman: No, not necessarily. Madonna: Untrue rumor, I mean, that's like funny David Letterman. Letterman: Oh man, Sir (calls out to the audience member who wanted to kiss Madonna) you're the luckiest man in the house! During these exchanges, the studio audience sounded like a Greek chorus, alternatively groaning when Madonna put down Letterman, and laughing uproariously

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when Letterman retorted. The following exchange made for an especially loud and supportive response for Letterman: Letterman: Okay, we'll do a commercial. Madonna: I don't think we should ever cut to a commercial. Letterman: No w e ' l l - Madonna: Let's keep talking and film every second of it. Letterman: Oh yeah. Because if the rest of it is as fascinating as the first part of it...(crowd roars) then we've...we've got something there... Madonna: Before, wait, wait, wait! Before we cut to a commercial, I just want to know. Um...is that a rug? Letterman: You talkin' about my hair? Well, all right--what is THAT (points to her roaring twenties like hair-do) a swim cap? (Crown roars approval. Letterman stands up and begins to mock a boxing stance) Come on! Let's go!

Madonna laughed at Letterman's insult and continued to make sexual innuendos in regard to basketball players, the overhanging microphone, and to flirt with Letterman. In this way, Madonna flirted with the symbolic line between residual deviance and taboo (see Scheff 1966). The following interchange focused on M a d o n n a ' s relationship with N B A basketball player Charles BarNey. Letterman:

So let's talk about your interest in the NBA. You go to a lot of games. You were, you were friends with Charles Barkley. Madonna: I wouldn't go THAT far. Letterman: You weren't friends with Charles Barkley? Madonna: I don't think he understands the meaning of friendship. Le~erman: Oh, really. He seems like he might be a hothead, that guy. Madonna: Hmmmm, hmmmm. Letterman: Did you know him at all? Madonna: Hmmmm Hmmmm. Let~rman: Did it hurt (Madonna laughs loudly) when you had that thing put in your nose? Madonna: I thought you were going to ask me if it hurt something else, but I (crowd groans) thought you were going to continue the Charles Barkley line of questioning. Letterman: Oh man... Madonna: (Expletive) The remainder of the interview continued on with the theme of M a d o n n a ' s risque language, with each epithet not only being bleeped, but also drawing an incredulous response from Letterman, which we presumed to be more mock than genuine. As Madonna continued to use the censored " f ' word, and as Letterman continued to show his incredulity, the camera fixed on an elderly couple from Wisconsin, the male obviously upset with M a d o n n a ' s language. Letterman began

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playing to this couple, the man in particular, and chastised Madonna for using profanities on national TV to a decent viewing audience. You are always [expletive] with me on the show... God... You are always [expletive] with me on the show. This, you know... You are ALWAYS [expletive] with me on the show [At this time the camera points to an elderly couple, the man is apparently disturbed, frowning...the woman looks in apparent wonder]. Letterman: See what you're doing? You see? You see what you're doing (applause) Now there, you see? Madonna: What? Letterman: A nice couple--where are you folks from? [An audience member sitting next to the couple cries out, "Appleton, Wisconsin"] Yeah. Appleton, Wisconsin. Look, they drove in all the way. They came in an Avis car and waited. Madonna: Letterman: Madonna: Letterman: Madonna:

With each censure of Madonna, the camera focused on the elderly gentleman, frowning in disapproval, but also applauding each time Letterman reproached Madonna for her language. The sequence of Madonna's epithets, Letterman's reactions, and the response of the elderly couple created a context for identifying Madonna as a residual deviant. Her behavior became located by the camera as disturbing to a middle American generalized other (Mead 1934) represented by the elderly couple.

FAWCETT'S APPEARANCE In contrast to Letterman's evocative introduction and reception of Madonna, he introduced Farrah Fawcett without sarcasm, offensive humor, or satiric commentary. In so doing, he attempted to engage in a form of democratized talk (Lochard and Soulages 1996) that has become standard within late night conversations. Such talk involves courteous exchanges of information, mutual complements, and respectful turn taking sequences. For her part, she entered the stage in a conventional manner, and greeted Letterman with a hand clasp and "brush kiss" on the cheek. The opening took on the standard appearance within the talk show frame as neither guest nor host keyed the opening as a potential contest. Fawcett's comportment signaled potential trouble when she appeared to have trouble concentrating and answering questions posed by Letterman. The following segment took place immediately after Letterman introduced Fawcett and both had assumed their spatial positions: Letterman: How ya' doin', welcome to the, uh, show. Very nice of you to be here.

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Well, I'm so happy to be here. Fawcett: Letterman: Now, you've never been on this show before. You were never on this program before...you were never on the other program we did on the other network. Is there any reason... You don't remember? Fawcett: Letterman: Hmm...remember? (Laughs) Just kidding...No...no!...Uhm... Fawcett: Letterman: (Laughs) Uhm...let me think. Why? Fawcett: Letterman: Why what? Haven't I been? Fawcett: Letterman: I don't know, that's what I had just asked you.. Oh, well! Fawcett: Letterman: (Laughs) How you doin'? You alright? Don't I seem alfight? Fawcett: Letterman: You seem fine...I know, I know you were, uh, kind of harried getting over here... (Seems to be giggling) Fawcett: Letterman: ...was there a problem? There were people...(Audience taughs)...lots of people...People who love Fawcett: me! Appearing uncomfortable and laughing nervously, Letterman provided an account for Fawcett C I heard...you were harried...") in order to maintain, at least temporarily, the rhythm of the interview. As members of the audience were laughing, the camera stayed focused on Fawcett, Letterman, and Fawcett and Letterman without cutting to the reaction of others. For his part, Letterman continued to key the conversation as a cooperative event, explaining Fawcett's apparently unusual responses as a result of being harried. F a w c e t t ' s apparent dis-ease and lapses in concentration made it especially difficult for Letterman to maintain the democratic form of talk. Further, as talk show hosts typically allow their guests a chance to present the image of their choice, or to give impressions (Goffman 1959), Letterman tried to provide an account for F a w c e t t ' s apparent lapses, or her impressions given off (see also Buxton 1987). Fawcett's image and talk did not flow well as standard late night talk and her lapses and pauses began to disrupt the expected rhythm of the conversational sequences. As the interview continued, Fawcett's talk and behavior appeared more noticeably unusual, enough so that Letterman began to contextualize it as a triadic event. The following occurred as Fawcett tried to explain a venture into Central Park. Fawcett: Letterman: Fawcett:

You know in Central Park...uhm...of course you do...I'm sorry (giggles) That's all fight. Uh, you've been here long (giggles)...so, ah, you, you can, you can go...uhm...and there's a...there's a...ah, golly!...Oh! I'm so sorry...

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Letterman: Fawcett: Letterman: Fawcett: Letterman: Fawcett: Letterman: Fawcett: Letterman: Fawcett: Letterman:

That's all right...Central Park. (Sighs)...There' s a road... A road...all right. A road in the park. (Laughs) A cut through...yeah...and there are places where...the wall:.. Right... (Sighs) The wall... What is that...the thing... The thing. Anyway, uh...there. (looks into the camera) Charades...Suddenly, Farrah and I are playing charades (Starts making silly charade gestures). Shaffer: (Off camera)...Sounds like. Letterman: Two words... Shaffer: Sounds like... Letterman: Road, wall... Shaffer: Wall...cut through...sounds like... Two overarching grammatical devices emerged from the apparent dis-ease over the failure of Letterman and Fawcett to maintain usual talk. First, Letterman brought in the camera to contextualize the dis-ease as a game of charades. Second, Paul Shaffer, the bandleader and Letterman's "sidekick," built on Letterman's contextualizing act and adopted the identity of a charades player ("sounds like..."). Shaffer and Letterman then engaged in a mock game. Fawcett further challenged the usual talk show format, and Letterman' s efforts to maintain it by calling her own, and Letterman's reciprocal behavior into account. The following occurred as Letterman attempted to strike a common chord with Fawcett. She began to lose her train of thought and then brought in an unseen third party who she felt was making fun of her. You're making fun of me (giggles). Fawcett: Letterman: (Points to self, looks incredulous)...Now, let's talk about, uh, I was telling people uh, before you got here that you and I are pretty much the same age. How did you celebrate, uh, your 50th birthday? Oh! Soooo it hasn't happened!...You know, like that? Fawcett: Letterman: Hm Hm (Audience member laughs loudly--off camera). Because (keeps looking to her right, over her shoulder)...Somebody, Fawcett: somebody over there thinks/..this is hysterical! (Audience laughs)...OK, but...but anyway (looks over her right shoulder)...when I explain (clears throat)...I was...uh...I mean, OK this is serious. Letterman: I know. This is...this is really true...The embankment was true...I was in the middle Fawcett: of...serious, uh, production... Letterman: The production... (Expletive deleted) What...is with him...what is he? Fawcett:

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Late Night Talk Letterman: Fawcett: Letterman:

I don't know...the production for your pay-per-view TV Special. Yes...and have it...uhm...trying to (pops mouth)...I have control. I had control (Audience member screams out, Yeah!). Clear the courtroom please. Let the witness finish (Audience laughs).

The host contextualizes more than one apparent disruption from the ordinary narrative in regard to the event. Fawcett's attention to an unseen person with whom she is rankled leads to several pauses in her talk. An audience member (also unseen) offers an audible "yeah!" after Fawcett claims to be in control. Letterman plays with the extraordinary acts by transforming the scene into an imaginary courtroom. The unusual aspects of the event become stimuli for humor, which makes the event more ordinary given its format.

RECONTEXTUALIZING

DISRUPTIONS

Conversation analysts and students of linguistic communication have provided detailed discussions concerning differences in speech acts (Searle 1978) and how such differences make a difference (see Bateson 1972). In particular, Labov and Fanshel (1977) have noted how meaningful statements in the form of propositions differ in appearance and substance from paralinguistic cues. On the one hand, propositions give impressions of direct statements that call for specific responses (e.g., yes or no). Paralinguistic cues, on the other hand, give off impressions of uncertainty and vagueness that invite an array of possible responses, ranging from inquiries ("are you OK?") to hypothetical interpretations ("you seem uncomfortable"). Madonna supplied the host with a number of propositions that he could respond to while maintaining the ritualized playful frame of conflict. Her most provocative proposition ("you're always f- ..... with me!") not only elicited widespread laughter from the audience, but invited a number of specific possibilities in regard to: (1) the host's response; (2) camera surveillance of the crowd; and (3) specific signs of negative reactions that the camera could key on. The proposition busted the frame and became the ground by which new frames could emerge. It allowed for new sequences of acts that could serve as opening up new lines of comedic and playful interchanges (cf. Schegloff 1968). Madonna's seemingly untoward behavior by conventional standards, but appropriate behavior in the context of ritualized play, provided Letterman with an opportunity to straddle two comedic devices. On the one hand, he could feign mock outrage toward Madonna and give the impression of chastising her. In this way, Letterman could serve as the "comedic cop" who draws the line between social and anti-social humor (see Potter et al. 1997). On the other hand, Letterman could join Madonna in a construction of a media spectacle (Garber et al. 1993) by building off of the disruptions created by Madonna' s refusal to maintain the dem-

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ocratic form of discourse. In this way, Madonna and Letterman could vacillate between making their conversation problematic and then normalizing it through a spectacle (see McLanghlin 1993, p. 48). They moved from contest to fantasy and brought the studio audience into their sphere without disrupting the rhythm of the conversation (Smith 1993). By contrast, Fawcett' s discomfort brought the conversation close to an uncomfortable realism, which can occur when the disruption becomes unengaging in its spontaneity (Ostrow 1996). Her talk became particularly unengaging as she emitted several paralinguistic cues, including stuttering, self interruptions, silences, aggravation, unprovoked laughter, and expressions of doubt (see Labov and Fanshel 1977, pp. 42-51). In response, Letterman began to respond in a therapeutic rather than in a democratic key, helping her out, and then recontextualizing such help as comedy (e.g., his utterance "charades...we're playing charades"). Madonna's propositions enabled Letterman to incorporate a variety of possible reactions from the audience. As she provoked particular reactions through these propositions, Letterman drew upon this audience to create comedic scenarios through his own propositions. The use of the elderly couple from Appleton, Wisconsin, seemed most effective. They became a surrogate "generalized other" as they were represented by the camera. When Letterman cried out, "You see! you see what you're doing!" in reference to the disgruntled expression of the elderly male, he used the grammatical transformation to create a humorous episode on the basis of Madonna' s propositions. Fawcett's paralinguistic cues seemed to create enough dis-ease to warrant a stable focus on the interacting dyad (Letterman and Fawcett). When Letterman transformed the dyad by playing to the camera, the studio audience seemed left out purposively. Rather than create the expansive humor on the basis of provocative propositions, Letterman and crew responded to the paralinguistic cues by drawing in the camera so that Letterman, and he alone, would be shown. An expansive use of the studio audience would not be effective in that the paralinguistic cues invited embarrassment rather than anger. The host's playing to the camera in a more inclusive, rather than expansive way, could better resolve the embarrassment and make Fawcett's discomfort less real than it seemed to be (cf. Chayko 1993). ITERATIVE

REFERENCING

OF SCRIPTED

EVENTS

After the episodes, commentary in newspapers and television entertainment shows engaged in processes of iterative referencing. Such referencing encodes the event into something noteworthy or noticeably different from normal late night talk events. Again, the event is seen as existing against type, and contradicting the narrative fidelity of late night talk (cf. Schrag 1991, p. 225). Whereas events deemed in fidelity to the frames of late night talk become immediately replaceable

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and stored away from public visibility, the mediated life of events that seem incongruous to the late night talk frames becomes extended as others in the media treat them as real newsworthy events within restorable reach (Dayan and Katz 1993). As a case in point, consider the following exchange between Fawcett and Howard Stem, when she appeared on his show to provide an account for her behavior on the Letterman show. Stern:

Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett:

I have to see a tape of your Letterman appearance, cause everyone's talking about it. They wrote in the paper that they thought you were high and everything. I guess I should have been. What, were you just nervous or something to go on there? No. I don't know. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen the appearance. OK, get that. Well, no it's so funny. Well yes it was so funny. Really. See, I'm doing it. This is what I did (starts giggling). You mean you couldn't get your thoughts together 'cause you were on television and like everyone... No I did. I got my thoughts together. I was very clear.

Later in the interview, Fawcett provided an account of her activity as generated by her sensitivity to the audience. The message of the account implied that the response of the audience, rather than her behavior, was problematic. In so doing, she also noted that the host treated her well. Fawcett:

Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett: Stern: Fawcett:

They said I never finished a story, because the audience was so...so much energy and "Farrah, Farrah," and looking and every time I'd start to tell a story, they'd go "yeah, woohoo," like it was sexual. It threw you. No, I was...okay, let's set the record straight. I was fine, I was good for people like you and you and me and you know... Right. ...people of... Average intelligence? More than average intelligence, I would say. Some people didn't get it. Oh I see. So, in other words, like you were just going out there being you? Yes, and having fun. And having a good time, and some people just took it the wrong way. Way the wrong way... ...Dave didn't make you nervous or anything, right? No, he was great. He was great? He was great.

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Fawcett took the opportunity to maintain that she was being herself and to altercast a specific portion of the audience ("more than average intelligence") as capable of understanding such a self display. In effect, she discounted any criticism of her (Pestello 1991) by implying that any problem with her display would be associated with an audience of less than average intelligence--or those who attempted to reduce her to a sexual object, void of thoughts. Madonna was not called upon to provide any accounts or to discount criticism. The iteration of her appearance and the incongruous event in which she took part provided a "business as usual" aspect in regard to her behavior. The noteworthy aspect of her appearance consisted of the transaction between her and the host, and the implication of sexual chemistry. Unlike the case of Fawcett, whereby the host was not involved in the problem between Fawcett and the audience (he was great), with Madonna, the host became an active participant in the construction of comedic tension (Ang 1996). Writing for The New York Times, Bill Carter noted that the host "never lost his temper or stopped looking for opportunities to turn the situation into humor" (New York Times, Friday, April 1, 1994, p. B1). This observation relates to our contention that Letterman seized upon the opportunities created by Madonna's propositions to create grammatical transformations. While Madonna did not comment on the performance afterwards, her publicity agent was quoted in another newspaper article as saying that Madonna "is not much of a reflective girl" (Fort Worth Star Telegram, Saturday, April 2, 1994, p. C1). Letterman's producer admitted that the host "was unhappy but not completely surprised by the show" (New York Times, Friday, April 1, 1994, p. B1). In effect, Letterman's re-keying of Madonna's behavior not only maintained the frame of the late night narrative, but made him appear as a trustworthy host, who takes such frames seriously (see Morse 1986, pp. 56-57). CONCLUSION Madonna and Fawcett are not only celebrities in popular culture, but women who navigate through male dominated formats within this culture. In the context of late night talk, their appearance not only signals announcement of selves as celebrities, but as gendered images, amid expectations of how to and how not to present and re-present themselves (Nelson and Robinson 1994). Each represent an emergent "other" in television--the popular female personality who exists in tension with the popular male (see Huyssen 1986). Madonna and Fawcett distinguish themselves from the female personalities on television from the 1950s through the 1980s in that they no longer merely complement the male figure. They are agents who can make news by and through their acts and independent of the scripts provided for them (Joyrich 1996). Audiences begin to understand them as not only

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recognizable celebrities, but as subjective beings who are often portrayed as acting in opposition to males. The male-female conflict, or at least the appearance of it, generated even more publicity about the "reality" of the exchanges. Did Madonna and Letterman really engage in conflict? Was Fawcett really on drugs? Did Letterman really feel uncomfortable with her? These sorts of questions extend the character of events beyond mere staging and presentation. Audiences and commentators attend to the events as substantial occurrences between gendered representatives requiring analysis, explanation, and at times, alignments (see Polan 1986; Scott and Lyman 1968). Journalists, commentators, talk show hosts, and television news producers (or an array of media representatives) provide a chain of commentary and continual opportunities for references to scripted events that seem noticeably different from ordinary narratives in relation to these events. In so doing the event becomes located in an implied objective past (Mead 1929; Maines et al. 1983) that representatives and participants in the event recollect and code for purposes of analysis. Fawcett's appearance on the Howard Stern show served as a dramatic example, whereby she admitted to acting in a strange way ("see, I ' m doing it again") but maintained that audiences with "above average" intelligence could see right through the performance as an act of sorts. Such commentary and opportunities for iterations of non-ordinary narratives reveals what Walkowitz (1993, p. 52) called a "mise en abyme of media" in which a variety of representatives and outlets create a contextualized process of identifying meaningful aspects of unexpected occurrences. In so doing, these representatives further extend the life of a disruptive event by supplying information about it and reporting it as if it were a live event, or something that consumers consider news. Fawcett and Madonna "set off the alarms" so to speak, and alerted the analysts and commentators of work to be done--in particular of the perceived necessity to deconstruct the events. The contextualized process of identifying the particular defining moments and turning points, representing them in audio, visual, or audio-visual formats, and asking for commentary by the participants transforms the mere event into a reportable contest with winners and losers. While commentators felt that Letterman seized opportunities with Madonna to score "humor points," they did not pronounce Madonna a loser in the contest. Madonna presented a self that she had presented before in film, on music videos, in concerts, and on other talk shows. She bantered and "mixed things up" as appropriate to her personae. Fawcett, on the other hand, seemed unable to present herself as one in command of her performance, and instead gave off the impression of being under the influence. Whereas Madonna acted in accord with what Letterman had already set up, and played into the anticipated frame, Fawcett began to break from an expected frame by behaving in ways that the host and audience did not anticipate.

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Afterwards, Fawcett's character became scrutinized when people suspected her of being under the influence. She seemed lost and confused and not up to the image of a strong woman who could hold her own with a late night talk host. While Madonna did not provide commentary to journalists about her performance (and it seemed unnecessary to do so), Fawcett's appearance on Howard Stern not only extended the life of the disruptive event and drew upon an implied objective past, but it also served to normalize a problematic presentation of her self (cf. Staske 1998, p. 82). Stern gave Fawcett the opportunity to provide an account for the appearance of her actions as being bizarre. From her point of view, her behavior was appropriate, but simply misunderstood by a particular audience. Self referential events become part of feedback loops whereby viewers not only attend to the staged event, but then discuss provocative developments associated with it (cf. Rushkoff 1994). In the feedback process, disruptions of scripted or expected events begin to resemble real media events (Dayan and Katz 1993) that analysts describe in light of expected behaviors, elaborated codes (Bernstein 1970), and matter in or out of place (Douglas 1966). While not earth shattering, pertinent to national security, or equivalent to the impact of axial media events (Manning 1996) the "real-ization" of the disruptive event through iterative feedback loops transforms ordinary staged occurrences into turning points that engage mass audiences. The particular events we described involved disruptions that called upon a talk show host to adjust to and recontextualize as humor. In so doing, reports of the disruptions and adjustments made news, and the parties involved responded in the aftermath of the event. The event thus took on a folk status and became framed in the vocabulary of a game or contest, whereby participants scored metaphorical points, committed symbolic errors or turnovers, and capitalized on what contestants offered to create opportunities for further scoring. The quality of the event took on the facade of an emergent sporting event in which the results suddenly became problematic. Treating the disruptive event as a game makes use of a particular frame that keys specific acts while ignoring or discounting others. Madonna's propositions, which invited evocative responses, and Fawcett's paralinguistic cues, which invited more compassionate responses, became the subject matter of news reports and talk show analysis. In effect, framing one event as a contest and the other as a misunderstanding of the guest's identity allowed for commentators to locate the events in additional frames that justified reporting. The contest and apparent misunderstanding became unusual occurrences rather than mere scripted events. Framing the disruptive event as noticeably different from its ordinary development negated the ironic aspect associated with reporting it. Just as killing people "for a good cause" loses its ironic tone when framing the cause as war, so does making a disruptive event "emergent news" lose its ironic aspect in the context of a contest or misunderstanding. Through media representations, the disruptive

Late Night Talk events become

141 transformed

into newsworthy

occurrences

that inform

a mass

audience.

REFERENCES Ang, I. 1996. Living Room Wars." Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. New York: Routledge. Auter, P. J., and D. Davis. 1991. "When Characters Speak Directly to Viewers: Breaking the Fourth Wall in Television." Journalism Quarterly 68: 165-171. Bateson, G. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Chandler Publishing. Bernstein, B. 1970. Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 1. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Boorstin, D. 1961. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper and Row. Buxton, R. 1987. "The Late-Night Talk Show: Humor in Fringe Television." The Southern Speech Communication Journal 52: 377-389. Calsamiglia, H , J. Cots, C. Lorda, L. Nussbaum, L. Payrato, and A. Tuson. 1995. "Communicative Strategies and Socio-Cnltural Identities in Talk Shows." Pragmatics 5: 325-339. Chayko, M. 1993. "What is Real in the Age of Virtual Reality? Refraining Frame Analysis for a Technological World." Symbolic Interaction 16:171-181. Couch, C. 1995. "Presidential Address: Let Us RekindIe the Passion by Constructing a Robust Science of the Social." The Sociological Quarterly 36: 1-14. Couch, C. J., S. L. Saxton, and M. A. Katovich. (eds.). 1986. Studies in Symbolic Interaction: The Iowa School. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Crispin-Miller, M. 1986. "Deride and Conquer." Pp. 183-228 in Watching Television, edited by T. Gitlin. New York: Pantheon Books. Davis, D., and R. Abelman. 1983. "Families and Television: An Application of Frame Analysis Theory." Journal of Family Issues 4: 385-404. Dayan, D., and E. Katz. 1993. Media Events. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Denzin, N. K. 1992. Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: The Politics of Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Boston, MA: A R K Paperbacks. Emerson, J. 1970. "Nothing Unusual is Happening." Pp. 208-222 in Human Nature in Collective Behavior." Papers in Honor of Herbert BIumer, edited by T. Shibutani. Englewnod Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Feuer, J. 1991. "Melodrama, Serial Form and Television Today." Pp. 163-177 in Television Criticism: Approaches and Applications, edited by L. Vande Berg and L. Wenner. New York: Longman. Gamson, J. 1994. Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Garber, M., J. Matlock, and R. Walkowitz. 1993. "Introduction." Pp. ix-xiii in Media Spectacles, edited by M. Garber, J. Matlock, and R. Walkowitz. New York: Routledge. Glaser, B., and A. Strauss. 1964. "Awareness Context and Social Interaction." American Sociological Review 29: 669-679. Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. • 1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper and Row. • 1983. "The Interaction Order." American Sociological Review 48: 1-17. Gross, E., and G. Stone. 1964. "Embarrassment and the Analysis of Role Requirements." American Journal of Sociology 70: 1-15. Heath, S. 1990. "Representing Television." Pp. 267-302 in Logics of Television, edited by P. Mellencamp. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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Huyssen, A. 1986. "Mass Culture as Woman: Moderuism's Other." Pp. 188-207 in Studies in Entertainment, edited by T. Modleski. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press• Joyrich, L. 1996. Re-Viewing Reception: Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture• Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Labov, W., and D. Fanshel. 1977. Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation• New York: Academic Press. Lochard, G., and J. C. Soulages. 1996. "The imaginary in Televised Talk: Permanence, Change and Conflict." The French Journal of Communications 4: 9-34. Maines, D., N• Sugrue, and M. Katovich. 1983. "The Social Import of G.H. Mead's Theory of the Past•" American Sociological Review 48:151-173. Manning, P. 1996. "Dramaturgy, Politics and the Axial Media Event." The Sociological Quarterly 37: 261-278. McLaughlin, L. 1993. "Chastity Criminals in the Age of Electronic Reproduction: Re-viewing Talk Television and the Public Sphere." Journal of Communication Inquiry 17:41-55. McPhail, C. 1994. "The Dark Side of Purpose: Individual and Collective Violence in Riots." The Sociological Quarterly 35: 1-32. Mead, G. 1929. "The Nature of the Past." Pp. 235-242 in Essays in Honor of John Dewey, edited by J. Coss. New York: Holt and Company. • 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meyrowitz, J. 1985. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press. Miller, D. 1973. George Herbert Mead: Self, Language, and the World. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Morse, M. 1986. "The Television News Personality and Credibility: Reflections on the News in Transition." Pp. 55-79 in Studies in Entertainment, edited by T. Modleski. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nelson, E. D., and B. W. Robinson. 1994. "Reality Talk or Telling Tales? The Social Construction of Sexual and Gender Deviance on a Television Talk Show." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 23: 51-78. Oppliger, P., and J. Sherblom. 1990. "David Letterman, His Audience, His Jokes, and Their Relationships." Communication Research Reports 7:15-90 Ostrow, J. 1996. "Spontaneous Involvement and Social Life." Sociological Perspectives 39: 341-351. Pestello, F. 1991. "Discounting." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 20: 26-46. Polan, D. 1986. "Brief Encounters: Mass Culture and the Evacuation of Sense." pp. 167-187 in Studies in Entertainment, edited by T, Modleski. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Postman, N. 1984. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin Books. Potter, W. J., R. Warren, M. Vaughan, K. Howley, A. Land, and J. Hagemeyer. 1997. "Antisocial Acts in Reality Programming on Television." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 41: 69-89. Rushkoff, D. 1994. Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture. New York: Ballantine Books. Scheff, T. 1966. Becoming Mentally Ill. Chicago: Aldine. Schegloff, E. 1968. "Sequencing of Conversational Openings." American Anthropologist 70: 1075-1095. Schrag, R. 1991. "Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice Versus Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dogs' Tails: Selling Social Stereotypes on Saturday Morning Television." Pp. 220-232 in Television Criticism: Approaches and Applications, edited by L. Vande Berg and L. Wenner. New York: Longman. Scott, M., and S. Lyman. 1968. "Accounts." American Sociological Review 33: 46-62. Searle, J. R. 1978. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Shibutani, T. 1966. Improvised News." A Sociological Study of Rumor. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Smith, G. 1993. "Some Frame Analytic Considerations of Sexual Humor." Communication & Cognition 26: 347-380. Staske, S. A. 1998. "The Normalization of Problematic Emotion in Conversations Between Close Relational Partners: Interpersonal Emotion Work." Symbolic Interaction 21: 59-86. Stone, G. P. 1962. "Appearance and the Self." Pp. 86-118 in Human Behavior and Social Processes, edited by A. Rose. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Timberg, B. 1987. "Television Talk and Ritual Space: Carson and Letterman." The Southern Speech Communication Journal 52: 390-402. . 1994. "The Unspoken Rules of Talk Television." Pp. 268-281 in Television: The Critical View, Fifth Edition, edited by H. Newcomb. New York: Oxford. Tuchman, G. 1978. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press. Walkowitz, R. 1993. "Reproducing Reality: Murphy Brown and Illegitimate Politics." Pp. 40-56 in Media Spectacles, edited by M. Garber, J. Matlock, and R. Walkowitz. New York: Routledge. Williams, R. 1974. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken. . 1989. "Shoot The Prime Minister." Pp. 40-43 in Raymond Williams on Television, edited by A. O'Connor. New York: Routledge.

RACISM IN THE IVORY CITY THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A RESEARCH PROJECT

Jeffrey E. Nash

In this paper I present the idea that the meanings of race can be so specific to a community and its history that a peculiar dynamic operates. To understand a community's specific dynamic informs us about the essential organization, operation and maintenance of a form of racism. This form can be distinctive and provides clues to understanding the persistence of racism, and how a community can be free from discrimination in an ordinary sense of exclusion from participation, yet maintain and even foster existing patterns of interaction among blacks and whites--patterns that both disadvantage blacks and maintain the status quo meanings of race in the community. Furthermore, these sociocultural meanings dissuade blacks from moving into the community and encourage conservative adaptations among those blacks who remain in the community. The ways that local myths and narratives function create, among both blacks and whites, what I refer to as "enclave racism." Specifically, I trace my discovery of how local myths and "community narratives" maintain race homogeneity, and how within sometimes highly variable senses of"community," the very ways that race is thought of and talked about creStudies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 147-168. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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ate "race histories" that reveal "the way things are." This discovery was the consequence of conducting a funded community survey. The survey itself attempted to capture and relay the views of minorities living in a specific community, Springfield, Missouri, and its results can be seen as somewhat independent of the concept of "enclave racism." In this paper, I use the experiences of doing the research as the context of discovery for the concept. RACISM

IN COMMUNITY

CONTEXT

From the publication of Mrydal' s (1944) An American Dilemma to contemporary works such as Wilson's (1980, 1987 and 1996) The Declining Significance of Race, The Truly Disadvantaged, and When Work Disappears and Hacker's (1992) Two Nations, race and its consequences are typically addressed with national data either in the form of surveys or official statistics. Certainly, the presumption that racism is a national problem that varies in severity from region to region, locale to locale, is raison d'etre for such approaches. However, the significance of local variation and its peculiarities can be overlooked. Since the "Yankee City" studies, we have appreciated how particular aspects of a community organization interact with and follow racial lines (Warner and Srole 1945). As Warner put it, social-class and color-caste vary from region to region and reflect the sometimes unique history and structure of a community. While the same general economic conditions affect both whites and blacks, they do so differentially with distinctive results. National studies such as Wilson's stress how social economic conditions operate to create an underclass composed predominately of African Americans, while expanded educational and occupational opportunities led to the convergence of races, at least in terms of social psychological profiles (voting behaviors, tastes in clothes, money management techniques, etc.). Wilson's polarization and convergence hypothesis characterizes national trends, yet the "truly disadvantaged" are found concentrated in a relatively few urban areas. Surely, gender, economics and racial stereotyping confound and replicate the divisions that exist among Americans. Such profound divisions justify a broad perspective requiring national documentation (Clayton 1996). This broad view has led researchers to conclude that racism is both on the wan and still a viable device people use to "make sense" out of inequality in American society. In other words, attitudinal and substantive racism measured by survey and compliance research shows a steady decrease over the last twenty-year period (Jorgenson and Jorgenson 1992; GSS, National Opinion Research Center 1972-1996). Yet, opposition to "devices" designed to pro-actively deal with the consequences of prejudice such as "affirmative action laws" and "bussing" have also increased. As Feagin and Vera (1995) suggest, racism, which they call "white racism," has adapted to modem laws and regulations. This "new" racism disad-

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vantages African Americans through subtle discouragement and, in particular, through the imposition of procedures that embody racist tendencies (Delgado 1990). Of course, at the center of the debate about how much and what kind of change has occurred in the aspects of racism is solid documentation about the persistence of residential segregation in America. Farley (1996) reviews recent literature on black-white residential segregation and concludes that while some lessening of residential segregation has occurred, most whites are uncomfortable with integration that amounts to more than a "symbolic" or "token" black presence. And, most recently Gotham (1998) documents how minimal compliance with federal and local housing policies and what he calls "blind faith" in the housing market has resulted in pronounced patterns of segregation in Kansas City. Gotham's work points to the importance of attending to interactive influences at both local and national levels. But, even his study may obscure how racism is rooted in everyday life. In research that points in this direction, Bakanic (1995) studied racial attitudes in two communities with infamous profiles--Philadelphia and Meridian, Mississippi--and contributes to our understanding of the community-specific character of prejudice. He showed that not only is the experience of race relations specific to each race, but that the gap between blacks and whites regarding their perceptions of discrimination is much wider than that documented by national studies. He was particularly interested in exploring the widely recognized but little explored distinction between what people say and do (cf. Fisbein and Ajzen 1975). By constructing an index of support for segregation, he was able to show that members of these communities expressed little support for the policies and practices of past segregation. However, when interviewing community members whose scores on the index showed they did not support segregation, he discovered much more variance than the scores would indicate. According to the objective measure of racial prejudice, members of these two communities fit fairly well with national profiles showing an historical decline in attitudinal racial prejudice, while in open-ended interviews they often particularized their beliefs about race---especially in terms of the history of these two communities. For example, remembering the community's history of racial strife "was threatening for many whites in the community, whereas remembering was an assurance for many in the black community that racial terrorism would not come again" (Bakanic 1995, p. 84). Through their descriptions of cases such as Dubuque, Iowa, a small predominately white community with no history of racial segregation, Feagin and Vera (1995, pp. 20-34) further underscore how racism exists in places where one might not expect it. In that city in response to racist incidents receiving national attention, city political leaders proposed initiatives to make their community more diverse. Such proposals evoke strong opposition and, according to Feagin and Vera, exposed a considerable degree of white racism in that community.

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In a provocative recounting of how a community dealt with desegregation over a 30 year period, Denzin et al. (1995) explore the complex relationships between collective memory and racial politics. They relate events that bring into focus issues that have a dual telling, one from the official (white) school board and the other from the double-consciousness of African Americans. They show that reconstruction of past events within the specific context of educational policies and practices selectively maintains the collective memory of a community. The views of blacks are "forgotten" or reformulated in making sense out of a process that looks to be desegregation but operates to control minorities' access to the public school system. Ample evidence supports the conclusion that racism in some forms persists in American society in spite of powerful ideological, educational and historical forces to end it. While many explanations of how this can be have been offered in sociological and popular literature (Feagin and Vera 1995; McDaniel 1996) not enough attention has been paid to the community's specific character for racism, particularly how distinctive forms of racism are enacted. What follows is an account of such dynamics for one community. That we should expect race relations to be sensitive to community context is a clear implication of Herbert Blumer's early work (1958, 1980). Blumer conceived of race relations as a process of continuous definition of identity among competing groups within "a process of historical development involving complicated and varying factors" (Blumer 1954, p. 21). Race relations are essentially relationships of power with dominant groups defining the shape of social order. Fleras (1990, p. 24) writes that "by acknowledging the intersubjective within an objective world, Blumer fostered a sociological analysis of race relations that respected both structure and interpretation." The experiences of conducting the present study as well as its findings are of a community and of race relationships. In order to appreciate the actual findings of the study and to present a new "theoretical" insight about racism, I sketch the community. THE COMMUNITY Springfield, Missouri, had a metropolitan population in 1996 of 296,345 with about 150,000 within the city limits. It is the third largest city in the state, and boasts of a rapidly growing population--nearly a 15 percent increase over the period 1990 to 1998. A pre-Civil War community founded in 1829, Springfield has experienced marly social, political and economic changes: from a frontier town with a rough and tumble Jessie James character to the "buckle of the Bible belt;" from a blue collar manufacturing center to a regional medical center with two large hospital complexes; from a railroad town to the gateway to Branson. 1 Springfield also experienced, along with the rest of the region, a diaspora of African Americans.

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In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Springfield had a population of about 10,000--perhaps nearly a fourth of whom were African Americans. 2 In 1892, for example, Springfield had one black police officer, Jacob Andrews, out of a total number of nine officers. 3 While the town exhibited some characteristics of a Southern community, by some historical accounts African Americans enjoyed a fairly "open" life with employment in nearby mills, at hotels and with the railroad. However, by the 1940s, Springfield had a population of 70,000 with a very low percentage of African Americans. In fact, in the forty years since the turn of the century, many African Americans had moved from the community and the region. Today, African Americans comprise less than 3 percent of the population. The story of African Americans in Springfield is complicated, reflected in the state's so called "neutrality" during the Civil War. A short drive from Springfield is the birthplace of George Washington Carver. Outside the city is the site of the Wilson Creek Battle of the Civil W a r - - a small but important battle which impeded the movement of Confederate forces on their way to block Sherman on his march through the South; and The Battle of Springfield was fought in the streets of the city in 1863. Post Civil War Springfield was a "border" town racially, which meant that its white population was conflicted over the "Negro's" role in society. African Americans in Springfield from 1870 (the year Missouri ratified the 15th Amendment granting Negro Suffrage) to 1907 enjoyed expanded participation in social life; for example, the Springfield school board gave "one of its four seats to a Negro candidate" (Dark and Dark 1981, p. 87) and Lederer (1986, p. 13) documents the presence of a "strong middle-class black community." At the turn of the century, the largest grocery store in the city was black owned and operated (Lederer 1986). Still, as throughout the South and in border states, Springfield was a segregated community with racial prejudice and even fierce competition just below the surface for status and political power between whites and blacks. This conflict came to a head in the early 1900s with the Easter lynching of three blacks arrested on suspicion of assaulting a white women. 4 These men were arrested and being held in jail in the wake of' earlier "incidences" in the city. In 1905 two black men were arrested for the murder of a white tailor, and in January, 1906, the shooting of an aged Confederate veteran had intensified racial tension in the city. On the Saturday evening before Easter Sunday, an angry mob stormed the jail, apprehended the men and lynched and burned them in the city square. They even returned to the jail to lynch the suspects in the murder of the Confederate veteran. One had escaped in the confusion of the riot, one had not, and he, too, was lynched and burned in the public square. Later evidence exonerated the men, but the story goes that an exodus of black families left the city never to return (Lederer, 1986). This incident was followed by a period between World Wars I and II of intensive Ku Klux Klan activity. The liminal character of this region as neither South nor North created a climate that pushed African Americans from the city and the region.

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In her research Lederer (1986) sketches major changes in the population composition of the area. Before the Civil War, the area had a significant black population mostly of slaves but also of free blacks. After the Civil War, the population increased with free slaves relocating to farm in Springfield and the surrounding area. Their numbers were sufficient to produce a "black commerce," professionals, churches and artisans. In 1890, one third of the registered voters in Greene County were black (Lederer 1986, p. 13). After the Easter lynching of 1906 and through subsequent "Jim Crow" years, Springfield grew and became more white and blue collar with a Burlington Northern Diesel Engine shop and many small manufacturing businesses. It attracted a large Zenith television assembly plant in the 1960s, the last such factory in the United States which closed completely in 1992. Now, Springfield is a city of light industry, a growing population, a major medical center and home of Bass Pro (a catalog and retail store specializing in outdoor, fishing and hunting clothing and equipment), innovative manufacturing and trucking companies, and is the gateway to Branson. Bass Pro shop, mindful of its "white" character, does include some black models in its catalog and Branson is the home of Charlie Pride's theater and does host the rock and roll nostalgia group, The Platters. But, Springfield is an exceedingly "white" place. Bass fishing, rebuilding engines, and conserving entertainment from the past contrasts with the urban, big city character that is associated with a modern African American community. While all this "white" character is apparent in Springfield, the city is also the home of one of the largest state universities in Missouri, Southwest Missouri State University, with a student population of over 16,000. THE UNIVERSITY

AND

THE MINORITY

STUDY

What makes the university a significant part of understanding race in Springfield is the pressure it has felt to attract minority students and faculty. As was the case with many Southern and border state universities, integration began in the 1950s. However, by this time the region had a very small African American community. The university did grow in numbers and began to feel the pressure in competition with others schools to recruit primarily black athletes. Southwest became a Division I sports university in 1982, and then began its move to be a national power, particularly in men's and women's basketball. So, a dilemma faced the university. If it wanted to develop a strong sports program, it either had to rely on local athletes, overwhelmingly white, or try to recruit from urban centers of the state and region. Of course, Kansas City and particularly St. Louis have major African American communities. The tension between building a sports infrastructure from local support which embodies the racist history of the community, or build-

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ing a national program that is de facto more diverse, exists today as strongly as ever. Second, the pressure toward diversity derives from the growth and maturity of the university. Established as a regional teachers college, over the years the transformation of a regional university into a university with a state-wide mission granted by legislative decree in 1995 has been realized. This mission, taken quite seriously by the university' s administration, is Public Affairs. Of course, the mission itself is less important from my point than the scope of it--it is state wide. When universities undergo accreditation and other evaluations by national agencies, they are evaluated relative to their own missions, objectives and outcomes. Since Southwest espouses understandings of and engagement in public life, character development and civility, and it does so within a strong emphasis on the training of professional educators, it is not surprising that national accreditation agencies have pointed to the lack of diversity as a weakness. The university has set for itself a goal of 7 percent minority enrollment for the year 2000. Currently, the student population is only 5.4 percent minority and only about 2 percent African American. Southwest expresses a goal of becoming more diverse, and it has been admonished by a major accrediting agency to take a pro-active role in making the local community a more "hospitable" environment for minorities. This "charge" gave impetus to the study which documents directly and indirectly the perceptions of members of Springfield's minority community and led to my discovery of "enclave racism." In conjunction with its ten-year North Central Accreditation, the university received the following recommendation: The Universityis encouraged to take a leadership role in initiating activities with the city of Springfield and other majorarea employersto createa more welcomingclimatefor minorities. In order to produce documentation for the next accreditation cycle, the university administration gave the university affirmative action officer the task of acting pro-actively. This officer founded the Coalition for Change in Springfield's Climate. While sounding a bit meteorological, the Coalition was to consist of representatives from all the major employers in the city. The original list included all local universities, Bass Pro, the major medical corporations (Saint John's and Cox), and local plants such as Kraft Foods. The ambitious undertaking quickly ran into resistance when the chair of the Coalition began to contact local employers. Educational institutions (Southwest being by far the largest, but including several small private colleges from the area) responded by naming a representative to the Coalition; several major employers, however, were notably absent. The Coalition, nonetheless, began to meet monthly to discuss what to do to establish a "more welcoming climate for minorities." Since I was director of the Center for Social Research, I was invited to attend the Coalition meetings. From the beginning, the chair and I had discussed the pos-

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sibility of a study of the local minority community to help establish an "empirical" base from which the Coalition could make recommendation for pro-active steps. For example, we were interested in demonstrating community support for a city sponsored Diversity or Minority Community Center. What follows is first the "tale of the study," a representation of the study and, finally, an "enclave" explanation of racism in Springfield. The Tale of the Study At the first meeting, I was barely one year into my term as Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Southwest and recently had assumed the position of acting director of the Center for Social Research due to a resignation and ongoing search for a new director. Although I prided myself on doing my homework about the community and university before I accepted the appointment, I was, in hindsight, quite naive about the racial history of the city. The chair of the committee introduced those who attended the meeting. Two local colleges were presented, about four or five of the top 20 largest employers had representatives. We introduced ourselves--"start-up" business took up most of the first meeting. Still at the first meeting the idea of a study was introduced. Ironically, to me, one administrator from Southwest wondered aloud about what we will learn from yet another survey. And, initially, an African American man and member of the Coalition, expressed serious reservations about doing a study. He outlined several reasons for not doing the study: (1) what will we learn that we do not already know (i.e., that the town is a home of racism, both substantive and procedural), (2) that a survey of whites, not minorities, would be much more useful (i.e., the problem was and is created by whites and, therefore, whites must change), (3) that if the study shows what local minorities already know, that racism persists in the community, police, officials of the city and unspecified "others" may retaliate in some way to increase discrimination toward minorities (i.e., the "truth," when read by certain groups in the community, will just make matters worse). Nevertheless, when faced with a charge, university folks do what university folks do best--conduct a study. Step one, convince members of the Coalition that a study is a good idea. We proceeded to do this by recanting the practical implications of well-conducted empirical research. I spoke about the usual: how do we really know what minorities think and feel about living in Springfield; and how important it will be to have actual data when approaching the City Council with a case about the need for a Center for Multicultural Activities or whatever proposal the Coalition might deem justified. We social scientists can be quite persuasive when citing studies that reveal unexpected findings, that is, where what everybody knew turned out not to be so. And, I couched the study's possible impact as positively as I could, pointing out that perhaps we will find that minorities are

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comfortable with Springfield's racial and ethnic climate, or at least that the climate might turn out to be not as inhospitable as we presume. The Coalition agreed in principle about the value of doing the study. Step two, find financial support for the study. I wrote a proposal which, in hindsight, not only was overly ambitious but somewhat threatening to some in the community. I called the proposal the "Comprehensive Study of Springfield Minorities Communities." I wrote The current proposal is to conduct such a study so that people whose voices may not have been fully appreciated in previous studies, or even in policy and practices involvingthem, will find an avenue for expression. Furthermore, throughuse of techniques of research designed to capture and relate with fidelity the experiences of those in the study, a respected document, balanced and fair, can be produced. That document, in turn, may serve as a platform for dialogue and planning. Without accurate empirically grounded data, discussions of the needs of minorities and their role in the social life of Springfield may proceed on distorted, one-sided or incomplete information (Grant Proposal 1997). I had in mind a qualitative research project that would start by contacting known community leaders of each of the four groups in Springfield, as they were identified in local discourse as leaders or "persons who know." The four groupings were African Americans, Asians (a mixed grouping of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Chinese), Hispanics (mostly Mexicans) and Native Americans (several tribes, both local and national). Using leaders or high profile people to gain entry, I proposed that trained interviewers, matched for race or ethnic identity, be introduced to families. Interviewers would then visit the homes of members of the communities, conduct interviews from a schedule designed to elicit perceptions of and experiences in Springfield, and elicit information from open-ended questions. I proposed that a snowball sampling technique be followed with each household suggesting the name of another minority family. In this way, I hoped to canvass all members of the respective communities and get counts of members of households resulting in information that was true to the members' perspectives and would allow us to enumerate what I suspected as the "under-estimated" size of the minorities communities. I thought the Center for Social Research could do this project for about $10,000. The university was quite interested in it, especially since the impetus for the Coalition came from the university. The President pledged one half of the costs. There were two possible local Foundations for funding. One had underwritten a Community Needs Assessment several years before that addressed the needs of the minority community (Martin and Hartmann 1996). I contacted that Foundation and learned that I had missed the deadline for application but could apply in the next cycle. I requested all necessary information and received no response, even after telephone conversations with the director. The second funding source seemed interested during telephone conversations; timing for application was appropriate; and, they supplied me with all the necessary forms and instructions.

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I submitted a grant application for $5,000 documenting that the university was good for the rest. Our proposal was rejected. When I called for reasons for the rejection, I was told that the board consisted of some longtime community members (who would someday be replaced) but that these current members remembered the family who established the Foundation and was quite sure that the "family" would not approve of this "kind of project." The sub-text was barely "sub." Why would a Foundation that was dedicated to improving the quality of life in Springfield, especially the arts, be interested in supporting a project that might be critical of the community; and might actually encourage more diversity? This was just not the right kind of project for the Foundation. Undaunted by the "cool" reception by the community civic activists, and forewarned by minority community members, yet encouraged by the leadership of the Coalition, we retumed to the Coalition's membership (by this time a group of about ten active members). I suggested that perhaps we could do an interview study with samples of the minority groupings for the money already pledged. I agreed to draft another proposal for the membership to review. I did so, this time describing a study that would train students and local members of the respective groupings to administer a questionnaire to samples. I proposed using professional sampling companies to draw representative samples of the minority population in Springfield, having had experience with such companies in drawing sample frames for other studies conducted by the Center for Social Research. I contacted one such company and was assured that they could supply us with names and addresses of minorities in Springfield. The Coalition agreed to be the official body sponsoring the project, although the money for the survey was coming directly from the university. The next step was to develop the questionnaire. We worked with members of the community and from our knowledge of previous studies (Landon and Larkin 1989; Martin and Hartmann 1996). We generated a list of topics to be covered and sample questions, and presented them to the Coalition. At the Coalition's suggestion, we had an open meeting to which we invited all interested parties to come and express their opinions about the topics that should be covered and questions that needed to be asked. The open meeting, time and place, was announced in the local newspaper and through university publications. At this meeting, I first began to formulate my theory of "enclave racism." The open meeting was attended by about thirty people. Most there knew someone in the Coalition; however, there were people "from the community" as well (read minority people who are not officially tied to an organization). The meeting revolved around points of objections to the study--reiterations of those first raised in the initial meeting of the Coalition. Then visitors, mostly middle aged to elderly African Americans, began to tell their stories, what I came to refer to as "narratives of individual experience." There were police and business stories, problems with the public schools and on the job, and tales of the past. Together these narratives consist of a "community mythology" of race.

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Racism in the Ivory City The C o m m u n i t y M y t h o l o g y

The community mythology unfolded before us in what at first seemed to be a series of highly individualistic accounts of mostly negative experiences with white people of power in the community. Police stories ran from accounts of police harassment, through overly close supervision of students at Central High School before, during and after extracurricular activities at the school, to the all too familiar accounts of police patrols pulling over "suspicious" vehicles driven by "brothers." Perhaps the most chilling narrative was given by an elderly gentleman, a long-time resident of the city, who told of his repeated filings of reports documenting racial discrimination in the police department. In particular, he told of targeting one police officer. He claimed to have copies of all the complaints he had made over a several year period. According to him, not only did he get no results from his complaint, but he actually became the target of retaliation. He told of coming home from work to find his home surrounded by police cars with lights flashing. When he asked what was happening, he was shown a search warrant. "For what?" he replied. The police said they had evidence that he may have drugs in his home. The search turned up no contraband, and the police left. The purpose of this "visit," he was told, was to "stop him" from filing complaints. Stories by parents of racially motivated encounters involving their children in the public schools were by far the most frequently related. Most of these implicated teachers, their attitudes, "unfair" punishment compared to "white" students, scheduling difficulties, and teachers not intervening to "correct" problems between white and black students. While these stories are, no doubt, told in many communities, and usually denied by school officials, they reflect, at the very least, suspicion and lack of trust in the fairness of the institution of education in America in general and in specific communities like Springfield. Other narratives that I heard in the "open" meetings of the Coalition and in interviews were about the exclusionary nature of the business community in Springfield. One man told how his business never received invitations even to bid on city contracts, let alone win the bids. He sought out the bidding dates and forms himself, he said, and submitted bids. In the two decades he has been in business, he has never won a bid. His cleaning business, he said, is well respected and successful. However, the closed character of the city's government, he opined, excluded black owed businesses from being competitive. In particular, there were references to the Easter lynching, mostly centered on the City Council's refusal to consider a memorial plaque in the present day town square. This issue about an official recognition of the historical reality of the event has been keep alive both by black and white citizens. That the lynching and Park Day, a community "gathering-in" of those departed, has smwived so long in the consciousness of the community was a key to the discovery of "enclave racism." Park Day, as it is now called, is perhaps the largest and best known "black" event in Springfield. It is quite simply a day when relatives and friends, once res-

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idents of Springfield, are to return to town to renew ties. The highlight of the day is a picnic at a park in North Springfield (hence, Park Day). Several hundred gather and have done so on this day for at least thirty years. A locally raised and educated young black man returned to town recently to make a film about Park Day and the spirit of renewal and community. Local police regard the gathering as "gang bangers" day, but in the black community, the day has a special festive air to it. The disparity of attitudes toward Park Day, from police disdain and apathy of the larger community to the enthusiasm of the black community, reflects the dynamics of racial relationships in the community. Narratives of racism apparently have spread beyond the confines of the community. While discussing the preliminary results of interviews with local African Americans and preparing to construct a research instrument for the community survey, a colleague related the following story. I used to work as a corrections officer in Iowa. I had a very good friend, a fellow officer, with whom I had become good friends. A job opening came up for my wife at Southwest Missouri State, so we decided to move. This meant me giving up my job. I told my friend about us leaving and invited him to come visit us in Springfield. He, a former football player for the University of Iowa and good sized man, said he knew all about Springfield and he would be fearful to travel through there, let alone stay there. Of course, whether this man was really fearful and whether Springfield's reputation is deserved are important questions. However, that the community has such a far reaching reputation, or a reputation at all, provides another clue to the formalization of the concept of "enclave racism." "White" retellings also play a role in the dynamics of racism in this community. To a considerable degree, a refueling of the mythology of the community came from the research of a faculty member at the university. This faculty member published a booklet in 1986, Many Thousand Gone: Springfield's Lost Black History, which presents a largely photographic documentation of the presence of African Americans in Springfield up to the Easter lynching of 1906. The theme of the booklet is that the lynching was the major push for migration out from the community. However, such lynchings were all too common at this juncture in American history, and similar diaspora did not always occur. Most likely, while blacks did move away from the area after the lynching, the retelling of lynchings together with a period of several decades of intense KKK activity in the area and general development of a racism specific to the community--that is, with a historical and narrative form--functioned to produce a race homogenization in the community. Therefore, whites tell about the "horrors" of racism past, blacks tell about the horrors of racism present, and the consequence is that the community pushes away blacks and pulls in whites creating the "Ivory City. ''5

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THE SURVEY RESULTS We conducted a survey, deciding to sample equal numbers of members of what the Coalition regarded as the four major groupings in the community: African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans. These groupings were stipulated by the terms of grants that gave the Coalition a near autonomy in the design of the study. Hence, questions such as whether or not to interview face-to-face or use telephone interviews were decided by the Coalition, more specifically the founder and chair of the Coalition. Simply locating members of the minority community was itself a kind of breaching experience that revealed underlying social structures of the community. For example, the Center for Social Research had purchased samples for previous research projects from professional sampling companies. We requested sampling lists for the four minority communities. When the list arrived, we began checking if the names, addresses and telephone numbers indeed belonged to people of the appropriate minority status. We discovered that the list for African Americans was highly unreliable--that is, most of the numbers called were not those of African Americans. We also discovered that the whites who were home, when asked if they were African American, were very resentful and even hostile toward our callers regarding why we might think that African Americans were living at their address. We trained student interviewers in the standard protocol, matched African American students with African American interviewees and so on. Our initial difficulty was in generating a list of interviewees. We wanted face-to-face interviews and were able generate a list of names for Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans. However, we soon learned that a sampling frame for African Americans was very difficult to procure. Likewise, we encountered resistance to grant interviews from Asians whose names we had. It seems that many own and operate eating establishments and were concerned that

T a b l e 1. Race/Ethnicity

Average age Average Household size Household income Percent female Percent College Graduate Percent married Percent own home Percent living north Springfield

Sample Characteristics b y Race/Ethnicity African American (n = 73)

Asian (n = 70)

Hispanic (n = 57)

Native American (n = 51)

41

35

44

48

2.7 $34,300 60

3.1 $36,703 36

3.4 $26,785 36

2.6 $24.520 43

17 40 41

60 43 47

6 73 49

10 54 50

59

25

69

69

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JEFFREY E. NASH

if we published a report that portrayed them as disgruntled or ungrateful to be living in Springfield, they might lose business. Finally, we relied heavily on local connections and opportunistic strategies. For African Americans, we attended local celebrations and other events where we knew there would be concentrations of black denizens. We sampled in the field, at Martin Luther King events, at community events and at meetings of church representatives. We purposely selected interviewees to represent a wide range in age and to be representative of gender. We followed leads from community leaders to increase our sample size among Asians and Hispanics. While each of these groups presented peculiar sampling problems, the most difficult group to locate and define was Native American. A small community in Springfield, Native Americans seem to be divided into two groups. Among those active in their community

Table 2.

Selected R e s p o n s e s to Q u e s t i o n n a i r e I t e m s b y Race/Ethnicity Question

1. conflict with or rarely interact with white majority 2. whites unconcerned or indifferent about minority issues 3. relations with majority over past five years same or worse 4. city government not responsive to needs of minority community 5. attitudes of leaders same or worse over past five years 6. discrimination higher compared to other parts of country 7. agree worse discrimination towards African-Americans 8. uncomfortable in public places 9. children negative experience in public school 10. crime in neighborhood has increased in past year 11. yes, police are serving minority needs 12. called police in last 5 years? 13. yes, ever heard of the Easter Lynching?

African American

Asian

Hispanic

Native American

43.8% (n=73) 31.7% (n=63) 19.6% (n=56) 88.2% (n=51) 72.9% (n=70) 57.4% (n=61) 61.1% (n=54) 98.1% (n=51) 52.1% (n=71) 30.4% (n=69) 40.4% (n=57) 64.7% (n=51) 42.3% (n=67)

6.8% (n=59)

14.6% (n=48) 61.2% (n=49)

48.6% (n=72) 27.7% (n=65) 40.4% (n=52) 59.2% (n=49) 47.6% (n=63) 27.3% (n=22) 55.3% (n=47) 72.9% (n=48) 82.8% (n=64) 83.3% (n=24) 56.5% (n=46)

6.3% (n=48)

51.4% (n=72)

7.1% (n=70)

22.8% (n=57) 73.3% (n=45)

78.3% (n=23)

25% (n=20)

30.8% (n=26) 73.3% (n=15)

20% (n=13)

4.6% (n=3)

14.3%(n=8)

34.8% (n=16)

30.7% (n=19) 64.2% (n=34) 88.4% (n=38)

10.8%(n=4)

53.1% (n=38)

10% (n=7)

35.8%(n=20) 39.6% (n=19)

74% (n=54)

34% (n=24)

26.8% (n=15) 78.4% (n=40)

Racism in the Ivory City

161

events, two organizations exist. One is affiliated with the American Indian Movement, and upholds a "purist" view of Nativism. The other group, while perhaps being more active within the dominant community, does seem to have more members who are "mixed" or at least more "assimilative" in attitude. Of course, they are regarded by those active in the other Center as inauthentic. We relied on students at the university who were active in one or both of the Indian Centers. A leader of the more "radical" Center became interested in the study through his acquaintance with a university student. He played a major role in procuring interviews with Native Americans. While we were able to sample across a range of age, income and other background variables, this sample is probably biased in the direction of the more "radical" Center. Table 1 describes the profiles of the respective samples of minority communities. While the difficulties we encountered (sampling and getting permission to conduct interviews) probably preclude any claim to random representation, we were able to sample a fairly disparate array of background characteristics. The younger age of Asians does make intuitive sense with the recent influx of Asians into Springfield as does this group's highest household income. Similarly, from our efforts at sampling, examination of census tracks and telephone calling that African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans are concentrated in the Northern neighborhoods of the city fits. Generally, the characteristics of these four groupings are not all that far from official statistics about these communities. Therefore, we felt fairly confident that opinions expressed by those in this study do at least reflect the views of their respective communities. Table 2 shows the distribution of responses to selected questions from the questionnaire. Since a goal of the project was to give voice to minorities, questions were designed to be general, tapping experiences across a wide range of social participation in the community. It is quite clear that responses are patterned by race and ethnicity. African Americans and Native Americans show the highest levels of negative opinions about living in Springfield. They report that they are relatively isolated from the community (item 1); they feel alienated from those with perceived power (items 2-5; 11); and they express discomfort being in public places and a great deal of negative experience with the public school system. And, both minorities display the highest percentage of people who had heard of the Easter lynchings. There are some departures from this pattern of African American/Native Americans. For example, item 6 shows that a higher percentage of Hispanics than African Americans believe that discrimination is higher in Springfield than other parts of the country. While this study does not allow comparisons with the dominant white population, it is difficult to imagine 51.4 percent of the white population saying they are uncomfortable in public places. These data seem to indicate that the experience of living in Springfield is different for members of different ethnic and racial identities.

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St, Louis 48% Black

Kansas City 33% Black

Adjacent Region less than 2% Adjacent Region tess than 2%

Adjacent Region tess than 2%

/

Adjacent Region less than 2%

/

16% Black

Little Rock 25%~lack Source:

",,,

Memphis 60+/oBlack

The Deep South 30-50% Black

Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis. University of Nissouri System. 1996 data, mostly from U.S. Census. Figures for cities refer to populations living within city limits.

Figure 1.

MYTH,

The Ecology of a White Enclave

NARRATIVE,

AND

ENCLAVE

MENTALITY

Based on the experiences of actually conducting a community survey on race and ethnic relationships, especially the narrative accounts encountered in seeking funding, drawing reasonable samples, developing research instruments and doing interviews, I discovered a dynamic which I called "enclave racism." Enclave racism is racism that is peculiar to a particular social ecology and which creates and sustains itself. The discovery of enclave racism followed steps leading to the formation of the concept. First, because of listening to accounts of local citizens and reading histories of the community, I became aware that Springfield has a lost history of African Americans, and recent history of in-migration of Asians and Hispanics though still in very small numbers. Still when placed in geographic context, one can realize the extent to which Springfield is a racial and ethnic enclave. As displayed in Figure 1, the community and its immediate environs are overwhelmingly white. Yet within a radius of a three-hour drive, substantial concentrations of minorities in large urban areas exist. Such patterns of human residents

Racism in the Ivory City

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are not random, but reflect strong forces of push, pull and selection. But these forces are not just economic. In fact, over the past 10 years, Greene County (Springfield) is among the fastest growing counties in the state with a 10 percent overall increase. The city also boasts of a very low unemployment rate. According to the Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis of the University of Missouri System, Greene County has increased in population by over 20 percent since 1980 with over half of this increase due to immigration (nearly all white); has a poverty level slightly higher than the state index; has a median household income ($32,000) that is right on the state level; and has experienced a period of expanded employment opportunities over the past two decades. While the percentage of minority population has increased slightly, it remains only 3.4 percent. Obviously, it is not the lack of economic pull factors that keeps Springfield white. What keeps the community white is enclave racism that operates through: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

narratives told by both whites and minorities which creates myths or stories about the history of the community which establishes a reputation and becomes part of the collective memory of the community and results in racial homogenization.

Enclave racism is reflexive in the sense that it creates and recreates itself in the telling of race relationships in the community. As a result of the process, the community not only maintains its "whiteness," but allows officials such as those who

Figure 2.

D y n a m i c s of C o m m u n i t y Racism

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run the university and major employers in the city to make efforts such as sponsoring a study through the Coalition for Change in Springfield's Climate to express, perhaps even genuinely, intentions to diversify and act pro-actively without the prospect of success. In particular, a university can adhere to policies and practices of "openness" while the community maintains itself as ordinary, or simply "the way things are." This dynamic of "enclave racism" can be represented diagrammatically. For Springfield, the collective memory of the racist past centers around the historical significance of the community as a site of a Civil War battle (Wilson Creek Battle), the infamy of the Easter lynchings, and the era of the Ku Klux Klan. I have already mentioned the Wilson Creek Battle. In the collective memory of the community which I understand as "essentially a reconstruction of the past [that] adapts the image of ancient facts to the beliefs and spiritual needs of the present" (Halbwachs [1950] 1980), Wilson Creek Battle has allowed a select identification with the Civil War that probably does mirror the mixed sentiments of the historical Springfield during the Civil War. As a border state, Missouri played a role in the war between the states in important court decisions and in the ambivalence that citizens must have felt. Being either South or North meant bloody conflicts and distrust of neighbors. Today, Springfield like many other cities with a Civil War significance re-enacts "history" yearly and is the site of conventions where people period dress. Other communities such as Dubuque, Iowa, use other reference points for their collective memory (Feagin and Vera 1995). In Springfield, it is possible to imagine a Confederacy "past." It is also very easy to imagine a racist past since the era of 1900-1940 did see a strong KKK presence in the area. A tourist attraction, a cave through which visitors are driven in Jeeps and now called Fantastic Caverns, was in the 1920s known as Ku Klux Klavem (its historical name at the time was Percy Cave). A photograph taken in 1924 shows Klan members guarding the entrance to the cave during a meeting (Dark and Dark 1981, p. 95). Hence, the collective memory of Springfield may be reconstructed in such a way that racism plays an important role. Although no careful historical demographic analysis of the period from 1900 to 1940 exists, it is highly probable that during this time, "real" forces functioned to homogenize the area racially, a regional Diaspora. Today, as I have indicated, narrative accounts of what happened and happens in Springfield are replete. Stories of police insensitivity and harassment are just a question away. Stories of unfair treatment in the business world, the public school system, selective treatment in public places and the like are told by both minority members and whites with the effect of creating both a repetition of "whiteness" and consequence maintenance of the race homogeneity. As is often the case in retelling, there is a sub-text. For example, the city like many others has experienced a pattern of development that has resulted in the decline of centrally located public schools. Again typically, at the high school level, these schools are the oldest and have the richest traditions. They also have

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the highest minority enrollment--in particular, African American students. This is the case in Springfield where Central High School struggles to attract students under a "freedom of choice" system. The school has several programs designed to attract gifted and college-bound students such as the International Baccalaureate, a full-time gifted program for sixth through eighth grades, but its decline has been so severe that it has had to move to a lower level of interscholastic competition. A recent editorial in the local newspaper, The Springfield News Leader, written by a white student outlines the advantages of a Central High School experience, and points out that while Central is under-enrolled, a high school to the south where development has been disproportional is over-crowded prompting discussion of building a new high school. Of course, this is an all too familiar pattern in American cities perhaps reinforced by realtors who direct buyers to the "best school districts." While this student can think of no reasons to avoid attending Central High School and many positive reasons to attend, the sub- text of her opinion reflects enclave racism. In Springfield for many parents, Central with its nearly 25 percent minority enrollment is the local symbol of "blackness." Our young editorialist writes Let me tell you, all the rumors of gangs, drugs and violence aren't true. They don't occur at Central any more than any other Springfield school ... Five to 10 students' actions shouldn't determine a school's reputation or level of morality [referenceto scuffle between students and police at schoolevent] ... Central has so many great things going for it, I think it's a shame that something simple like the open enrollment policy is hurting Central so much (NewsLeader, March 1, 1999).

COLLECTIVE MEMORY A N D THE PRESENT Like many other communities in the United States, in Springfield the meanings of race and ethnicity serve as a background to virtually every aspect of community life. So pervasive is the sub-text of race that for whites to notice it at all they have to appreciate the historically derived context which carries the meanings. In their study of Edge City, Denzin, et al. (1995) make this point through recounting the history of racial policy in the telling of how the city managed desegregation over a 30 year period. From the way the city initiated desegregation in 1966 to how the school board responded to an Office of the Civil Rights investigation of the Edge City Schools, racial politics played a role. As Denzin et al. put it, "the official memory that honors race has forgotten these events" (Denzin et al. 1995, p. 201). As in Edge City, the telling and retelling, the patterns of remembering and forgetting, maintain a system of social control that disadvantages the minority community. Blacks, in particular, are excluded from the "formal memory system of the town" (Denzin et al. 1995). In Edge City, in the context of the school board's policy on desegregation, at least two forms of consciousness operated : the dominant white form that selectively forgets or reforms the interests of minorities and the

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black from which forces a "sense of always looking at one' s self through the eyes of others" (Du Bois 1903-1989, p. 3). Perhaps the Springfield minority community survey captured the double-consciousness and the veil that screens racial memories. Springfield's minorities respond to our questions through their sense of how the white majority sees them. The Springfield they live in is not the same Springfield that whites know. Asians, therefore, cautioned us that they did not want people (whites) thinking they were ungrateful to live in the community (for fear of lost business in their restaurants). Hispanics as recent arrivals learn the "history of the community," and Native Americans and Blacks reflect a strong sense of being the "others" who make up the community. In this mix, the stories told of past and present select memories and keep minority views in abeyance. Springfield, like Edge City, uses its past to construct its present.

CONCLUSION By recounting the natural history of a research project in a particular community, I relate my discovery of a way to understanding race relationships as highly contextualized. I suggest that racism derives from a complex of social memory, narratives that create and sustain a community mythology and is specific to a community to a much greater degree than suggested by studies of racism that use national data bases. Enclave racism functions in a community to allow officials of local organizations to make efforts to comply with demands of outside accreditation agencies, state and federal fair employment practices with an expectation that such efforts will have little effect. Enclave racism slows or negates social change and selects a conservative adaptation by older minorities who stay in the black community while compelling younger minorities, particularly African Americans, to leave the community. Finally, enclave racism buffers against in-migration of minorities, particularly African Americans. Overall, the Springfield community becomes attractive to whites who have grown up in the area or who want to escape to an imagined "middle America" for a variety of reasons. Older minorities, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans, but particularly African Americans stay in their respective communities as conservative and non-confrontational members. Younger people leave, and local minorities are socialized into the narrative of oppression or accommodation. While generalizations about racism based on national data remain crucial to an understanding of changes in racial relationships in the United States, our experiences in conducting a community survey demonstrate that broad-stroked portrayals may be misleading. By placing the understanding within a context of community and depicting the dynamics of racism in that setting, we can gain not only a deeper appreciation for the dynamics of racism, but decipher some of the

Racism in the Ivory City apparent

contradictions

167 in n a t i o n a l s u r v e y d a t a a n d i n " o f f i c i a l " a c c o u n t s

of

progress toward equality of opportunity.

NOTES 1. Since the late 1980s, Branson, Missouri, has become a major tourist attraction with several million visitors coming to the town to see "shows" at the sometimes posh theaters. Andy Williams, Wayne Newton, and a host of country stars such as Mel Titlis had theaters where they perform regularly. The entertainers often are best depicted as "past their prime," and the average visitor remembers those entertainers in their prime. Branson also has a theme park, "Silver Dollar City," a water park for families and factory outlet centers for shopping. Developed after the Las Vegas strip model, Branson may be thought of as a "family" Vegas--perhaps, as one visitor remarked, without the fun. 2. According to a Census report of 1878 (George Escort, History of Directory of Springfield and North Springfield) the total population of Springfield was around 7,000, about 1,700 of whom were "colored." The completeness and even official status of this report is open to question. This source along with Lederer (1986) however, certainly allows us to document that the black population in Springfield at the turn of the century was significantly larger than in subsequent decades. 3. In 1998, the police department had about 1 percent African American officers (4 out of about 277 sworn officers, December 16, 1998), compared to 11 percent (1 out of 9) in 1892. 4. A local historian, Mary Newland Clary, has carefully documented the newspaper accounts of this lynching in an unpublished paper ("The Easter offering: A Missouri Lynching, 1906"). Clary believes that the lynching did leave the black population living in terror and many families did board trains for Memphis, St. Louis, and Kansas City. 5. The term "Ivory City" was used by a local African American resident to refer to Springfield. Springfield is also referred to as "white town," or in local parlance as simply "Springfield," understood as referring to the dominant white majority.

REFERENCES Bakanic, V. 1995. "I'm Not Prejudiced, But ...: A Deeper Look at Racial Attitudes." Sociological Inquiry 65(1): 67-86. Blumer, H. 1958. "Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position." The Pacific Sociological Review 1(1): 3-7. Blumer, H., and T. Duster. 1980. "Theories of Race and Social Action." Pp 211-238 in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism. Edited by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Paris. Clayton, O. Jr. (ed.). 1996. An American Dilemma Revisited: Race Relations in a Changing World. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Dark, H., and P. Dark. 1981. Springfield of the Ozarks: An Illustrated History. Woodland Hills, CA: Windsor Publications, Inc. Delgado, R. 1990. "When a Story Is Just a Story: Does Voice Really Matter." Virginia Law Review 76 (February): 105. Denzin, N. 1997. "Remembering and Forgetting Recent Racial Politics." Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education II (Fall): 191-208. Du Bois, W.E.B. 1903-1989. The Soul of Black Folk. New York: Bantam. Feagin, J. 1991. "The Continuing Significance of Race: Anti-Black Discrimination in Public Places." American Sociological Review 56:101-116. Feagin, J. R., and H. Vera. 1995. White Racism: The Basics. New York: Routledge.

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Fleras, A. 1990. "Race Relations as Collective Definition: Renegotiating Aboriginal-Government Relations in Canada." Symbolic Interaction 13: 19-35. Gotham, K. F. 1998. "Blind Faith in the Free Market: Urban Poverty, Residential Segregation, and the Federal Housing Retrenchment, 1970-1995." Sociological Inquiry 68 (February) 1-31. Jorgenson, D., and C. B. Jorgenson. 1992. "Age and White Racial Attitudes: National Surveys, 1992-1989." Sociological Spectrum 12: 21-34. Hacker, A. 1992. Two Nations: Black and White. New York: Maxwell MacMillan. Halbwachs, M. [1950]. 1980. The Collective Memory. New York: Harper and Row. Landon, D., and W. Larkin. 1989. Racial Discrimination in the Springfield Housing Market: Changes from 1986 to 1989. Center for Social Research. Southwest Missouri State University. Lederer, K. 1986. Many Thousand Gone: Springfield's Lost Black History. Springfield, MO: Missouri Committee for the Humanities and the Gannett Foundation. Lewis, M., and J. Serbu. 1999. "Kommemorating the Ku Klux Klan." The Sociological Quarterly 40: 139-157. Martin, J. D., and D. J. Hartmann. 1996. Mobiling for the Future: An Update of the Community Needs Assessment for Springfield, Missouri. A Report of the Center for Social Research, Southwest Missouri State University. Myrdal, G., with the assistance of R. Sterner and A. Rose. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper and Brothers Warner, W. L., and L. Srole. 1945. The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups. Vol III, "Yankee City Series." New Haven: Yale University Press. Wilson, W. J. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. . 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. . 1980. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

CRITIQUE OF CONCORDANCE IN THE COMMERCIAL BLOOD INDUSTRY

Leon Anderson

INTRODUCTION Few substances have been the topic of such extensive and intense sacred affiliation in the course of history as human blood. Blood is central to religious symbolism and the subject of myriad rituals and taboos (e.g., Durkheim 1915; Frazer 1935). With the development of medical science and technology, however, blood became increasingly subjected to a secular gaze. The medical study of blood has yielded profound benefits for human health, especially in the arena of blood transfusion technologies. But the ascendance of a medical orientation to blood, especially when tied to its "harvesting" from paid donors, 1 has produced a dense new arena of moral debate. Such contested terrains of social discourse have long been of interest to sociologists investigating the social construction of social problems. In this paper I explore the divergent discourses of U.S. blood plasma companies and their paid donors regarding plasma donation with the goal of demonstrating one way to expand the social construction of social problems agenda. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 169-195. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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The constructionist approach taps a rich analytic vein in its focus on the social processes through which specific issues come to be defined as social problems and various social groups vie for the ownership or control over those problems (Gusfield 1989). The bulk of the literature has focused on the struggle for social problem definition and the activities of groups that have successfully established problem ownership. As a result, social problems have been productively analyzed as social movements (Mauss 1975; Hilgartner and Bosk 1988). Frame alignment (Snow et al. 1986; Snow and Benford 1992) and resource mobilization perspectives (McCarthy and Zald 1973, 1976) provide powerful analytic tools for understanding successful alignment and mobilization related to what become defined as social problems. But the emphasis on the struggle for public success tends to result in a truncated descriptive and theoretical analysis of the range of discursive positions or claims-making activity related to potential social problems. Many arenas of potential social problems tend to be characterized not so much by visible struggles as by social ecological accommodation and patterning of alternative discursive practices in ways that ease or facilitate the alignment of actions among actors with diverse and often clashing perspectives. The focus on visible public struggle can mask subtle, but significant discursive strains--including silences, as many feminist have demonstrated (e.g., Smith 1990; Gordon 1993; Miller 1993), and as a result reduce the purchase from which a social analyst can critique hegemonic discourse. An appropriate strategy for analyzing such arenas of social accommodation needs to go beyond examination of dominant claims and the struggle for definition to observe the ecological patterning of diverse discursive practices. It is necessary to search out the fleeting, perhaps somewhat hidden utterances of marginalized groups and develop a theoretical agenda that opens a dialogic space between these voices and the dominant ones--as implied in Denzin's (1997) discussion of a feminist communitarian ethic. Furthermore, the investigator must be sensitized to the existence of many potential social problems at ambivalent social interstices where actors may vacillate and/or hedge their claims that run counter to hegemonic discourse. Such an agenda, of course, is not exclusive to sociology--both cultural studies and communications, for instance, have focused considerable attention on the inclusion of marginalized voices. The work of communications theorist Celeste Condit, in particular, provides a useful approach for exploring the social dynamics associated with the development of late twentieth century hegemonic discourse in the United States. Condit (1994) proposes what she terms a "critique of concordance" approach that conceptualizes late twentieth century U.S. public discourse as evolutionary and accommodationist. Contrasting her approach with a Marxist "dominant ideology" perspective that seeks to debunk public discourse as a clever set of rhetorical ruses imposed by the dominant class, Condit argues that contemporary public discourse incorporates multiple contesting groups in an evolutionary process which provides an opportunity for improving the quality of life for a

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wide range of social groups. Such an accommodationist model of concord, she contends, recognizes that the accommodations of public discourse at any given time are "neither harmonious nor inevitably fair" since "all human concord is necessarily skewed" (Condit 1994, p. 210). The critic's role should be a politically motivated and judgmental one of "illuminat[ing] the accommodations made and missed toward the goal of facilitating the best possible concord" (Condit 1994, p. 210). Similar to Denzin's conception of a feminist communitarian perspective, Condit posits a culturally diverse, materially differentiated plurivocal democracy in which the role of the social critic is to facilitate dialogue. Condit's social critic draws upon the insights of constructionist thought and shares many of its sensibilities, but her goals and methods differ from scholars who work within the traditional social construction of social problems approach. Conventional constructionists engage in detached analyses, toward the intellectual goal of understanding claims-making processes related to "putative conditions" (Spector and Kitsuse 1977) or "condition-categories" (Ibarra and Kitsuse 1993). Such an approach, Ibarra and Kitsuse argue, provides no "theoretical rationale for employing or embedding ... judgments in our analytic renditions of the member's perspective" (1993, p. 23). In contrast, Condit pursues a value-driven goal of seeking to expose continuing blockages to open communication. Her analysis is not meant simply to uncover and describe, nor to evaluate the objective validity of condition-categories proposed by claims-makers, but rather, to advocate for the inclusion of currently marginalized perspectives in the development of more expansive concord in public discourse. Condit proposes a heuristic for systematically examining and evaluating public discourse in a manner consistent with her theoretical perspective. This methodology involves examining the various themes, agents and perspectives represented in public discourse, while being particularly rigorous in searching for marginalized voices and analyzing the conditions of their exclusion. The role of Condit' s social critic is strikingly similar to the "politically committed ethnographer" advocated by Denzin (1997, p. 274). Both avow a relational epistemology, jettisoning the value-free detached observer in favor of the socially engaged and self-reflective social critic. Both recognize "dialogical communication [as] the basis of the moral community" (Denzin 1997, p. 274) and believe the goal of social analysis should be to promote and continue dialogue rather than to simply describe an objective social reality. Discourse about commercial blood donation has rich potential for being approached from this perspective. It is characterized by a clear concordance advocated by pharmaceutical companies, legitimated by medical experts, and supported by public policy. But a deeper exploration also reveals the alternative discourses of marginalized product recipients (especially hemophiliacs) and plasma donors. In this paper I focus on donor-oriented rhetoric since it is the most industry-dominated. Unlike hemophiliacs, who are organized nationally and internationally and have recently won large settlements from plasma companies

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(Hutchcraft 1996; Kreiger 1997), paid plasma donors are virtually unorganized and omitted from public discourse. This exclusion, I will argue, exacts a social toll, both in the exploitation of poor plasma donors and in the endangering of the nation's blood supply. CONTEXT

AND

METHODS

Since most U.S. citizens are unfamiliar with U.S. plasma collection and blood product manufacturing, I begin with a brief overview of the industry. I then discuss the methods and data that inform my analysis. The U.S. blood collection industry is basically divided into two sectors. One consists of the public "nonprofit" sector including the Red Cross and other community and hospital blood banks that recruit nonremunerated blood donors. The other sector consists of private, for-profit blood collection and product manufacturing businesses owned primarily by transnational pharmaceutical companies (e.g., Baxter Travenol, Bayer, and Cutter/Miles Laboratories) and relying on paid "donors." For historical reasons too complex to elaborate here, the U.S. nonprofit and commercial blood sectors are also distinguished according to just what they "collect" from their donors. Unpaid donors for the nonprofit sector almost exclusively contribute whole blood, while paid "donors" in the commercial sector generally sell only their blood plasma. 2 The commercial blood plasma industry in the United States is also split between two somewhat different types of collection centers: "downtown" centers, which are located in ghetto or interstitial neighborhoods and tend to draw primarily underclass donors, and "college" centers, which are located near large universities and draw more college student donors (Espeland 1984). This paper is focused exclusively on commercial plasma companies and their paid underclass and student donors. Unlike "voluntary" whole blood collection, which depends on relatively infrequent donations from a large donor pool, the U.S. plasma industry relies on a smaller pool of between 1.5 and two million economically-strapped individuals, seventy percent of whom are repeat donors, and many of whom donate twice a week on some regular basis (Reilly 1985) for payments typically ranging from nine to twenty dollars per donation. While whole blood donors are limited to giving blood about once every two months, U.S. plasma donors can donate twice weekly, up to 50-60 liters annually depending on body weight by far the most of any country in the world. Due to these liberal plasma donation regulations, U.S. donors provide well over half of the plasma for the seven billion dollars worth of plasma products sold annually worldwide (American Blood Resources Association 1997)---leading a major industry advocate to refer to the United States as the "OPEC of the blood trade" (Drees quoted in Hagen 1982, p. 66). The commercial blood industry has had a rocky post-World War II public and legislative history, despite its continuous growth since the 1950s. Spurred in large

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part by British sociologist Richard Titmuss' scathing indictment (1971) of the United States paid donor system, U.S. public debate about blood collection peaked in the early 1970s, culminating in the development of a national blood policy under the Nixon administration. Since the formulation of the 1970s' national blood policy, which required, among other things, the explicit labeling of all whole blood collected from paid donors, the commercial blood industry has shifted to almost exclusive collection of blood plasma and the development and marketing of plasma products has expanded enormously (Hagen 1982; American Blood Resources Association 1997). Kimbrell has argued that the controversy over blood policy during the late 1960s and early 1970s, "became the greatest public debate about the ownership of human tissues since slavery" (1993, p. 11). After the early 1970s, the debate quieted for a decade and a half until the resurgence in the late 1980s of concern with transfusion product quality resulting from the AIDS epidemic (Epstein 1996; Institute of Medicine 1995; Shilts 1987). The industry has protected its fight to collect plasma from paid U.S. donors despite widespread (if uneven) international rejection (e.g., by the World Health Organization) of commercial donation, on the grounds that it exploits poor donors who have few economic alternatives to selling their blood and that the products manufactured from commercial plasma hold a higher risk for blood transmissible diseases. As we will see, industry advocates have promoted a sanitized, market-oriented model of their industry that has dominated public discourse. The voices of plasma donors regarding commercial blood collection challenge some of the most basic assumptions of the industry's model, such as the level of medical rigor in plasma centers and the quality of donor plasma. But while my early research on public discourse regarding commercial blood policy documented the roles of governmental monitors (particularly FDA officials), medical personnel, and hemophiliacs in the blood policy debate, I found a dearth of plasma donor participation. Drawing upon Condit's critique of concordance model, I have attempted to collect materials that enable me to juxtapose the industry's claims-making with donor discourse, hoping in the process to demonstrate the importance of incorporating plasma donors in public policy discussion. This paper is part of a larger mulfimethod study of the commercial blood industry in the United States which includes historical analysis of blood policy, industry donor recruitment, donor and recipient experiences, product marketing strategies, and industry changes spurred by the AIDS epidemic. Given my interest in enriching concordance in public discourse, I sought to collect materials relevant to the perspectives of as many of the relevant groups of social actors as possible. This required a data collection strategy somewhat different from conventional research. My strategy can perhaps best be described as a variant of "maximum variation sampling" (e.g., Patton 1990; Lincoln and Guba 1985). I rigorously searched for sources of data portraying the views of the range of industry participants. Since not all pertinent groups of actors had access to or participated in the same kinds of claims-making venues, the resulting "data set" consists of an

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eclectic collection of claims-making activities, including donor-oriented advertising, written donor portrayals of plasma donation, and donors' oral discussions in plasma centers. As Table 1 shows, the donor advertisements came from newspapers, telephone directories and plasma center hand-outs. Since university students represent a highly-prized donor group, plasma centers regularly publish display ads in student newspapers. Therefore, I collected student newspaper advertisements from two large universities, Ohio State University and Ohio University. City newspapers represent another source of donor advertising, although usually in small ads in the newspaper's classified section. Over the past several years I have amassed a convenience sample of 40 advertisements from such papers in eight large U.S. cities. I have also collected over 100 "yellow pages" ads from 51 cities across the United Statesi representing approximately 25 percent of the plasma centers in the country. The city newspaper and telephone directory ads came primarily from major urban areas and were focffsed on a broader donor base than the advertising in the student newspapers. In addition:to donor-oriented advertising, I collected industry publicity materials that speak to issues of donor recruitment and motivation, including promotional packets from the American Blood Resources Association (the industry's primary U.S. trade association) and several plasma and pharmaceutical company internet homepages. Since my goal was to systematically explore not only official plasma center rhetoric, but also the potentially competing discursive activities of the donors themselves, I searched out sources of donor discourse on selling plasma. In situ observations in plasma centers yielded extensive talk about "selling blood," espe-

Table 1.

Plasma Donor Rhetoric Data Sources

Data Sources 1. Donor-Oriented Advertisting Ohio State Univ. Lantern Ohio Univ. Post Plasma Center Hand-outs Telephone Directories from 51 Cities City Newspapers from 8 Major Cities

Time Frame

No. of Observations

1993-97 1993-97 1984-1997 1995

76 Display Ads 28 Display Ads 10 Plasma Centers 104 Plasma Center Ads

1994-97

40 Classified Ads

1993,1997 1997

2 (incl. ABRA Journal) 8 Homepage Listings

2. Publicity and Trade Materials ABRA Promotional Packet Plasma Co. Internet Listings

3. Donor Rhetoric Participant Observation 1984-1997 Student Donor Internet Listings 1997 Homeles Donor Internet Listing 1997

10 Plasma Centers 14 Articles 1 Article

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cially among homeless and other underclass donors, and to a degree among student donors as well. Over the past decade and a half I have logged approximately 60 hours in plasma center observations. I also pursued donor-written materials on the intemet, ultimately locating 14 student donor articles, and one biographical narrative by a purported former homeless donor. My goal has been to identify the range of discursive claims pertaining to plasma donation, paying close attention to the constituencies making the claims and the venues in which these discourses are expressed. In doing so I hope to articulate deficiencies in the current dominant discourse and to demonstrate the importance of bringing donors' marginalized voices into the blood policy debate.

DONOR-ORIENTED RHETORIC OF THE PLASMA

INDUSTRY

The donor-oriented discourse of the commercial plasma centers is consciously designed to legitimate and encourage plasma donation. It does so through the use of three basic rhetorical motifs which I refer to as "easy money," "the gift," and "medical service." In tandem, these rhetorical motifs encourage donors to sell their plasma and provide a sanitary, altruistic image of the plasma industry. The Rhetoric of "Easy M o n e y " The major persuasive appeal for recruiting paid plasma donors, not surprisingly, is money, as demonstrated in many newspaper and yellow pages advertisements for donors that carry banners stating "EARN $$$$$" and "EARN EXTRA CASH." "Cool Cash," as a classified ad from one major city newspaper (Figure 1) proclaims in bold capital letters, receives top billing as a draw for donors. Furthermore, plasma centers are quick to emphasize just how much money a donor can earn. A display ad for NABI BioMedical Center in the Ohio State University Lantern announces, "Do you know that [regular donation] can add up to $500 each quarter!" Similarly, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch ad emphasizes that regular donors can earn $120 per month, and an advertisement for a Serologicals plasma center in the Mobile Register announces that Rh Negative donors can earn $200 per month. Yet another ad (Figure 2), from the Ohio University Post, depicts a droopy-eyed student caricature and carries the message that even the cloud of illness can have a silver lining: "Now Mono Can Pay Off"--to the tune of $400 per month! Equally important as the amount of money that one can earn from selling plasma is the message that it is "easy money." A NABI Biomedical Center ad (Figure 3) carries this message directly, with a banner proclaiming, "Easy Money," under which a group of cheerleaders wave enthusiastically. A less direct way to convey this message is to minimize the amount of time that is required to

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======================================

EARN

COOL CASH For Your Donation

PLANT ST LAB... Where a good deed Is a good deal l (Donors w/6 rnos. absence Paid as new donor) Mon-Fri 6-4:30, Sat. 9-3 Doctors hrs 8-3:30 Mon-Fri Sat, 9-1 4266 Plant Road 256-7775 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Figure I earn the money, as demonstrated in advertisements that specify "just a few hours per week" or urge donors to sell plasma "on your way home from work." A Nashville yellow pages ad for Interstate Blood Bank simply states, "MAKE CASH ON YOUR NEXT 30 MINUTE BREAK!" Another way of conveying the "easy money" message is to publish special coupons that offer bonuses to new donors. Still other ads focus attention on just what the "easy money" can be used for, as in a Seattle yellow pages ad that suggests selling plasma as a way to "pay off bills," or in Ohio University and Ohio State newspaper ads that encourage students to sell plasma in order to have money for a spring break vacation. As pervasive as this "easy money" rhetoric is, however, it is seldom used in isolation. Few centers frame the commercial trade in human blood as an exclusively economic arrangement. In recognition of the multiple stigmas attached to the commercialization of the human body, plasma centers attempt to sanitize their business (both physically and morally) by incorporating two other rhetorical idioms: the rhetoric of "the gift" and the rhetoric of "medical service and technique."

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Now, having mono can pay off. &lake sSO right n o w ! If you have or have had mononucleosis in the last 2 months, you c o ~ receive $50 each time you donate p~asma - for a pos~b Die tofal of $.400 a monthl _ _ ~ t m m m ~ SER* TEC IlOIOGICALS

PHONE 592-6651 Source:

Ohio University Post (April 29,1999, p. 7)

Figure 2 The Rhetoric of the "Gift" The image of a gift is of something freely given with goodwill and sense of social connection and responsibility (Schwartz 1967). The gift metaphor has figured prominently in the development of blood banking systems (such as the American Red Cross) and organ donor programs through out the world. One interesting aspect of the plasma industry's rhetoric is its adoption of this metaphor despite the fact that it is conducted by for-profit companies and that donors are paid. As Wendy Espeland has observed, plasma industry advertising, "by mimicking the publicity campaigns of the Red Cross, attempts to encourage audiences to associate selling plasma with donating blood" (1984, p. 147). This moral sanitizing strategy is evident in the industry' s appropriation of the term "donating" to refer to commercial transactions, as well as the use of the cross symbol in some plasma center ads.

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Ohio State Univ. Lantern (June 4,1997, p. 5)

Figure 3 The rhetoric of the gift relationship is common in donor advertising. In the "Cool Cash" advertisement (Figure 1), for instance, the Plant Street Lab uses the gift metaphor twice--first in referring to the "donation" and second in stating that the Lab is a place "Where a good deed is a good deal." Numerous ads proclaim that selling plasma is "Helping Others While Helping Yourself." Many ads stress the urgency of the local need for plasma products, as in a Bayer Pharmaceuticals display in the Seattle yellow pages that announces, "There Are People In Your Area Who Desperately Need Quality Plasma Products." The word "community" frequently pops up in advertisements and many plasma centers use local identifiers in their names (e.g., Detroit Plasma Corporation, Community BioResources in New Orleans, Bio-Blood Components of Ohio, Kansas City Plasma Center, Mil-

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waukee Blood Plasma, Inc.) to tap into the image of the nonprofit community blood bank, even though they are subsidiaries of transnational pharmaceutical companies and the locally derived plasma is not used in the community. The rhetoric of the gift relationship is also emphasized in many of the posters that adorn plasma center walls. One poster in the Austin Plasma Center, for instance, showed a man whose blood was being extracted by a plasmapheresis machine. The caption underneath the picture read, "This man is a paid blood donor. He represents one-third of all the blood donors in America. We owe him a debt of gratitude." Some industry advocates have even tried to reframe the act of plasma donating as essentially nonmonetary, arguing that "donors" freely give their plasma, and are compensated "actually for their time" (Drees 1983, p. 182). This gift rhetoric sanitizes the blood trade in two ways. First, it provides a benevolent social identity for paid donors, accentuating altruistic motivation and distracting attention from more self-interested economic motivations of both donors and pharmaceutical companies. Second, it suggests that plasma center activity should be regarded as a "service" rather than as a commercial product-a redefinition that has profound implications for product liability, as I will elaborate below. The Rhetoric of "Medical Service and Technology" Plasma company use of medical service and technology rhetoric has been noted by several scholars (Anderson and Snow 1995; Espeland 1984; Kretzmann 1992). The names of plasma centers frequently emphasize biomedical technology, as illustrated in cases like NABI BioMedicals; Alpha Therapeutics; Serologicals, Inc.; and Premier BioResources. Advertisements often highlight medical technology as well, as demonstrated in yellow pages ads that focus on such technologies as antibody testing and viral marking. PBI Plasma Center in Baton Rouge showcases medical service prominently in its newspaper ads by identifying a variety of ill people for whom plasma products are used, including hemophiliacs, leukemia patients, and bum victims, among others. This medical rhetoric extends beyond advertising, and is evident in the centers themselves. In many (especially college) centers there is a conspicuous effort to maintain an antiseptic "medical" appearance. Not only phlebotomists and technicians, but often the entire staff wear white medical smocks. In some cases an effort is made to make the center look like a doctor' s office or hospital. Espeland (1984), for instance, reports the case of a "college" plasma center that prominently displayed medical journals in its reading rack. Wall posters, in addition to promoting the gift image of selling plasma, frequently list plasma products and medical factoids about their use. Centers run by one pharmaceutical company have display cases which exhibit company products and identify their potential recipients. Some plasma centers even go so far as to print brochures or wall posters that list the medical benefits of"being a frequent donor," such as "getting your

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vital signs checked" (e.g., temperature and blood pressure) more regularly than other people and the opportunity to get "free vaccinations" (as part of programs for manufacturing vaccines). Medical rhetoric is used to sanitize the commercial blood trade physically and morally. The antiseptic atmosphere that is prevalent in "college centers," for instance, suggests that the staff are highly trained medical professionals, although actually staff qualifications vary widely. The medical trappings also convey a sense of service consistent with the gift metaphor. The economic aspect of the activity is downplayed, while posters, product display cases, and even donor advertisements promote a vision of medical service that all participants ostensibly share. As the preceding discussion demonstrates, three rhetorical motifs dominate the official and public discourse of commercial plasma centers vis-a-vis their "source plasma donors." The "easy money" rhetoric is the most pervasive rhetorical theme in advertisements, but the very fact that plasma centers so consistently incorporate the secondary gift and medical service framings indicates how important they consider them to be in reducing the industry's stigma. Indeed, these subordinate rhetorical motifs--in donor-oriented discourse--are the primary rhetorics that plasma centers use in describing their business to broader public and governmental (e.g., the press, legislative and monitoring agency) audiences, where concerns for product quality are tantamount. What is perhaps most striking about the industry's donor-oriented rhetoric is that there is never mention of any potential conflict between the "gift" and "medical service" motifs, on the one hand, and the emphasis on donor profit on the other, Plasma industry donor advertising has the advantage of existing in media space that is almost completely free of conflicting rhetoric. As one moves into venues where other groups or constituencies are present as discursive actors, however, the opportunity for alternative representations looms large. I turn next to college student texts describing plasma donation, followed by a discussion of the discourse of underclass donors and plasma center staff in their interactions at the plasma centers. AMBIVALENT

STUDENT

DONOR

RHETORIC

Consistent with plasma center rhetoric, student donor accounts tend to cast donating plasma as "easy money," readily available for little investment of time and effort, as captured in the following quote from a Califomia State University-Long Beach online student editorial: Starving students, starve no longer. If you have.., an empty stomach and neither time nor patience for a part-timejob, we suggestyou considerputting yourbodily fluids on the market. If you are 18 or over, Miles Inc. PlasmaCenter between Magnoliaand Chestnut on Anaheim in LongBeach will buy yourblood... For 45 minutesto an hours worthof "work"they're will-

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ing to pay $15 for the first visit, $18 for the secondand $20 for the third (Forty-NinerEditorial Staff 1997). This quote demonstrates how typical student texts focus on the amount of money and the ease of collecting it. Another story, by a Kansas State University student, emphasizes just how much can be earned, stating, "At North American Biomedical Inc. individuals can earn from $300 to $600 a month if they donate plasma on a regular basis" (Fassnacht 1997). And a University of New Mexico article quotes a student on the ease with which the money can be acquired: "That's the beauty of it, man. It takes no work by me and they pay cash" (Carpitella 1997). A few student narratives rely exclusively on interviews with plasma center staff and, not surprisingly, duplicate plasma center rhetoric in combining "easy money" and "gift" motifs. So, for instance, in an article titled "Donating Earns Students Cash," a student journalist from Northern Arizona University begins, "Saving someone's life and earning cash. Donating plasma does both" (Doll 1997). The article, which is based solely on an interview with a Flagstaff plasma center director, goes on to discuss screening and medical safety processes and concludes by returning to the gift rhetoric: "Donating plasma gives people the opportunity to do something for others that they would not ordinarily have" (Doll 1997). By far the majority of student articles I found, however, were either first person narratives or interviews with student donors. While these texts also emphasized "easy money," they were far more ambivalent, tending to depict student donors' and plasma companies' motivations and practices as macabre and morally problematic. Student texts on selling plasma frequently revolve around a ne'er-do-well protagonist, the destitute lazy student in search of quick cash. So, for instance, an article titled "Quick College Cash" depicts student life: "Once you enter college you become penniless, ruthless, and have a one-track mind: money, money, money. You need it in cash and you need it right now" (,'Quick College Cash" 1997). In another article an Arizona State University student writes, "Contrary to popular belief, desperation is actually the mother of invention" (Miller 1994). The author then chronicles a variety of morally suspect financial ventures, such as selling one's own--and roommates'--clothing to a used clothing store and stealing from a friend's money jar, in addition to selling plasma. Unlike plasma company ads and brochures, student texts are rich with humor and irony in their depictions of donors, sometimes referred to as "blood whores," who frequent "the local plasma center, almost always conveniently located in the vicinity of the area' s hottest nightspots, so the fiat boys can drop off their cells in exchange for some cash to blow on 'Dollar Beer Night' next door" ("Quick College Cash" 1997). These articles lampoon student donors as non-stop partiers, video arcade addicts, and substance abusers in search of money to satisfy their hedonistic needs. Plasma centers come off looking no better in student accounts, which are quick to point out the self-serving nature of plasma center rhetoric. One

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article describes the pheresing area (where the actual donations occur) as, "a cheery place, with posters on the wall proclaiming me a hero for helping all sorts of hemophiliac kids and burn victims with my plasma, a fluid I almost never use anyway" (Patterson 1996). The same article satirizes plasma centers' ostensible concerns with health issues by describing a staff person who "proceeded to hand me 123 different waivers that shielded NABI from responsibility in the event of accidental death, deformity, bruises and overextraction of bodily fluids resulting in mummification" (Patterson 1996). Many texts include one or more student horror stories about bad experiences while selling plasma. Typically the articles start on a positive note, then take a frightening "needles and blood" turn, as in a story from the University of Oklahoma titled, "Plasma Donation: Lazy Man's Dream or Needle-Ridden Nightmare?" The story begins, "I walked in the brightly lit facility with joy in my soul and a . . . faith in America's capitalist system. What I left with, though, is a differ-

Source:

Patterson (1996)

Figure 4. Plasma Donation: Lazy Man's D r e a m or Needle Ridden Nightmare?

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ent story" (Patterson 1996). The text goes on to describe a painful venipuncture with a "FIVE-INCH NEEDLE!" and "a scar on my left arm the size of Idaho." Similarly, another student recounts, "One time they missed my vein. They put it [a needle] in and left me there, and about 20 minutes later I realized nothing was happening . . . . the needle had gone completely through my vein" (Miller 1994). Still another student, from Kansas State University, describes what she calls a °'devastating experience": "When they were infusing the blood back into my arm, the needle had slipped, and the blood did not go back into my vein but went into my arm instead" (Fassnacht 1997). Consistent with the horror story motif, student graphics in plasma articles portray strikingly different images of plasma donors than do the plasma centers. In contrast to the images like that Of the robust fun-loving characters in Figures 3, for instance, the illustration accompanying the aforementioned University of Oklahoma article (Figure 4) shows a "scrawny bald unshaven character sweating in fear of the needle in his ann, with a skull looming ominously in the background, Despite such horror stories, however, all except one of the articles I found stop short of serious critique of the plasma centers, pulling their punches with a "but, hey" defense, acknowledging that, whatever their problems, plasma centers provide students with a much-needed opportunity to supplement their incomes. As the Cal State--Long Beach newspaper editors put it, "It may sound sick, it may sound mercenary, but hey, it' s cash" (Forty-Niner Editorial Staff). The University of Oklahoma student voiced similar sentiments: "It may be painful, scary and a little weird, but hey, you get free money, a free movie and free grape Kool-Aid, and that's what America is all about. Isn't it?" (Patterson 1996).

SUBTERRANEAN BLOOD BANK BLUES: UNDERCLASS D O N O R RHETORIC Student donors represent a significant segment of U.S. plasma donors (Anderson, Newell, and Kilcoyne 1999; Landfield 1986), but the majority of people who sell plasma nationwide are impoverished underclass donors. Indeed, as noted previously, Espeland (1984) has distinguished between two types of plasma centers: "college centers," that draw primarily on student donors, and "downtown centers" which are typically in marginal or ghetto areas and that purchase the bulk of their plasma from the poor, unemployed, and homeless. Written texts about plasma donation by underclass donors are rare in comparison to college student texts, undoubtedly due in large part to their limited opportunities to appropriate written discourse and to access the media. I located only one internet story referring to plasma donation by an nnderclass donor, written by a purportedly former homeless man who wrote of selling plasma in New Orleans before hitchhiking north at Christmas to visit a girlfriend's family. The story (Watson 1997) focuses primarily on their cross-country trip, but the paragraphs on the plasma center provide a

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black humor portrait of a group of destitute alcoholics and drug addicts dependent on getting bled by the "steel dick" (pheresing needle) to support their habits. While underclass donors do not write much (at least in published venues) about their experiences donating plasma, they do engage in rich donation-related discussions during the long hours they spend at the plasma centers. For this reason my examination of underclass donor discourse focuses primarily on their oral rhetoric. Indeed, in my observations at plasma centers I have found underclass donors spend far more time talking about their plasma experiences than do student donors. The explanation for this has to do, I believe, with the considerably different donation experiences of the two groups. Ethnographic studies of plasma centers (e.g., Anderson and Snow 1995; Espeland 1984; Kretzmann 1992; Wiegand 1989) have consistently observed that a substantial portion of donors struggle with feelings of stigmatization associated with selling plasma. Students, however, tend to feel less oppressively stigmatized than do underclass donors. One reason for this is that "college centers" have a more upbeat ambience than "downtown centers." They are usually brighter, cleaner, and they exhibit more gift and medical service imagery than do "downtown centers." Also, student donors typically are in a better position to manage the stigma associated with selling plasma than are underclass--especially homeless donors. But most significantly, as Kretzmann has observed, plasma center staff treat underclass donors more derisively than they do students. The claims-making activities of underclass donors are closely tied to the rhetoric and controlling behaviors of plasma center staff. I therefore describe plasma center staff interactions with underclass donors, then turn to those donors' claims-making activities. "Downtown" plasma centers represent a site of conflict where the industry's sanitizing rhetoric breaks down as plasma center staff come face-to-face with flesh-and-blood minority and underclass donors. Industry rhetoric notwithstanding, plasma center staff frequently suspect donors of trying to hide health problems and life-style risks associated with "bad blood" in order not to be rejected. The underclass "donor's provisional identity as 'bad blood' pervade[s] the organizational processes of evaluation, screening, and control" (Kretzmann 1992, p. 419). Staff are often distrustful and vigilant, keeping their eyes on the activities in the lobbies where donors wait to be called for donation. One widespread expression of distrust toward donors is the plasma center practice (particularly common in "downtown" centers) of marking donors' fingernails with phosphorescent "black light" ink (visible only under an ultraviolet light) to identify them as donors and to prevent them from donating at other centers at the same time. Each center has one or more "black lights" to detect their own and other companies' donors. Downtown centers also prominently post "rules" that warn donors against eating, drinking, and sleeping while waiting to donate and may even proscribe such benign activities as chewing gum and "closing your eyes." Underlying the entire donation process is the dependency and powerlessness of donors whom

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center staff view suspiciously and want to keep in their place, as expressed in a poster on the check-in counter at one plasma center that stated "Giving Plasma is a Privilege Not a Right." Donors have a difficult time carving out a respectable social position at plasma centers. Kretzmann summarizes their situation: "Regular donors must endure hours of boredom, self-degradation, physical discomfort, and the potential hazards in plasmapheresis" (1992, p. 432). They do so in an environment that provides few resources for warding off stigmatization and avowing more positive personal identities. Not surprisingly, Kretzmann notes, identity work is one of the more common forms of conversation among underclass donors. The strategies of personal identity construction (Snow and Anderson 1987) in relation to plasma centers vary according to the length of time that underclass donors have been selling plasma. New donors occasionally distance themselves from the "plasma donor" role by asserting that they do not really need the money. Alternatively, a few of those who have been donating for a longer period of time seek to make their experience meaningful through embracing the plasma donor role as a "job." But most of the longterm homeless and other underclass donors seem too cynical to pursue this strategy. They are too aware of how their personal circumstances and lifestyles contradict many of the plasma center directives. Rather than viewing plasma donation as an "honest job," many underclass donors talk of it as a game of wits in which they are pitted against the plasma center staff. Such stories often focus on the tricks they use to get the staff to let them donate even though they might not meet the strict criteria for donation--such as putting rocks in their pockets in order to meet the weight requirements. Some talk of faking the requirement for personal identification, while others recount how they have managed to hide heavy drinking and illness, as illustrated by the following conversation that I overheard between two disheveled young men in a Columbus, Ohio plasma center. "Yeah, they ask me, I tell them, 'I don't touch alcohol.'" "Shit, that's what I'm sayin', 'I don't touch it either.' Except every time I get a chance. I never drink--unless someone offers it to me." "Yeah, same here, except when someone offers me some or I got money to buy it. But I come in hung over and they ask me about it, I just tell 'era, 'Man, I had to work the night shift last night and I'm just worn out's all.' I been ready to pass out I feel so bad, but they'll believe anything I tell them. I just know how to say it so they believe me." Underclass donors also used horror stories of past plasma donations (similar to those discussed by student donors) to garner a degree of respect from their peers. It was not uncommon to see several homeless individuals sitting in the parking lot or in the back of the lobby at one of the plasma centers, taking turns describing their goriest plasma center experiences. Such stories, no doubt often exaggerated, highlight the drama and agon of selling plasma, as illustrated in the following tale,

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told to half a dozen listeners at an Austin plasma center by a twenty-two year old man who had been selling plasma regularly for several years. I'll never forget the time in Denver when I got a new person sticking me who didn't know what the hell she was doing. I mean, she stuck my ann every which way from Sunday and couldn't hit a damn vein. So I'm sitting there with blood drippin' down my arm and about twenty holes stuck in me and she tells me that she doesn't think I'm gonna be able to give 'cause my veins aren't good enough. So I told her, 'No way I'm goin' through this and not get some money. Give me that needle and I guarantee you I'll find a vein.' So I ended up sticking myself--and got a vein the very first time. If I'd have let her keep going I'd have been a damn pin-cushion. Although such stories frequently portray the homeless as desperate and powerless, the tellers also receive respect and acclaim from their audiences for their experiences. In their discursive activities, then, homeless and other poor plasma donors turn to subterranean forms of stigma management similar to the "secondary adjustments" noted by Goftman(1961) in total institutions and "out-group alignments" (Goffman 1963) with other poor donors who may serve as an understanding reference group and help mitigate stigmatization. In so doing, of course, they develop a set of claims about plasma donation that stand in stark contrast to the industry's rhetoric, as well as an ambivalent and adversarial relationship to plasma center staff and operating procedures. But the antagonism of underclass donors in the plasma centers is muted by the (at least superficial) obedience to the rules that is demanded of them if they are to maintain "the privilege to donate." Given the limited economic opportunities available to them (Snow, Anderson, Quist, and Cress 1996; Wiegand 1989), few homeless donors challenge the staff in any direct way. Rather, they acquiesce in their own exploitation, with a grim acceptance. As "Rhymin' Mike," a homeless street poet who stayed periodically in Austin, wrote in his poem "Blood Bank Blues," "Guess you have to give them what they want, 'cuz money doesn't grow on trees."

DISCUSSION In the preceding pages I have described three alternative discursive perspectives regarding the nature of commercial plasma donation in the United States. The donor-oriented rhetoric of plasma companies emphasizes the ease with which donors can make money, the altruism of donating plasma, and the medical technology and service on which plasma donation are based. This industry rhetoric glosses potential conflicts among these three discursive motifs. In contrast, student discourse about plasma donation tends to be critical and ironic, focusing on the discrepancies between students' (and pharmaceutical companies) financial motivations and the notion of altruism promoted in plasma center ads and posters. Student texts also emphasize the more macabre aspects of plasmapheresis tech-

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nology--needles slipping through veins, pheresis machine malfunctions, passing out on the street after donating--rather than the medical uses for the plasma they donate. The third discourse, that of underclass donors, provides yet a different perspective. While underclass donors are quite skeptical of plasma centers in many ways, they do not focus on discrepancies in plasma center rhetoric in the way student texts do. Rather, the discursive practices of underclass donors are devoted primarily to discussing the struggles they engage in to maintain the privilege of selling plasma and to identity-work in which they endeavor to carve out a respectable space for themselves in a highly stigmatized and controlling environment. While a massive sociological literature has analyzed the claims-making struggles for social problems definition, far less work has attended to the social ecological accommodation and patterning of alternative discursive practices. Drawing on the methodological heuristic proposed by Condit, I have identified two marginalized rhetorical perspectives and juxtaposed them to the currently hegemonic public discourse regarding paid plasma donation. Yet questions remain as to how these discordant discourses can exist among social actors whose activities are so closely aligned without erupting into contentious "social problems" battles. In this particular case the noncontentious alignment of groups with divergent discursive perspectives is facilitated by four primary factors: the distinctive venues in which the various discourses are expressed, the ambivalence of donor discourse, the perceived medical legitimacy of pharmaceutical companies, and the legal protection of "donor confidentiality." I briefly address each of these factors in turn. As this paper has demonstrated, there is little overlap among the alternative donor-oriented discourses. Not only are these discourses the products of social groups with divergent interests in and experiences with plasma donation, but they occupy distinctly different social ecological spaces. Plasma industry rhetoric is far and away the most publicly visible, with advertising that occupies a significant space in college newspapers and telephone yellow pages directories, as well as showing up less prominently in city newspapers, on the internet, and even recently on highway billboards. Neither student nor (especially) underclass donors have such regular access to mainstream media outlets for their views. Students occasionally voice their views in college newspapers and on the internet, but seldom in close proximity to plasma center advertising. So, for instance, I have found no hypertext links between student and industry discussions of plasma donation on the internet. Underclass and homeless donor discourse is even more ecologically isolated from public view and distanced from industry rhetoric. It exists almost exclusively in fleeting subterranean discussions among underclass donors at the plasma centers, where they cautiously avoid revealing their views to plasma center staff. Such discursive segregation frees each perspective from potential challenge by the others. A second reason that student and underclass donor rhetorics have not produced a significant challenge to industry discourse is that both groups present, at most,

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ambivalent critiques. Neither discourse makes prima facie claims that the industry should be dismantled or subjected to radical reform. Indeed, these donors are concemed to retain the economic option that plasma centers provide them. Certainly, since the discontinuance of donor recruitment in U.S. prisons and mental institutions in the early 1980s (Institute of Medicine 1995), U.S. plasma donors have not faced the coercion experienced by peasant and prison donors that continue in some third world countries (Hagen 1982; Kimbrell 1993), nor have they suffered from the tragic health risks, such as HIV infection from reused medical supplies, reported in Mexico and India (Avila et al. 1989; Banerjee et al. 1989). Indeed, most conflicts that I have witnessed in plasma centers have concerned homeless donors' demands to be allowed to sell plasma in the face of plasma center rejection. Furthermore, when engaged in the act of plasma donation, both donors and staff exhibit what Goffman refers to as "dramaturgical circumspection" (1959, p. 218), exercising prudence to not call into question the legitimacy of their mutual performance. As a result of discursive segregation and dramaturgical circumspection, conscious conflict seldom emerges. Awareness of these processes casts a new light on Ibarra and Kitsuse's call for attention to " the project of theorizing each context's particular engagement with claims-making activities" (1993, p. 50), suggesting that such analyses need to be sensitive to the ways in which contexts may produce accommodative claims-making silences as well as overt claims-making. Yet a third reason for the unchallenged dominance of plasma company rhetoric has to do with the pervasive cultural legitimacy accorded medical discourse. As Ibarra and Kitsuse have argued, in U.S. culture, "claims are most idiomatic, i.e., suasive, when it is evident that medical judgment has taken precedence over moral judgment since the understanding of the body that is grounded in scientific knowledge is presumed to be both impartial and more factual, hence demonstrably superior to views generated by moral beliefs" (1993, p. 39). Similarly, in her study of in vitro fertilization discourse, Condit has observed that medically "technologized" rhetoric tends to receive high public legitimacy, but at the cost of "replacing social values with technical protocol" (Condit 1994, p. 220). Neither students nor underclass donors have the credentials to appropriate medical discourse, even though their knowledge and experiences may be very germane to medical issues. Pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, have medical experts and extensive proprietary data on plasma donors to undergird their claims to medical legitimacy. When the topic becomes technologized, it tends to minimize the importance of social decisions on such issues as the effectiveness of oral screening, how donors should be treated in plasma centers and what should constitute appropriate remuneration--issues on which plasma donors would have more claim to legitimacy. A final issue playing into the marginalization of donor discourse is the legal protection of "donor confidentiality." U.S. plasma collection companies have regularly sought protection from donor discovery under state "blood shield" statutes

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that were originally legislated to protect non-profit blood collection agencies from liability for inherently risky, but vitally important medical "services." A central component of most blood shield statutes is the provision of confidentiality of donor records. Under such statutes, courts have barred discovery on a number of grounds, including that it "threatens the nation's blood supply [and] violates the physician-patient privilege" (Collela 1995, p. 5). During the wave of HIV-related liability suits during the 1980s and 1990s, courts have been very hesitant to challenge these statutes' protection of donor identity, although several judges have found in favor of somewhat more liberal rights of discovery. Even in those cases, however, the courts have tended to mandate anonymous depositions or responses to written questions (Jenner 1989; Woods and Thornton 1990). While ostensibly protecting donors (and hence the blood supply), donor confidentiality statutes indirectly serve to further marginalize donors and their discursive positions from public discourse. Indeed, given the tremendous litigation effort and expense involved in donor discovery, so few donors have been interviewed that they been effectively erased as discursive actors in the legal process. The exclusion of contact between watchdog institutions, such as the courts and the Food and Drug Administration, and plasma donors promotes the hegemony of plasma industry discourse and protects the industry from potential donor-grounded critiques of plasma center practices. Underlying and intertwining with each of the factors cited here are the extensive financial resources of the transnational pharmaceutical industry. The U.S. plasma industry itself grosses in excess of four billion dollars annually (American Blood Resources Association 1997), which is but a small fraction of the income of its parent companies. These financial resources afford the opportunity for extensive lobbying with federal regulatory agencies, expert legal support in regulatory and liability cases, and public relations campaigns, including recent plans by the American Blood Resources Association for "development of a series of communications programs to get our message out to the most critical audiences first, followed quickly by a grassroots communication program to the broader public and local audiences" (Reilly 1997, p. 99). Each of the factors discussed here serves to restrict dialogue between the industry and its donors. In tandem they erect a nearly impenetrable barrier between conflicting discursive positions. A complete "critique of concord" analysis would extend beyond donor-oriented rhetoric examined here, to explore the full range of relevant social actors and their places in the prevailing social policy and public discourse. In the case of the debate over the blood supply, for instance, hemophiliacs have had a significant voice, both in the courts (e.g., Hutchcraft 1996) and in recent public discussions (e.g., Institute of Medicine 1995). A more complete ecological mapping of discourse about the U.S. plasma industry would include a detailed analysis of the individual and collective discursive positions of hemophiliacs and the venues in which their voices have been heard. An analysis of this aspect of industry discourse would be more amenable to the prevalent sociologi-

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cal focus on highly visible public struggles for social problem definition and ownership. In this paper I have focused instead on a heuristic for going beyond the most visible conflicts to explore nascent, subterranean conflicts revealed in all-but-invisible marginalized discourse. I conclude with a consideration of the critical potential of such an approach and the ethical implications of the analysis presented in this paper. CONCLUSION Drawing on the work of Celeste Condit, I argued earlier that the critical constructionist's role should be a politically motivated and judgmental one of "illuminat[ing] the accommodations made and missed" in public discourse (Condit 1994 p. 210). I have endeavored to demonstrate one way of achieving this goal through an ecological mapping of the discourse of social actors occupying different structural positions vis-a-vis the U.S. plasma industry. Such an approach is consistent with standpoint theorists' assertions that social structural positions will create conditions for learning from experience that will be epistemologically privileged in producing certain sorts of understandings and discourse (e.g., Smith 1990). The heuristic demonstrated here is meant to bring the interpellated experience of variously situated social actors into dialogic juxtaposition. Just as Craig Calhoun has argued of standpoint epistemologies grounded in experience, so the marginalized discursive positions examined here reveal a "tension left unresolved between the immediacy and critical potential of experiences that are discordant with hegemonic cultures" (Calhoun 1995, p. 172). An advantage of exploring marginalized discourses is that they often reveal issues and contradictions that are glossed by culturally dominant perspectives. So, for instance, the discursive practices of student and underclass donors reveal tensions between economic and altruistic motivations far more directly and richly than does industry rhetoric, which is consciously designed to skirt such moral quandaries. In contrast to the value neutral analysis espoused by constructionists such as Ibarra and Kitsuse (1993), the critical constructionist must ultimately address evaluative concerns, including the play of power in hegemonic discourse (as explored above) and, as Condit emphasizes (1994, p. 225), the consequences of the omission of alternative voices. I conclude, therefore, with a brief discussion of the consequences of the omission of donor discourse from the most high profile U.S. blood policy analysis in the last quarter century, the report of the Institute of Medicine's Committee to Study HIV Transmission Through Blood and Blood Products. In 1993, in response to political pressure from the hemophiliac community, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, requested that the Institute of Medicine establish a committee to study the tragic events that led to HIV-contamination of portions of the U.S. blood supply in the early 1980s. The

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fourteen member committee, which was composed of medical experts, including two social scientists, undertook an extensive fact-finding mission to uncover, as much as possible, the objective facts of the tragedy. Their study represents the most detailed and rigorous examination of U.S. blood policy since the studies and reforms of the early 1970s. The committee's report, based on extensive interviews and analysis of documents, assumes that one objective narrative cml capture the truth and serve as the basis for a more rational approach that will reduce the chances of similar future debacles. The published report, HIV and the Blood Supply: An Analysis of Crisis Decisionmaking (Institute of Medicine 1995), has considerable critical merit. The methods of data collection tap a wide range of relevant actors in the blood supply during the early 1980s. The report clarifies the discussions and policy-making surrounding the HIV debate during that period and it acknowledges "inadequate leadership and inadequate institutional decisionmaking processes" (1995, p. 209) in governmental, commercial and nonprofit organizations. While seeking to avoid placing direct blame, the report recognizes the public health risks of "regulatory capture" in the blood industry and corporate secrecy in competitive health-related contexts. But the committee failed to reach its full critical potential because it made no systematic effort to include relevant marginalized perspectives in its data. While organized hemophiliacs, who had spurred the study, were asked to participate, the committee failed to interview any nonprofit or commercial blood donors. This is a conspicuous omission in the chapter on donor screening and deferral, which is based exclusively on information from medical researchers, government officials and blood industry advocates. Not surprisingly, given the lack of donors' perspectives, the chapter focuses on official donor screening guidelines, but never asks such questions as to what degree such guidelines may have been (and may continue to be) circumvented by plasma center staff and their donors. The dearth of donors' perspectives in the Institute of Medicine report is particularly disappointing given the committee's own findings about the factors responsible for poor policy and decision making in the early 1980s. One of the report's strongest criticisms is leveled at the FDA for the restricted range of perspectives represented on its Blood Policy Advisory Committee. "[G]iven how much authority FDA in effect has ceded to this advisory group," the report states, " it did not sufficiently represent all potentially affected groups. In hindsight, such representation would have assured that all pertinent points of view would be considered during B PAC deliberations" (Institute of Medicine 1995, p. 126). Yet the committee itself falls victim to the same problem, relying on the discourse of organized groups and failing to aggressively identify and search out alternative voices. Furthermore, the report's recommendations for future blood policy call for the development of a Blood Safety Council which could serve as an "expert panel on best practices" (Institute of Medicine1995, p. 221) with expanded representation, including "representatives of the general public (who may in the future require

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blood transfusions) and individuals who currently require frequent use of blood products, such as hemophilia patients" (1995, p. 221). Given the committee's interest in expanding representation, it is puzzling that the report makes no reference to the role of blood and plasma donors as active social agents in the blood and blood products industry. Perhaps the primary reason for this lack of interest in donors is revealed in one of the committee's recommendation that the best way to avoid the risks of undue industry influence "is to choose some panelists who are not expert in the subject of the panel's assignment but have a reputation for expertise in evaluating evidence, sound clinical judgment, and impartiality" (1995, p. 234). This recommendation for objective, neutral observers who are good at evaluating "the facts" stands in contrast to the dialogic standpoint approach advanced in this paper. Such distanced observers may indeed have a salutary effect on social policy discourse, but it is epistemologically near-sighted to bring them into the discussion while excluding groups that have direct, structurally-situated, although "partial" knowledge of the plasma industry. While most plasma donors do not have the kinds of expertise recommended by the committee, they have another kind of knowledge that is equally, if not more, crucial to public debate and social policy. The approach advocated in this paper could have served the IOM committee well, prodding it to investigate significant, but largely invisible perspectives and experiences in the blood and blood products industry. The committee's conclusions and policy recommendations would have been richer, although perhaps more critical of the plasma industry. Bringing donors--especially underclass donors--into the dialogue would at the very least have raised questions about the health and social implications (for donors as well as product recipients) of a blood collection system that draws almost exclusively upon economically precarious individuals. Since well over half of the blood plasma collected worldwide by transnafional pharmaceutical companies is derived from U.S. donors, these health implications are truly global in scope. The social construction of social problems is a multifaceted activity in which various groups of actors are situated in different structural and discursive positions in relation to potentially conflictual arenas of social life. Social constructionists and social movement theorists have made wide-ranging contributions to our understanding of the dynamic emergence of publicly visible social problems. And yet, as such analysts well recognize, many potential problems do not emerge into public visibility. Similarly, many potential groups of social problems "claimants" are excluded, sometimes with their own complicity, from public dialogue. As Avery Gordon has observed, "Visibility... is a complicated phenomenon entirely bound up with the available and dominant technologies of representation and the social and 'personal' forms invisibility takes" (1993, p. 312). In this paper I have attempted to demonstrate an approach that can add a critical dimension to the social constructionist agenda. The role of the critical constructionist should not simply be to champion the claims of one group over those of another, but rather

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to a d v o c a t e for d i a l o g u e t h r o u g h e x p a n d i n g t h e r a n g e o f social actors w h o s e pers p e c t i v e s are b r o u g h t to light. T o a d o p t s u c h a n a p p r o a c h is to s h e d the veil o f v a l u e - n e u t r a l a n a l y s i s a n d a c k n o w l e d g e a n e t h i c a l i m p e r a t i v e to p r o m o t e " d i a l o g ical c o m m u n i c a t i o n [as] the b a s i s o f the m o r a l c o m m u n i t y " ( D e n z i n 1997, p. 274). It is m y h o p e t h a t o t h e r c o n s t r u c t i o n i s t s w h o s e e k a critical p u r c h a s e for t h e i r w o r k will f i n d t h e a p p r o a c h I h a v e o u t l i n e d a b o v e u s e f u l for t h e i r r e s e a r c h as well.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to acknowledge the research assistance of Christina Moser and Shannon Hunt and the financial support of the Ohio University Honors Tutorial College. This paper has benefited from insightful readings and suggestions from Mary Beth Krouse and anonymous reviewers.

NOTES 1. The term "donor" is obviously euphemistic when applied to individuals who sell plasma to commercial firms. Nonetheless, I use it throughout this paper since it is the term most commonly used within the industry and the existing literature. 2. The distinction between the public nonprofit and private for-profit sectors of the blood industry, while a basic industry distinction, is not completely accurate on two counts. First, even ostensibly "non-remunerated" donors frequently receive a variety of incentives for donation (Titmuss 1971; Hagen 1982). Second, the two sectors of the industry have developed increasingly extensive connections, as the Red Cross and many other blood banks have begun to sell blood plasma to pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical companies in turn have become suppliers of various products to non-profit blood banks. 3. Since I was unable to obtain permission to reprint the original advertisement, this figure represents a slightly modified version of the original ad with identifying information deleted.

REFERENCES American Blood Resources Association. 1997. ABRA Fact Sheet. Bethesda, MD: American Blood Resources Association. Anderson, L., C. Newell, and J. Kilcoyne. 1999. "Selling Blood: A Case Study of Student Plasma Donors." Sociological Spectrum 19: 137-162. Anderson, L., and D. A. Snow. 1995. "The Tainted Relationship: The Commercial Blood Plasma Industry and the Homeless in the United States." Perspectives in Social Problems 7: 181-202. Avila, C., H. C. Stetler, J. Sepulveda, E. Dickinson, K. G. Castro, J. W. Ward, G. Romero, and J. L. Valdespino. 1989. "The Epidemiology of HIV Transmission among Paid Plasma Donors, Mexico City, Mexico." AIDS 3:631-633. Banerjee K., J. Rodrigues, Z. Israel, S. Kulkarni, and M. Thakar. 1989. "Outbreak ofHIV Seropositivity among Commercial Plasma Donors in Pune, India." Lancet 337: 166. Calhoun, C. 1995. Critical Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Carpitella, J. 1997. "Plasma Junkies." Available http://w3.gti.net/grayarea/plasma.html.

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Collela, U. 1995. "HIV-Related Information and the Tension Between Confidentiality and LiberalDiscovery." Journal of Legal Medicine 33: 1-64. Condit, C. 1994. "Hegemony in a Mass-mediated Society: Concordance about Reproductive Technologies." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11 (3): 205-230. Denzin, N. K. 1997. Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Doll, J. N. 1997. "Donating Earns Students Cash." Available at http://www.thejack.nau.edu/O11796/ life6.html. Drees, T. 1983. Blood Plasma: The Promise and the Politics. New York: Ashley Books. York: The Free Press. Durkheim, E. 1915. The Elementary Forms of The Religious Life, translated by Joseph Ward Swain. New York: The Free Press. Epstein, S. 1996. Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. Espeland, W. N. 1984. "Blood and Money: Exploiting the Embodied Self." Pp. 131-55 in The Existential Self in Society, edited by J. Kotarba and A. Fontana. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fassnacht, C. 1997. "Donating Plasma Adds to Pocketbooks Safely." Available at http:// www.spub.ksu.edu/issues/v100/su/n 162/city-plasma-fassnacht.html Forty-Niner Editorial Staff. 1997. "Body Parts Worth Bucks." Forty-Niner Online Editorial. Available http://ra.acs.csulb.edu/~d49er//Issue3/3opstr re.html Frazer, J. G. 1935. The Golden Bough. New York: MacMillan. G0ffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. . 1961. Asylums. Garden City, New York: Anchor. . 1959. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, New York: Anchor. Gusfield, J. 1989. "Constructing the Ownership of Social Problems: Fun and Profit in the Welfare State." Social Problems 36:431-441. Hagen, P. J. 1982. Blood: Gift or Merchandise. New York: Alan R. Liss. Hilgartner, S., and C. Bosk. 1988. "The Rise and Fall of Social Problems." American Journal of Sociology 94: 53-78. Hutchcraft, C. 1996. "$640 million drug firm offer on AIDS." Chicago Tribune, May 31, p. 1 sec.3. Ibarra, P. R., and J. I. Kitsuse. 1993. "Vernacular Constituents of Moral Discourse: An Interactionist Proposal for the Study of Social Problems." Pp. 25-58 in Reconsidering Social Constructionism: Debates in Social Problems Theory, edited by G. Miller and J. A. Holstein. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Institute of Medicine. 1995. HIV and the Blood Supply: An Analysis of Crisis Decisionmaking. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Jenner, R. K . 1989. "Identifying HIV-Infected Blood Donors: Who is 'John Donor'?" Trial 47: 92-103. Kimbrell, A. 1993. The Human Body Shop: The Engineering and Marketing of Life. New York: Harper Collins. Kreiger, L. M. 1997. "Blood Money: Hempohiliacs with HIV Collect from Drug Firms." San Francisco Chronicle June 8, A-1. Kretzmann, M. J. 1992. "Bad Blood: The Moral Stigmatization of Paid Plasma Donors." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 20: 416-441. Landfield, R. 1986. "Legal Problems of the Plasma Industry." Pp. 101-110 in Legal Issues in Transfusion Medicine: Managing Risk in a Changing Environment, edited by G. M. Clark. Bethesda, MD: American Association of Blood Banks. Lincoln, Y. S., and E. G. Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Mauss, A. L. 1975. Social Problems as Social Movements. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

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McCarthy, J. D., and M. N. Zald. 1976. "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory." American Journal ~?fSociology 82: 1212-1241. . 1973. The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Miller, C. 1994. "Financial Woes Trouble Students." Available http://wildcat.arizona.edu/~wildcatl papers/old -wildcats/fal194/september/septem Miller, L. J. 1993. "Claims-Making from the Underside: Marginalization and Social Problems Analysis." Pp. 349-376 in Reconsidering Social Constructionism: Debates in Social Problems Theory, edited by G. Miller and J. A. Holstein. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Pacific Bell. 1997. San Diego Smart Yellow Pages: 365. Patterson, R. 1996. "Plasma Donation: Lazy Man's Dream or Needle-Ridden Nightmare?" Available at http://www.ionet.net/-twilken/copy/plasma.ht ml. Patton, M. Q. 1990. Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods, 2nd edition. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. "Quick College Cash." 1997. [Online]. Available at http://www.product.com/cbnet/money/quick_c ash.html Reilly, R. W. 1997. "ABRA President's Message: Standards, Information and Communications." The Journal 5(4): 98-99. . 1985. "Source Plasma Donors and Industry Response to AIDS Risk" (video). New York: Abbot Diagnostic Educational Services. Schwartz, B. 1967. "The Social Psychology of the Gift." American Journal of Sociology 73: 1-11. Shilts, R. 1987. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: St. Martin's Press. Smith, D. 1990. Conceptual Practices of Power. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Snow, D. A., and L. Anderson. 1987. "Identity Work Among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction andAvowal of Personal Identities." American Journal of Sociology 92:1336-1371. Snow, D. A., L. Anderson, T. Quist, and D. Cress. 1996. "The Homeless as Bricoleurs: Material Survival Strategies on the Streets." Pp. 68-96 in Homelessness in America: A Reference Book, edited by J. Baumohl and K. Popper. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. Snow, D. A., and R. D. Benford. 1992. "Master Frames and Cycles of Protest." Pp. 133-155 in Frontiers of Social Movement Theory, edited by A. D. Morris and C. M. Mueller. New Haven: Yale University Press. Snow, D. A., E. B. Rochford, Jr., S. K. Worden, and R. D. Benford. 1986. "Frame Alignment Process, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation." American Sociological Review 51: 464-481. Spector, M., and J. I. Kitsuse. 1977. Constructing Social Problems. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Titmuss, R. M. 1971. The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy. New York: Vantage. Watson, C. 1997. "A Holiday Hitch." Available at http://www.wavenet.com/~prashkin.hitcb.html Wiegand, R. B.. 1989. "Sweat and Blood: Sources of Income on a Southern Skid Row." Pp. 111-22 in Homelessness in the United States, Volume 11."Data and Issues, edited by Jamshid Momeni. New York: Greenwood Press. Woods, G. N., and A. V. Thoruton. 1990. "Deadly Blood: Litigation of Transfusion-Associated AIDS Cases in Texas." Texas Tech Law Review 21: 667-734.

GET-TOUGH LEGISLATION AS REPRESENTED ACTION THE CASE OF CANING, PADDLING, AND FLOGGING

Phillip W. Davis

The latest campaign to get-tough on crime in the United States started in the 1970s, but get-tough activity surged recently (Irwin, Austin, and Baird 1998). Boot camps and other forms of "shock incarceration" proliferated during the late 1980s, and new three-strikes laws were adopted during the 1990s, some of them sentencing offenders to life upon any third felony conviction. Another get-tough measure considered in several states and passed into law in at least two states was the resurrection of chain gangs. Work crews soon appeared alongside public highways shackled together at the ankles (Allen and Abril 1997). Additionally, many public-shaming measures have been adopted, primarily on local levels where new city ordinances require the public posting of the names and faces of DUI and prostitution offenders. Debates over these measures center on the their constitutionality, their efficacy, and their severity. Supporters defend the measures on the basis of claims about their value as remedies for America's street-crime problem, and as solutions for Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 197-216. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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its history of failed corrections. Research focuses on whether the measures cut recidivism, save money, or cause new problems (see, e.g., MacKenzie and Donaldson 1996; Stolzenberg and D'Alessio 1997). Most studies find little empirical support for the idea that get-tough penalties cut crime, and critics argue that "Scarlet Letter" punishments and three-strike laws represent vengeance in the guise of policy (Litowitz 1997; Schichor and Sechrest 1996). Sociological research on legislative activity to "fight crime" focuses on those bills that got off the ground and made it into law. One such "success story" is the diffusion of sexual psychopath laws studied by Sutherland (1950). He explains the rapid spread of new laws on the basis of easily aroused fear and concern over a new category of villain, the sexual psychopath. Other studies examine how drug laws are passed in response to organizational self-interest, media interest, and minority group scapegoating (Becker 1973; Reinerman 1989). Few researchers, however, examine anti-crime legislation that failed to become law, or study how criminal penalties that are already banned on the basis of cruelty are defended and proposed anew. One such measure appeared during the 1994 and 1995 legislative sessions when seven different bills were sponsored in six state legislatures. If passed, these measures would authorize public caning, paddling, flogging and whipping. They followed close on the heels of the media's massive coverage of the story of Michael Fay, an 18 year-old from the United States who was imprisoned in Singapore and sentenced to be caned for theft and vandalism. Media interest first centered on whether Fay should be caned, and then widened to the issue of whether caning also should be used on America's criminals (Holloway 1996). Polls at the time indicated most Americans disapproved of flogging (Elliott, Strasser, and Bennett 1994). Fay was caned and none of the bills became law. But the proposals to reinstitute public flogging in the form of "caning" in the United States were argued loudly in the press, in committees, and--in one state--on the floor of the State House of Representatives. Sociologists generally recognize that crime problems are social constructions resulting from claims-making activity (Lowney and Best 1995; Spector and Kitsuse 1977). The same can be said for criminal penalties and other crime solutions. In this paper I examine the nature and content of these particular get-tough proposals. I also analyze the justifying talk used by sponsors to legitimate their proposals. After a few words about my perspective and methods, I examine the caning bills themselves as a form of represented action that would authorize a previously banned penalty. Then I look at sponsors' talk about their bills, focusing on their rationales for developing, endorsing, and sponsoring these get-tough measures. I argue that sponsors worded the text of the bills to sanitize the intended action, and to represent the proposed penalties as moderate rather than extreme. Finally, I argue that, whether or not they are ever implemented, sponsors' proposals and arguments incorporate and shape cultural images of crime and punishment, offenders and offenses, legitimate and illegitimate force, and righteous and

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unjust suffering. They also reflect on issues of state-sponsored violence when officials float their proposals in public rather than keeping their intentions under wraps. PERSPECTIVE,

BACKGROUND,

AND

METHODS

For my analytic model I adopt an interpretive and constructionist approach to public issues and social problems, suggesting how this model applies both to successful and failed get-tough solutions to the putative crime problem. I will summarize the relevant literature for each set of ideas in turn. First, constructionism approaches public issues as the representations or claims of claims-makers (Spector and Kitsuse 1977), including primary claims-makers such as public officials, and secondary claims-makers such as the press (Best 1991). Both engage in typifications or characterizations of the problem's essential or true nature (Best 1995). When constructionists examine crime, they usually focus on images and activities by claims-makers when intense interest leads to legislative "success" and new crimes are produced. Or when old crimes such as serial killing are "used" and recast to generate alarm and divert attention (e.g., Jenkins 1994). Take the case of child abuse. Child abuse reporting laws swept through all fifty states in a few short years after the discovery of battered children in the early 1960s (Johnson 1987). Similarly, the new crime problem of stalking emerged rapidly in the early 1990s and laws that defined and outlawed the practice were quickly enacted (Lowny and Best 1995). More recently, constructionists write about social problems "work" (Holstein and Miller 1997), that is, the interpretive activity associated with identifying and remedying the things people think constitute social problems. Studies usually focus on the problems work of media and professionals, but more recently have attended to problems work in everyday life. We have very few studies, however, that closely attend to legislator's own interpretive activity. Whether it is lay or professional activity, media typifications are usually central to social constructions of crime problems. Without widespread coverage, local issues or tragedies like the slaying of Adam Walsh would never reach national or global levels of interest, alarm, and debate over murdered and missing children (Best 1991). Media concerns also shape the emergence of remedies. Some judges in the criminal justice system, for example, draw upon and play to the mass media in delivering "gonzo justice" (Altheide 1992) handing out unusual sentences to signify their own get-tough attitudes and their own impatient creativity. In legislative circles, we might begin to think of the sponsorship of new laws for unusual penalties as "gonzo legislation." Whether or not new crimes are created, and whether or not proposed penalties are adopted, the study of legislative processes that identify troublesome conditions and propose remedies can tell us much about the nature

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and development of claims-making activity and problem symbolization (Spector and Kitsuse 1977). Some of the new get-tough problems work starts to resemble what conflict theorists call state-sponsored violence. Those theorists usually apply a macro focus to empirical materials gathered from a considerable distance. Their concern is usually for large scale political influences rather than for interactive processes and culturally expressive practices. Their research usually focuses on violent outcomes in military, international, criminal justice, and police contexts. Analysis relies heavily upon historical materials and public records for information about covert plans to target or victimize domestic or international populations through arms smuggling, torture, execution, or assassination (see Davis and Stasz 1990; Macfarlane 1974). Using objectivist conflict models, sociologists have also examined genocide, focusing on violence as an inherent feature of certain political structures (Kuper 1990). The state is often conceptualized as an inherently coercive apparatus, and the violence is approached as an implemented reality (van den Berghe 1990) Interpretive research on violence examines interpersonal attacks (e.g., Athens 1997), domestic violence (e.g. Johnson 1992; Loseke 1992), and muggings (e.g., Luckenbill 1981). But there are very few interpretive studies of state violence, no doubt in part because violence itself is a social construction, and because studies of state violence often assume too much about the monolithic nature of state structures. A few interpretive analysts have examined the rhetoric that instigates war (e.g., Blain 1988), dramaturgical and discursive strategies in support of state executions (e.g, Bleakley and Lofland 1977; Emerson 1993; Sarat 1993), and the interpretive and interpersonal dynamics surrounding the police use of force (e.g., Hunt 1985). Few have examined the sponsorship of violence by the state in its early days before force and violence became implemented realities, or when seemingly violent measures were proposed but never adopted. My analysis draws upon three sources of materials. First, I gathered over 150 newspaper and magazine articles about the caning controversy, including news stories, editorials, and letters to editors. News stories focused on the Fay case, on the proposed legislation in the United States, and on committee decisions in State Senates and Houses of Representatives. They described how Fay was originally sentenced to six hits with a cane by a representative of the court trained in martial arts. Magazine articles wrote in detail about how much caning hurt, how it often tore the skin of the buttocks and left scarring, and how people often passed out when being caned. There were outcries from Western criminologists, columnists, ethicists, and civil libertarians. Fay's father mounted a petition drive to have Fay's sentenced dismissed based on Michael Fay's contention that his confession was coerced. U.S. President Clinton personally petitioned the Singapore government, and eventually Fay's sentence was reduced to four strikes. Editorials and letters to editors expressed dismay or optimism about the practice and its significance.

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Many large city editorials proclaimed the practice barbaric, and some warned of its uneven use against minorities if it were ever authorized. Second, I interviewed a convenience sample of 15 sponsors and co-sponsors of these legislative bills. Fay was caned on May 5, 1994. A few weeks later an Assembly person in California announced he would introduce legislation authorizing the paddling of juveniles for graffiti-related offenses. The announcement received considerable press, and soon Representatives and Senators from a handful of others states (Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, and Tennessee) proposed other bills for caning or, in some cases, "paddling" juveniles and/or adults for a variety of criminal offenses. In the Winter of 1995 I read that a bill authorizing the caning and flogging of adult offenders on the county courthouse steps was being proposed in a nearby state. I went to the capital for face-to-face interviews with five sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill. I also observed that state's Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on the bill, accompanying one of the bill's sponsors as he presented and discussed his proposal to cane adult property offenders. I also interviewed a Senate Judiciary Committee member after that meeting. Unfortunately, I missed the activity in the House on the bill a few weeks earlier where it also did not get out of committee. I later interviewed other sponsors and cosponsors, and two legislative assistants, by telephone for a total of 15 interviews. I should mention that, without inside or personal ties to these elected officials, they may well have approached the interview as little more than an occasion to "front me out" (Douglas 1976). Also, the interviews were launched without much chit-chat (Douglas 1985) or time to establish trust and rapport (Fontana and Frey 1998). Third, I obtained copies of each bill, as well as ancillary legislative documents about the bills' development through different committees. I should note that, while I collected materials about sponsorship in its early stages, I was not able to gather firsthand observations of informal legislative activities and discussions associated with the drafting and development of these bills during the most preliminm-y stages. Also, my interviews with sponsors were conducted during a time when public and press interest was high, and I was not able to gather materials months earlier during a politically quieter time as the details of the bills were drafted.

AUTHORIZATION

SCRIPTS

Legislative text spelling out proposed criminal sanctions can be read as dramaturgic scripts for imagined or anticipated events. The text not only contains representations of the punitive event, but also includes representations of targeted actors who are to be hit on particular parts of the body by named agents using a designated agency within particular settings (see Table 1). The text also includes the official name for the action itself. Together these elements construct an image of

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the penalty as administratively regulated, behaviorally restrained, technically humane and sufficiently proportional. I will organize my comments about legislative products as symbolization by borrowing heavily from Burke's (1969) classic statement of dramaturgic elements (also see Brissett and Edgely 1990). S p e c i f y i n g A c t o r s a n d Acts According to these bills, only criminal offenders are to be caned or paddled, but not all criminal offenders are equally eligible. In three of the six states juveniles are the target, while the others do not single out children. One bill limits canings to felony-grade delinquent acts for all juveniles, and to misdemeanor-grade delinquent acts for juveniles 13 and older. In one case the bill was amended to exclude juveniles who have already been abused, and to disallow paddlings for juveniles if the probation officer believes that the court-ordered paddling " m a y contribute to the abuse" of the juvenile and his or her siblings. When I asked the bill's sponsor about the amendment he said: Paddling is a good form of correction. However I know there are ways to have abuse of it, and I know that's the last thing you want to do. You know, it's supposed to be a deterrent, and if yon paddle someone who has been severely beaten or abused anyway, it won't do any good. And as a matter of fact that's abuse because that person is already scared. The Mississippi bill is broadly aimed at "any person found guilty of any criminal act," but most bills identify special wrongdoings that warrant the disposition. The Tennessee bill singles out aggravated criminal trespassing, vandalism, mailbox tampering, civil rights intimidation, flag-burning, church and cemetery desecration, and burglary. The California, New York, and New Mexico bills are usually called "graffiti bills" since that is the only offense for which paddling is proposed. One bill limited canings to lesser offenses, a sponsor noting: This bill was never meant for a murderer or a rapist or any one like that. It was meant for the guy who couldn't keep his hands off your lawnmower or continuously assaulted his classmates or his friends or some of the gang members or even for some of the first time drug offenders etc. But if we truly went to caning...then maybe we could get the message across to these offenders that this isn't going to be pleasant. You are going to be, number one, publicly humiliated and publicly watched and publicly advertised because of your criminal activity. And number two, we are going to whip the hell out of you and continue to whip the hell out of you until you realize that this is not a cool thing and you may not need to commit that criminal act again. Echoing that sentiment, another sponsor noted: ...you can't use this with murderers, you've got to put them away in prison. But...if you can take these young people--and that is where it will be effective--take these young

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juveniles and stop them from committing juvenile crime, and saving people's lives the next year or the next year, they won't become murderers or rapists. By citing particular offenders and offenses, by stipulating that only certain people committing certain crimes will be subject to the specified penalties, legislators represent the proposed penalties and actions as specific and restrained. The text thus signifies an inhibited state wielding force only upon the deserving few because of the particular offenses they have committed. Naming the Action Another important aspect of the action represented in these legislative texts is the wording for what the state will do to the deserving few. These bills name the event that targeted persons would experience, calling it either paddling or caning, depending on whether adults or juveniles were to be hit. Each of the two bills for adult offenders named the event a "caning," and three of the four bills sentencing juveniles named the event a "paddling." One bill originally called the event a caning but, when the bill died in a House Committee, the sponsor added an amendment to a hard labor bill authorizing what was only referred to as "corporal punishment." The hard labor bill, with the amendment, passed the House but did not reach a vote in the Senate. The amendment gives judges the power to: ...suspend the imposition or execution of sentence, and place the defendant on probation as herein provided or require the defendant to perform labor as determined by the court of the county where the defendant resides or was convicted as well as institute corporal punishment in connection with labor as determined by the sentencing court, except that the court shall not suspend the execution of a sentence of imprisonment after the defendant shall have begun to serve such sentence. It is interesting that one sponsor of a caning bill said he was thinking about amending it so he could change the name to "whipping:" I've kind of got in mind changing the bill just a little bit, to change the terminology to public whipping maybe (instead of caning). Other than that ! wouldn't really want to change anything else about it. That has less of an impact when you say "whipping" instead of "caning" but, of course, to be honest, I used caning because there is a message there, I think, and that kind of implies the message. (How would "whipping" be different?) If you just say "whipping" and be real specific in the legislation that the State Supreme Court would define what would be used to whip with might help it a little bit. For him, "canings" as a punishment label connoted the Fay incident, and that connection was ultimately too remote, too "foreign," and politically less palatable than the name customarily used in the United States.

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Punishments in public settings are often organized according to an open dramaturgical style allowing for visibility and shame (Bleakley and Lofland 1977). Five of the seven bills I examined specifically mention a public setting where the canings and paddlings are to take place, usually a courtroom. The bill that doesn't mention a setting simply states, "Caning shall be administered by the Department of Corrections as ordered by the court." The most public setting in any of the bills is outdoors in front of a criminal justice edifice: "Punishment shall be imposed on the court house steps in the county in which the criminal act was committed." Sponsors there, like elsewhere, noted that location was meaningful to the extent that the public context would make the penalty especially degrading: "...it doesn't necessarily have to be on the courthouse steps but in public view where everybody can see it well and, honestly, that's the humiliation part which is probably worse than the whipping itself." Designating Self-Territories Another scripted element of the authorized event is the targeted area of the offender's body. All but one bill specifies a body area, and in each case it is the buttocks. Only two bills refer to the matter of bare versus clothed flesh, however, specifying that paddling be "over normal attire" or "on the outside of normal apparel." This targeted area is the one favored by Singapore courts for caning, although in that country the offender's buttocks are bare. In these ways the body is represented as having differently deserving surfaces, and the action is represented as ultimately making contact only within an appropriate demarcated zone. By confining the proposed action to a particular part of the body, these legislative texts further represent the event as an inhibited action carried out with respect for cultural conventions that recognize the "ritually segmented flesh" that make up the individual's "self-territories" (Goffman 1971). Identifying Agent a n d Agency Most bills identify the kinds of people who will do the caning or paddling, and three of them refer to the apparatus itself. The California and New York bills are the most detailed in their references to agents and agencies, as well as to when a back-up agent takes over: "Paddling shall be administered by a parent of the minor. However, if the parent declines to administer the paddling, or if the court determines that the parent has not administered a satisfactory paddling, a bailiff shall administer the paddling." I asked a sponsor what he had in mind by a "satisfactory paddling" and was told that if it looked like the parent's heart wasn't into it, then court staff should take over to make sure the paddling hurt: "It's gotta have a sting to it."

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Both bills also specified the dimensions of the object to be used: "A 'paddle' shall be made of hardwood that is 3/4 inch thick. The handle of such paddle shall be six inches long and one and 1/2 inches wide. The paddle area shall be eighteen inches long and six inches wide." The similarity in bills, of course, is more than a coincidence. The California bill was faxed to the New York sponsors who made only a few changes. Other bills refer to the object in general terms, calling it a "cane" or a "bamboo cane." Representing Quantity These scripts further normalize the proposed penalty by, in all but one instance, denoting the quantitative limits of the action. Except for the Louisiana bill, they specify a range for the number of hits to be administered (in Louisiana the number of strokes was left up to the Department of Public Safety and Corrections): in California, up to ten, in Mississippi two to ten, in New Mexico up to six, in New York up to ten, and in Tennessee one to four for misdemeanors and five to 15 for felonies. The bills do not describe the rationale for the number of hits, nor were they the result of precedent. Interviews with sponsors indicated how they were the result of interpretive work. When asked about the numbers, one sponsor noted: (... it says no less than 2 nor more than 10, I was wondering how you came to those numbers?) Yeah that was in the original bill--I just had to pick something out of the clear blue sky.., there are different forms of caning. You can cane like you do in Singapore, you can use a belt, I mean there are all kinds of different forms of caning. But I didn't get too technical because I just wanted to pass the idea then if the people wanted it, come back and determine the punishment but I'd like to leave it up to the judge leave him some leeway. When asked, "...where those numbers came from?," another said, "Well there's 14 for misdemeanors. And 5-15 for felons. And, well, y o u ' v e got to start some where. We just pulled those out of thin air, frankly. It just developed. You got to start some where." Another put it this way: "Very frankly, I studied the Singapore caning law. I got a lot of information from that. There is no track record that I know of in this nation. If there is a state that allows for any kind of corporal punishment, I don't know about it so that was my basis." Only two bills explicitly mention anything about the severity of the canings, paddlings, or floggings. The Tennessee bill states, "The severity of the flogging shall be commensurate with the severity of the criminal act for which the defendant was convicted." The amended Louisiana bill declares: "If at any time during the administration of the paddling the court believes the parent or guardian is striking too severely or that continued paddling may abuse the juvenile, the court shall order the paddling stopped and it is not to be continued later." In general,

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quantity (and severity) are scripted in ways that represent proposed activities as proportional, judicious, and limited.

AUTHORIZATION

DISCOURSE

Sponsors are aware of the controversy surrounding the images and events that their bills script and would authorize, and much of their talk is by way of defense and justification. I will organize my comments on sponsor's tough talk by pointing to several key strategic themes and justifications, drawing implicitly on the analysis of how actors justify and account for their actions and positions by neutralizing some meanings and adhering to others. These strategies provide accessible rationales for unusual penalties, and help create the impression that "nothing unusual is happening" (Emerson 1970). A p p e a l i n g to B y g o n e T e m e r i t y Sponsors typically characterize their proposed punishments as the resurrection of an abandoned but desirable practice from the past, as the way it used to be. Canings and paddlings are represented as old-fashioned remedies for modem troubles. The presented logic is that progressive techniques of crime control have failed, and that wild youth are the products of permissive childbearing. One sponsor noted: ...some of the things that used to be done a few hundred years ago, we might have to go back to it. I don't mean burning at the stake, I don't advocate that, but I think we have to have public execution, it would be very instrumental in changing the wayward part of our population that doesn't mind committing crimes. Distancing himself from the excesses of the past, he locates whipping as among the things that were once acceptable but, lamentably, are no longer practiced. Denials of Barbarism Critics charge that caning is a form of flogging, and that flogging would be a cruel anachronism. So sponsors often refute the notion that caning and paddling are regressive, uncivil, or barbaric. One sponsor described his defense of his bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee: As one of the Democratic senators told me, I don't want to do anything to hurt anymore kids and that was the main thrust of it. That they thought it was just barbaric and awful to do anything like that to kids that had committed graffiti....(Do you remember any of your rebuttals to that?) When I got up to rebut him, being a physician, I told him that I wanted to apologize for insulting him and if I had known it was going to upset him so

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much, I would have given him some Valium first. No, I just said that kids ought to be made responsible for their actions, and they ought to know that these things are going to happen, and if we can embarrass them in front of their friends, maybe that would deter some of them from going out and committing the graffiti. Because critics often called the proposals a devolution and a barbaric violation of civil and human rights, sponsors support reinstituting the practice by emphasizing urgent societal needs. One cosponsor said: I think it's one of those things where people say that it's barbaric, and they say, "What if the children see it?" Well, what if they do? We insulate people too much from crime and what happens in punishment...So many people have not seen a the inside of a jail or a prison and they can't imagine it. Another sponsor refuted the criticism of barbarity by pointing to various limits and controls on the event were the law passed: "Where I ' m from in (the local paper) there is an editorial that was talking about 'blood-letting and opening wounds and cutting the flesh' and this i s n ' t about any of that. The bill calls for leaving it up to the state as to what happens. And it should be controlled, uniform, and safe." A p p e a l s to D e t e r r e n c e More common than any other discursive theme in both the interview materials and in press accounts was the idea that caning or flogging was a reasonable criminal penalty'because of its putative usefulness in deterring crime. And it would do so in special ways because of the spectacle that would accompany the blows. One cosponsor of a caning bill said: You know with some people a good flogging or whipping--just the pain and the humiliation--would make them steer away, as well as those who witness it. You know young people who would see it, they might think twice before they got drunk and started driving down the road in a car. As compared to right now, they hear their friend gets pulled over and is in jail for a day and then the parents come down and get them out. It's something to talk about at school, but it's not as scary as if their friend was publicly caned. Another sponsor invoked the deterrence rationale in this fashion: When you can commit crime against your neighbor, your brother, and then you go to court and that's not very publicized and you get off scott flee, there's never any deterrence there and I'm not very soft on crime period, never have been and never will be. I'm not very strong in favor of the rehabilitation element in our prison system.

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It is interesting to note that while on the phone to one sponsor's legislative assistant I was asked if I could provide the details of any social science research that demonstrated that the corporal punishment of criminal offenders resulted in less recidivism than other types of penalties (I said I didn't know of any). C o n d e m n i n g the Gutless Sponsors speak of these bills as solid and serious legislation that would have moved further through the approval process were it not for their less courageous peers who shied away from the controversy because they didn't want to make the tough decisions to get tough. One of them said, "...they didn't have enough members of that committee with the intestinal fortitude to move it out of committee." Another ascribed the bill's failure to the fact his peers, they "didn't have the--I'll put this politely for you--manhood to do it." Sometimes sponsors are complimented for their lack of timidity in sponsoring their bills. After a sponsor spoke at a Judiciary Committee meeting a Committee member said: I want to say Senator, I commend you for your courage in bringing this bill. Whether it's right or wrong, I commend you and I do so publicly....It was Solomon who ...said that folly is bound up in the heart of the child, that the rod will drive it far from it. The other day we discussed the Enlightenment....Perhaps we've become so enlightened that ...our culture is being destroyed and I commend you for raising the debate of these questions. I think that instead of ridicule you should be given honor for being more courageous than most of us would probably be. Appeals to "Real" P u n i s h m e n t Another way in which sponsors talk about the merits of their proposals is by making the argument that caning and paddling constitute "real punishment." The idea draws force from the way it contrasts with "what we do now," and "all the things that aren't working." Caning is said to be real punishment because it is--or would b e - - m o r e painful and humiliating than customary jail or prison sentences or probation. Those other punishments lack the same moral and practical standing that caning would enjoy because, as these representations go, they go too far in protecting criminals and not far enough in punishing offenders. Caning and paddling are said to be real punishments in that they are effective, and they are effective because they would painful, swift, and humiliating. Using H o m e p l a c e Analogies Several sponsors say caning and paddling in criminal and juvenile contexts is, or would be when implemented, analogous to what parents legitimately do to children in the homeplace. Frequently they represent the action as something they

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have personally experienced and survived, typically for the better. The implication is that the proposed action should be viewed in the same way as childhood punishments that are more familiar, less controversial, and legally protected. One sponsor said: I don't know what the answer is but I know that we've spent the last thirty or forty years trying to convince the world that we are the most sensitive and humane country in the world. We've been taught that we shouldn't spank our children and we shouldn't use corporal punishment in schools, and we've forgot over a period of time that those things seemed to work for our parents and our grandparents....I don't know what the answer is but I know I got my share of canings. I could change it to a belt or a leather strap or whatever you became accustomed to when you were younger. But caning was something that stuck. Another noted in reference to his bill for juveniles, "It' s just like raising a child. If you have a young child, you can use corporal punishment on the child until he is 15 or so and after that it's useless to try it." Another described a homeplace experience as partly prompting his bill: Yeah there was of course, the situation in Singapore but that was not what really gave me the idea. What happened was....I came from a very large Catholic family, and of course I had been spanked a number of times in my life time. But what caught me was this: When she (daughter) was two years old, she's three today, my wife had never spanked her. She had drawn a line on our pavement of our driveway and instructed her not to go past that line because if she did she could get hurt she could run out into the street and get run over so she drew that line....she proceeded to cross that line and, before my wife could get to her, she was almost in the street. And so she spanked her and when I came home that day, I could see my little girl had her bottom lip out. My wife was just as unhappy and crying, and it was a very traumatic for me that my daughter had to be spanked. But to me it just kind of clicked. Sponsors liken caning to spanking and then point to spanking's putative effectiveness at home. They use the spanking analogy and create the "representative anecdote" (Burke 1969) to confer a sense of legitimacy, accessibility, and legality onto the proposed penalty based on the legitimacy and legality of an easily understood and widespread practice.

DISCUSSION The "caning craze of '95" was not an unwittingly spread contagion of punitive fervor imitating the Singapore approach to crime. This study examined how it was a process of complex social problems work involving the scripting and justifying of unusual penalties. While proposals to cane, paddle, and flog America' s criminals failed as legislation, the legislative activity is significant as a form of prob-

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lems work. In this sense it succeeds as a "signifying act" (Perinbanayagam 1985; also see Garland 1990) and as represented claims. These scripts and justifications represent controversial and potentially cruel penalties as restrained, inhibited and sanitized state activity made necessary by the gravity of particular crime problems. They identify the offenses that warrant the penalty. Some of the bills draw on media vocabulary associated with the "caning" of Michael Fay in Singapore, although some bills conventionalized the penalty by calling for "paddling." Bills also specified particular settings, bodily targets, administrative agents, and number of hits. Sponsors endorsed and justified the bills by citing the proposed penalty's value in bygone days, their proportionality and civility, their deterrent value, their manly nature, and their homeplace efficacy. There are three additional points to be made. First, legislative sponsors' social problems "work" is closely linked to media coverage, processes, and influence. These bills have a gonzo (Altheide 1992) quality. As "gonzo legislation," the bills were a response to media coverage and media themes. The spurt of legislative activity surrounding caning and paddling came close on the heels of the Michael Fay story--it was only a matter of weeks before an elected official announced his intentions to introduce similar legislation in his state. Legislators' responded to and made use of media meanings, storylines, and interest to create, borrow, and modify the criminal penalties they proposed. Sponsors were opportunistic in their use of images, scripts, and rhetoric to align themselves with a nexus of get-tough values in a climate of support for other get-tough penalties and solutions to crime. At the same time, sponsors gave the media new stories about flamboyant legislators taking public relations risks to propose a controversial get-tough penalty. For two legislative sessions, dozens of sponsors and cosponsors both reacted to and shaped media images of the issues. Second, claims-making about caning while seeking its authorization has significance as state-sponsored violence. Since the penalties were not put into place, they qualify more specifically as "near violence," similar in some ways to the violent acts discussed by Athens (1997) that could happen but do not. The close study of sponsors' scripts and discourse tells us the most about the authorization of state violence in its early stages, and about the things sponsors think important to incorporate into their proposals that would authorize crime penalties involving bodily attacks. It also says something about the sanitary scripting of the penalties, and about the familiar nature of the justifications for the penalties. The legitimation and authorization of state-sponsored violence appears especially tentative, incremental, and complex, but they develop through ordinary sponsorship activities by officials making use of widely available and relatively familiar themes. Third, the emergence and development of the caning controversy was shaped by the sponsors' ability to draw on existing cultural wisdom and conventional practices. Sponsors link many of their claims about the value of caning and paddling to the legality and approval of spanking at home and paddling in schools. A large majority of parents in the United States spank their children (Straus 1994),

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and the practice has a long history of religious, legal, and scientific justifications (Greven 1991). Until recently, school paddlings were legal in a majority of states (Hyman 1990). Similarly, age-based proposals to cane juveniles draw on cultural constructions of children as incomplete and incompetent social objects (Denzin 1977). It is not surprising that some legislators target for corporal punishment those who already experience it the most, who have the fewest protections against it, who are already defined as appropriate targets. The proposed solutions to children's crimes are normalized by linking them to conventional names such as paddling, a conventional apparatus such as paddles, and conventional practices such as targeting the buttocks. The meanings of spanking are changing, and more and more parents are trying to quit (Davis 1994, 1999). But advocates of bringing paddling into the courtroom and onto the courthouse steps can readily draw upon traditional practices and justifications-when trying to make their case. Finally, sponsors may have got as far as they did in their claims-making and in their problems work because of the extant cultural wisdom that makes criminals the historically appropriate object of physical punishments like those the sponsors tried to reauthorize. Where does theorizing about social problems work go from here? One important direction is to explore how media constructions influence work culture, and how work culture influences official images and proposed solutions. Here the focus would be on the ways that media images come to have a special significance for officials in the "solution business." This direction raises questions about how images and solutions are traded, modified, and interpreted within and across cliques, organizations, and institutions in official settings. In some settings there are groups that routinely generate images of problems, espouse justifications for solutions, and arouse the emotions of publics, In this study, staff counsel and research assistants helped to draft bills, rewrite legislation, advise sponsors, and monitor political activity in other districts, states, and countries. Their influence on policymakers ideas about what makes a "good proposal" requires further attention. Moreover, proposals for reform are likely to adhere to an official problems logic that makes those proposals appear as reasonable next steps, given the apparent failure of previous efforts. It may be that work group culture, including local customs and shared understandings, create a context in which formerly outrageous ideas become tenable proposals. An understanding of this context may help explain how "risky-shifts" emerge, develop, and solidify, perhaps proceeding more forcefully from the bottom up than the top down. Another direction is the development of a model of how official problems work can lead to state-sponsored violence. A fully interpretive model of state-sponsored violence would ground the phenomena in its everyday contexts, examine signifying acts as well as violent outcomes, link state violence to mundane justifications, and explain how officials find vulnerable targets, use media imagery, and intensify public concern. While research on state violence by the police and

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the military usually focuses retrospectively on violent outcomes, an interpretive model would also try to explain why some proposals for state violence don't get off the ground, fail to get out of committee, and fall short of implementation. It would also explain how and why violent solutions become objects of consideration in the first place, as well as focus on how violent solutions are sanitized and justified through scripted representations and authorizing discourse. Where does research on the topic go from here? One suggested direction is to develop an empirical strategy allowing a closer, firsthand familiarity with official problems work in its earliest stages when get-tough legislation first seems tenable and worth trying. Another would be to examine local problems culture on a micro level in districts, communities, and neighborhoods as legislators and other policymakers gauge the political waters and float their ideas for unusual crime-problem solutions. Researchers might also examine the ideological, political, and organizational obstacles and constraints faced by sponsors and potential sponsors, constraints that shape risks and gains as they present themselves as proponents of controversial penalties, including the risk of embarrassment. We also need to examine the development and influence of audience interpretations and activities by the press, vocal constituents, legislative peers, lobbyists, social critics, service organizations, child advocates, and so on. Why unusual bills acquire more momentum, legitimacy, resources, and support in some localities and not in others might also be examined, as well as the tactics sponsors use in front of different audiences to embrace or distance themselves from the appearance of opportunism, malicious intent, and unrestrained force. Other studies of mundane sponsorship activities by state officials and representatives are needed for a better understanding of why some plans or proposals to inflict suffering succeed and others do not. Those studies using other materials may shed light on the influence of local legislative cultures, informal interaction and formal deliberations, drafting decisions and practices, and promotion of the idea that assaulting the body and inflicting physical suffering are legitimate, reasonable, and acceptably civil. We should examine sponsorship in the early days, when it is being tried on for size, when various proposals are floated if only to attract attention, when it is discussed in an array of arenas, when its rationale is debated, and when it goes through or bypasses one organizational channel or another. Researchers might also examine other get-tough proposals such as those found in the "chemical castration" controversy of 1997 and 1998, and newer public-shaming techniques. Finally, research could examine the bearing of ordinary activities and problems discourse on justifications for extraordinary punishments and policies. Research in this direction would turn our attention to the ways that other quick-fix policies, proposals, programs, and punishments follow politically expedient avenues and seize upon highly publicized events. A study of this sort might help explain why unusual get-tough measures develop in some circles and not in others, perhaps

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because some issues (such as graffiti, chain gangs, and flogging) have a special and ongoing resonance in particular regions, states, and other political localities. REFERENCES Allen, H., and J.Abril. 1997. "The New Chain Gang: Corrections in the Next Century." American Journal of Criminal Justice 22:1-12. Altheide, D. L. 1992. "Gonzo Justice." Symbolic Interaction 15: 69-86. Athens, L• 1997. Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Becker, H. 1973. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Best, J. 1991. Threatened Children. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • 1995. "Typification and Social Problems Construction." Pp. 1-16 in Images of Issues, Second Edition. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Blain, M. 1988. "Fighting Words: What We Can Learn from Hitler's Hyperbole." Symbolic Interaction 11 : 257-276• Bleackley, H., and J. Lofland. 1977. State Executions: Viewed Historically and Sociologically. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith. Brissett, D., and C. Edgley. 1990. "The Dramaturgical Perspective." Pp. 1-46 in Life as Theater: A Dramaturgical Sourcebook, Second Edition. New York: Aldine de Grnyter. Burke, K. 1969. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Davis, N., and C. Stasz. 1990. Social Control of Deviance: A Critical Perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill. Davis, P. W. 1994. "The Changing Meanings of Spanking." Pp. 133-154 in Troubling Children. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. .1999. Corporal Punishment Cessation: Social Contexts and Parents' Experiences." Journal of Interpersonal Violence 14: 494-510. Denzin, N. 1977. Childhood Socialization. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Douglas, J. 1976. Investigative Social Research: Individual and Team Field Research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. . 1985. Creative Interviewing. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Elliott, M., S. Strasser, and W. Bennett. 1994. "Crime and Punishment." Newsweek 123: 18-23. Emerson, J. 1970. "Nothing Unusual is Happening." Pp. 208-22 in Human Nature and Collective Behavior: Papers in Honor of Herbert Blumer. Englewood Cliffs, N J: Prentice-Hall. Emerson, R. 1993. "Capital Trials and Representations of Violence." Law and Society Review 27: 5963 Fontana, A., and J. Frey. 1998. "Interviewing: The Art of Science." Pp. 47-78 in Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Garland, D. 1990. Punishment in Modern Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goffman, E. 1971. Relations in Public. New York: Harper and Row. Greven, P. 1990. Spare the Child. New York: Alfred Knopf. Holloway, N. 1996. "Spare the Rod." Far Eastern Economic Review t59:20-21 Holstein, J., and G. Miller. 1997. "Social Problems as Work." Pp. Ix-xxi in Social Problems in Everyday Life. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Hunt, J. 1985. "Police Accounts of Normal Force." Urban Life 13: 315-341. Hyman, I. 1990. Reading, Writing, and the Hickory Stick: The Appalling Story of Physical and Psychological Violence in American Schools. Boston, MA: Lexington Books. Irwin, J., J. Austin, and C. Baird. 1998. "Fanning the Flames of Fear." Crime and Delinquency 44: 3248. Jenkins, P. 1994. Using Murder. New York: Aldine de Gmyter.

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Johnson, J. 1987. "The Changing Concept of Child Abuse and its Impact on Family Life." Pp. 257-275 in The American Family and the State. San Francisco, CA: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. . 1992. "Church Response to Domestic Violence." Studies in Symbolic Interaction 13: 277286. Kuper, L. 1990. "The Genocidal State: An Overview." Pp. 19-51 in State Violence and Ethnicity. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Litowitz, D. 1997. "The Trouble with 'Scarlet Letter' Punishments." Judicature 81: 52-57. Loseke, D. R. 1992. The Battered Woman and Shelters: The Social Construction of Wife Abuse. Albany: State University of New York Press. Lowny, K., and J. Best. 1995. "Stalking Strangers and Lovers: Changing Media Typifications of a New Crime Problem." Pp. 33-57 in Images of lssues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Luckenbill, D. 1981. "Generating Compliance: The Case of Robbery." Urban Life 10: 25-46. Macfarlane, L. J. 1974. Violence and the State. Birkenhead, UK: Willmer Brothers Limited. MacKenzie, D., and H. Donaldson. 1996. "Boot Camp for Women Offenders." Criminal Justice Review 21: 21-43. Perinbanayagam, R. S. 1985. Signifying Acts: Structure and Meaning in Everyday Life. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Reinerman, C., and H. G. Levine. 1989. "The Crack Attack: Politics and Media America's Latest Drug Scare." Pp. 115-137 in Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Sarat, A. 1993. "Speaking of Death: Narratives of Violence in Capital Trials." Law and Society Review 27: 19. Shichor, D., and D. Sechrest. 1996. Three Strikes and You're Out. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Spector, M., and J.I. Kitsuse. 1977. Constructing Social Problems. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings. Stolzenberg, L., and S. D'Alessio. 1997. "Three Strikes and You're Out": The Impact of California's New Mandatory Sentencing Law on Serious Crime Rates." Crime and Delinquency 43: 457469. Straus, M. 1994. Beating the Devil Out of Them. New York: Lexington. Sutherland, E. 1950. "The Diffusion of Sexual Psychopath Laws." American Journal of Sociology LVI: 142-148. van den Berghe, P. (ed.). 1990. State Violence and Ethnicity. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

STIGMA A N D PLACE SPACE, COMMUNITY, AND THE POLITICS OF REPUTATION

Karen E. Hayden

Leaving the good people of Newburyport behind, crossing the Merrimack and, by an easy transition exchanging the Old Bay State for the Granite State, one quickly finds himself in an almost entirely uninhabited region, surrounded on every side by barren hills and shady nooks...Finding his way as best he can through the rough and narrow highway, the traveler suddenly comes upon the scene of a low marshy district, which a group of rickety shanties tells is the abode of some specimens of the genus homo. To satisfy what has now become a greedy curiosity, your correspondent enters a village, settlement, camp, or what you will, and there he finds--What? Not two score miles from the Hub of the universe...there he came upon a scene the adequate representation of which defies pen, pencil, or brush...It is now known as South Seabrook, and is distant from Newburyport only about eight miles... (A correspondent to The Boston Post, July 6, 1871). Marginal places, those towns and regions which have been "left behind" in the modem race for progress, evoke both nostalgia and fascination. Their marginal status may come from out-ofthe-way geographical locations, being the site of illicit or disdained social activities, or being the Other to some great cultural centre...marginal places that are of interest here are not necessarily geographical peripheries but, first and foremost, they have been placed on the periphery of cultural systems of space in which places are ranked relative to each other (Shields 1991, p. 3).

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 219-239. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4 219

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This paper explores the concept of stigmatized places, not categories or simply place-identities, but communities to which solidarity, location, and the stigmatizing trait are attributed and the attribution is naturalized. I investigate how a town which is not geographically isolated acquires a reputation for "backwardness" and for being an "inbred town," and how this image has persevered for centuries despite changes in the ecology of the region and within the community itself. I am interested more generally in how a place comes to define a people and how they in turn define their community as fixed--as theirs, as defensible. The focus of my research is Seabrook, the subject of the 1871 newspaper article quoted above. Seabrook is a community of approximately 6,500 residents, located on the Atlantic coast of Southern New England. My work combined field research and oral histories and testimonials with a contextualized cultural history of the town. The latter involved examining culturally significant materials produced in, on, or about the town from approximately the mid-nineteenth century to the present. I consulted regional newspapers for how the town is depicted and in what connections and analyzed available folktales, folk songs, poems, jokes and local humor for their portrayals of the town and its citizens. Several questions about Seabrook are important in understanding some of its external perceptions and the relationship between identity and the practices of community membership. First, the town is, and has been for over a century, surrounded by folklore concerning its "image." Seabrook is a community of ill repute. In the extreme, it is treated as essentially unchanging, fixed by its culture, and driven by pathologies associated with inbreeding. The myth that Seabrook is "inbred" appears in nineteenth century newspaper articles and is still discussed in neighboring towns today. I found numerous historical accounts describing the town's inhabitants as "little above the condition of savages" with "no schools, no church, no morals, no culture ''1 and with "brutish tastes and unbridled passions [which] led them to a state of positive barbarism. ''2 Seabrook is also renowned for its close-knittedness. While this is normally viewed as a positive feature of a community, Seabrook is perceived as close-knit to a fault they are too tight, too familiar, too insular and provincial. Their solidarity is innate; their property is communal and fiercely protected. They are seen as both formidable and highly suspicious of outsiders. By those outside of the community, "Seabrookers"or "Brookers" (as they are called) are known for their toughness and this trait is celebrated within the town.

A PARTICIPANT OBSERVER OF REPUTATION: INTERVIEWS

AND

CONVERSATIONS

I am not a Seabrooker; I exist outside of the reputation. I am, however, close to it in both proximity and experience. I grew up in Greenland, a small town within New Hampshire's Seacoast region, about 12 miles inland from Seabrook's Arian-

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tic coast. My family has lived in this town for several generations and many members still live there today. This familial closeness and geographical proximity of family names does not mark us in the way certain names mark their bearers in Seabrook, because of its association with inbreeding. As Lillian, one of my interviewees put it, I remember people saying, 'All Southers are Seabrookers and all Seabrookers are Southers!' I used to hear that all the time growing up. To this Randy, another interviewee who was present, added, Well, I used to hear people say, 'All Eatons are Seabrookers and all Seabrookers are Eatons!' Ah, poor Seabrook... Unlike Seabrook, Greenland was never sullied by a reputation--the name "Greenland" does not brand its members the way "Seabrook" does; we were never called "Greenlanders" nor did we have to defend ourselves because of our town. Our residency was not significant to others in the way Seabrook was and is. Growing up in Greenland afforded me insight into Seabrook's reputation. I was a participant observer of it; I often heard and repeated Seabrook stories growing up. For instance, any time our elementary school played against Seabrook Elementary in sports, the home team players were inevitably whipped into a terrified frenzy by the time of the game, because all day long students told tales of how ferocious the Seabrookers w e r e - h o w they would crack you over the head with a field hockey stick, or how their girls' field hockey team could beat our boys' soccer team on the field and then "kick the shit out of them" after the game just for fun. As I got off the school bus to play field hockey against Seabrook on their home turf, I remember looking around for twelve-year-old girls who I assumed would be six feet tall and mustached~this is what I had heard, after all. Being a member of a somewhat similar and nearby community also provided me with enough insight to question Seabrook's ill repute, its existence and perseverance. As an observer and examiner of it, I often wondered why one town had achieved such a lasting character and characterization while another did not, even though several of the seemingly damning traits were as apparent in Greenland as they were in Seabrook. We were close-knit; we had many similar last names in our town; we had farmers and fishers who could be classified as "hicks" by people who enjoyed making such classifications. We had our "ruffians"--doesn't every small town? In addition to growing up near Seabrook, I have other connections to the town. Several members of my family worked for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, a place of employment for many people from Seabrook. This research began with conversations I had with my uncle, Spike, who at the time was in his early seventies and retired from his job at the Department of Transportation. Like me, Spike was fascinated by Seabrook's mythology. Spike's father, my grandfather, also worked for the State on road crews. Spike often said,

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I wish Grampy was around to tell you about the Seabrookers---he was a peacemaker, you know he got along with them real well and sometimes settled disputes between them and other road crew guys who made fun of them. Grampy knew how to get along with them, though. The trick was to not make fun of them. If you treated them well-you know--fair, you had a friend for life, but so many people just made fun of them 'cause they were from Seabrook and they were pretty rough around the edges, you know. Boy, I wouldn't mess with 'em though--they w e r e tough--that part is true. M y connection to Spike was helpful in my interviews with older Seabrook men who recognized m y family name or reported knowing one of m y relatives. This provided some e n t r e e as an outsider interviewing people in a town notorious for "keeping to themselves" about a reputation that is not the easiest topic to broach. Another tie I have to Seabrook is m y husband and his family, who moved into Seabrook from the lakes region of New Hampshire when he was in elementary school. Although their initial inception into the community was a bit rocky, his family eventually became friends with several Seabrook families and remain so to this day. M a n y of m y interviewees were old family friends or contacts made through them. W e own a small camp in the northern woods of Maine where some friends from Seabrook also own a camp, so many of m y initial informal queries into Seabrook's reputation took place there, around a campfire or in a canoe. These discussions were interactive, casual, and spontaneous (cf. Ellis, Kiesinger, and Tillmann-Healy, 1997). For instance, one night I asked Dan, a family friend and one of m y "key informants," why he thought the perception of inbreeding in Seabrook was so persistent. Dan said, Well, it's like out here (gesturing toward the woods with his hand), you know [in rural Maine]. Someone passing through might see one or two people who don't look quite right to them and see that it is a very small, backwoods town, and they make the assumption that the people are inbred, or that incest goes on. Then they tell other people that, and before you know it, everyone thinks it's true. It's like that in Seabrook, and who knows, it might be going on in one or two families, but because it is a small, closeknit town, and there are a lot of the same last names in town, people have always said it was inbred, whether or not it ever went on. This informal exchange offered an inroad for a discussion of an invidious reputation to take place (cf. Fine 1993). I was asking about a difficult topic the perception that Dan comes from an "inbred t o w n " - - a n d would not have felt comfortable asking it of a stranger. But, since we had become friends during the period of m y research, and Dan knew why I was asking such a question, he answered it without hesitation. In both my informal and formal interviews, I wanted to evoke spontaneous representations from both within and outside of the town to analyze how Seabrook residents currently represent their town and themselves, as well as how Seabrook-

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ers are represented by outsiders in the light of the town's reputation. For this I interviewed residents of Seabrook and people from its surrounding communities. I conducted formal interviews with twenty-four people, several of whom were interviewed on more than one occasion. All but two of these interviews were taperecorded and transcribed. The ages of interviewees ranged from nineteen to seventy-four years. Several of the people I spoke with were from "old Seabrook families"--people whose genealogies could be traced back several generations in the town and who would be considered "Seabrookers." Others were from old Seabrook families, but currently lived in other towns in the region. For outsiders' representations Seabrook, I spoke with people who grew up in the towns bordering Seabrook, or in the general area know as the Seacoast region. Other interviewees were people who moved into Seabrook from other regions of New Hampshire. The interviews lasted anywhere from one to four hours. Many were conducted with more than one interviewee present, and were conversational and interactive. Additionally, I engaged in discussions with people who were introduced to me by key informants. I do not count these among my interview data, but these conversations did summon information which was quite useful to me in ascertaining current manifestations of Seabrook's reputation. For instance, I interviewed Dan, the family friend, numerous times and he set up interviews with several of his family members, as well as took part in those interviews. Dan introduced me to other family members with whom I did not conduct formal interviews, however, he would inform them that ! was interested in Seabrook's reputation, or simply state that I was studying Seabrook, and the person would make a remark or tell a tale, and I considered this "data." Or, he would ask a question that invoked a story or brought a Seabrook tale up-to-date, and this information inevitably made its way into my writing. There are many benefits to using this type of "spontaneous data" in researching reputation. Seabrook's reputation is based upon spontaneous, word-of-mouth enactments, and this is how I approached it methodologically. In other cases, the "data" which comprise Seabrook's mythology have been collected somewhat haphazardly. Some stories were overheard in bars, restaurants, and other public places. Reputation is at base social; its existence depends upon people interacting. It takes on a life of its own, but not apart from its performance by social actors in the act of speaking. The reputation's genesis, history, and regeneration depend upon people's fascination with it and their willingness to perform it--to call upon it when the occasion warrants. When one utters "the whole town is related," or, "they're all inbred," the person is dramatizing that reputation. It is safe to assume the person has not witnessed the act of inbreeding, rather, the person is supposing, or resupposing what has already been said. Often, the "data" I collected were unsolicited--Seabrook jokes were told to me by people who had no idea I was studying the reputation of the town.

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OTHER PLACES, OTHER STIGMAS In addressing the question of how a stigma becomes geographically bounded by juridical positions of residency, I hope to elucidate the phenomenon of the "branded town" or "branded region" or even the branded section of a particular town, as the commonly-used phrases "the bad part of town" or "wrong side of the tracks" convey (Shields 1991, p. 15). Similarly, the term "inner-city" has become a catch-all phrase for all manner of deviant behavior (perceived or actual) and in turn stigmatizes all those who inhabit these spaces. As Jerome Krase argues, there is an undeniable cache of either negative or positive symbolic currency in one's place of residence. He states, We can be stigmatized or celebrated for our address... For example, Bedford Stuyvesant is widely known as a predominantly Black community: but why do many assume (knowing little more about the community than this fact) that it is also a 'bad neighborhood'... In the ghetto, 'those' people living there make it bad; or the people are somehow less because they live in that neighborhood (1979, p. 252).3 The phrases "wrong side of the tracks," and "bad part of town," obviously denote socioeconomic and property value concerns, but, it is my contention that there is also a cultural and folkloric element to these boundaries, a surplus of meaning which acts back upon the material conditions which initiate it. The imaginary boundary is organized as an instance of folklore or mythology (cf. Anderson 1983). As Anthony Cohen noted in the Symbolic Construction of Communities, "the sea may divide one island from another, just as the parish border may mark the beginning and the end of a settlement. But these boundaries are symbolic receptacles filled with the meanings that members impute to and perceive in them" (1985, p. 19). While Seabrook is indeed unusual, there are similarly reputed, virtually pariahlike places elsewhere. For instance, the entire region known as Appalachia--the term itself has become a signifier of "a strange land and a peculiar people," (Banks, Billings, and Tice 1993) and the "idea of Appalachia" for people outside the region masks any understanding of the lived experiences of the people inside the region (cf. Stewart 1996, 1990). Kathleen Stewart's book, A Space on the Side of the Road (1996) illuminates this "idea of Appalachia" as a "thing." She states, " . . . as an 'object' 'Appalachia' already has its place in an American mythic imaginary. There is the list of traits that has been assigned to it, such as a 'poverty region' and a 'backwater' or a 'folksy place'" (p. 4). These locations, whether entire regions or small islands, become place metonyms they are polluted sites whose reputations mark them off as "other." A metonym is a figure of speech in which the name of one thing (or place) is used to denote another thing (or place) with which it is associated (Eagleton 1983, pp. 99, 167-168; Burchfield 1996, p. 492).

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In the case of Seabrook, the name itself has become metonymic. When I began this research, I considered assigning a pseudonym to the town to avoid subjecting it to further ridicule and scrutiny. As the research progressed, the pseudonym issue became harder to reconcile, partly because of Seabrook's metonymic quality. So much of the town's reputation has become embedded in the name, "Seabrook," that the name itself is symbolically loaded with connotations and, often, derision. Because of Seabrook, "brook" can be displaced and its meaning reattached elsewhere. I have heard people "put down" or insult other townships by tacking "brook" on the end of the town's name; so Amesbury becomes "Amesbrook" or someone from Salisbury can be classified as "a true Salisbrooker." Other locations are called "little Seabrooks," meaning a few people from Seabrook have moved there, or it is an area where families from Seabrook own camps. These references themselves tell tales. Seabrook has become a metonymic insult--a type of place--a working class place, a tough place, an insular place. The "little Seabrook" allusions imply that Seabrookers do things in groups--they move together, camp together. And, wherever they go, the land takes on their mark. The reputation, which is tied to the place of Seabrook, can be displaced; it moves and takes root elsewhere. Pariahic reputations assimilate all manner of invidious representations, constituting a kind of paradigm capable of even more general use. For Seabrook, the attribution of corruption by inbreeding is often associated with qualities normally deployed discursively as changeable. For instance, Seabrookers are known to speak in a dialect specific to the town, and different from the dominant, core language. The dialect has been traced to Old English, 4 and nuances of it can still be heard in town to this day. Seabrookers use phrases like, "we staved him up, boy"--and boy is drawn out and exaggerated to sound like the nautical flotation (i.e., bell buoy). This means we beat him up. They use "ike" and "hark" as exclamations, as in "Ike, look at that!" Many of the Seabrook residents I spoke to said they thought the language variations were "almost gone," or that "you don't hear it much anymore." But, for over a century, the language stood as an absolute difference, setting Seabrookers apart and linking them to an unchanging view of history--as walking, talking antiquities. 5 Seabrook's image is at least partially class-related, but not in a simple statistically-aggregated sense. Geographically, Seabrook is not an isolated "backwoods" town. It is surrounded by many wealthy communities and has one of the largest and most attractive stretches of beach in the state of New Hampshire, and is accessible by many interstate routes running through the town. This suggests that the typical accounts of the attribution of backwardness and social isolation as effects of poverty and geographical isolation are not sufficient in explaining Seabrook's reputation or its insular qualities. The socially maintained reputation has become a "place-image" and is understood through "oversimplification or a reduction to one trait, stereotyping or the amplification of one or more traits, and labeling

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where a place is deemed to be of a certain nature" (Shields 1991, p. 47, my emphasis). In sociology, literature on deviance and symbolic interactionism provides both theory and cases which are suggestive and useful in exploring community reputation. However, there is very little which examines the symbolic loading of place. I am interested in how a place or a town, acquires a "bad reputation," and how the reputation is extended to the town's inhabitants, sometimes by default and sometimes by active efforts to keep it alive internally. I explore the perceptions of deviant communities, not the more traditional notions of "communities of deviants."

GOFFMAN'S N O T I O N OF STIGMA A N D ITS APPLICATIONS The sociological notion of stigma was first introduced in 1963 by Erving Goffman in Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Goffman's exploration of stigma was concerned primarily with individuals or groups of individuals who were unable to conform thoroughly with societal standards of normalcy and the significance of stigmata on social interactions and the self. Goffman did not specifically investigate stigmatized places. I believe his notion of stigma can be expanded and applied to the type of stigma tied to regions which I am discussing. While Goffman's work was mainly concerned with "discrediting" or "spoiling" attributes with which an individual is bom or that one acquires in life, I believe his perspectives can also be applied to stigmas into which people are born. Along these lines, in his article on urban place stigmas, Jerome Krase noted, "stigma is not limited to p e o p l e . . , the concept can also be applied to places. The stigma of certain people can be transferred to a place they occupy; altemately people can be stigmatized by their free, or especially their involuntary, residence..." (1979, p. 252). While much of Goffman's book addresses stigmas due to bodily appearances or disabilities, or to perceived character flaws such as alcoholism or mental illness, he does also briefly discuss the notion of tribal stigmas--"stigmas of race, nation, religion, or family lineage which equally contaminate all members of the family" (p. 4, emphasis added). Tribal stigma is the least developed stigma category of Goffman's book yet it is most relevant to the idea of stigmatized place which I am exploring. Indeed, Goffman's use of nation in his description of tribal stigma suggests that stigma can be tied to a geographically-bounded place. However, Goffman does not elaborate fully on this category, and when discussing tribal stigma, he confines his discussion mainly to racial and ethnic group membership, or to family stigmas. The place stigma is fundamentally structured around a region and thus the signifiers of skin color, foreign language, or even family name are not present. However, in the case of my own research, family name is often significant, since the

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town' s stigma is that of being "inbred." I have heard many derogatory statements about the town in which people say "they all have the same last name" or "there are only three last names in the whole town." The "they" in this insult encompasses the entire populace of the town. The perceived derogatory feature of "being inbred" is not an individual or familial stigma; it is extended to the entire township and organized around the juridical position of residency. The place itself is spoiled, and thus individuals known to be of this place are spoiled by default. For individuals who are born into these spoiled spaces, both Goffman's notions of the discredited and the discreditable are applicable, because there are some situations in which people are known to be from the discredited place, and other occasions where this is not immediately known, but is revealed or learned. There are still other circumstances in which the place means nothing--to people not from the immediate parameter of the region in which the spoiled place is a significant object of ridicule. For instance in the first case, in the immediate geographic region in my study, Seabrook high school-aged students attend school in a neighboring town where their residence and its reputation are well known. In these cases Seabrook residents are clearly discredited--they are "Seabrookers," or "Brookers." A typical account of the types of discrediting remarks and actions Seabrook residents endured in high school is offered by Deb, now forty-six. She reported that in her freshman year, she was "labeled as a Seabrooker." I asked her what sort of things people would say, and she replied, Oh, you know, they'd call you a Brooker, stupid stuff like that. It's not necessarily what they'd say, it was just their actions. I was just not included, so therefore I didn't try to be included. I did my thing, I did sports, I was never a good student... But then, during the summer of my junior year, I started dating a guy from Hampton. So in my senior year, it was like I was the member of some elite group. But, it was funny, because I was an outcast prior to that. In the case of the discreditable, there are situations wherein individuals are not known to be from Seabrook and people assume they are from another, non-stigmatized neighboring town. For instance one of my interviewees recalled the reactions of people who learned she was from Seabrook. Inevitably, people would say, "Oh, I didn't know you were a Seabrooker?!" In this exchange, as in the ones Goffman describes between ex-convicts and "normals," a seemingly "normal" individual is demoted to one who is "less than." In the case of Seabrookers, the demotion occurs merely because of where they were born. This differs from Goffman's discussion of "the discreditable" because his use of the term is confined to individuals who were attempting to conceal information about their personal biographies relating to behavior or perceived character flaws (e.g., drug use or past incarceration) and not about their town. But, once known, the individuals are

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discredited and "tagged" nonetheless. The stigma can be individuated, but it belongs not to individuals or even groups of individuals, but to a place. In the third case, because of the regionality of the place stigma, there are instances where the town of Seabrook is not symbolically significant. For instance, an interviewee in my study who attends college in a different state did not find she had to defend or apologize for her township at college, because it was not a significant object of ridicule or scorn outside of the immediate region of the town itself. While it is difficult to establish precise parameters of the town's reputation, it is local, and is confined to its bordering and neighboring towns within an approximately thirty to fifty mile radius. Since I am discussing this stigmatized place phenomenon as a type of regional mythologizing--of stories told and retold without reference to facts or origins--it is not my desire to "pin it down." Methodologically speaking, this is impossible. While the reputation centers around a township, the circulation of the reputation cannot be mapped, at least not definitively. It is a sort of "discrediting mythology" based upon tales told about a town in its region, for over a century, in which the town has a pariah status. In folklorists' terms, these stories are "folk legend" and have been "transmitted by a chain of oral communication" (Cohen 1995, p. 53). These tales are not recorded, and one can never know where the chain begins or ends. 6

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE While the sociological literature into the topic of stigma associated with place is sparse, I have located a few studies which exemplify the sort of regional mythologizing in which I am interested. One example is offered by folklorist, David Steven Cohen (1995). Cohen's research into the "Pineys" of the New Jersey Pine Barrens clearly illustrates a stigma constructed around a place. One of the first elements noted about the "Pineys" is that they are named or denoted by their residence in a particular region--in this case a vast, swampy, deeply wooded section of New Jersey which lacks clear geographic boundaries, but is nonetheless clearly bounded by reputation (1995, p. 47). This naming of people by their residence in the stigmatized region is also present in my research setting and is a key element of regional stigmatizing. The denotation can be seen as a source of pride, but also serves as a basis for disdain. While there is clearly an insider/outsider distinction here, through my own research I have found that these distinctions can shift both within the community and from outside as well. Cohen's research on the Pineys describes a group of people living in the Pine Barren region which has taken on a local reputation for being "ignorant," "stealing," "poor," "pitiable," "neglected," and who have become inextricably linked to their locality (1995, pp. 47-77). Historically, the name itself seems to have a "shifting referent." For instance, Cohen discusses a researcher in the late 1930s who, when asking where the Pineys were, was told that the "Pineys lived further

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south--until he reached a point in his travels when he was told they live further north" (1995, pp. 48-49). Cohen illustrates that while the location of the term "Piney" does seem to move, the stigmatized role that the Pineys play in the larger region appears to have remained stable over time (p. 4). A component of what I am calling the "stigmatized place phenomenon" observed by Cohen is the elusiveness of the connotation to the unknowing outside observer. As one of Cohen's respondents told him, " . . . if you gotta ask what a Piney is, then you haven't been there long enough to figure it out" (1995, p. 48). This clarity of the stigma for those from the region, yet lack of clarity for those on the outside, illustrates that locality and territory have much to do with the stigma. A similar example of this type of stigmatized community is found in Jane Hurwitz Nadel's study of Ferryden, Scotland entitled "Stigma and Separation: Pariah Status and Community Persistence in a Scottish Fishing Village" (1984). Ferryden is a small, distinct, kin-based and highly endogamous village on the east coast of Scotland. Nadel states, "the town and its people were stigmatized... [they] were generally characterized as being inbred and weak-minded, dirty, coarse, sly, impulsive, bellicose, and inebriated. They were objects of satire, exploitation, revulsion, and occasionally well-meaning charity" (p. 104). Nadel locates the source of Ferryden's stigma mainly in the fact that it was a fishing village, and fisherfolk have "historically been marked as a distinct and low-prestige occupational group" and thus does not fully explore the regional aspect of the stigma (1984, p. 101). However, aside from her discussion of fishing, Nadel's research also reveals some of the characteristics of the place stigma with which I am concerned. Nadel mentions the strong linkage between "work, residence, and social image" and this suggests that the stigma attached to the village is not solely occupational and is also tied to place (1984, p. 101, my emphasis). She also acknowledges that not all fisherfolk of Scotland received the negative stigma associated with the occupation, and that the "relationships between fishing and non-fishing people varied considerably from region to region" (1984, p. 104). Further, Nadel discusses Ferryden's endurance as a "distinct communal entity" which was isolated from, and subordinated to, other towns in its surrounding region (p. 103). As with the Pineys and Seabrookers, the inhabitants of Ferryden are named by their region and are known as "Ferrydeners," in the surrounding area and also as "True Ferrydenders" within the town to separate themselves from "incomers" who moved into town recently for work at an oil services base located near Ferryden. In my research, I found people would often distinguish between '°real Brookers" and people who moved into town. For instance one Seabrook resident (a selfproclaimed "real Brooker," about sixty-five-years old) said to my husband, who took part in our conversation, "Oh you might know of Seabrook (since he mentioned living there as a child), but you're not a Seabrooker!" Like Seabrookers, Nadel found that "True Ferrydeners" are "linked to the village by ties of kinship" and "believe that Ferryden belongs to them" and that they "define the village community in terms of themselves and their past" (p. 102). These characteristics

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of ownership, shared history, and defending their community from outsiders are common features among stigmatized communities. Interestingly, both the Ferrydenders in Nadel's study and the Seabrookers in m y own study are known for their "rock hurlings," which in Seabrook are known as 'brickings,' as in 'brick 'em.' Tales of Seabrookers throwing rocks at outsiders in their town are still told in the surrounding region, and the phrase, "If you can't lick 'em; brick 'em," said to be a common Seabrook refrain, comprises part of the local lore about the town. One of my respondents, a twenty-year-old college student whose family has lived in Seabrook for several generations, said when I asked her about her town's image, " . . . we were secluded and we threw rocks at people to keep them out." Since the town is not geographically secluded, I asked her to elaborate on this notion of seclusion, and she again turned to stories of rock throwing, stating: For some reason, when I used to hear these stories when I was young, I don't even know who told me these stories, it may have been my neighbor, I don't know... I just got this image of everybody standing right at the town line and throwing rocks. I'm sure it wasn't like that, but that's what it sounded like. It was a v e r y . . , keep-to-themselvestype community. Another person I interviewed, Malcolm, a seventy-two-year-old man from a neighboring Seacoast town recalled driving through town with some friends when he was in his twenties. He said when they reached a particular road in Seabrook, a group of teenagers pelted their car with rocks. I asked why he thought they did this, and he said, "Cause they knew we weren't from town." In Nadel's work, she also describes rock hurling as part of the local legend and symbolic of both the village's endogamy and social isolation. She states, Local legend says that boys from the [neighboring] town who ventured across the bridge to the village would be met by a barrage of stones and refuse hurled at them by village men and boys. It is unlikely, however, that any town or farm youth who succeeded in establishing a liaison with a Ferryden girl would have wished to legitimize it by marrying her, for Ferryden and its people were stigmatized (p. 104, emphasis added). In both cases, rock hurling appears to be a visible (and tangible) instance of the townspeople viewing their stigmatized community as clearly fixed and defensible. Furthermore, the practice is a source of in-group pride and is strengthened and celebrated through local legend. According to Cynthia, a sixty-nine-year-old woman I interviewed whose family is from Seabrook but who now lives in a neighboring town, the local lore about "brickins" dates back to the Revolutionary War. Growing up, she was told that Seabrook residents were not afforded the "right to bear arms" during the Revolution. She was not sure why this was the case, but speculated that "they didn't like them because of the way they talked."

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Cynthia surmised that because of the Seabrooker's strong "Elizabethan English" accents, they were assumed to be sympathetic to Britain. On the contrary, Seabrookers were more than willing to fight for independence. The story of one notable town member who was imprisoned in the Tower of London in the late 1600s for his early struggles against the "tyranny of kings" figures significantly in the town's written history. 7 Since they were not issued arms or ammunition during the Revolution, the story goes, they improvised by piling up rocks and bricks with which to defend themselves. Thus, the phrase, "If you can't lick 'era; brick 'em" emerged, perhaps as a turn of the phrase, "If you can't beat 'era; join 'era." In addition to the rock throwing practices and the folkloric celebration thereof, also notable in both the Seabrook and the Ferryden cases is the fact that the communities, which are not geographically isolated, are perceived as isolated, secluded, or as Nadel puts it, as "distinct communal entities" (p. ! 03). Nadel mentions that "unlike many old fishing villages, Ferryden is easily visible from the main road" (p. 102). As mentioned earlier, while in the past there were parts of Seabrook which may have been isolated at high tide, this is no longer the case; it is quite accessible, with major U.S. routes running through the town. But, I found many instances where Seabrook was presented discursively as remote, almost unreachable. For example, I recently struck up a conversation with an approximately sixty-year-old man at a bar in a Massachusetts town located about six miles from Seabrook's town lines. The man said, "I hope you can hear me alright, some people have a hard time understanding me 'cause of my accent." I had noted his speech patterns, which at this point were quite familiar to me. I said, "Oh really, where are you from?" He replied, "Oh, I ' m from a place far, far away. I ' m from Seabrook, New Hampshire!" As he said this, he played up the accent, emphasizing Seabrook's supposed "remoteness." The perception of social isolation, of an island-like world unto itself, is produced and reified through social practices and cultural representations of both Seabrook and Ferryden in the form of storytelling and local legends.

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Elias and Scotson's classic community study, The Established and the Outsiders ([ 1965] 1994) explores community and the politics of reputation between a newer "immigrant" neighborhood known as the Estate and an older "established" neighborhood of the Village in the English community of Winston Parva. The authors illustrate the older neighborhood inhabitants' propensity to "close ranks" against the newer arrivals by means of stigmatization (1994, p. xv). The stigma waged against the new group, who were not ethnically, racially, or socioeconomically different from the older group, was that they were "untrustworthy, undisciplined and lawless" with "low behavior" and "bad family lives"--or as Elias and Scotson suggest, they were simply "anomic" (1994, pp. xxv, 88). The established

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group, on the other hand, saw themselves as "charismatic" with superior norms and virtues (1994, p. xxiii). In the collective fantasy of the established, "close contact with [the outsiders] threatened a member of [the] established group with 'anomic infection'" or "fear of pollution" (p. xxiv). I found examples of this sort o f " f e a r of pollution" or the fear of stigma by physical proximity to Seabrook's borders. For instance, Gordon, a seventy-four-yearold resident from an "old Seabrooker family," told the story of sitting in a diner in a neighboring town and overhearing two young women in the booth next to his argue over who lived "closer to Seabrook." Gordon described how the two went back and forth, trying to pin proximity to the other, saying "No, y o u ' r e way closer, because half of your street is in Seabrook," and the other trying to refute the claim with some other geographical marker. Gordon said he wanted to tell them, "I got you both b e a t - - I ' m from Seabrook!" But, he did not; despite the fact that they were disparaging his home, Gordon reported that he "did not want to embarrass them." This fear of geographical contamination is evidenced in the story of a local restaurant that briefly moved into Seabrook from another town in" the late 1970s. After learning of the town' s reputation, the story goes, the owners decided to relocate again, just a few hundred yards down the road into Hampton Falls. Since this is an example of the types of anecdotal stories told about the town, I cannot verify the reasons for the move, however, people I interviewed said that the owners did not want to have a Seabrook address in the phone book nor in its advertisements. These stories o f Seabrook's town line being imbued with polluting qualities illustrate the importance of place in the mythology circumscribing the town.

IN-GROUP IDENTITY: O W N I N G THE STIGMA One of Elias and Scotson's findings which stands in contrast to Seabrookers, Pineys, or the True Ferrydeners, is that the stigmatized group, because of their "newness" and lack of cohesion, was unable to transform their stigma into a source of in-group identity and pride. For instance, in considering the in-group identity of Ferryden, Nadel observes that: those groups and classes with little access to property.., have been looked down upon, castigated for immorality, and regarded as dangerous and polluting• While the fisherfolk of Ferryden value their identity, they also have longed for respectability•Looked at in this way, True Ferrydenhood takes on a paradoxical dimension. From the outset, the fisherfolk's homes and livelihood were owned by the lairds, or mortgaged to fishcurers. The only property the Ferrydenners ever owned free and clear was their community. To lose it would take away their source of dignity and respect, to render them less than fully human (1984, p. 113). •

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.

Despite its negative connotations and the paradoxical dimension of the pariah identity, it is an identity nonetheless. Cohen also noted that the Piney identity

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became a source of pride, with people from all over southern New Jersey heralding their identity with "Piney Power" bumper stickers and buttons (1995, p. 49). In my research into Seabrooker identity, I found that town inhabitants take pride in their community and seem to work at keeping their town's stigmatized image alive. For example, because they live on the coast near a large area of muddy flats, clamming, or digging clams, has always figured prominently in Seabrook's town culture. If, as Nadel contends, fishing is thought of as a lowly occupation, then one could surmise that clamming is the lowest of the lowly fishing vocations. It involves the backbreaking work of bending over constantly to dig a pitch fork into the mud to unearth the clams and sifting through the mud by hand to locate them. Seabrook women became well known in the region as expert clam shuckers, an even more grueling task of forcing the shells open to extract the clams. But, Seabrookers do take pride in the work and in the clams. The town's yearly celebration, "Old Home Days," features many clam-related activities. For instance, the 1996 "Old Home Days" festivities featured a doll carriage parade, and one three-year-old girl dressed as a clam digger in high plastic "wellie" boots and rolled up pants. She pushed a carriage decorated as a giant clam. The words "Seabrook Clam Digger" were painted on the side of her carriage and she carried an "official clam digging license" from 1950 which was given to her by one of her relatives. 8 Since 1989, the clam flats have been closed on and off due to bacterial contamination. But, as one person I interviewed from a neighboring town said, "illegal clam digging has become a rite of passage for Seabrook boys." Additionally, Seabrook clammers are reputed to have a "till" into which they pool resources to aid those clammers who get caught on the closed flats, using it to bail people out of jail or help pay their fines. Illegal clam digging and trying to evade State Fish and Game officials have become sport in Seabrook, and are played up as a source of pride and in-group identity. In turn, illegal digging has also become a new source for stories about Seabrookers and their stupidity and "lawlessness" among the surrounding communities. In one local paper their brazen disregard for regulations was admonished; they were described as risking their own health, and since some were "caught bootlegging the shellfish, ''9 risking the health of others as well. In my interviews, other examples of pride within the Seabrook community emerged. Donna, the twenty-year-old college student who recalled the story of people lined up at the town line throwing rocks, also remembered that in the elementary school, there was tremendous pride in Seabrook as a community. She noted that once children reached high school age, they attend school in the neighboring town, where they are often singled out and made the brunt of jokes about "Brookers." But, in the town's own school, they sang cheers which incorporated and venerated the "Brooker identity" in their verses. She relayed a cheer, which went, "S-E, S-E, S-E, A, B-R, B-R, O-O, K, Brooker, Brooker 'til I die, let me hear that Bubba cry!" An eleven-year-old boy I spoke to reported that they still

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recite this cheer in the elementary school. "Bubba" is another term used within Seabrook. It is a familiar term, used as a signifier of insider identity. "Ayuh, Bubba" is a greeting used within Seabrook, meaning "Okay, buddy ''1° or "That's right, buddy," or even, "Hi, Friend." And if someone says, "He's a real Bub," or a "wicked Bub" this means he is a true Seabrooker, from an old town family, and not someone who moved in from out of town. It also connotes someone who epitomizes the Seabrooker identity--a tough person, someone you "don't want to mess with." There is a cultivated pride in the ownership of the stigmatized identity-despite its inherent derogatory cast--which attributes to the longevity of both Seabrook's reputation and the town's communal identity. Elias and Scotson suggest that lack of cohesion and in-group identity allowed the outsiders' stigma, once hoisted upon them, to become entrenched. I contend that for some stigmatized regions, the inhabitants, b e c a u s e o f their cohesion and communality, act to reproduce their reputation from within the region and to defend it from encroachment, drawing them even closer together and reinforcing their insularity. As Nadel asserts, " . . . the only thing [they] ever owned free and clear was their c o m m u n i t y . . , to lose it would be to take away their dignity and respect, to render them less than fully human" (p. 113). When discussing the codes of conduct for stigmatized people and the issue of in-group alignments, Goffman stated, Althoughthese proposedphilosophies of life, these recipes of being, are presented as though from the stigmatizedindividual'spersonalpoint of view, on analysis it is apparentthat something else informsthem. This somethingelse is groups,in the broad sense of like-situated individuals, and this is onlyto be expected, since what an individual is, or could be, derives from the place of his kind in the social structure (1963, p. 112, emphasis added). This could not be any more clearly illustrated than in the case of individuals from stigmatized communities. When the place of one' s kind is a stigmatized place, a place which is defined by others as polluted, as degenerate and anomic, this is a powerful force on one's in-group identity. Seabrook's culture as a community has incorporated ways to celebrate the town's unique reputation, venerating the infamous trait of toughness and insularity through its own folklore and oral history. However, other interviewees mentioned ways in which the reputation of the town negatively affected their own biographies. For instance, there is the case of Lillian, a woman in her mid- to late sixties whose family was originally from Seabrook, but moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts, in her parents' generation to work in the shoe industry. Lillian said that growing up, she tried to keep her Seabrook family connections hidden from others even though one of her grandmothers still lived in the town. Lillian often visited her grandmother in Seabrook, but she said, "living here in Newburyport, I didn't let anyone know my family came from Seabrook." I asked why, and she said,

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Because of the reputation, because if they knew that, they'd be calling you a Seabrooker, and it wasn't a very nice term back then. So, I was embarrassed. But, I'll tell you one thing, they were warm, loving people--and neat as a pin. Least the ones I knew.., some were strong-willed and didn't necessarily respect the law. I wish I could go back. There are so many things I want to know and can't find them out now and I just wish I could go back and listen to them, and talk to some of these old-timers that are gone. Lillian makes a connection here between being from a stigmatized place and being embarrassed by it, but also to a loss of a community and kinship that she now mourns. For Lillian, who is a genealogy buff and avidly researches her ancestry, the loss of her Seabrook ties was significant. She said several times in our interviews, "If only I could go back, just for a few days, to hear the people speak in the dialect." She also said that even in some of her genealogical research, people brought up the town's stigma. She mentioned an interview she conducted with a ninety-year-old woman who lived in Newburyport who, when she heard that some of Lillian's family was from Seabrook said tersely, "Twasn't a very moral place." Gordon, the seventy-four-year-old father of one of my key informants, also recalled instances where he was embarrassed because he was "from Seabrook." He told a story of working as a carpenter with a friend, another Seabrooker, in the house of a well-to-do woman who had recently moved to Hampton. He said the woman, who was not even from the area, often made jokes and put-downs about Seabrookers to them, perhaps to show she could "fit in" in her new surroundings. "She didn't know we were from town, you k n o w . . . Finally, my friend said to her, ' M a ' a m , you know, you're talking to two Seabrookers!' Well, after that, boy, she gave us clothes, f o o d - - s h e ' d send us home with something every day after that!" In this case, he was more embarrassed for the woman than himself, but the fact that she tried to fight this situation by sending the men home with charitable donat i o n s - a s s u m i n g they must be in need of something--was just as insulting as her remarks.

SUMMARY In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson (1983) argues that communities are artifacts. An examination of reputation and community can illuminate how communities are imagined from the outside, and then how those on the inside use the reputation to strengthen the community from within. The invention of community is assumed to be the work of those on the inside and not a geographical necessity. Mary Douglas, in an essay in which she ponders the idea of home as a kind of space wrote,

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This essay makes a fresh start by approachingthe home as an embryoniccommunity. If that sounds platitudinous it is because many sociologists think of the embryonic community as modeled on the idea of home. This relic of nineteenth-centuryromantic enthusiasm has been a stumbling block in sociology, where it is assumed too easily that the survival of community over many vicissitudes does not need explaining. On this line of thought both home and community are supposed to be able to draw upon the same mysterious supply of loyal support, and further, their inner sources of strength are unanalyzable:thanks to a kind of mystic solidarity home and small local communityare supposedto be able to overcomethe forces of fission that tear larger groups apart (1991, p. 288). I argue that the construction of community is also dependent on attributes that arise from outside the community itself and these attributes, however derogatory, can become an "inner source of strength" within a community. In the case of Seabrook, this revolves around an unsavory, invidious reputation made up of jokes, insults, disparaging remarks, and stories about the inbreeding and degeneracy of its inhabitants. This reputation became a symbolic boundary around the town, a discrediting mythology separating Seabrook residents from their supposedly non-inbred others. Some Seabrookers, in turn, have embraced their lack of acceptance, using it to strengthen community ties from within and to keep others out, for as Douglas also argues, "those committed to the idea of home exert continual vigilance in its behalf' (p. 305). In examining the reputation and the mythology that surrounds and supports Seabrook as a community I have shed some light on what Douglas calls the "mysterious supply of mystic solidarity." Seabrookers created an impenetrable closeness of kin and more than kin. This cultivated closeness made them the object of ridicule all the more so. A community that is so tight-knit is both dangerous, fascinating, and, because of the notion of inbrededness and incestuousness, disconcerting. The image of Seabrook unsettles the outsider. This is not an idyllic, coastal New England community.

SOME THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS In his book, Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity, Rob Shields describes place myths. He writes, "[p]laces and spaces are hypostatised from the world of space relations to the symbolic realm of cultural significations. Traces of these cultural place-images are also left behind in the litter of historical popular c u l t u r e s . . . These images connected with a place may even come to be held as signifiers of its essential c h a r a c t e r . . . " (1991, p. 47). The purpose of this paper was to review some of the existing literature for the types of place-images that Seabrook exemplifies--communities which are marked by a reputation tied to region. I expanded Goffman's notion of tribal stigma to address the stigmatized place phenomenon and further an understanding of pariah communities and their members. In discussing the role of stigma in encounters between normals and stigmatized others, Goffman said, " . . . what is proven false is not the person with

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a differentness, but rather any and all those who happen into the situation.., there are of course even more direct instances of the situation, not the person, becoming threatened" (p. 136). I have extended this notion of threatened situations to explicate the idea of threatened, or threatening, localities and their inhabitants. I examined how cultural boundaries are erected and reified in regional settings in such a way that the township itself is spoiled, and explored the roles that these stigmata play within the community and among people of the larger region in which these communities are located. What is added or modified in the study of stigma and place reputations? How does the articulation of space combined with the attribution of human qualities (i.e., an immoral place, a tough place) resituate our notions of stigma? I have argued that certain stigmata are not fixed to individuals nor to groups, but to spaces, becoming geographically bounded and territorial in the relations they constitute. There is symbolic capital in these boundaries, a surplus of meaning which reflects back upon the material conditions which initiate them. These imaginary boundaries can be examined as an instance of folklore or regional mythology. This rethinking of Goffman's notion of stigma suggests that turning our attention to the forces of place in defining people, particularly in a postmodern society of transient, highly mobile populations, can lead to new areas of consideration in community studies. Among the questions which arise are: Can the stigma be left behind, or, conversely, can it rub off to new inhabitants? Future research into stigmatized communities should consider how place reputations can affect regional planning and land use strategies. For instance, does the political economy of reputation influence the types of businesses drawn to stigmatized places? Are places of ill repute thought of as readily available receptacles of noxious industrious, such as solid waste transfer stations? In exploring the notion of place stigma further, I will consider the notion of a "fetishism of place" wherein places are assigned human qualities and stratified accordingly.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper and to Norman K. Denzin for his suggestions and encouragement. Special thanks to Michael Brown and Kathy Hayden for reading and commenting on every draft.

NOTES 1. NewburyportDaily Herald, June 3, 1871. 2. BostonPost, July 6, 1871. 3. For more discussion of the anti-urbanbias in this country, see Gist and Fava (1965). See also Silbey (1995).

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4. According to Kurath (1973) Seabrook is described as having "much inbreeding" and being "suspicious of outsiders" (p. 213). In a 1987 Boston Globe article on the dialect, a Seabrook woman is quoted as saying, "My father always used 'hark' with is when he wanted us to listen up. That's Old English, but we learned it just the way kids learn 'no'." 5. The idea that endogamy can act to maintain language patterns was explored by Stevens and Swicegood in their 1987 article, "The linguistic context of ethnic endogamy." 6. See also Vansina (1985). Oral tradition as history--particularly the sections on hearsay, historical gossip, reminiscence, and group and cumulative accounts. 7. In Dow (1962), the incident was known as Gove's Rebellion and the town history states that in 1682 [Edward Gove] sounded the tocsin of revolution [which was] not responded to with that concert of action and energy which marked the uprising in 1775. Gove and his followers were arrested and tried for high treason. He was sentenced to be hanged and drawn in quarters, but after two and a half years of imprisonment in the Tower of London, he was pardoned and released. 8. The Beachcomber Newspaper, August 22, 1996. 9. July 24, 1993. 10. These terms were mentioned by many of my interviewees and "Ayuh Bubba" was quoted in the 1987 Boston Globe article by J. Ackerman entitled, "Our dying dialects."

REFERENCES Ackerman, J. 1987. "Our Dying Dialects." Boston Globe, September 26, pp. 1, 24. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso. Banks, A., D. Billings, and K. Tice. 1993. "Appalachian Studies, Resistance, and Postmodernism." Pp. 283-301 in Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Boston Post. 1871. The Algerines. July 6. Burchfield, R. W. 1996. The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, 3rd ed. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Cohen, S. D. 1995. Folk Legacies Revisited. New York: Rutgers. Cohen, A. P. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Communities. New York: Routledge. Douglas, M. 1991. "The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space." Social Research 58: 287-307. Dow, C. 1962. Seabrook: A Unit on the Town of Seabrook, New Hampshire. Rowley, MA: Rowley Printing Company. Eagleton, T. 1983. Literary" Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Elias, N., and J. L. Scotson. [1965] 1994. The Established and the Outsiders. London: Sage. Ellis, C., C. E. Kiesinger, and L. M. Tillmann-Healy. 1997. "Interactive Interviewing: Talking about Emotional Experience." Pp, 119-150 in Reflexivity and Voice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Fine, G. A. 1993. "Ten Lies of Ethnography: Moral Dilemmas of Field Research." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 22: 267-294. Gist, N. P., and S. F. Fava. 1965. "The Image of the City." Urban Society 524-544. Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Touchstone. Krase, J. 1979. "Stigmatized Places, Stigmatized People." In Brooklyn, USA: The Fourth Largest City in America. New York: Brooklyn College Press. Kurath, H. 1973. The Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England, 2nd ed. New York: AMS Press. Mills, C. W. 1942. "The Professional Ideology of Social Pathologists." American Journal of Sociology 49: 165-180.

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Nadel, J. H. 1984. "Stigma and Separation: Pariah Status and Community Persistence in a Scottish Fishing Village." Ethnology 23:105-115. Newburyport Daily Herald. 1871. South Seabrook, June 3. Norse, S. 1996. "Celebration Inspires Creativity: Seabrook Old Home Days." The Beachcomber, August 22, p. 12. Seabrook Historical Society. 1968. Seabrook, New Hampshire: A Commemorative Book, 1768-1968. Somersworth, NH: The New Hampshire Publishing Company. Shields, R. 1991. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. New York: Routledge. Sihley, D. 1995. Geographies of Exclusion. New York: Routledge. Stevens, G., and G. Swicegood. 1987. "The Linguistic Context of Ethnic Endogamy." American Sociological Review 52: 73-82. Stewart, K. 1990. "Backtalking the Wilderness: 'Appalachian' En-genderings." Pp. 43-56 in Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Stewart, K. 1996. A Space on the Side of the Road." Cultural Poetics in an 'Other' America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vansina, J. 1985. Oral Tradition as History. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

"THE EATING DISORDER IS NOT YOU" APPLYING BAKHTIN'S THEORIES IN ANALYZING NARRATIVE CO-CONSTRUCTION IN AN INTERNET SUPPORT GROUP

Mary K. Walstrom

The expansive body of theoretical work by Bakhtin/Voloshinov has been insightfully tapped and applied in a number of empirical language studies (Barnes and Vangelisti 1995; Hickman 1993; Hicks 1994; Kamberelis and Scott 1992; Shotter and Katz 1996).1 However, Bakhtin/Voloshinov seems primarily invoked by language scholars to refine theoretical and philosophical understandings of his work, only at times pointing toward this work's rich potential use for empirical inquiry (cf. L~ihteenm~iki and Dufva 1998). Here I seek to bridge the gap between empirical applications of Bakhtin/Voloshinov's theories in communication research and the writings that allude to this aim. Specifically, I attempt to demonstrate how Bakhtin/Voloshinov's theoretical conceptions of self/other, genre, and voice guided a micro-level discourse analysis of interaction within an Internet support group for women with anorexia and bulimia, alt.support.eating.disord (ASED). Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 241-260. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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In the present work, I lay out Bakhtin's theories of self/other, genre, and voice, elaborating ways they intersected with and guided my evolving interpretation of ASED interaction. I then present a micro-level discourse analysis of ASED interaction involving one two-part and one three-part exchange between initial posters and respondents. I focus on a process by which I argue ASED participants actively co-author, or co-construct (Jacoby and Ochs 1995), an "intimate genre" (Bakhtin 1986, pp. 79, 97)--a genre I see as exemplifying a "public narrative" (Somers and Gibson 1994, p. 62) in the ASED forum. Somers and Gibson (1994) define a public narrative as one that is "attached to cultural and institutional formations larger than the single individual, to intersubjective networks or institutions" (p. 62). Though micro-level discourse analysis, I came to see one collectively produced and shared narrative within the ASED forum as such a public narrative, serving as a key resource upon which many group participants draw in presenting eating disorder experiences. My analysis of the co-construction of an ASED public narrative is a portion of my larger examination of ASED narrative activity (Walstrom 1999). I briefly outline this study, here to serve as a backdrop for the present analysis. This larger work took shape as a micro-level discourse analysis of the co-construction of eating disorder (anorexic and bulimic) and recovering identities in the ASED forum. This co-construction process emerged as salient to me based on an in-depth examination of the pronominal positionings (Davies and Harre 1990; O'Connor 1994) taken up by ASED participants in both personal narrative and what I came to see as an ASED public narrative. 2 Specifically I trace within ten two-part exchanges the systematic ways in which women locate themselves as protagonists within configurations of positionings involving action, states of being, and stances, including epistemological, affective, and evaluative (Ochs 1995). 3 I argue that these configurations of positionings taken up by women evidence the co-construction of a continuum of five identities, ranging from indeterminate eating disorder identity to recovering identity. I suggest that this finding offers a promising micro-level account of ways in which everyday narrative activity may serve to transform eating disorder identities to recovering identities--one primary and powerful discursive route, in my view, to recovery. The present discussion of Bakhtin's theories and their application in a discourse analysis of ASED interaction has two alms. I first seek to incite communication researchers to join therapists in studies of therapeutic interaction in both face-to-face and on-line contexts, while drawing on Bakhtin's theories for such inquiries. This aim in part follows Capps' and Ochs' (1995) call for increased collaboration between therapists and communication researchers, especially discourse analysts. In a study of the narrative co-construction of agoraphobic identities, encourage therapists to combine forces with discourse analysts to look "at" rather than "through" language (Capps and Ochs 1995, p. 18)--namely, to closely examine discourse structures and functions for better understanding and facilitating recovery processes. I view the present work as a point of departure for

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communication researchers and therapists interested in collaborative study of therapeutic interaction to further understandings of recovery, as I aim to lay out how B akhtin's theories may provide both theoretical and analytical grounding for such inquiry. Second, I aim to show ways in which communication research may contribute to studies of anorexia and bulimia in the natural sciences, such as psychology. I see strong potential for a discourse analytic perspective on eating disorders-focusing on women' s own narratives of eating disorder experience--to fruitfully expand the emphasis being placed by some psychological research on external manifestations of women's eating disorders (e.g., eating behaviors and body image distortions; cf. Cash and Brown 1987; Faust 1987). This expansion seems important because, informed by Bakhtin (as cited in Morson and Emerson 1990), we know that "to be means to communicate" (p. 50) and that to change the "event of being" (Morson and Emerson 1990, p. 177) that is the self, one needs to change the utterances by which the self is forged and to whom those utterances are addressed in a particular context. It is my view that communication researchers, especially discourse analysts--guided by Bakhtin's theories--may broaden psychological understandings of how eating disorders are sustained, as well as dismantled, by pursuing studies of these problems through the lens of everyday narrative activity. I preface my discussion of Bakhtin's theories by overviewing the origin and nature of the database for the upcoming analysis which those theories informed.

DATABASE My analysis of the co-construction of a public narrative within ASED interaction evolved out of my own reading and participating in the on-line support group. I unexpectedly discovered the ASED forum five years ago while browsing the new newsgroups recently added automatically to my Interact newsreader program. This discovery became an important facet of my own ongoing recovery from anorexia nervosa, as it coincided with the disbanding of my "real life" support group. 4 My involvement in ASED as an experiencer of an eating disorder entailed reading and responding to posts (individual messages) as well as saving posts that fueled my own struggle to recover. This involvement as a participant-experiencer came to highly inform my involvement in the group as a researcher. That is, in reading and saving 5,609 individual posts out of personal interest, I began noting common themes in those posts that struck me as both helpful and intriguing. I then proceeded to systematically save ASED posts as threads for research, guided by what I had observed as salient in the posts I'd previously saved randomly. 5 For example, my collection and examination of ASED threads largely revolved around group participants' frequent references to their eating disorder voices. I also allowed my emotional understanding of these references--~e sense con-

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veyed by their evaluative attitude (Bakhtin 1986; Katz and Shotter 1996)--to inform my analysis, given how strongly these references resonated with my own anorexic voices. Over a 12-month period, I collected 144 threads made up of 823 posts for my larger analysis. I decided to explore ways in which communicative processes across threads facilitated the posing and solving of problems related to eating disorder experiences, an aim geared toward concretely helping women overcome their conditions. I shared my research goals with newsgroup participants, and the responses that I received wholly encouraged me to proceed with my project. My sharing with group participants the nature of my study and my intent to seek practical benefits for women struggling with eating disorders grew out of the feminist ethic (Denzin and Lincoln 1994) I sought to actively employ in my research.

BAKHTIN/VOLOSHINOV: SELF/OTHER, GENRE, AND VOICE I next elaborate Bakhtin's theories of self/other, genre, and voice, highlighting ways they enabled me to locate and analyze the co-construction of a public narrative within ASED interaction. Self/Other Bakhtin argues that the self is socially determined, namely a product of the utterances to which we (cannot help but) respond in ongoing dialogue we hold with others, actual or imagined: "in the absence of a real addressee, an addressee is presupposed in the person" (Voloshinov 1973, p. 85). He stresses the role of particular others in shaping the utterances that bring the self into being: "I give myself shape and form from another's point of view, ultimately from the point of view of the community to which I belong" (Voloshinov 1973, p. 86). Given the central location of particular others in the formulation of the self, a Bakhtinian perspective affords my analysis of ASED interaction heightened recognition of the key role of group participants in (re)formulating selves and of the resources on which they collectively draw in this process--a shared history or "apperceptive background" (Bakhtin 1986, p. 95; Voloshinov 1973, p. 118). For example, I see this background as in part composed of the many problems commonly faced by ASED participants, specifically those related to starving practices, or more generally, to hunger. 6 Problems of hunger are often linked to other complications, such as emotional or psychological difficulties (e.g., anxiety regarding the consequences of having eaten--gaining weight--or mental deliberations and obsessions over eating at all). In light of Bakhtin's theory of self/other, ASED participants' shared apperceptive background can be appreciated as a vital shaping force in initial posters' abilities to formulate and share problems such as hun-

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ger (and related difficulties) and in respondents' abilities to interpret and address them: Take whatever kind of utterance we will.., the verbal expression of some need--for instance hunger--we may be certain that it is socially-orientedin its entirety. Above all it is determined immediately and directly by the participants of the speech event, both implicit and explicit participants, in connection with a specific situation (Voloshinov 1973, p. 87). Bakhtin's notion of self/other enabled me to recognize A S E D participants as not just actively involved in, but also uniquely suited for, the process of self/ other-constitution. Following Bakhtin, I suggest this process is facilitated by w o m e n ' s shared apperceptive background, equipping them to interpret each other's problems and pose solutions geared toward eliminating eating-disorder-related practices. Although the self c a n ' t be known directly, writes Bakhtin, he posits a complex theory of how the self emerges as an "event of being" (Morson and Emerson 1990, p. 177) through the relationship between an author (self) and hero (protagonist in narrative) in the reading of an artwork (e.g., a novel): The author.., is not an identity . . . . He [sic] is the author only in the event of the artwork only as he [sic] can be perceived or shown to be a function of the relation between author and hero in the event of a particular reader's reading (co-authoring)of that particular text. (Bakhtin 1990, p. xxxi). W h a t is accessible to us is the self we receive as a "gift" from others (the I-for-other), who rescues us from sheer potential by finalizing or consummating images of ourselves in written, spoken, or even imagined interaction (Morson and Emerson 1990, p. 191). These consummated or finalized images give rise to our ever-evolving, often-conflicting, yet knowable and observable identities in situated instances o f dialogue. Bakhtin suggests others accomplish this feat through their "excess of seeing" (Bakhtin 1990, p. 22) or "surplus of vision" (Morson and Emerson 1990, p. 53). He offers a moving example of this achievement in describing a process by which the pain of one who is suffering is transformed through the other's supplying of something the sufferer is lacking in his/her field of vision. This moving illustration o f the often isolating nature of pain strikes me as analogous to the pain shared by women with anorexia and bulimia on ASED: "He [sic] does not see the agonizing tension of his own muscles.., or the expression of suffering on his own face. He [sic] does not see the clear blue sky against the background of which his [sic] suffering outward image is delineated for me (Bakhtin 1990, p. 25). In the other's performing what Bakhtin calls the ethical act of witnessing of the images of self (e.g., identities) situated in dialogue (e.g., as protagonists in narrative), the other may relieve the self's suffering: "The clear blue s k y . . , becomes a pictorial feature which consummates and resolves his [sic] suffering. And all of

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these values that consummated the image of the other were drawn by me from the excess of my seeing, volition, and feeling" (Bakhtin 1990, p. 27). In my analysis I recognize the central role of ASED participants as witnesses to the images of self located in narratives shared within their support group forum. 7 That is, I view such witnessing as a powerful catalyst for evoking the kinds of utterances that forge new selves (and new identities). I also suggest such witnessing helps to ease the suffering many women experience due to the isolating nature of their struggles with a widely pathologized condition. In my analysis, I explore how ASED participants, engaged in mutual acts of witnessing (grounded in a shared apperceptive background), co-construct a collectively shared genre, a public narrative, serving as a site for solving problems and for forging new selves and identities (e.g., recovering identities). I elaborate next how I came to view the ASED public narrative as genre through the lens of Bakhtin's work. Genre Bakhtin's theory of genre shaped my conception of an ASED public narrative as specifically an "intimate genre" (Bakhtin 1986, p. 97). For example, intimate genres, argues Bakhtin (1986), are "imbued with a deep confidence in the addressee, his [sic] sympathy, in the sensitivity and goodwill of his [sic] understanding. In this atmosphere of profound trust, the speaker reveals his [sic] internal depths" (p. 97). The trust inhering in this genre, writes Bakhtin, stems from speakers' and writers' dependence on the active, responsive understanding of certain real or imagined addressees situated in historical contexts. I see such understandings of addressees available to ASED participants--in part rooted in their shared apperceptive background and I suggest that is one way in which the ASED public narrative may be taken as an intimate genre. Another way the ASED public narrative may be taken as an intimate genre is through the primary genres that constitute it. As Bakhtin argues, all intimate genres are made up of primary speech genres. The ASED public narrative exhibits several features identified by Bakhtin as inherent to primary genres. For example, the ASED public narrative contains given characters and a plot, both of which are uniquely invoked by ASED participants in particular narrative instances. First, there is a protagonist (ASED participant or initial poster) who is in constant struggle with an antagonist, specifically, one or more eating disorder voices. 8 Second, the plot unfolds around this ongoing struggle (complicating action), often involving whether or not the protagonist (the initial poster) will comply with the eating disorder voice's promptings (explicit or implicit) to engage in eating-disorder-related practices (e.g., starving or bingeing/purging, taking diet pills or laxatives, and/or engaging in self-mutilation): This plot largely develop in one of two directions in ASED narrative activity. The systematic nature of this dual plot structure served as the starting point of my interpretation and analysis of an ASED public narrative.

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One recurrent version of the public narrative' s plot features the eating disorder voice as winning a struggle for control (e.g., a battle) over ASED participants' actions. In this version, the group participant portrays herself as having lost, or listened to, the eating disorder voice and, thus, has (is or will) actively engage in eating-disorder-related practices. 9 The grave nature of this plot cannot be overemphasized. If this plot is sustained by a group participant over time-involving her repeated engaging in starving or bingeing and purging--she is likely to land in a hospital or treatment center. 1° In a worst-case scenario, death is imminent. Although such generalizations lie beyond the scope of the present analysis, Peggy Claude-Pierre, an internationally-recognized eating disorder therapist and in-patient clinic director, takes seriously the fatal impact of her patients' battles with their eating disorder voices. Claude-Pierre (1997) labels these voices Negative Mind, which she argues fuels a death impulse underlying her patients' anorexic and bulimic practices: Given that victims are on an unconscious track to total self-negation, if they perceive themselves as fat, this will allow the Negative Mind to demand that they lose even more weight...They vie to be the best at dying (pp. 68-69).

In ASED narrative activity, the eating disorder voice is similarly positioned as responsible for women's various eating-disorder-related practices. Women's invoking of the public narrative not only brings this relationship to light, but crucially opens it up to the potential for being changed or destabilized to jointly construct a new conversational reality (Shotter 1993, 1995). One way that this potential may be discursively realized is through the shaping force of the respondent, who may challenge the self-presentations of the initial poster as well as offer alternative self-presentations. I argue that the latter case involves a micro-level instance of both problem-solving (addressed below) and the co-construction of recovery-oriented identities (addressed in my larger analysis). In a second version of the public narrative plot, the battle between the initial poster (protagonist) and the eating disorder voice (antagonist) shifts, such that the voice's influence on group participants' eating-disorder-related practices is gradually diminished. In this version, women portray themselves as having conquered the eating disorder voice--specifically, as separated from it--and as (or soon to be) engaging in recovery-related practices and experiences.11 In this second plot version, self-presentations of initial posters are validated, as well as creatively elaborated, by respondents. I suggest this practice by respondents represents another dual micro-level instance of problem-solving and the co-construction of recovery-oriented identities within ASED interaction. Thus, Bakhtin's concept of genre was vital to me in exploring how ASED initial posters take what seem to be givens of a collectively shared genre--a public narr a t i v e - t o uniquely pose eating-disorder-related problems. Bakhtin's perspective on genre also guided me in examining ways that respondents offer alternative

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images of initial posters, namely those oriented toward solving problems posed by initial posters. In short, an ASED public narrative, as an intimate speech genre, seems to help group participants accomplish one (implicit or explicit) "plan" (Bakhtin 1986, p. 81) of their utterances--to forego eating-disorder-related practices. This view guided my examination of ways that ASED participants seem to be involved in the co-construction of the public narrative and a continuum of identities. Voice Bakhtin's theory of voice also became central to my understanding of ASED participants' references to eating disorder voices--and how they shed light on a public narrative--as this theory serves as a tool for making sense of a volatile internal facet of anorexia and bulimia, one that is often concealed. That is, Bakhfin's notion of voice presents a complex and sophisticated theory of inner life-that which is not directly accessible to discourse analysts--and then suggests how analysts may, in fact, indirectly access and explore this inner life through what is displayed in dialogic interaction (written or spoken) with others. Thus, Bakhtin's conception of voice is especially important to my analysis since women with eating disorders, as well as many others suffering various psychological afflictions, often struggle to both apprehend and express the inchoate, chaotic inner experiences of illness (Frank 1995). Moreover, Bakhtin's conception of voice has not only guided me in theorizing and interpreting the eating disorder experiences I approach as an analyst, it has helped me in reflecting on and integrating into my analysis the eating disorder experiences I have had myself. Bakhtin regards voice as a perspective, a distinct, real entity existing in our internal realms whose expression is situated in historical and social contexts. These perspectives, or voices, that occupy our internal realms unfold like alternating lines of dialogue, and are always a response to at least one other's voice (Voloshinov 1973). Yet this inner dialogue may not always be perceived as such; it may be apprehended as "total impressions," which "are joined with one another and alternate with one another not according to the laws of grammar or logic but according to the laws of evaluative (emotive) correspondence, dialogic employment" (Voloshinov 1973, p. 38). These voices of the inner realm may be realized or held back. When realized they must be recognized as a shaping force on our experience: Realized expression, in its turn, exerts a powerful, reverse influence on e x p e r i e n c e . . . [t]his reverse i n f l u e n c e . . , has tremendous importance and must always be taken into account. The claim can be made that it is a matter not so much of expression accommodating itself to our inner world but rather of our inner world accommodating itself the potentialities of our expression, it's possible routes and directions. (Voloshinov 1973, p. 90-91).

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In analyzing ASED participants' narrative activity, I have attended closely to the ways in which realized expressions--portrayed as an inner dialogue between the selves and the eating disorder voices--seem to open up concrete avenues to women for alleviating eating-disorder-related problems. For through realized expression (e.g., through the ASED public narrative), group participants bring to the level of social interaction the internal voices that seem to lie at the heart of eating disorder practices--voices which may otherwise remain inchoate total impressions. To leave these utterances and impressions unformulated and unshared isolates them from the "form-shaping" operations of the other (Morson and Emerson 1990, p. 191). These operations, according to Bakhtin, are essential for realizing self-change. Bakhtin distinguishes between two types of voices that constitute our internal realms: authoritative voices and internally persuasive voices, or discourses. 12 First, authoritative discourses are infused with past authority: "It is a prior discourse" (Bakhtin 1981, p. 342). It does not merge with other discourses; it remains "sharply demarcated" (p. 343), and it demands to speak "in quotation marks" (p. 343). It also mandates strict allegiance--it must be either totally affirmed or rejected: "one cannot divide it up--agree with one part, accept but not completely another part, reject utterly a third part" (p. 343). Such discourses, writes Bakhtin (1986), include those inhering in various institutions, such as totalitarian political regimes, religions, and even families. 13 A prominent example of authoritative discourses, in my view, includes clinical discourses of anorexia and bulimia. Instances of such discourses that I have observed in ASED narratives (e.g., "I am starting to subscribe to the theory that anorexia is a slow form of suicide") seem to invoke an official, objectifying, and disciplining voice of medicine (Foucanlt 1979). I suggest these discourses threaten to overshadow alternative discourses that may be competing for expression, such as those based on women's personal experiences. These authoritative discourses of anorexia and bulimia, as I and others have argued (Garrett 1994, 1998; Szeleky 1988; Walstrom 1996), pathologize the experience of women with anorexia and bulimia and minimize attention to possibilities for recovery. These discourses are then often sensationalized by the mainstream media (Garrett 1994), serving to propagate and escalate the pathologizing of women with eating disorders (Walstrom 1996). A second type of voice, writes Bakhtin (1981)--internally persuasive discourse--"is denied all privilege, backed up by no authority at all, and is frequently not even acknowledged in society" (p. 342). Internally persuasive discourses may be "further, that is, freely, developed, applied to new material, new conditions" (p. 345); one can "put it in a new situation in order to wrest new answers from it, new insights into its meaning, and even wrest from it new words of its own" (p. 346). Bakhtin regards internally persuasive discourses as "half-ours and half-someone else's" (p. 345). One way these discourses bear the traces of such co-ownership is through their "double-voiced" nature, unlike

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authoritative discourse which is "incapable of being double-voiced" (p. 344). That is, double-voiced discourses are meant to be heard as including the voices of others (Morson and Emerson 1990). Bakhtin (1981) states that double-voiced, internally persuasive discourse has been tested, which challenges the nature of its authority. This notion of testing allows us conceive of how we assimilate discourses of others, transforming them from authoritative to internally persuasive discourses (or back again). Once assimilated, internally persuasive discourses remain unstable, moving along a continuum of "varying degrees of 'our-own-ness'" (Bakhtin 1986, p. 89). Internally persuasive discourses, in other words, maintain the potential to become "more than half someone else's" (Morson and Emerson 1990, p. 222). In this process, argues Bakhtin (1981), one begins to resist a former internally persuasive discourse or voice: "it is questioned, it is put in a new situation in order to expose its weak sides, to get a feel for its boundaries, to experience it physically as an object" (p. 348). That is, a struggle ensues among various internally persuasive discourses (pp. 345-346). Bakhtin's conception of the ongoing struggle among internally persuasive voices has informed my analysis of ASED narrative activity in the following way. I suggest the ASED public narrative serves as a site in which group participants display a struggle between at least two internally persuasive voices--one voice aligning with the aims of the eating disorder voice positioned as an antagonist, and (at least) one voice aligning with the aims of a self positioned as a protagonist. Such displays of self-talk by ASED participants are striking, in my view, given the potentially face-threatening nature of such displays in a publicly available forum, such as the Internet (Brown and Levinson 1988; Goffman 1981). I suggest ASED participants' displays of self-talk shed light not only on how internal dialogue may shape eating disorder practices, as Claude-Pierre (1997) hypothesizes, but also on how others can impact the nature of these internal dialogues to afford an emergence of new voices, selves, and identities--possible discursive foundations, I argue, of eating disorder recovery. PUBLIC

NARRATIVE CO-CONSTRUCTION: AN ANALYSIS

The two sets of ASED initial posts and replies analyzed below became salient to me early in my data collection, due to the multiple references women made to the "eating disorder voice." I eventually came to see these posts as sites for examining the co-construction of a public narrative within ASED interaction (and eventually as sites for the co-construction of eating disorder identities). In the examples below, I attempt to show ways in which an ASED public narrative is co-constructed through group participants' invoking of common characters (self as protagonist and the eating disorder voice as antagonist), development of a plot, and

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the making of a point central to that plot. I also highlight ways these practices foster problem-posing and -solving in the ASED forum. In Example 1, I analyze a two-part exchange in which Jackie responds to Elaine's explicit questioning of her own understanding of the eating disorder voice. (All the names of group participants were changed. All original spacing and spelling was preserved.) 14 Example I Elaine: 01 >everyone keeps talking about the "eating disorder voices'and i don't 02 >think i have them...in a sense, it's like right before i go into ed mode, 03 >i hear/feel nothing at all. i don't know what that means .................. ? Jackie: 04 We don't mean "voices" in the sense that a schizophrenic might hear 05 voices. We refer to the eating disorder as having a "voice" because 06 our minds tend to give u s - - o f t e n - - a steady stream of unhealthy, 07 eating-disordered propaganda. ("You're so fat! .... Don't eat that!" 08 "Look at her, she's so much more skinny than you!" Etc.)

18 19 20 21

It' s important to recognize that the eating disorder is not YOU. Understanding that the e-d "voice" is not your OWN is a good way to isolate it as a *disorder*, rather than an integral part of your Self.

In lines 01-02, Elaine foregrounds a gap between other group participants' eating disorder experiences ("everyone keeps talking about 'the eating disorder' voices") and her own ("and I don't think i have them...in a sense, it's like"). She establishes this gap as a problem in line 3 by displaying uncertainty, accomplished through a negated epistemological stance ("I don't know what that means"). She solicits a solution to this problem, in my view, through extended ellipses and a question mark. I argue that the ASED public narrative is invoked as Elaine refers to the "eating disorder voices" in line 01. The quotation marks bounding this phrase index it, as "double-voiced," that is, as an instance of both Elaine' s words as well as "someone else's" (Bakhtin 1981, pp. 344-345). This invoking of the public narrative makes relevant a response that features this narrative, as well. Jackie's reply does invoke the public narrative in addressing Elaine's problem. First, in line 04, Jackie juxtaposes the voices shared (or "talked about," as Elaine stated) by ASED participants ("We don't mean 'voices'...") and the voices often

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associated with another group--persons with schizophrenia. Jackie distinguishes the experiences of ASED participants from "schizophrenics," in my view, by using a plural form of "voices" in line 04, mirroring Elaine's plural form, and by using a singular form of "voice" in line 05. Jackie then supplies requested information about the eating disorder voice to Elaine through offering a reason why ASED participants use such a term ("because our minds . . . . ", lines 05-07). I argue that this utterance displays a characteristic objective of the eating disorder voice as an antagonist within the public narrative--to present false information to prevent participants from eating. This objective is evidenced by Jackie in lines 07-08, as she directly quotes the eating disorder voice ("You're so f a t ! . . . " ), serving as a criticism designed to curtail Jackie's eating. A second index of the public narrative is evidenced in the quotation marks enclosing "You're so fat!" (line 07). These quotation marks may be seen as an instance of double-voiced--and internally persuasive--discourse (Bakhfin 1981). For example, as noted earlier, the eating disorder voice (as antagonist in the public narrative) customarily formulates negative evaluations of the self. Such negative self-evaluation is accomplished in lines 07-08 ("You're so fat!" and " L o o k at her, she's so much more skinny that you!"). A third index of the public narrative may be seen in line 07, as the eating disorder voice issues a command geared toward policing and reinforcing eating-disorder-related practices ("Don't eat that!"). Moreover, these evaluations are intensified in the first and third utterances by "so; so much more," and in all three utterances by exclamation marks. The public narrative is invoked a fourth time in line 18, where Jackie asserts a general claim about eating disorders ("It's important to recognize that the eating disorder is not YOU"). I argue the structure and function of this claim offers a glimpse, of the central point--or evaluative clause in a Labovian (1972) sense-of the public narrative. To elaborate, this utterance is structured as a "fact" (Potter 1996, p. 112), serving to establish and generalize its truth status. This status is also enhanced by Jackie's switch to "empirical discourse" (Potter 1996, p. 115), that is, her use of the impersonal voice. This utterance also serves an evaluative function ("important"), highlighting its significance to the participants of the ASED forum. This point is consistent with the plot of the public narrative, namely is, to engage in battle with--and ultimately overcome (to separate from)--the eating disorder voice. In lines 19-21, Jackie revises and asserts nearly the same claim ("Understanding that the ed 'voice' is not your O W N . . . " ) and then supports it with a second one ("is a good way to isolate it as a *disorder*, rather than an integral part of your Self'). This supporting claim also doubly functions as a fact and an evaluation. The evaluative function is accomplished by the metaphor "isolate" and the asterisks framing "disorder," which discourages, in my view, the equating of the "self' with the "eating disorder voice." Jackie concludes by portraying the eating disorder voice as no more than a "part" of the self (line 20-21). Moreover, she capitalizes the word "Self," which I view as implicitly establishing the eating dis-

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order as subordinate to the self. Having focused her reply exclusively on articulating the nature of the eating disorder voice and ASED participants' reasons for referring to it, I suggest that Jackie not only has provided a solution to Elaine's problem, but has also indexed and reconstituted--co-constructed--the public narrative. In Examples 2.1-2.2, I analyze a three-part exchange between an ASED initial poster and respondent. In Example 2.1 Polly responds to Maria's complaints and call for help. Polly's solution features a dialogue with herself and her eating disorder voice (LV stands for "little voice").15 Example 2.1 Maria: 01 >help. i am so depressed, i want to die. i am so fat. and my goddam 02 >computer refuses to work. this probably won't get through anyway. Polly: 03 Well it did. =-)

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

1.) When I ' m feeling yucky, and my little voice is saying mean things to me, I try to find something nice to say back. For example: LV: You are so gross. I can't believe how fat you've gotten. Me: I have really nice hands. People compliment me on them. LV: People are so repulsed by you because of how disgusting you look. Me: I am smart. People are attracted to me because of how much I have to offer them. LV: Look at how far your stomach sticks out. Me: My hair looks great. It's shiny and healthy because I ' m nourishing it.

Maria's post begins with a call for assistance ("help"), "precasting" (Capps and Ochs 1995, p. 43) the subsequent utterances as problematic. The nature of her problem is formulated as three reasons why assistance is being solicited (lines 01-02). The structure and function of these reasons serve to establish their adverse nature: (1) a state of being which indexes an unfavorable emotional state ("i am so depressed"), (2) an affective stance which accomplishes a suicide threat ("i want to die") and (3) an evaluative stance ("i am so fat") which negatively evaluates Maria's appearance. In addition, Maria casts her computer as uncooperative ("won't work") and as a barrier to her communicating with the group ("this prob-

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ably won't get through anyway"), which is also problematic. I suggest the third reason, the negative self-evaluation of Maria' s appearance ("I am so fat"), potentially indexes the public narrative, since negative self-evaluations, as noted above, tend to characterize utterances as products of the eating disorder voice. In addition, the second reason ("I want to die") may also index the public narrative, for the objective of the eating disorder voice is to encourage starving, as Claude-Pierre (1997) notes, to death. To further ground these interpretations, I point to how one participant, Polly, invokes the public narrative in her response to Maria, displaying that Polly has ostensibly inferred Maria's use of this narrative and invokes it to create a relevant response. This potential inference by Polly I see as due to the apperceptive background (Bakhtin 1986; Voloshinov 1973) shared by women within this particular Intemet forum. Thus, the public narrative seems to serve as a tool for filling in gaps, that is, for enabling respondents to exploit their "excess of seeing" (Morson and Emerson 1990, p. 177) to make sense of, as well as attempt to solve, eating-disorder-related problems. Polly's solution to Maria's problems involves a strategy for engaging in dialogue with her eating disorder voice--to talk back to it ("When... my little voice is saying mean things to me I try to find something nice to say back", line 11). Polly then demonstrates how she engages in such dialogue herself. I suggest that such dialogue represents "realized expression" (Voloshinov 1973, p. 90), which may be otherwise relegated to an internal realm without the availability of a public narrative to ASED participants. Polly offers three examples of dialogue with, or talking back to, her eating disorder voice (marked as "LV"). In the first example, the eating disorder voice issues two consecutive negative self-evaluations. The first, constructed as a fact (Potter 1996), is a generalized negative evaluation of Polly ("You are so gross," line 14), intensified by the use of "so." The second negative evaluation criticizes Polly for an increase in weight ("how fat you've gotten"). The evaluation is intensified by Polly's framing of this increase as surprising ("I can't believe," line 14), an abnormalizing strategy (Potter 1996; cf. Wooffitt 1992). In response to these eating disorder voice evaluations, Polly singles out a particular feature of her body not related to body size or weight and positively evaluates it ("really nice hands," line 15). Polly intensifies this evaluation by casting herself as a recipient of similar, corroborating assessments from others ("People compliment me on them," line 15). In the last two examples of Polly's dialogue with her eating disorder voice (LV), negative evaluations are again issued, both targeting Polly's appearance. In response, Polly once more highlights aspects of herself that are not related to size or weight. I suggest that Polly's response may be interpreted as exemplifying the point of the public narrative. For example, Polly calls attention to aspects of herself that exceed a narrow focus on eating-disorder-related concerns (weight/appearance), seeming to demonstrate that she is "more than," or not equivalent to (and separate from), her eating disorder.

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In Example 2.2, Maria responds to Polly's disclosure of her own struggle with the eating disorder voice, shaping her narrative expression of this struggle in terms Polly's dialogic approach. The name of Maria's eating disorder voice is the dictator (referred to as "D"): Example 2.2 Maria: 01 02 03 04

thank you polly! i have to try your method of talking back to your voice, i call mine the dictator, i once drew a picture of him. it wasn't pretty, it was pretty empowering though, in a weird sort of way.

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

i guess now is the time to use polly's method against the dictator.

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

D: you are fat and disgusting. me: you are a talented artist and musician, you are on your way to being healthy, you have much more energy than you did a few years ago. D:you weigh a ton. me:your laugh makes people happy, your dog loves you. you are intelligent and caring. D: but you are fat and out of control. me: just because your weight may have gone up a bit does not mean that it will keep going up forever, you are a woman, your body changes as it cycles. D: (fading away) but your thighs... me: shut up you stupid scumbag or i'll have to plant pink plastic flamingoes on your lawn :) !

Maria begins a reply to Polly by expressing gratitude for Polly's response to her call for help, and/or the solution Polly offered. Maria also displays enthusiasm for and commitment to carrying out Polly's proposed solution ("I have to try your method of talking back to your voice," line 02). Next Maria invokes the public narrative, revealing that she, too, has endowed her voice with a name ("the dictator," lines 02-03). Maria further invokes the public narrative to convey a strategy that she has used for dealing with her eating disorder v o i c e - d r a w i n g a picture of him. Here Maria seems to offer reciprocal help, displaying a potential new way for Polly to engage in and concretely benefit from ("it was pretty empowering") artistically dialoguing with her internal tormentor.

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Maria next employs the strategy (solution) that Polly proposed--talking back to her eating disorder voice (in Maria's case, the dictator)• Note that for Maria as well as Polly, all four utterances attributed to the eating disorder voice contain negative self-evaluations based on bodily appearance. One distinct way in which Maria's responses to the eating disorder voice differ from Polly's is that Maria uses the second person pronoun "you" in the lines in which she is slated as speaker, unlike Polly who takes up the first person pronoun, "I." I suggest that this strategy employed by Maria may index what Bakhtin calls "experimenting" with or testing new internally persuasive discourse (Bakhtin 1981, p. 348). As Bakhtin (1981) argues, internally persuasive discourses, or voices, are first tested• In passing the test, they may be creatively developed to formulate new solutions to problems. I suggest Maria' s use of the pronoun "me" instead of 'T' points toward her testing of the public narrative--indicating it is still "more than half someone else's" (Bakhtin 1981, p. 345)--to create a solution to her problems• Such testing may also be evidenced by Mafia's use of a lower case "m" in "me" in the attributive tags preceding the utterances slated as hers (lines 27, 30, 33, and 36), a second way her response differs from Polly (who uses an upper case "Me"). A third difference between Maria's and Polly's invoking of the public narrative involves Mafia's modifying how she characterizes the force of the negative evaluations issued by the eating disorder voice• In line 36, the eating disorder voice's utterance is cast as losing force ("fading away") and as trailing off (displayed by ellipses)• Then, in lines 37-39, Mafia boldly attacks the voice in a way that Polly does not, ordering the voice to stop talking ("shut up"), negatively evaluating it ("you stupid scumbag") and threatening it ("or I'll have to plant pink flamingoes. .,,). 16 Maria, in sum, appears to creatively adapt the public narrative, demonstrating, in my view, how internally persuasive voices may be fitted to "new materials, new conditions" (Bakhtin 1981, p. 345) to generate "solutions in the language of another's discourse" (p. 347). Maria's creative adaptation also evidences, I argue, how the public narrative--as an intimate genre (Bakhtin 1986)--is co-constructed by ASED participants. •

CONCLUSION I have presented an analysis of the co-construction of a public narrative within an Interuet-based support group for women with eating disorders (ASED), highlighting how Bakhtin's theories of self/other, genre, and voice may be applied in communication research• I suggest such narrative co-construction was evidenced in one case (Example 1) through one ASED participant's, Jackie's, attempting to solve another group participant's, Elaine's, problem by explaining the nature and purpose of group participants' references to the eating disorder voice. In doing so, this made available for analysis, the generic features of the public narrative, namely, its main characters, plot, and central

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point: to separate the self from the eating disorder/voice ("the eating disorder is not YOU . . . . the e-d 'voice' is not your OWN"). Through this first case, what is also made explicit about the public narrative is its key problem-posing function--to serve as a resource for talking about the eating disorder voice (Elaine's post, line 01). In a second case (Examples 2.1-2.2), the co-construction of the public narrative was evidenced as two ASED participants--Polly and Maria--invoked this narrative. Specifically, through the public narrative Polly offered a solution to a series of problems initially posed by Maria, and Maria implemented that solution. In this instance of the co-construction of the public narrative, a problem-solving function of this narrative becomes salient--to serve as a resource for talking back to the eating disorder voice (Polly's post, line 11, and Maria's post, lines 02). The problem-posing and -solving orientations of these two functions of the ASED public narrative--talking about and talking back to the eating disorder voice--highlight concrete ways in which this local genre may practically benefit women struggling with anorexia and bulimia. These functions also further the understanding asserted by Bakhtin (as cited in Morson and Emerson 1990)--that who we present ourselves to be as we communicate can bring about formative changes in who we are. 17 In conclusion, I hope to inspire communication research that draws on Bakhtin's rich body of theories for exploring narrative (and identity) co-construction processes in therapeutic discourses and contexts. I also hope to foster potential ties between communication researchers and therapists committed to the study and treatment of afflictions such as eating disorders. I believe the fruits of such ties may significantly advance what each discipline knows about recovery. Although discipline-specific theories and analytical language may take time to integrate, I see Bakhtin's theories--and their demonstrated role in the present analysis--serving as one useful tool for launching cross-disciplinary, collaborative research. Such collaboration between communication researchers and therapists may directly benefit women struggling with anorexia and bulimia, as women are guided in training new micro-level attention on their everyday narrative practices. This attention may bring new awareness of how women's co-constructed realized expressions (Voloshinov 1973) may accomplish what Bakhtin contends involves concrete formative change--shown here in one on-line forum as the separating of the self from eating disorder voices and practices through narrative activity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Norman Denzin, Paula Saukko, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback and encouragement on an earlier version of this work.

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NOTES 1. In recognizing the controversy over the authorship of Bakhtin's and Voloshinov's work, I regard Bakhtin as representing the perspectives, if not the products, of the works attributed to Voloshinov.

2. Personal narrative in this work refers presentations of self in which ASED participants portray themselves as protagonist-doers (as actors) or protagonist-experiencers (thinking, feeling, evaluating, or being). 3. According to Garrett (1998), men make up 6-10 percent of the population of persons with eating disorders, Few men contributed to ASED discussions during the time that I read and participated. For this reason, I focused on women's contributions in data collection and analysis. 4. Other efforts I had made to pursue recovery included two hospitalizations and many years of therapy. On ASED, I found many women who were similarly invested in recovery, providing some alliances that were profoundly helpful to me. 5. A thread refers to one initial post and all replies to that post. 6. This apperceptive background also includes ASED participants' narrative experiences within the on-line support group forum. 7. See Frank (1995) for a moving ethical imperative to witness others illness narratives. 8. The eating disorder voice(s) are cast, or personified (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), in various ways by ASED participants (e.g., a "monster," "dictator," or "committee"). 9. This excerpt, illustrating an ASED participant's "loss" to the eating disorder voice, is drawn from my larger analysis: Right now I ' m sitting here writing in an effort to stop myself from going and eating. I feel like I ' m actually fighting myself, its an exhausting battle going on in my head, "I want food; NO, NO, NO, YOU'RE TOO FAT TO E A T ! ! ! ! ! " . . . Fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, stomping on the ED voice--he won't go away!!! 10. See Hornbacher (1998) for a painful personal journey in and out of in-patient eating disorder treatment, a path marked by battles with eating disorder voices. 11. This excerpt, illustrating a participant's overcoming of the eating disorder voice, is drawn from my larger analysis: I have no clue where the voice from inside of me came from. I never hear a positive voice, but last night I did. I keep saying I don't have the strength to fight, but I realized last night I DO!!!!! I DID IT! !I I Stood UP TO FIGHT FOR MYSELF!!! ! I CAN GET OVER THIS !!! !! 12. I use the terms "voices" and "discourses" interchangeably, following Morson and Emerson (1990). 13. See Taylor (1995) for a micro-level discourse analysis of authoritative discourses operating within families. 14. Example 1 includes both Elaine's entire initial post and Jackie's reply to that post, representing a complete two-part exchange. 15. Example 2.1 includes both Maria's entire initial post and Polly's reply to that post, representing a complete two-part exchange. 16. I suggest that this threat represents an inside joke shared by ASED participants. Despite its unclear meaning, it's function can be reasonably inferred: Maria will take corrective, disciplinary, retaliatory action if the eating disorder voice (Dictator) does not shut up.

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17. I further examine this relationship between how we present ourselves in narrative and formative changes in selves and identities in a micro-level discourse analysis of the co-construction eating disorder and recovering identities in ASED narrative activity (Walstrom 1999).

REFERENCES Bakhtin, M. 1981. The Dialogical Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. 1986. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. 1990. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin, TX: University of Texas. Barnes, M., and A. Vangelisti. 1995. Speaking in a Double-voice: Role-making as Influence in Preschoolers' Fantasy Play Situations. Research on Language and Social Interaction 28:351-389. Brown, P., and S. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Capps, L., and E. Ochs. 1995. Constructing Panic: The Discourse of Agoraphobia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cash, T. F., and T. A. Brown. 1987. "Body Image in Anorexia Nelwosa and Bulimia Nervosa." Behavior Modification 11 : 487-521. Claude-Pierre, P. 1997. The Secret Language of Eating Disorders. New York: Random House. Davies, B., and R. Harrt. 1990. "Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves." Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 20: 43-63. Denzin, N., and Y. Lincoln. Eds.) 1994. Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Faust, J. 1987. "Correlates of the Drive for Thinness in Young Female Adolescents." Journal of Clinical Child Psychology 16:313 -319. Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of a Prison. New York: Random House. Frank, A. W. 1995. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fraser, C. 1994. "Starved to Death." Allure 184-187,222. Garrett, C. 1994. "The "Eating Disorders' Smorgasbord." Australian Journal of Communication 21(2): 14-30. . 1998. BeyondAnorexia: Narrative, Spirituality, and Recovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hicks, D. 1994. "Individual and Social Meanings in the Classroom: Narrative Discourse as a Boundary Phenomenon." Journal of Narrative and Life History 4: 215-240. Hicks, M. 1993. "The Boundaries of Reported Speech in Narrative Discourse: Some Developmental Aspects." In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hornbacher, M. 1998. Wasted."A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. New York: Harper Flamingo. Jacoby, S., and E. Ochs. 1995. "Co-construction: An Introduction." Research on Language and Social Interaction 26: 171-183. Kamberelis, G., and K. D. Scott. 1992. "Other People's Voices: The Coarticulation of Texts and Subjectivities." Linguistics and Education 4: 359-403. Katz, A. M., and J. Shotter. 1996. "Hearing the Patient's "Voice": Toward a Social Poetics in Diagnostic Interviews." Social Science & Medicine 43: 919-931. Labov, W. 1972. The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax. In Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lahteenm~iki, M., and H. Dufva. (Eds.) 1998. Dialogues on Bakhtin: Interdisciplinary Readings. University of Jyv~skyla: Centre for Applied Language Studies. Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors WeLiveBy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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Morson, G. S., and C. Emerson. 1990. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation ofa Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. O'Connor, P. 1994. "You Could Feel it Through the Skin: Agency and Positioning in Prisoner's Stabbing Stories." Text 14: 45-75. Ochs, E. 1995. "Constructing a Social Identity: A Language Socialization Perspective." Research on Language and Social Interaction 26: 287-306. Potter, J. 1996. Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric, and Social Construction. London: Sage. Shotter, J. 1993. Conversational Realities: Constructing Life Through Language. London: Sage. . 1995. "In Conversation: Joint Action, Shared Intentionality, and Ethics." Theory and Psychology 5: 49-73. Somers, M. R., and G. D. Gibson. 1994. Reclaiming the Epistemological "Other": Narrative and the Social Construction of Identity. In Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Szeleky, E. 1988. "Reflections on the Body in Anorexia Discourse." Resources for Feminist Research 17(4): 8-11. Taylor, C. 1995. "You Think It Was a Fight?: Co-constructing the Struggle For Meaning, Face, and Family in Everyday Narrative Activity." Research on Language and Social Interaction 28: 283-317. Voloshinov, V. N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar Press. Walstrom, M. 1996. "'My Story'" of Anorexia Nervosa: New Discourses for Change and Recovery." In Cultural Studies: A Research Annual, Vol. 1. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. .1999. "Starvation... Is Who I Am": from Eating Disorder to Recovering Identities Through Narrative Co-construction in an lnternet support group. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Wooffitt, R. 1992. Telling Tales of the Unexpected: The Organization of Factual Discourse. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

WIDOWHOOD RECONSTRUCTION OF SELF-CONCEPT A N D IDENTITIES

Helena Znaniecka Lopata

BASIC CONCEPTS Bereavement is the objective situation of having lost someone significant; grief is the emotional response to one's loss; and mourning denotes the actions and manner of expressing grief, which often reflects the mourning practices of one's culture (Stroebe, Stroebe, and Hansson 1993, p. 5). Grief Work: emancipation from the bondage of the deceased, readjustment to the environment in which the deceased is missing, and the formation of new relationships (Lindemann 1944, p. 43). To this I would add the important processes of reconstruction of the self-concept and identities. According to Stryker (1981, p. 23) Identities are '"parts' of the self, internalized positional designations that exist insofar as the person pm-ticipates in structured role relationships, the consequence of being placed as a social object and appropriating the terms of placement for oneself." My addition would be to specify that identities are carried by persons into situations and form one of the bases for negotiated role relationships. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 261-275. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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Social Role is a set of negotiated, mutually interdependent social relations between a social person and a social circle involvingduties and rights on all sides (Lopata 1971, 1986b, 1991; based on Znaniecki 1965). Self Concept: Rosenberg (1979, pp. 7-9) defined the self-concept as "the totality of the individual's thoughts and feelings having reference to himself as an object." It consists of parts (Content), the relationship among the parts (Structure), "the ways of describing both parts and the whole (Dimensions) and Boundaries" (see also Lopata 1987d, pp. 203-204). There are several sources of self-concepts important in widowhood The first is a consequence of sexual, racial, and other important identification assigned at birth on the basis of physical characteristics. These, in turn, form the basis of pervasive racial and gender identities into which people are socialized and which they carry throughout life. New identities may be added later. Such pervasive identities vary in content, structure, dimensions and boundaries in different social roles and settings. The second source of the self-concept are the social roles that people enter and exit. 1 Societal and community cultures contain images of the perfect, and the "average," social person and circle members for almost all social roles, but each set of relationships that forms a specific role is a result of multiple combinations of the cultural norms with the reality of the situation. A third source of the self-concept is reflexive, a consequence of the individual's perception of both the identities and role selves in different situations, using looking-glass images, cultural standards and comparisons to others. Finally, I consider people to have a generalized self-concept that is abstracted from the specific interactional and social role settings, that generalizes from many images of the past, present and anticipated future. "I am bashful," I am good at making friends but not good at all in speaking to groups. ''2

IDENTITIES A N D SELF-CONCEPTS IN CHANGING SOCIETIES Many social scientists have theorized about the relationship of human beings to their societies and communities. Scholars attempting to understand the changes in such relationships due to the dramatic changes in societies of the last centuries and their effect on people the past two centuries or so have generally used a bi-focal categorical analysis, one of the most famous of which is between the gemeinshaft world of small communities and personal interaction and the gesellschaft world of rational, depersonalized secondary relationships (Tonnies 1887). The most frequent interpretation of these categories idealizes the gemeinshaft and presents gesellschaft societies and social structures as alienating. A traditional versus modern dichotomy has also been used, with objections by Gusfield since cultures and societies do not form whole mutually exclusive fabrics and from Papanek (1978), since the original research and analysis were gender

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biased. ! agree with both Gusfield and Papanek since, no matter how "modern' or "developed" a society is defined by outside observers on the basis of selected criteria, the self-concepts and lives of members, and especially of women, evidence a great mixture of connectedness to others and their social world. Coser (1991) objected to the idealization of the gemeinschaft, traditional, type of society in her last book, In Defense of Modernity because the modern environment provides a complexity of social roles unavailable to members of the gemeischaft world: "a complex role-set forces its members to negotiate and make compromises between different, often incompatible or even contradictory expectations and points of view (p. 156), leading to complexity and flexibility of the self." Thus, Coser (1991) concluded that modernization frees the person, especially women and children, from the restrictions of the gemeischaft society that has constant control over its members and prevents the development of a freer, independent and flexible person. On the other hand, Lofland (1985, p. 176) concluded that individualization, a product of modern society, has decreased the number of people with whom multiple connecting blocks are formed: Intimacy (that is, the sharing of many facets of self, the multiple threaded connection, with only a few others) would appearto be a productof Western individualization,urbanizationand industrialization. In other words, the modern Western world has decreased the number of people with whom an individual develops building blocks, or threads of connectedness of human attachment, that give meaning to the self (p. 175). It has increased the significance to the self of the few people with whom multiple blocks or threads are developed, maintained. These two authors thus present very different images of the consequences of the death of a husband for the self-concept and identities of the widowed woman. According to Coser, the complexity of modern social life makes a women less dependent upon a single social role such as wife and a person, such as a husband than true of women in gemeinschaft societies. According to Lofland, modernization makes dependence upon a few people, and thus an active husband, high leading to devastating grief. I propose to argue for a combination of these views, assisted by Berger and Kellner's analysis of the construction of reality in marriage. To do so I must review historically what we know about wifehood and widowhood in other places and times.

WIFEHOOD

AND

DIFFERENT

WIDOWHOOD

IN

SOCIETIES

Variations in the importance of the role of wife in different societies and at different times is recorded by historians, anthropologists and sociologists. Lerner

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(1986), B oulding (1976), and many other feminists have tied to explain patriarchy and its influence on the whole life course of both men and women. Generally speaking, the greater the patriarchy, patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal residence, the greater power has the husband' s family and through it, the husband on the wife who marries into it. Her fate is even more dependent upon that family in the case of his death, as documented by recent analyses of the situation of widowed women in the Third World, especially in those societies of Africa and Southern Asia, with such family structures as described by Owen (1996), Potash, (1988) and others. Widowhood can be devastating to all aspects of life and the self (see also various chapters in Lopata 1987a, 1987b, 1987c, 1997a; Heisel and Touba in Lopata 1987a). Inheritance laws and the rights of men over unprotected women of the family or the community have usually been granted by even legal representatives, and wars have created atrocities by occupying forces or within refugee camps. Most of the literature focuses on status and safety losses and does not deal with identity and self-concept analyses in any but the desperate cases. The economic situation of widows in traditional America also depended heavily on inheritance practices, opportunities for economic maintenance and social role involvements. The British common law was modified in this country to allow some inheritance to widows, but it was often too small an amount, pushing them and their minor children into poverty. Elaborate church, community or poor- and work-house arrangements were attempted to support such people. The situation of widows at those times reinforces Coser's (1991) thesis that a small, Gemeischaft community was stifling to the personal development of women, presenting each person with a very restricted set of social roles and very "greedy" in its demands and social controls. It was, and still is in particularistic environments, especially restrictive for girls and women assigned to the home and family, with little consideration of the outside world and few opportunities to develop complex selves. Men's and women's worlds and social roles were segregated and women's lives were routinized and narrowly focused. Women were not encouraged to experiment or deviate from "the cultural mandate" (Coser 1991, p. 135). Widowhood opened few doors, and often closed those connected with wifehood. The dominance of the gemeinshaft style of life did not preclude the development of complicated gesellschaft structures in large, complex societies, but most people and certainly most women, have only recently been able to take advantage of these. In the meantime, many traditional support systems and social relationships gradually withered. WIFEHOOD AND WIDOWHOOD TRANSITIONAL AMERICA

IN

Although legal means of establishing women's rights expanded through the twentieth century in the United States, cultural and economic changes created new

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complications for self-concepts and identities of wives, carried into widowhood. All the features of industrialization in the forms it took here increasingly separated the world of work organized into jobs in bureaucratized or at least depersonalized groups from work in the home and its territory (Lopata 1993, 1994). In addition, the push toward the economic institution devalued any work defined as not contributing to the gross national product and simultaneously devalued people who did such work. The home territory was assigned to women and dependent children, the public to men. This made women and children clearly dependent upon the wage of an income earning male "breadwinner." The public sphere became constructed as a highly competitive, rational, bureaucratic one involving men committed to its "greedy" demands (Coser 1974; Coser and Coser 1974). In order to clearly separate the important public economic sphere from the private domestic one, a whole ideology explaining differences between people who worked in each emerged, built upon the patriarchal images of the past. In order to function well in this harsh environment, men had to be socialized and constantly maintain an appropriate personality, unemotional (except for anger and impatience), competitive and depersonalized, logical and technological, lacking in-depth relationships and sentiments. The whole burden of interpersonal interaction, nurturing and caring for others fell upon women, who then had to be socialized to accept a secondary position in the value system. Each type of personality was ideally exclusive of the other, making for partial identities, abilities, sentiments and emotions. In other words, the economic dependence had to be accompanied with personal dependence. Although men and women were both dependent upon each other, in different ways, only women were defined as dependent in the cultural construction of reality. Several studies of the roles and lives of women in transitional America, in which new forms of work and community life were emerging, outlined wives' actual contribution to their husband's and societal welfare. Fowlkes (1980), Bernard (1983) and Finch (1983) analyzed the duties of wives that benefit the husband's careers, including stroking, protection from home problems that might interfere with work and careers, maintenance of a presentable home and family for public view, performance of "minor" tasks connected with his job, such as typing or entertaining, and even performance of major activities suchas speech writing and presenting. In addition, according to Daniels (1988), the wives took on volunteer work that enabled communities to function and flourish but were not supposed to interfere with obligations to the husband. Occupational involvement by women was definitely discouraged in such marriages, not only because it split time and made demands, but also because of the assumption that employment was for money and thus that the husband of women who "had" to be employed did not earn enough to maintain a life style (Papanek 1973, 1979). Thus, although the wife did not move into the husband's family, as in patrilocal societies, the various periods of time between agricultural and those of "modem" American urban life styles with increasingly multidimensional involvement

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by women, the transitional period made them highly dependent upon the husband himself. The husband's personality and occupational demands dominated a wife's life, daily and in terms of income, location, mobility and obligations. Many of the middle-class women whom we (Lopata 1971, 1994; Lopata, Barnewolt, and Miller 1985) interviewed in the Chicago area in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s had spent the majority of their lives focused on the husband's world, producing and maintaining status and organizing activities around his schedule. In fact, one of the features of grief was the loneliness of middle-class widowed women for such a life with travel, conferences, and organizational memberships made possible through the husband's work and finances (Lopata 1969). His death decreased the work, but also the perquisites, leaving empty space and time with few social events. In addition, former associates, considered to be friends, no longer invited the widowed woman, showing that her contributions of personality and friendship were insignificant and that it was the husband who formed the main connecting link. Such rejection does little for self-esteem. Loneliness for the self as part of the life and derived status was reflected in many of their statements. In summary, the traditional and transitional times of American history made life and identities difficult for widows because of women's high dependence upon being married, being married to a particular husband, and being part of a couple. On the other hand, friendship among women regardless of marital status and the alleged importance of families that had made women's lives full in the past could continue (Bernard 1981), even if within a limited life space (Coser 1974). Within that space, organized by social class and race, the similarity of life style and restrictions on social roles made identities and self-concepts based mainly on the family of origin, the husband's and children's reputations, and own personal reputation in terms of characteristics and abilities. Widow Brown may have been merry, a good Christian or a old hag, but the identities were tied into marital status and into the past. In the Gemeinschaft world people lived in the shadow of not only their own history, but also of that of their family and associations (Coser 1991). During transitional times, women often reported feeling "in limbo," with "no place to go" with the rest of their lives, with the diminishment of marital roles and in the absence of other sources of identity (Lopata 1973a, 1973b, 1975, 1986a, 1996a). WIFEHOOD

AND

WIDOWHOOD

IN UNEVENLY

DEVELOPED AMERICA As all observers comment, life is changing dramatically and differentially in different parts of American society. How these changes affect wives and widows varies by numerous factors. We have learned of two main theories of the effects of such changes that can help us understanding the reconstruction of

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identities and self concepts of women in widowhood, thus making grief of such another devastating. Lofland (1985, p. 181), in discussing the "social shaping of emotion: the case of grief," points out that grief, or the emotional responses to the death of another, varies considerably in "shape, texture and length" (p. 181). The strength of the emotion is heightened by the degree of significance of that other to the self. She concluded that grief is particularly difficult in modern times since individualization trends have increased the importance of a small number of highly significant others. The death of one of these people is thus more devastating than in societies in which the self has connecting threads with numerous others. It has, thus, increased the significance for the self of the few people with whom multiple blocks or threads are developed. If we follow Lofland's guide to modern society, we find that complex family structures and the intertwine with village neighbors are becoming replaced with highly individualistic connections with only a few people. The voluntaristic nature of American life, in which individuals have greater freedom of choice than in other times and places, means that friendship, marriage, and other close associations are assumed to be a consequence of choice and knowledge of how to enter, change and drop social relationships. Women who remain married are generally seen as emotionally and socially dependent upon that marital situation and upon that particular husband. Other pictures of modern America reinforce Rose Coser (1991) defense of modernizing society, with its complex social scale and volunteristic social engagement that expand the social life-space of people, making them less dependent upon a few significant others not only for life style, but also for identities and self-concept. Kohn (1977), as well as Kohn and Schooler (1973, 1983) found a close association between job complexity and personality. These changes, combined with the effects of feminism and the women' s movement, indicate the opening for women of opportunities of multi-dimensional life space, with role extensions in several institutions. The combination of these two pictures of the complexity of the social world and the scarcity of important others leads us to conclude that relationships tend to cluster at rather extreme levels, very significant or more transitory, casual and even secondary.

PROBLEMS O F I D E N T I T I E S SELF-CONCEPT

AND

IN WIDOWHOOD

How can we reconcile the two images of the modern world in our understanding of the processes of identity and self-concept reconstruction in widowhood? Is the death of a husband devastating because he was one of the few significant others in the wife's life, or is it only one of the changes in the whole social life space?

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In their simplest form, we can consider identities as those outward selves that are brought into interaction. People enter a situation with pervasive identifies, important in varying degrees to how they are treated, what is expected of them and what they are able and willing to do and accept in rights in a social relation or a social role. The identities a people want to present and have validated must fit in with the identities others assign them. Interaction difficulties arise if the person does not have a clear idea as to the Content of own identity, if s/he wants to have accepted an identity the circle does not accept, or if the circle tries to force upon him/her another pervasive or role identity that s/he refuses. There are several layers of identity problems in widowhood. One is the impossibility of retaining those past identities that were based on marriage and relationship with a particular other, the husband. A second problem is, the fact that grief work must involve giving up the past attachment while observing the culturally defined obligation to preserve memories of the deceased for the benefit of other people, such as the children and as a cultural prescription of mourning. One way some widows have solved this dilemma is through what I (Lopata 1981, 1996b) call "sanctification" process of the late husband. The bottom line of a complex scale asked for degree of agreement with the statement: "my husband had no irritating habits." He is cleared of mortal deficiencies and located safely out of the way as a benevolent saint. Such a process performs some very important functions. It removes the husband as a constant mortal observer and critic. Second, it is beneficial to the self-concept. If such a saintly man married her, and stayed married to her, then she must not be such a bad person that her depression moods indicate. The negative effects of such sanctification are the irritation produced in friends who knew him, and who must live with mortal husbands with irritating habits. It also discourages other men from becoming involved since they can not compete with such a saintly late husband. A third aspect of widowhood in modernizing America, is that the social role of widow, with specific duties and rights in a social circle that sees and treats her primarily as a widow, has gradually diminished in importance as changes in society removed the specialized functions of helping in illness and funerals, or whatever such women were assigned. The role of widow has been converted into a temporary one, active only at the time surrounding the death of the husband, when a social circle forms with specific obligations to the woman because she is widowed and specific duties she must carry forth to the members of the circle, including the deceased husband. After a while the members of the circle start withdrawing into their own lives, leaving the woman to work out her own life changes. A problem develops, sometimes to a high degree, if the circle begins to leave the role before the woman is ready to leave, or if it insists that she remain in the role longer than she wishes or can do so. She is then left with only the stigmatized pervasive iden-

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tity of widow, which many American widowed women actively hate (Lopata 1996; van den Hoonaard 1997). 3 A fourth problem is the need to somehow forge new identities, announce them to others and have them validated by circle responses. Ideally, the new identities could retain positive aspects of the past that will be accepted by others in combination with positive aspects of the present and future. The pervasive identities of race, ethnic and religious group continue, regardless of marital status. The pervasive identity of a woman remains, but even that Varies by setting. Negative sub-identities of old, widowed, are often added, with all the consequence. Identities connected with widowhood are not homogeneous or involving a woman the same way in all situations. With family and friends, the woman may be constantly reminded that she is a widow and special demands can be made of her because of this identity. Widowed mothers are expected to act and be acted with differently than mothers when the father is present. The role of couple friend, if continued, will depend on whether the woman can convince those friends that she can continue to contribute to their social life. Whether the role of friend is entered into with other women who are widows also depends on what they find in common or whether this is the only available companionate contact. And while a woman's externally and internally felt identities are both changing and persistent, her social world responds to her continued presence, evident in her physical appearance and social roles. The only way of avoiding being treated at least partially as the old self is to leave the whole environment entirely and enter a new world that does not know the past person at all. In such cases responses to the self are based on impressions of actual appearance and behavior, initially and in the situation, as well as the location the self takes in social roles and the various social circles of members of this new world. That process of identity transformation is similar in many ways to that experienced by immigrants to a new society who can not reproduce the identities lived in the home country, but who do not wish to give up parts of those identities and accept images of "assimilated" persons.

If the woman remains where she has interacted in the past, people will include that past out of habit or refusal to bother about changing. Thus, the ever-present world carries over the baggage from the past. However, that ever-present world treats the widowed person, to the extent that it is aware of the widowhood, in different ways than before, sometimes ways that she refuses to accept or fights with emotion. If she refuses to be treated as a widow, others may not know how to treat her In American society there is the additional problem that no one is clear as how a widow should act and be interacted with in any particular role. How important is it that she is a widowed professor of chemistry?3 A changing woman is unpredictable, others are afraid that she will become too dependent or too demanding of attention. She is a deviant in the world they all shared before. She may be seen as competition for the rights and privileges associates still possess, such as for the living husbands, or for a comfortable home. Associates do not know what the

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widowed woman wants to drop from her past, and what she wants to retain. They feel awkward in her presence, not liking to feel that way. They can not know what baggage from the past she is carrying and how this makes them look in her eyes. They may provide advice that is wrong, or rejected, feeling then rejected themselves.

THE SELF CONCEPT

IN WIDOWHOOD

It is important for us now to return to our basic concepts, especially to separate the concept of identity from that of self-concept, a difficult task due to the intertwine of the two. As we know, there are two directions of self and identity presentation: one to the self in the form of self-conceptl the other to the world as identities interacted with by others. Descriptions of changes in widowhood in the literature usually emphasize the problems of grief but summarize the results in simple terms, as positive in feeling of wholeness or as negative, in depression or the withering of the self. What goes on in-between is often neglected, mainly because the person who has already worked things out does not elucidate all the intermediary experiences and the person who has not worked through everything often reports no change in the self (Lopata 1975, 1986a, 1996b). Actually, the processes are gradual and ever changing as old contents of the self-concept fade, are reconstructed and blended in with all the new self-images. Changes in content are accompanied with changes in parts, dimensions and boundaries. These boundaries are tightened with the removal of connecting links or self-extensions of dally and event interactions or expanded to include new self-extensions. One way of solving the apparent contradiction between the Lofland and Coser et al visions of the relationship between the individual and her social world applicable to the loss of a significant other and changes in the self-concept and identifies in widowhood in modem society is by interjecting Berger and Kellner's (1970) view of marriage, especially among middle-class, urban Americans. Berger and Kellner (1970) analyzed the ways in which marriage leads to the reconstruction of reality for the partners through interaction and conversation. Even before the "event" of the marriage itself, the future wife and husband form themselves and each other into a couple unit and reconstruct their relations with others, family, friends and all sorts of associates. The authors concluded that this interaction is most apt to develop as a continuing process among middle-class American couples. I would add that is more likely to involve changes in the wife and her world than in the husband and his world. Until recently, both her first and birth names were wiped out as she became Mrs. John Brown. Vestiges of the traditional patriarchal system are made visible in the manner of her address, officially and even in personal interaction such as correspondence. In addition, the extent to which the two-sphere world is still significant in her life, she is assumed

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to leave behind the personality of an unmarried girl and take on the serious responsibility of building and maintaining a home and caring for the family. In that world the husband is seen as changing less, since his primary identities and commitments are tied into the occupational world outside of the home. The continuing nature of the self-concept in life is partially dependent upon this process of self-validation through interaction with the same significant other. The absence of the husband with whom reality is constructed throughout marriage can make the reconstruction of the self-concept difficult. A person can not go through the reconstruction in social isolation, then to come out of the closet to present the new construct to others. The internal interaction of the constructing self is constantly being interrupted by responses from others, by how she feels about these reactions and by the plans of action in which all are involved. The presentation of self must be validated or rejected for future self-work. But the significant other with whom this dynamic process was constantly tested is gone. The newly emerging self can not be known to the deceased so he cannot help reconstruct it in her imagination as she converses with him. Thus, her personal identities, which form the self-concept internally felt and tested, are in flux affected by social identities diffused yet reoccurring day-by-day, as experiences throw the widowed woman back and forth in how she sees and feels about herself. The solid base back home with whom ideas had been tested is silent. On the other hand, this means, especially if the late husband is sanctified, that his negative responses are also absent. This may help the woman build new self-confidence and expand her horizons. If we follow Bernard (1973) in her conclusion that marriage is restrictive and unhealthy for women, its end may bring new mental and physical health in a new social life-space. The above discussion indicates that the thesis presented by van den Hoonaaard (1997) that the past self-concept must be foreclosed after the death of the husband is too simplistic, since the whole is composed of a variety of parts, some of which are retained almost indefinitely for two reasons. In the first place, the self-concept and its content does not fall apart completely and it takes a lot of work to drop bits and pieces, reorganize the whole, add new elements and new boundaries. In the second place, people around the woman tend to see her as a continuing person, in spite of the addition of the identity of widow. They thus enforce some continuity to identities and thus to the self-concept.

CONCLUSIONS Grief work, encompassing "emancipation from the bondage of the deceased, readjustment to the environment in which the deceased is missing, the formation of new relationships," (Lindemann 1944) and the reconstruction of the world, especially the self, are very complex and indefinite processes. Most of what we know about them comes from recent research, autobiographies and our own expe-

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riences, analyzed with the help of symbolic interaction concepts. The former reluctance of researchers to deal with this subject means that they used the concept of grief to compress the almost separate processes of identity and self-concept reconstruction. The effects of death of a husband, and life in widowhood, the topics of this paper, are influenced by the characteristics of the society and the community within which the widowed person lives, as well as by personal resources of the past, present and future. Modern American society has intensified relationships with a very limited number of significant others, creating high emotional, cognitive and personal dependence. At the same time, it has provided opportunities for complex social life-spaces, of clusters of roles, making any one role less dominating in importance than in the past when people, especially women, were limited in the variety of roles available to them by family and home obligations. Within this combination of societal situations grief for a husband has multifaceted dimensions, mainly of a very personal nature. Close, intimate relationships involve the self on many levels and emotional as well as cognitive ties must be restructured after the death of the other. Interdependence of day-by-day existence combines with interdependence of world views, leaving the survivor to work through felt and desired changes alone. Complexity of the social life space increases the number and variety of identities with which she must work through. The internal questioning of the self, reconstructing the past and trying for a future is constantly interrupted by the outside environment that places obstacles as well as opportunities for change. The stable sounding board of the spouse of years' interaction is absent. The self must explain itself to the self, and then present the changing self-concept as identities to others for validation or rejection. Cooley' s description of three aspects of the looking-glass-self must be augmented by the Meadian emphasis on the self as active, as doing more than just experiencing feelings about the perceived judgement by the other. As the self-concept undergoes redefinitions, the self also wishes to present the desired identities to others and to accept or refuse some of the offered images. Thus, the processes are a constant interaction of the self with the self and with others who tend to bring past baggage and new stereotypes into the situation. The reconstruction of the self in the direction wished for by the widowed woman must take account of the whole situation, made difficult by emotional turmoil. The new person that is to emerge from the grief processes is often unpredictable and varied by the situation. The processes are unending in that new elements constantly appear and must be responded to, modifying whatever had been "finished" grief work.

NOTES 1. It always surprises me to see symbolic interactionists use the Lintonian definition of social role that focuses on only the title holder, rather than on the relations between that person and all social circle members who grant rights and receive the duties.

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2. A "generalized self' a self-administered questionnaire formed part of an extensive interview described in Lopata, Barnewolt, and Miller (1985; Lopata 1987b). It contained 36 generalized characteristics and area of competence. 3. According to Charmaz (1980, 1997), much of American avoidance of death and negative feelings toward the grieving can be attributed to the values of the Protestant ethic. Grief is supposed to be worked through and done away with as an obligation of membership in the community. In fact, Americans have even classified grief into entitled or legitimate and moral, or disenfranchised as illegitimate and without honor. However, as I found in my studies, even entitled grief does not carry over into honoring widows• The complexity of attitudes leads to underestimation of the grieving of some bereaved persons.

REFERENCES Bankoff, E. A. 1990. "Effects of Friendship Support on the Psychological Well-Being of Widows." Pp. 109-139 in Friendship in Context, edited by Helena Z. Lopata and David L. Maines. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Berger, P., and KeUner, H. 1970. "Marriage and Construction of Reality." In Patterns of Communicative Behavior. London: Collier-Macmillan. Bernard, J. 1973. The Future of Marriage. New York: Bantham. • 1983. "The Good Provider Role: Its Rise and Fall." In Family in Transition, Boston: Little, Brown. . 1981. The Female World. New York; The Free Press. Boulding, E. 1976. The Underside of History: A View of Women Through Time. Boulder: Westview. Charmaz, K. 1980. The Social Reality of Death. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Charmaz, K. 1997. "Grief and Loss of Self." In The Unknown Country: Death in Australia, Britain and the United States. New York: St. Martin's Press• Coser, L. 1974. Greedy Institutions. New York: Free Press. Coser, L., and R. L. Coser. 1974. "The Housewife and Her Greedy Family." In Greedy Institutions. New York: Free Press. Coser, R. L. 1991. In Defense of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford Stanford University Press. Daniels, A. K. 1988. Invisible Careers: Women Community Leaders in Volunteer Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Finch, J. 1983. Married to the Job: Wives Incorporation in Men's Work. Boston: George Allen & Unwin. Fowlkes, M. R. 1980. Behind Every Successful Man. New York: Columbia University Press. Gusfield, J. 1976. "Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarity in the Study of Social Change." American Journal of Sociology 72:351-362. Guyral, J. S. 1987. "Widowhood in India." In Widows: The Middle East, Asia and the Pacific. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Heisel, M. 1987. "Women and Widows in Turkey: Support Systems." In Widows: The Middle East, Asia and the Pacific. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hoonaard, van den, D. 1997. "Identity Foreclosure: Women's Experiences of Widowhood as Expressed in Autobiographical accounts." Aging and Society 17: 533-551. Kohn, M. L. 1977. Class and Conformity: A Study of Values. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kohn, M. L., and C. Schooler. 1973. "Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects." American Sociological Review 38:97-113. . 1983. Work and Personality: An lnquiry into the Impact of Social Stratification. Norwood, NJ: Albex. Lerner, G. 1986. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Lindemann, E. 1944. "Symptomology and Management of Acute Grief." American Journal of Psychiatry 101: 141-148. Lofland, L. H. 1985. "The Social Shaping of Emotion: The Case of Grief." Symbolic Interaction 8: 171-190. Lopata, H. Z. 1969. "Loneliness: Forms and Components." Social Problems 17: 248-260. . 1973a. Widowhood in an American City. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. . 1973b. "Self-Identity in Marriage and Widowhood." Sociological Quarterly 14: 407-418. .1975. "On Widowhood: Grief Work and Identity Reconstruction." Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry VII/: 41-55. .1986a. "Becoming and Being a Widow: Reconstruction of Self and Support Systems." Geriatric Psychiatry VIX: 203-214. .1986b. "Znaniecki's Theory of Social Roles: Further Developments." Pp. 149-171 inA Commemorative Book in Honor of Florian Znaniecki on the Century of His Birth, edited by Zygmund Dulczewski. Poznan, Poland: Universytet Ira. Adama Mickiewicza, seria Socjologii No. 15. . 1987a. Ed. Widows: The Middle East, Asia and the Pacific. Durham, NC: Duke University Press• . 1987b. "Widowhood: World Perspectives on Support Systems." Pp. 1-23 in Widows: The Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, edited by Helena Z. Lopata. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. . 1987c. Widowhood and Social Change• Pp. 217-229 in Widows: The Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, edited by Helena Z. Lopata. Durham, NC: Duke University Press• . Ed.. 1987d. Widows: North America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. • 1987e. "Widows: North American Perspective." Pp. 3-31 in Widows: North America, edited by Helena Z. Lopata. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. • 1987. "The Generalized Self and the Content of Self-Esteem." Presented at the annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Chicago, August. . 1991. "Role Theory." In Social Roles and Social Institutions: Essays in Honor of Rose Laub Coser. Boulder: Westview. . 1993. "The Interweave of Public and Private: W o m e n ' s Challenge to American Society." Journal of Marriage and the Family 55: 176-190. . 1994. Circles and Settings: Role Changes of American Women. Albany: State University of New York Press. .1996a. Current Widowhood: Myths and Realities. with chapter by Annette Prosterman. Newbury Park: Sage. . 1996b. "Grief and Husband Sanctification." In Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. New York: Taylor & Francis. Lopata, H. Z., and H. Brehm. 1986. Widows and Dependent Wives." From Social Problem to Federal Policy. New York: Praeger. Lopata, H. Z., D. Barnewolt, and C. A. Miller. 1985. City Women: Work, Jobs, Occupations, Careers: Chicago. New York: Praeger. Owen, M. 1996. A World of Widows. London: ZED Books. Papanek, H. 1973. "Men, Women and Work: Reflections on the Two-Person Career." American Journal of Sociology 78: 852-872. • 1978. "Comment on Gusfield's Review Essay on ' Becoming Modem'." American Journal of Sociology 83: 1507-1511. .1979. "Family Status Production: The 'Work' and 'Nonwork' of Women." Signs 4: 775-781. Patil, G.D. 1990. Hindu Widows: A Study of Deprivation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Karnatak University, India. Potash, B. Ed.. 1986. Widows inAfrican Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rosenberg, M. 1979. Conceiving the Self New York: Basic Books.

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Stroebe, M. S., W. Stroebe, and R. O. Hansson. 1993. "Bereavement Research and Theory: An Introduction." In Handbook of Bereavement. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stryker, S. 1981. "Symbolic Interactionism: Themes and Variations." In Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives. New York: Basic Books. Tonnies, F. 1887. Gemeinschafi and Gesellschaft. Leipzig, Fues's Verlag. Touba, J. R. 1987. "The Widowed in Iran." In Widows: The Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Znaniecki, F. W. 1965. Social Relations and Social Roles. San Francisco: Chandler.

CULTURAL MAINTENANCE A N D NARRATIVES OF RESISTANCE IN EDUCATIONAL REFORM

David L. Altheide and Dee Ann Spencer

Don't leave before the bell...

- - ( a teachers' restructuring session).

INTRODUCTION Symbol systems convey meaning in context, but these are organized as culture for short-hand use by members to share definitions of situations. This paper reports how school teachers and administrators in several schools made sense of efforts to change their activities. Our aim is to offer some ways in which narrative accounts reflect divergent school cultures, yet resonate general principles of symbolic interaction regarding group identity, history, and presentation of self. Our materials illustrate how members reflexively place the immediate problem in a context of meaning that is usually immediately understood and affirmed by the audience members. Such views are often implicitly and explicitly reflected in everyday patterns of cultural maintenance and members' stories. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23, pages 277-293. Copyright © 2000 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0639-4

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While each culture may have its own unique symbol system, our focus is on the way organizational cultures are reflected in members' accounts of their circumstances, particularly the way an immediate "problem" is contextualized. Culture is a process and not a thing, but the process is tied to symbolic communication, including accounts and meanings that are often reified by the members as obvious and indisputable. Thus, we do not treat each school in depth, probing its obvious unique history, but rather, note how underlying processes of affirming symbolic membership as "those of us" inform definitions of the situation. We suggest that awareness of members' views is particularly crucial in any effort to change a course of action. Drawing on materials collected from ethnographies of three schools, we offer several dimensions of story-telling in educational institutions to promote researchers' focus on members' narrative of their life-worlds. A concept we have found useful is Mehan and Wood's (1975) elaboration of an "incorrigible proposition," or unquestioned and unquestionable axioms often shared by members as a feature of their membership. We suggest that school culture reflects certain incorrigible propositions, particularly the most general one: Insiders know more than outsiders, who by their actions, are meddlesome, nagve, and make things worse. We focus on the following thematic emphases of members' accounts: history and collective memories; a credibility hierarchy linking formal and informal organization; resistance strategies and vocabularies; a process for cultural maintenance and reproduction. Sharing certain accounts constitutes an interactional activity that embodies their coherent body of knowledge about "how things are around here."

METHODS

AND

SETTINGS

Data for this paper were taken from ongoing research studies of school reform we conducted in school districts located in the Midwest and in the West. Three case study schools were selected for use in this analysis including an urban district in the West, a suburban district of a large urban area of the Midwest, and a medium sized city in a rural area of the Midwest. We served as external evaluators in each of the schools and created research designs to examine a wide range of programmatic and student outcomes measures. Consistent with recent discussions about post-realist ethnography (cf. Denzin and Lincoln 1994), we have had to adjust our roles in the schools to accommodate divergent interpretations about tasks, goals, accountability, and the consequences of evaluative work. Our primary role for being in each of the settings was to be evaluators of specific programs as well as more general improvement undertakings. Of course, our claims were also subject to the cultural maintenance of each school, particularly resistance strategies, for example, the "insiders" knew the truth, university professors and ivory tower types don't know the reality of schools. Indeed, we have heard academic research-

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ers derided by state officials for not appreciating the "real merits" of various "educational innovations" even though numerous assessments showed them to be ineffective. Membership was assigned to us as being "out there," often in league with administrators. Accordingly, as both formative and summative evaluators, we were aboard the floating target that we sought to help "redirect" through periodic reports and informal feedback throughout the studies. We were to perform summative evaluations--at the end of the period show what has worked and what has not, as well as periodic formative evaluations-annual reviews and suggestions about the state of things, the processes that could be improved to enhance success of certain changes, and rules of thumb for the school personnel to follow in order to achieve their goals. Although the quantitative data derived from such sources as scores on standardized achievement tests, from attendance, dropout, and graduation rates, and other outcomes of interest to the schools, the districts, and state funding agencies, these data did not provide explanations for understanding the schools' change or lack of change. Therefore, we used qualitative methods to create ethnographic accounts of the schools to better understand the social and cultural context in which reforms were created and acted out in the schools. Through the use of observations, focus group interviews, informal interviews, and documentary analysis we were able to examine the ways that teachers and administrators understood the process of change. Data were coded and analyzed using Word 7 as well as Nudist software in order to identify key themes and descriptive phrases relevant to cultural maintenance and narratives of resistance. Our basic questions were, how does school culture, as reflected in members' accounts, mediate the effects of educational reform, and how are overlapping waves of reform remembered by teachers and embedded in the history, culture, and stories of their schools? Our analysis of some key features of school culture that are central to "cultural maintenance" follows a brief overview of the specific research sites. Utopia H i g h School 1 Utopia High School is located in the inner city of a large urban area of the West. About 60 percent of its students are Hispanic, 25 percent are African American and 15 percent are Anglo. Over 3,000 students attend the high school and are enrolled in either the traditional school or in one of its five magnet programs. The magnet programs were added in the 1980s in response to a desegregation order, currently under question as to whether funds will continue to be funneled into the school. In the mid-1980s the school undertook a massive reform effort (we will refer to as the "Reform"), which included shorter teaching days so that teachers could call or visit students' homes and spend more time in one-to-one tutoring. They also organized freshmen classes into cores consisting of 90 students shared by three

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teachers who had adequate planning time to coordinate the learning activities of their cohort of students. Numerous programs were also introduced to reduce dropout rates, increase graduation rates, and raise students' self-esteem, none of which were formally linked. Despite the reform efforts, students' scores on standardized achievement tests stayed far below district, state, and national norms, dropout rates remained high, and graduation rates remained low. In fact less than 50 percent of students who began as freshmen at UHS graduated four years later. Changes in district administrations also changed the focus of support for the Reform at UHS and it was dismantled in 1993 after five years. The school returned to its traditional organizational structure and teachers taught more classes. Three years later (in the fall of 1996), much to the staff's consternation and confusion, they were asked by district administrators to create a new plan for reform which would address low test scores and high dropout rates. Although the district' s rationale for this request was linked to the need to appeal to the court for continued desegregation funds, this was not explained to the staff, most of whom felt the plan worked and changes were made unjustifiably. Utopia High School's grand narrative may be defined as "Success Denied." One of the authors has conducted research in the school for the past 8 years. The next two schools have been studied for three years. M i d w e s t H i g h School Midwest High School is located in a middle-class working "bedroom community" on the periphery of a large city in the Midwest. Midwest High, the only high school in the city of 20,000, has 1,200 students, nearly all of whom are Anglo. Their staff of 80 teachers has been described as a well experienced faculty by some, and by other as an "aging" faculty. Walking down the hallways of Midwest High reveals a very traditional school where the principal runs a "tight ship." Most classrooms have chairs lined in rows facing the teacher and the hallways are orderly between classes. Students are required to wear ID/name tags and are called on the carpet if they are caught not wearing them. We were told the purposes of this, albeit contradictory, were to ensure that strangers were not in the school (which we found peculiar for a school of that size located in an isolated spot of the small city), as well as to ensure that everyone knew everyone else's name. Despite the "tight ship" tone to the school, Midwest High has been in the forefront of a succession of school reform programs, many of which would suggest a more fluid school climate than was apparent from our observations. From grant awards and other state funds, the school enjoys extensive staff development training, travel to conferences, and, for some individuals, trips to visit other schools in the country, as well as the purchase of a significant number of computers. In recent years they have introduced block scheduling, and have shifted to a site-based management by a team of teachers, as well as the principal and assis-

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tant principals. The team, with some changes in membership, has met for several hours each week over the past several years. A number of the reforms had overlapping and interconnected goals and objectives, although, as our research showed, the nature and extent of their interconnectedness was not apparent to the staff. Midwest High School grand narrative is consistent with "Success is Change." Sunshine Elementary School Located in a rural area on the outskirts of a rapidly growing city of about 75,000 people, Sunshine Elementary School sits in a neighborhood of new, middle-class, single family dwellings. Its spacious central building is at the center of the campus and is surrounded by a number of temporary buildings which house single classrooms. There are 550, mostly Anglo, students enrolled in kindergarten through the fifth grade. With 55 teachers and a number of permanent substitutes on the staff, class size is small. Sunshine Elementary is an experimental school based on the Constructivist philosophy. The "brain child" of the principal, working in collaboration with a local university, and with the support of considerable amounts of external funding, teachers have extensive training in instructional practices which exemplify this philosophy. Consultants come to the school to provide one-on-one training for the teachers, and video tapes of lessons are reviewed with the consultants while substitute teachers take over the classes for the teachers. An ongoing problem is high turnover rates among the teaching staff which influences and limits the lasting effects of this intensive training. Sunshine staff members object to the use of standardized tests based on the belief that they do not accurately or appropriately assess what children are learning or the extent to which they are progressing. Alternative modes of assessment, however, have not been put into place. Sunshine's grand narrative is "Success is Obvious." Each of the "grand narratives," while not shared by all staff members, are promulgated by the key decision makers. However, these narratives are secondary to the broad incorrigible proposition stated at the beginning of this essay: Outsiders, like us, are deemed to be incapable of understanding, seeing, or directing success. FEATURES

OF SCHOOL

CULTURE

Research suggests that a school's teachers and other members have shared (but not necessarily unanimous) views of "who they are, how they got here, and where they are going." We contend that an understanding of a school' s culture, particularly members' accounting structures, should be central to an understanding of school reform throughout its history in the school. As stated by others:

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"... school improvement has three overlapping symbolic domains: (a) history; (b) current cultural values and patterns expressed in heroes/heroines,rituals, ceremonies, and stories; and (c) a vision of what the future might become. Owen (1987) sees this process as myth making, 'creating a likely story arising from the life experience of any group, through which they come to experience their past, present, and potential' (Bacharach and Mundel11995, p. 16). Our work is based on t h e assumption that a school's culture can best be understood through listening to the stories of those who "live" in schools. The importance of stories in the history and development of formal organizations has been recognized by social scientists for quite some time. As Deal (1995) has written: Grounding intangible issues and values in personalized examples helps pass important moral lessons from generation to generation. Telling stories provides a medium for sharing and appreciating the rich texture of life. Hearing stories is the primary way that people learn what to do. Analyzing stories provides still another avenue for understanding what a culture values and wishes to maintain (p. 121). Teachers' stories or "teachers' voices" are the more recent focus of a growing body of literature on the importance of teachers' perception of their work and workplaces. Teachers' stories are considered a crucial contribution to an understanding of the knowledge structures through which they take actions in their classrooms, as well as interpret reforms in their schools (Carter 1993; Hargreaves 1996; Spencer 1996). Teachers' accounts are manifested in narratives that can be thematized as: a history and collective memories; a credibility hierarchy linking their formal and informal organization; resistance strategies and vocabularies, and a process for cultural maintenance and reproduction, for example, for socializing new members. History and Collective Memories Everyone knows history. Their history. It is a history that works for them and anchors their identifies and membership. Members of an organizational culture such as schools m a y not completely agree, and their views may not agree with outsiders, such as evaluators, researchers, or "experts," to provide an assessment or "official reading" o f their school. Several factors are involved in cultural reality maintenance which make the process problematic. Teachers are not always given consistent and coherent information about their organization. Administrators do not always communicate in a systematic and thorough way with their faculty on such things as the rationale behind pushes for reform, about the results o f research which describes and evaluates their schools, or on any matters pertaining to teachers' workaday lives. This leads to fragmentation of information and the development of multiple versions of reality, none o f which may match the "official" version. These stories get reified through the informal structure of the school organization by way of "teacher talk."

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Changes in administrations also complicate, further fractionalize, and create considerable ambiguity as to teachers' understanding of what new agendas for reform may "lie in wait" for them. For example, teachers at Utopia High School had worked under the leadership of an extensive succession of principals, in fact, a new one every year, and in some years there was more than one principal. Teachers' frustration was reflected in this teachers' comments: "We've had 7 or 8 principals. You have new ideas coming and leaving; there's no consistency. Change is part of our lives. Teachers aren't resistant to change if it's consistent." And another added, "We have new ball players every year, month, week, and day. Each time there's a new group of people we just keep pushing it down and pretty soon we're going to choke. Each year it comes along and it changes." And another commented, "I've seen so many principals I ' m not going to even bother with getting to know this one." Changing leadership under any circumstances gives rise to questions among teachers about their new administrator's spoken and hidden agendas, as well as the creation of a general wariness about what these agendas will do to the daily lives of teachers. This situation of uncertainty gives rise to talk and the development of stories, which are shared and passed between teachers and become a part of the school culture. At Utopia High School, these stories were characterized by cynicism and distrust. From another perspective, based on stories heard from administrators, we have encountered several Situations in which officials at the district level did not want research results of a major program to be widely disseminated because they feared criticisms from within and without the district, and even fiscal sanctions from sources outside the school. As a result, the report was filed and "shelved," even though it had identified serious problems which needed to be addressed in plans for continuing change. No effort was made to widely communicate the more detailed findings to teachers and others in order to see what worked and what did not. Indeed, it was typical for reports to not be widely shared with teachers. Nor was any attempt made to help the teachers understand what could have been done differently to improve the situations, particularly if a similar effort was made in the future. Consistent with the incorrigible proposition guiding our analysis, any communication that does take place is hedged against "what everyone already knows," which may include individual's perception of their own experiences. On several occasions we were told by faculty that study results we reported to them were inaccurate. We assumed this was because our findings did not match with their perceptions of reality, or that the results were discrepant from the preferred explanations for the situation. Indeed, researchers' results may be viewed like administrators' pronouncements. Both are likely to be regarded as illegitimate and more about the administrators' or researchers' reality than the teachers' who see the school world from within their classrooms. "Outsiders" are just that, "outsiders" to that world. Innovators and researchers don't belong, don't understand. The dual

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lens which separates these versions of reality are not often reconciled, and teachers' inability to "hear" the results of reset findings were testimony to the obdurate nature of their beliefs. One consequence of this history process is that it may be difficult to convince teachers that some previous programs ended because they d i d not work well, rather than some arbitrary decision for "no apparent reason." Consider a reform effort at Utopia High School (Success Denied) to improve standardized test scores and reduce the dropout rate. M o s t teachers felt the multi-pronged program was a success despite clear and multiple evidence that the program did not accomplish its goals, for example, that test scores did not increase and attendance and dropout rates did not improve. Nor were teachers engaging in the kinds of activities expected of them, for example, informal contacts outside of class with students, This was a significant feature of their local culture and created a major symbolic barrier against another innovation. As one teacher explained: The Reform was a great way to go. It gave teachers the time to work with individual students and work together to talk about kids. Attendance improved, everything was better. I worked closely with two kids and could follow up. I had 100% success rate or they would have dropped out and they didn't. The Reform was so successful that attendance increased, the population of the school increased, then they increased class size, to say "let's save money." They decided the Reform was so successful that "let's get rid of it" (Focus group interview, Utopia High School). Credibility Hierarchy The schools we studied all had a credibility hierarchy that was partially predicated on the distinction between formal and informal organization and channels of communication. Moreover, each school's credibility hierarchy emerged through specific situations and the negotiation of meanings and interpretations, over a period of time. Teachers, as the key transmitters of school cultures, were expected to carry out ideas for reform, which were, more often than not, derived from their administrators. With few exceptions, the only d i m e n s i o n used by administrators and others in implementing change was the formal organization. Power was structured to flow from the top-down, while resentment rose to the top. In general, administrators t o l d - - b u t d i d n ' t ask teachers, who in turn, told but didn't ask--students, who in turn were often blamed by everyone. Such a sequence of interaction sets a negative pattern in motion, as Deal explains: When inconsistencies are noticed, then the logic of confidence breaks down and external constituenciespress for hard evidence of effective performance. This sets up a reversal of the logic of confidence, a vote of no-confidence, which sets up a downward spiraling, self-fulfilling prophecy--unless the organization can respond (Deal 1995, p. 132). The formal was rarely respected, partly because teachers were subordinates, but also because it was believed that the interests of superiors were not derived from

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the interests of teachers, although on occasion, the two m a y h a v e coincided. W h i l e there is hardly m u c h sociological n e w s here, it bears e m p h a s i z i n g since r e f o r m efforts in these schools typically c a m e f r o m the administration. O n e teacher at U t o p i a H i g h S c h o o l (Success Denied), w h e r e an i m m e n s e r e f o r m effort had been carried out and then abandoned, c o m m e n t e d : I go back to the Reform. It worked until the administration got involved. After 5 years, it ended. You saw teachers pulling together and were together and talking. It was broken up with this new campus. You had teacher involvement here, it worked. Now we're reinventing the wheel. Let's go back to it [the Reform] and modify it and use what worked. It's when I came to Utopia. I've only seen a decline in morale of teachers and students. We're tired of hitting our heads against a wall. We come up with a reform plan and it's dropped. When teachers made suggestions and implemented them for the Reform, but at the end of the Reform they were dropped. It was too successful, The teachers here saw it come and be dissolved. You're going to meet resistance [to more reform plans] (Focus group interview, Utopia High School). A n o t h e r teacher e x p r e s s e d the d o w n w a r d spiral of c o n f i d e n c e described by D e a l above. My question is, whose doing the restructuring? When someone from higher authority makes the decision--restructuring should come from us because we're the ones that know what students need. If you mandate a program to me I'm not going to buy in and just go through the motions. It should be a combination, but teachers should have the greater input (Focus group interview, Utopia High School). W h e n another teacher was asked what "restructuring" m e a n t to him, he replied, "This w e e k ' s administrations' n e w v i e w s " (Focus group interview, U t o p i a H i g h School). These v i e w s w e r e not lost on administrators. W h i l e U t o p i a H i g h had n u m e r o u s principals during their reform, M i d w e s t H i g h (Success is Change) had one during this p e r i o d o f our analysis. This individual was h i g h l y regarded by s o m e state officials for his leadership and i n n o v a t i v e programs. Our field notes d o c u m e n t e d his explanation o f h o w he a p p r o a c h e d the latest reform: The management team changed from 5 to 9. Uncertainties remained about site-based management. The principal indicated he was trying to change to a more consensus based decision-making model. He noted that it was hard because he was brought in as a "hit man," and to make changes, and he did. It was his way or else. But now he had to change, but it was difficult for some others, especially the assistant principal who was from the old school of authoritarian decision making (Field notes, Midwest High School). A b o u t one y e a r later as w e w a l k e d the halls with this principal, he e x p l a i n e d that a n e w p r o g r a m he was considering i m p l e m e n t i n g had not b e e n w a r m l y r e c e i v e d by the faculty but he did not let this stop him. H e was surprised because he had heard about this idea at a national conference, had returned enthusiastically to the school to b e g i n yet another n e w reform, and fully e x p e c t e d his faculty to " g e t on

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the bandwagon." Field notes from this conversation described how he persisted to get this program into the school. One thing that was interesting was his view of management. They have tried many new things, one of which he proposed last May...He had the faculty vote on it and only two of 80 faculty supported it. He said he would revisit it in the fall. He sort of attributed this to coming at the end of the ear. He then described how the faculty "approved" it this fall. Upon further discussion, we asked how many people voted for it, and he said, with a smile, They didn't vote, I told them they were going to do it (Field notes, Midwest High School).

This uncertain balance between shared decision making and top-down decision making was alSO reflected in the comments of the principal of Sunshine Elementary School (Success is Obvious). This principal explained his reticence to us in front of several of his assistants for not fully sharing decision-making with faculty: We all know schools run by the faculty and I wouldn't want to be there..." He added that, "Our school has a balance of faculty and focused leadership" (Field notes).

Resistance Strategies a n d Vocabularies When selective communication or interpretation occurs several times, a foundation grows into symbolic barriers to protect from future "manipulation." Each statement made, heard and acknowledged helps construct the facade and fill in meaning spaces with more specifics. Testimonials are forthcoming and member history also enables them to resist administrative mandates once they are enacted. Mandating that a policy be implemented is quite different from having teachers embrace a plan because they believe it is addressing the correct problem and that it can be successful. Occasionally such efforts draw out the cultural vocabularies which define some individual roles and identities. Within the informal organization, there are many positions and "posturing" associated with certain roles that are usually "owned" and enacted by particular members. There is plenty of blame to go around, of course, but, as noted above, of constructing blame is tied to the incorrigible proposition about outsiders, whose efforts further compound an already complex process of dealing with our "problems." We wish to stress that the language members use carries a definition and general view that is indexed by the word, and most members know what the more general referent is. For example, one individual at Utopia High (Success Denied) was observed to use similar language over a 7 year period in defining many teachers' collective position. While agreeing that the earlier reform worked, if current efforts were not as successful it was because the challenges from before were even stronger now: The big problem was the students. From this slant, the school was described as a "zoo," with attendant implicit positions for students and faculty.

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"We need to reorganize the school to something we don't have. Right now it's a zoo." He later added, "I try to look at this place form the viewpoint of students. Some already have ambition and they do well. We have a lot of kids who don't. This place is a social zoo and everyone is running around and screaming. That's the normal state of affairs at Utopia. They get lost here and get lost for years. We have good programs for them. In my ESL classes they don't even know why they are here. A large school is no good. They came from a small situation and they come here and are lost. We need to break this place up according to the needs of the students so we can sit down with people and talk to them" (Focus group interview, Utopia High School) Once a position is stated (e.g., "This place is a zoo"), then others can engage in a dialogue about the "problem" as they see it, and what can be done. The process of talking through a problematic situation allows people to make sense out of situation that does not make sense. Sociologists refer to this process as "quasi-theorizing," or the creation of inverse explanations in which a cause of a problem is identified before examining its effect (Hewitt and Hall 1973; Hall and Hewitt 1970). In doing this, people make agreements about the solution to a problem, they take into account past events and reinterpret them in view of the new solution, and other values and beliefs are introduced which support the explanation. Once put in an orderly perspective, "normal" activity can be resumed. W e found that some teachers became the owners, or the authorities and the "cantors," o f a particular position or explanation o f "the way things are." Their stories became standardized, and their positions took on a predictable and scripted quality, such as the teacher who regarded the school as a "zoo." Another teacher's "script" was that all the students were from poor, chaotic, broken homes and had to have their basic needs met before they could be expected to perform in school. Her views were based on the fact that she dealt with only those students who were referred to her as in need of social services--thus, her world view supported this belief, when in fact, according to "official" records, she dealt with approximately 7 percent of the student population. The dominant perspectives, including the incorrigible proposition to affirm a coherent reality, are occasionally manifested through subtle challenges, which tend to solidity the position albeit at the expense of marginalizing those who do not quite "understand." A n example of "speaking our culture" occurred in an exchange between two teachers asserting positions with which both were associated and had been for several years. One teacher stressed the general view that students were very disadvantaged, and until that was dealt with, they really couldn't learn (Focus group interviews, Utopia High School). Teacher 1: You have to have some consistency. Our kids have to deal with survival. If the class is not exciting enough, I'm [the student] going to doodle and tune you out. My concern is let's deal with unfinished business. Teacher 2: It doesn't matter where you come from, you can be the poorest of the poor and still do well in school. We always do in my department. We fail few students and

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we score well On the AP test. Our students are jus t as poor as those in other departments. If you didn't sleep in a bed and now you are here, and you will work. Cultural M a i n t e n a n c e a n d R e p r o d u c t i o n In every school we have studied, innovation and change was contextualized by the folding in of the "new" and within the symbolic parameters of the "old" or what we "always do around here." The familiar patterns of the rhythms of schools are ingrained in the perceptions of teachers as lifelong observers of school life. In fact, much of daily life in schools and classrooms is characterized by habit, ritual, routines, and practicality which allow for the ongoing flow of social activity (Hall and Spencer 1982). Most classrooms are designed in an egg carton fashion in which teachers do their work in an environment isolated from other teachers, time is organized into tightly prescribed segments, bells ring and students know to move to another location, and so forth, such that time and space are predictably organized, as are the basic instructional and power relationships between teachers and students. Such predictable patterns in the ways school work was made stunningly clear in Cuban's work documenting the marked similarity of classrooms in this country for the past 100 years (1984). In our studies we have seen examples of this "folding in" and the integration of the new with the old. As mentioned above, this folding process is characteristic of the ways teachers reconfigure and integrate reforms into the classrooms in particularistic kinds of ways. We found that if a school had adopted one program several years ago, the new one was seen as an extension of it. Indeed, we found several schools in which multiple innovations were essentially doing the same thing. Much was new, but little had changed. For example, Midwest High School (Success is Change) was a member of Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, used the language of Accelerated Schools, was trying to Break the Ranks, was involved in several model schools projects, and was adhering to changing state and national standards, to mention a few--all stemming from the principal's attempt to be on the cutting edge of every educational reform. However, when we asked teachers to explain the differences in the various programs, they were unable to do so. But they were able to tell us that things were "going well," that all programs are "doing the same thing." Our observations in Midwest High School showed that teachers' instructional practices were quite traditional and (low) student outcomes had changed little over several years. Teachers expressed that they felt reform burnout as the result of implementing multiple, simultaneous innovations. I've just seen that everybody's tired. It's kind of like the third year in school. The kids always seem to let down, "Oh, this is our third year." Maybe this is our let down. For two years we really pushed forward and really did more that changed our teaching styles and bringing in the ideas of cooperative learning in our classrooms and the onset of the technology. And I think that we would just like to stand still for a little bit, let us get used to this, and then we can go on

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and say, "Okay, this is where we need to go now." But at this point, everybody's getting tired (Focus group interview, Midwest High School). While most reforms emanated from the administration in the schools we studied, the administrators expressed confusion about the multiple goals and objectives of the various programs. In fact, when we questioned several administrators about the goals and objectives they had promised in order to receive large grants, they said that it had been so long since the grant proposal had been written, or that someone no longer in the school had written the proposal, that they didn't remember what they had promised. Placed under the microscope of evaluation, they conceded that the promises in their proposals were unrealistic. Their primary concern when questioned about meeting their goals was, "Does this mean we'll lose our money?" The process of role enactment, such as, the "zoo" example above, defines a situation and a position, but it can also promote and reinforce certain ways of doing things and of interpreting future action. This can matter when innovations are being discussed and cultural scripts and identities are "consulted" and constituted through interaction. The school culture provided a context of meaning for faculty to interpret their current problems, the likely outcome of future efforts to improve the situation. The key element was how the situation was defined. With repetitions through stories, or the use of quasi-theories, such definitions became an incorrigible proposition, the validity of which could not be doubted. And through the telling of stories, the culture of the school was transmitted to new teachers. Socializing N e w M e m b e r s One becomes a member of any social activity by learning its language, stories, and perspective. For example, one new teacher at Utopia High expressed the problem on getting to know the school culture: I'm new iia the field and my experience has been here. I wasn't really told what the Reformwas so I just did my job. We're so big we're in our own little worlds. I still don't know some people in the school (Focus group interview, Utopia High School). In Sunshine Elementary School (Success is Obvious), a plan to train teachers to use a particular approach to education, Constructivism, soon developed into a staff development project in which teachers spent several hours a week out of their classes receiving special instruction in how to implement the new instructional strategies. The high teacher turnover at this school created a gap to fill, especially if the entire school was to use this approach. When we asked how new teachers were "caught up" with the rest of the faculty, we were told that what we were really asking was how the school "osmocizes" new teachers, or introduced them to the school's philosophy and practices. The process consisted of having

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new teachers observe another teacher and a consultant at work as a permanent substitute covered any regularly assigned classes. Moreover, new teachers were expected to both catch up within a reasonable period of time, as well as be supportive of the process. The culture of this school was taking on religious overtones of "true believers." It seemed as though some with doubts were reluctant to speak, at least not in front of Some colleagues. On one occasion, a 19 year veteran at another school proclaimed that she now realized she had wasted her time and could not teach at all until she joined this faculty. Due to consistent peer pressure and cultural celebration, such testimonials were offered in the presence of the principal and other teachers about the wonders of the approach and what an impact it was making on their students, while in private communications we would often receive a somewhat different story.

DISCUSSION We have pointed to the importance of understanding the role of cultural maintenance in the process of school reform. School cultures provide the symbolic foundation for membership, identity and the discourse for guiding interaction. People talk identity and membership. But they also provide a rationale and logic for accounting for discrepancies between member identities, the organizational mission, goals and objectives, and the outcomes. Such an account is essential to preserve the cultural order and the sense of who we are. What/who is to be blamed when we are not successful? A reflexive examination of the research process suggests that the member test of truth can be self-validating. While notions of success are clearly relative, our ethnographic work suggested that targets of blame are not relative, and in each setting where we worked there were clear symbolic pointers for the problem. In all cases, the outsiders were blameworthy, but there were sub-categories for blame as well. In one case (Utopia High), it was the students who did not perform and were actually regarded by many teachers as not being capable of performance. In another setting (Sunshine), it was standardized tests, and the "ignorant" state administrators who expected some accounting of whether educational performance had improved. For Midwest (Success is Change), the principal often blamed the teachers, and the teachers blamed the principal for trying to do too much. Narratives and resistance strategies work in the culture of schools to make any reform a hit or miss situation. Outsiders see contradictions; insiders resolve them under a rubric of situational practicality. Contradictions in the process of reform, and in the evaluation of such efforts, make it difficult to achieve success, and are likely to reinforce a cultural notion about the lack of coordination and integration of the school's organization. For an evaluator and ethnographer, some of these contradictions appear bizarre in their ordinary contexts. Among them, we offer the following examples.

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Cultural maintenance enables teachers, as workers in schools; to engage in programmatic efforts based on apparent contradictory premises that are '°made consistent" by the local culture. An illustration is the use of cooperative learning, on the one hand, and what we termed "independent decision-making," on the other hand. Group-participation and team cooperation was stressed over individual direction, particularly if this obviated against group efforts toward consensus. Independent decision making, while more akin to traditional notions of independent work, for example, "get your own grade," "make you own decisions," or "do your own work," is certainly in the center of recent anti-drug-violence-alcohol programs. Students are urged to not listen to friends and make up their own minds. And rather extensive state and federal programs are funded to teach these skills. They exist side-by-side in many of the classrooms were studied, with few teachers noting the putative contradictions. The logical rough edges were blurred by the practical context of the local culture that promoted programmatic compartmentalization for different projects, and often, different funding. Another example is expertness, or who has the right to set the agenda for action at one school. Despite a programmatic mandate by a major grant to promote shared decision-making with a faculty based management team, the school principal's approach remained relying on a small cadre of "insiders." Our field notes reflected how the faculty's interest in selecting some different consultants than originally proposed was honored, but really it was severely limited by the choices given the teachers by the "insiders." From the "insiders" perspective, teachers were making decisions when they could voice some opinions in a meeting. As an aide told the principal, "Your teachers are feeling more "empowered' and have more "voice' as a result of this project. They seem more open to speak up in meetings." When asked how the staff development activities were selected, the principal explained: We decided to invite some people from [city]...therewas a staff uproar, so we sent people to [city] to decide who they wanted, and they came back with two people's names. (The aide added, with a big smile, "Can you believe they chosethe tWOWewanted?") (Field notes, Sunshine ElementarySchool) The upshot was that the culture of the school was not fundamentally changed, but actually expanded the locus of control. This example also brings up an important, yet contradictory, issue concerning the role of leadership in an area of school-based-team decision making era. All the principals in the schools we have studied have been caught in a double-bind, based on contradictory guides for their role in school governance found in competing calls for reform. But contradictions are given a context of meaning--and thereby essentially alleviated by the use of several of the maintenance strategies noted above, Administrators are told that school change is dependent on strong leadership, and at the same time, they are pressed, if not required, to engage in

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site-based management and joint decision making as a team member with their school's faculty. As others have pointed out: Despite its many contributions, the effective schools tradition has sometimes added to the confusion by emphasizing strong leadership from principals and de-emphasizing collegiality and collaboration (in Bolman and Heller 1995; Barth 1990; Sykes and Elmore 1988).

By way of reflection, as both formative and summative evaluators, we were aboard the floating target that we sought to help "redirect" through periodic reports and informal feedback throughout the studies. With the former, we gave periodic feedback and suggestions to help focus attention on stated goals and to promote success. As the latter, we were expected initially to provide an overall assessment of nature and extent of success or failure of various reform efforts, for example, reduce the drop out rate. But the feedback we provided throughout the projects also afforded us crucial opportunities to discover and explicate the members' reactions to our findings, as well as providing them a practical direction for knowing "what we were interested in," whereby they could, on the one hand, affirm some general findings, but more commonly, on the other hand, clarify certain interpretations with additional stories. Our awareness of the cultural maintenance process led us to focus on vocabularies of motive in vogue by some teachers and administrators. In this regard, we were following school improvement efforts over time, collecting conventional baseline data, but more importantly, focusing on the process and perspective of the various stakeholders in each setting. Finally, our experience clearly suggests that we are part of what we study. We have had to be ever-mindful of our role as visitors from a "third dimension," always walking an invisible line between objective researchers, collaborators, and evaluators. We were infiltrators through our prolonged immersion in the schools, and yet "hired hands," with teams of people, high visibility, contractual obligations, and goods to be delivered within specified time periods (Punch 1986). At times we have been the "bearer of unhappy tidings," because we presented research findings which revealed serious problems. But the amount of resistance to research findings has been proportional to the degree to which the information has been discrepant from commonly held beliefs that are firmly entrenched in the school's culture (Spencer 1992). We have occasionally suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous accusations, but as Becker has said, "Canny administrators try to contain snoopy sociologists, but it isn't easy" (1990, p. 234).

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Becker, H. S. 1990. "Generalizing from Case Studies." In Qualitative Inquiry in Education: the Continuing Debate. New York: Teachers College Press. Bolman, L. G., and R. Heller. 1995. "Research on School Leadership: the State of the Art." In Images of Schools: Structures and Roles in Organizational Behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Carter, K. 1993. "The Place of Story in the Study of Teaching and Teacher Education." Educational Researcher 22(1): 5-12, 18. Cuban, L. 1984. How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890-1980. New York: Longman. Deal, T. E. 1995. "Symbols and Symbolic Activities." In Images of schools: Structures and roles in organizational behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Denzin, N. K., and Y. S. Lincoln eds. 1994. Handbook of Qualitative Methodology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Hall, Peter M. 1997. "Meta-power, Social Organization, and the Shaping of Social Action." Symbolic Interaction 20: 397-418. Hall, P. M., and J. P. Hewitt. 1970. "The Quasi-theory of Communication and the Management of Dissent." Social Problems 18:17-27. Hall, P.M., and D. A. Spencer. 1982. "The Social Conditions of the Negotiated Order." Urban Life 11(3): 328-349. Hargreaves, A. 1996. "Revisiting Voice." Educational Researcher 25 ( 1): 12-19. Hewitt, J. P., and P. M. Hall. 1973. "Social Problems, Problematic Situations, and Quasi-theories." American Sociological Review 38: 367-374. Mehan, H., and H. Wood. 1975. The Reality of Ethnomethodology. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Owen, H. H. 1987. Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organizations. Potomac, MD: Abbott. Punch, M. 1986. The Politics and Ethics of FieIdwork. Beverly Hills: Sage. Spencer, D. A. 1992. Researcher as Bearer of Unhappy Tidings: Cases from an Urban High School. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society. Spencer, D. A. 1996. "Teachers and Educational Reform." Educational Researcher 25(9): 15-17, 40. Sykes, G., and R. F. Elmore. 1988. "Making Schools Manageable: Policy and Administration for Tomorrow's Schools.'! In Politics of Education Association Yearbook. Philadelphia, PA: Falmer.