Jurnal Studies in Symbolic InteraCiOn | Makalah Dan Jurnal Gratis
STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC
INTERACTION
STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC
INTERACTION
Series Editor: Norman K. Denzin
Recent Volumes:
Volumes 1–32:
Studies in Symbolic Interaction
STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION VOLUME 33
STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC
INTERACTION
EDITED BY
NORMAN K. DENZIN
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
EDITOR OF BLUE RIBBON PAPER SERIES
LONNIE ATHENS
Department of Criminal Justice, Seton Hall University,
South Orange, NJ, USA
EDITOR OF COMMODITY RACISM
RICHARD KING
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies,
Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA
MANAGING EDITOR
MYRA WASHINGTON
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
CO-MANAGING EDITOR
DONG HAN AND YING ZHANG
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
United Kingdom – North America – Japan
India – Malaysia – China
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First edition 2009
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ISBN: 978-1-84855-784-0
ISSN: 0163-2396 (Series)
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CONTENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
ix
PART I: BLUE RIBBON PAPERS
INTRODUCTION TO ‘BLUE RIBBON PAPERS’:
INVESTIGATING THE EMPIRICAL WORLD
Lonnie Athens
3
THE WISDOM OF DISTRUST: REFLECTIONS
ON UKRAINIAN SOCIETY AND SOCIOLOGY
John M. Johnson and Andrew Melnikov
9
SITUATING PUBLIC PERFORMANCES: FOLK
SINGERS AND SONG INTRODUCTIONS
Scott Grills
19
THE MUSIC RINGTONE AS AN IDENTITY
MANAGEMENT DEVICE: A RESEARCH NOTE
Christopher J. Schneider
35
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Jude Robinson
47
THE STRUCTURE OF FLIRTATION: ON THE
CONSTRUCTION OF INTERACTIONAL AMBIGUITY
Iddo Tavory
59
BECOMING A SOCIOLOGIST: ONE WOMAN’S
JOURNEY
Virginia Olesen
75
v
vi
CONTENTS
PART II: COMMODITY RACISM: REPRESENTATION,
RACIALIZATION, AND RESISTANCE
COMMODITY RACISM NOW
C. Richard King
97
COMMODITY RACE AND EMOTION: THE
RACIAL COMMERCIALIZATION OF HUMAN
FEELING IN CORPORATE CONSUMERISM
Jeffrey Santa Ana
109
THE PRINCESS AND THE SUV: BRAND IMAGES
OF NATIVE AMERICANS AS COMMODIFIED
RACISM
Debra Merskin
129
YEAST: CANNIBALIZING THE ORIENT IN AMERICAN
CULTURE
Sheng-mei Ma
149
IT’S GOTTA BE THE BODY: RACE, COMMODITY,
AND SURVEILLANCE OF CONTEMPORARY
BLACK ATHLETES
David J. Leonard
165
CONSUMING ‘‘POLYNESIA’’: VISUAL SPECTACLES
OF NATIVE BODIES IN HAWAIIAN TOURISM
Vernadette V. Gonzalez
191
CINCO DE MAYO, INC.: REINTERPRETING LATINO
CULTURE INTO A COMMERCIAL HOLIDAY
Jose´ M. Alamillo
217
IF SANTA WUZ BLACK: THE DOMESTICATION
OF A WHITE MYTH
Charles Fruehling Springwood
239
vii
Contents
UNSETTLING COMMODITY RACISM
C. Richard King
255
PART III: PETER M. HALL LECTURE SERIES
INTRODUCTION TO DAVID ALTHEIDE’S
TALK: ‘‘TERRORISM AND PROPAGANDA’’
Susan Stall
277
TERRORISM AND PROPAGANDA
David L. Altheide
279
THERE’S OUR HITLER ENVY! ALTHEIDE’S
VERSION OF FEAR IT NOW
Michael A. Katovich
297
PART IV: NEW INTERPRETIVE WORKS
THE ESSENTIALS OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM:
A PAPER IN HONOR OF BERNARD N. MELTZER
Gil Richard Musolf
305
COMMUNICATIVE SUSTAINABILITY:
A FRAMEWORK FOR PERFORMANCE
ACCOUNTING
Wayne D. Woodward
327
THE INTER-PLAY OF POWER AND META-POWER
IN THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF
‘‘ENTREPRENEURIAL’’ PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
FIRMS: A PROCESSUAL ORDERING PERSPECTIVE
Mark W. Dirsmith, Sajay Samuel, Mark A. Covaleski
and James B. Heian
MYSTIFICATION OF ROCK
Michael A. Katovich and Wesley Longhofer
347
389
viii
CONTENTS
NARRATIVE FORM AND TEMPORALITY
IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE: ROMANCE, TRAGEDY,
AND AMERICA’S PRESENCE IN IRAQ
Robert L. Young
417
FOUR ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL PARADOXES:
REFLECTIONS ON THE WORK OF KENNETH
LIBERMAN
Scott R. Harris
443
LEAVING BLACK ROCK CITY
John F. Sherry, Jr.
459
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Jose´ M. Alamillo
Chicana/o Studies, California State
University Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA,
USA
David L. Altheide
School of Justice and Social Inquiry,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Lonnie Athens
Department of Criminal Justice, Seton Hall
University, South Orange, NJ, USA
Mark A. Covaleski
School of Business, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Mark W. Dirsmith
Smeal College of Business and the social
thought program, Penn State University.
University Park, PA, USA
Vernadette V.
Gonzalez
American Studies Department, University
of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
Scott Grills
Department of Sociology, Brandon
University, Brandon, MB, Canada
Scott R. Harris
Department of Sociology and Criminal
Justice, Saint Louis University, St. Louis,
MO, USA
James B. Heian
Division of Social Sciences and
Management, Utica College of Syracuse
University, Utica, NY, USA
John M. Johnson
School of Justice and Social Inquiry,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
C. Richard King
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies,
Washington State University, Pullman, WA,
USA
ix
x
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Michael A. Katovich
College of Liberal Arts, Texas Christian
University, Fort Worth, TX, USA
David J. Leonard
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies,
Washington State University, Pullman, WA,
USA
Wesley Longhofer
Department of Sociology, University of
Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA
Sheng-mei Ma
Department of English, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Andrew Melnikov
Department of Sociology, Eastukrainian
National University, Legansk, Ukraine
Debra Merskin
School of Journalism and Communication,
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
Gil Richard Musolf
Department of Sociology, Anthropology,
and Social Work, Central Michigan
University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA
Virginia Olesen
Department of Social and Behavioral
Sciences, University of California-San
Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Jude Robinson
The Health and Community Care Research
Unit (HaCCRU), University of Liverpool,
Liverpool, UK
Sajay Samuel
Smeal College of Business, Penn State
University, University Park, PA, USA
Jeffrey Santa Ana
Department of English, Stony Brook
University, Stony Brook, NY, USA
Christopher J.
Schneider
Irving K. Barber School of Arts and
Sciences, University of British
Columbia-Okanagan, Kelowna,
BC, Canada
John F. Sherry, Jr.
Department of Marketing, University of
Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
xi
List of Contributors
Charles Fruehling
Springwood
Sociology and Anthropology Department,
Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington,
IL, USA
Susan Stall
Sociology Department, Northeastern
Illinois University, Chicago, IL, USA
Iddo Tavory
Department of Sociology, University of
California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA,
USA
Wayne D. Woodward
Department of Language, Culture, and
Communication, University of MichiganDearborn, Dearborn, MI, USA
Robert L. Young
Department of Sociology and
Anthropology, University of Texas at
Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA
PART I
BLUE RIBBON PAPERS
INTRODUCTION TO ‘BLUE RIBBON
PAPERS’: INVESTIGATING THE
EMPIRICAL WORLD
Lonnie Athens
I am pleased to introduce the second issue in Studies in Symbolic
Interaction’s ‘‘Blue Ribbon Paper’’ series. In contrast to the chapters in
the first issue that focused exclusively on theoretical matters, the chapters in
this one are focused on empirical problems. In John Johnson’s and Andrew
Melnikov’s provocative article, ‘‘The Wisdom of Distrust: Reflections on
Ukrainian Society and Sociology,’’ they examine the results of a nation-wide
poll that shows among other things that Ukrainian citizenry paradoxically
displays little faith in any of the branches of their democratically elected
government. On the one hand, this finding is paradoxical because
democracy is a relatively new experience for present day Ukrainians. Since
their country had been for years a puppet state of the former Soviet Union,
one would think that they now would be elated by the opportunity to elect
their leaders. On the other hand, the founding fathers of our nation also
displayed considerable distrust in government, including democratically
elected ones, such as our own. In fact, their distrust was so great that it led
them to build into our constitution an intricate system of checks and
balances of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of
our government. Although conventional psychological wisdom is that
distrust of others is a sign of paranoia, Johnson and Melinkov conclude that
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 3–7
Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033002
3
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LONNIE ATHENS
being wary of governmental institutions and politicians may be a healthy
state of affairs for a country’s citizens.
The authors of our next three chapters all examine different aspects of
popular culture. In ‘‘Situating Public Performances: Folk Singers and Song
Introductions,’’ Scott Grills analyzes the introductions that folk singers
often provide to their songs during live performances. He collected his data
primarily from conducting informal interviews with folk singers and
participant observing their performances over a four year period at various
folk festivals held across North America. Grills, an accomplished
saxophonist, who has played in several blues bands, found that introducing
a song serves a purpose other than merely killing time between tunes.
According to him, ‘‘song introductions provide additional information to
the audience that would be otherwise unavailable, provide the artists with an
opportunity to influence audience interpretations, allow for legitimizing
strategies to be utilized and, importantly, allow artists an opportunity to
invoke disclaimers, accounts, and justifications’’ for their performances.
Thus, they afford singers the opportunity to ‘‘situate’’ a song and, thereby,
help the audience to place the right accent on the meaning of their
performance. As Grills points out, prefacing a public performance is not a
practice unique to folk singers or even singers, but is one that writers,
filmmakers, magicians, musicians, comedians, and others also use to help
insure that an audience will interpret their work in the proper light.
Hopefully, Grills will push his enlightening analysis even further by
identifying the properties of introductions that increase the likelihood of
their success in making an audience respond positively to an artist’s
performance.
In ‘‘The Music Ringtone as an Identity Management Device: A Research
Note,’’ Christopher Schneider provides another study of popular culture. To
collect data on the tunes that American youth select for the ringtones on
their mobile phones, he drew on his participation observation at a secondary
school and information gleaned from census data and trade association
publications, such as Billboard’s ‘‘Hot Ringtones Chart.’’ To provide a
framework for understanding his findings, he drew on the work of Erving
Goffman. He found that for, at least, members of the American youth
culture, the tunes that they select for their mobile phones’ ringtones serve as
what Goffman calls a ‘‘tie-sign,’’ or critical indicator of who they are and
what they are about. According to Schneider, however, this can often create
potential problems of what Goffman like to refer to as ‘‘information
control.’’ The ringtones on our cell phones may reveal personal information
about us that we may sometimes prefer to keep hidden from others.
Introduction to ‘Blue Ribbon Papers’
5
Although we can switch the ringtones on our mobile phones ‘‘on’’ and
‘‘off,’’ this may not always be a practical option. Thus, depending on the
audience, a ringtone can potentially reveal harmful or helpful information
about our identities, and thereby, operate as either a positive or negative
‘‘tie-sign.’’
In ‘‘There’s No Place Like Home,’’ Jude Robinson examines still another
important aspect of popular culture – the documentary film. She turns her
perceptive eye on director Jeff Togman’s award-winning documentary,
‘‘Home,’’ which covers 10 weeks in the life of a Black middle-aged mother
and her six children. The mother is confronted with the problem of whether
to move her family from their present residence in an urban slum to a new
residence in a ‘‘better neighborhood.’’ At first glance, the answer to this
problem seems to be a no-brainer. As Robinson sees it, however, ‘‘Home’’
raises this problem to the level of a serious existential dilemma for this
mother. On the one hand, she has the opportunity to move her family into
bigger and better housing in a swankier part of town. On the other hand, she
is reluctant to take advantage of this seemingly ‘‘golden opportunity’’ that
has been handed to her on a silver platter. According to Robinson, the
answer to this paradox is ‘‘Home is where your heart is.’’ As she explains,
this mother’s ‘‘heart was never into moving away to a new house and
neighborhood where she would be a nobody by leaving her old house and
neighborhood where she was a somebody.’’ In her present neighborhood,
this single-parent mother with six dependent children was a ‘‘somebody’’
because she was doing the seemingly impossible – raising good kids in a bad
neighborhood. In a good neighborhood where the odds would be stacked
much more heavily in her favor, however, she knew that she would no
longer be considered anybody special because she would be doing only what
every mother living in that neighborhood was expected to do.
In Iddo Tavory’s ‘‘The Structure of Flirtation: On the Construction of
Interactional Ambiguity,’’ the topic of analysis switches from popular
culture to everyday life. During the course of a 14 month study, he observed
over 65 incidents of flirtation, most of which took place in cafes and bars.
Tavory places flirtation inside a larger class of interaction, which he labels
‘‘suspended interactions.’’ According to him, suspended interaction occurs
when the interactants intentionally hold the outcome of their interaction in
abeyance. In the specific case of flirtation, a possible sexual advance is made,
but its ultimate meaning is purposefully left ambiguous. He argues that
flirting can be advantageously viewed as social interaction that unfolds over
three stages. During initial stage, the interaction between the actors has a
nonsexual tenor. During the middle stage, however, an advance is made that
6
LONNIE ATHENS
changes the tenor of the interaction to a possible sexual one. During the
final stage, the sexual advance that was made during the middle stage is
further clarified making clear that it was a sexual advance. According to
Tavory, the flirtation ceases as soon as the meaning of an ambiguous sexual
advance becomes determinate. Thus, for him, flirtation is limited to the
social interaction that takes place during this middle stage which lies
somewhere ‘‘between and betwixt’’ making normal, everyday chit chat and
an explicit sexual proposition. Tavory deserves credit for opening up for
empirical investigation a class of interaction that Simmel and others have
long speculated about, but few have subjected to direct empirical
examination.
In the last chapter, ‘‘Becoming a Sociologist: One Women’s Journey,’’
Virginia Olesen describes the circuitous route that she followed in becoming
a sociologist. She organizes her narrative around what her former mentor
and later colleague, Anslem Strauss, called ‘‘turning points.’’ Although all
the turning points that resulted in her becoming a distinguished medical
sociologist cannot be mentioned here, I will highlight some of the key ones
to give the flavor of her journey. Although an undergraduate at the
University of Nevada at Reno, Olesen dreamed of becoming a journalist.
After earning bachelor’s degrees in both history and english at Nevada, she
landed a job at local newspaper on Mare Island, California where she
worked first as a cub reporter and later as the editor. Despite her obvious
success at this newspaper, she became bored with working on local news and
personal interest stories. An early important turning point in her career
came when she applied for a fellowship to attend graduate school at the
University of Chicago. Though studying communication at Chicago, she
met several outstanding sociologists, including Anselm Strauss, on whom
she apparently made a good impression.
After finishing up her work for her master’s degree in communication at
Chicago, she decided to switch to Stanford University for her doctorate
degree. However, she quickly became disenchanted with the intellectual
content of its communication’s programme. The next major turning point in
her career occurred when she decided to transfer from the university’s
department of communication into its department of sociology which she
found much more intellectually satisfying. After earning her Ph.D. in
sociology at Stanford, she found herself once again in the job market.
Another important turning point came in her career when Anselm Strauss
and Fred Davis offered her a soft money position to work on a research
project on nursing careers at the University of California at San Francisco.
With a great deal of hard work, tenacity, and a bit of good luck, she worked
Introduction to ‘Blue Ribbon Papers’
7
her way up from a soft money research position to a tenured, full professor
in its College of Nursing’s Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
that Anselm Strauss help create and later headed up. I think that Olesen’s
chapter should be required reading for all students in the social sciences
considering a career in academics. Among other things, it shows how she
deftly managed her professional life during the difficult years before
affirmative action had been instituted. It also demonstrates more generally
that academic careers do not always follow a straight line, that personal
contacts can play a big role in your success or failure, and that you must be
ready to seize opportunities when they knock at your door.
THE WISDOM OF DISTRUST:
REFLECTIONS ON UKRAINIAN
SOCIETY AND SOCIOLOGY$
John M. Johnson and Andrew Melnikov
THE WISDOM OF DISTRUST
Ukraine regained its independence in 1991, following over 7 decades of soviet
domination, and about 300 years of Russian domination. Democracy and
stable institutional development have proven problematic for Ukraine since
1991, arguably more so than any of the other Eastern European countries.
Unlike the increasing economic development in the other countries, for
example, per capita GNP in Ukraine has decreased by approximately 50% in
the last decade. President Viktor Yushchenko’s ‘‘Orange Revolution’’ has
promised certain westernized economic reforms, but political opposition has
forced a new election scheduled for September 30, 2007.
During the summer of 1993, the director of the Ukrainian National
Academy of Sciences commissioned a sociological survey to monitor the
current social situation in Ukrainian society, its perspectives, structures and
institutions, economics, politics, and national and cultural features reflected in
Ukrainian public opinion. Sociologists Natalia Panina and Evgeniy Golovakha were asked to head the survey team. In 2001, they produced a volume
$
Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction,
New York City, August, 2007.
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 9–18
Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033003
9
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JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
Tendancies in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001: Sociological
Indicators, which reports the results of the first seven years of this exhaustive
survey in Ukraine (Panina & Golovakha, 2001). Their report includes over 170
tables to summarize the polling data on citizen evaluations of the economic
situation and attitudes toward economic reforms, standards of living and living
conditions, consumption orientations, working activities, employment, and
satisfaction with jobs. Also included are attitudes toward political orientations,
social and political activity, toward state and institutional power structures,
religion and beliefs, effectiveness of the legal system, the state of health,
environment, and attitudes toward medical service. Everyday life, leisure,
cultural activities, and interpersonal relations and psychological conditions are
additionally included, as are education, mass media, knowledge, and attitudes
about national identity and migration. Even the most casual reader is
impressed with the exhaustive nature of the survey and the issues addressed.
A close reading of the report produces an unmistakable emphasis on the
high level of distrust expressed about virtually all aspects of life in Ukraine.
The authors refer to these ‘‘conditions of mass distrust of the state (and)
civil society institutions’’ (p. 123), and further observe, ‘‘You can only look
at the population’s trust in main social institutions and power structures and
see that in the average citizen’s field of trust, there are only the citizen
himself, the family, and God.’’ (p. 122) To further dramatize this, one
table showing the comparative trust scores across realms of Ukrainian life
(Table B2, p. 53) reveals that the trust scores for astrologers are higher than
those of all official state institutions, specifically the Supreme Court, the
Parliament, the Presidency, the militia, the political parties, the traditional
trade unions, the private entrepreneurs, and the new trade unions. The high
level of distrust is so overwhelmingly pervasive throughout the report that,
when combined with the very high No Response levels, a serious reader
develops a healthy skepticism about whether to even believe any of this;
after all, with such high levels of distrust expressed about all aspects of the
social order, by what warrant would one accept these responses and trust
them? This is a very serious question, and one we cannot here answer. Even
if we were to hypothetically speculate that Ukrainian citizens had a higher
level of trust for the pollsters than they expressed for any other official,
state, or civil institution (which would put it at the lower middle level on the
scale), this would involve such a high rate of error that it would compromise
the survey as a whole. It remains highly plausible that such polling results
from Ukraine are severely and fatally flawed.
If Ukrainian polling respondents responded to the polling situation with no
more trust than they expressed about all other state and civil institutions in
Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology
11
Ukraine, then why did they bother to respond at all? Another good question
we think. Scholars trained in symbolic interaction would likely observe that
the polling situation itself should be studied as an instance of a complicated
social interaction, commonly between two or more persons who are
previously unknown to each other in any intimate manner, and thus a
context where the emergent meanings of specific statements or questionnaire
items are negotiated in a face-to-face situation. This is the message to be taken
from Aaron Cicourel’s (1964) book Method and Measurement in Sociology,
where he asserts that interview or questionnaire results cannot be taken as
unproblematic ‘‘data,’’ but should be examined to see how it is that pollsters
and relative strangers manage and negotiate meanings during a face-to-face
encounter. Those familiar with the writings of Herbert Blumer would
additionally emphasize that meanings in face-to-face encounters have an
emergent quality to them, that they flow out of a social process (the interview
or questionnaire encounter) which cannot be assumed as a ‘‘given’’ in the
research (Blumer, 1969). Without really knowing these aspects about the
Ukrainian questionnaire interviews, one plausible speculation is that some of
them may have interpreted the polling questions as an occasion to ‘‘vote’’ for
a response, perhaps intending to ‘‘send a message’’ to those in power,
concerning their elected options, independently of how they ‘‘really felt’’
about the question, or what they ‘‘really thought’’ about it. Whatever the
answer is to this, it is clear that Ukrainian scientists and scholars take this
high level of distrust as a serious problem for the immediate national future of
Ukraine, as expressed by many of the selected essays edited by Golovakha,
Panina, and Vorona for the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
(Golovakha, Panina, & Vorona, 2000).
The survey polling results reported by Panina and Golovakha in Tendancies
in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001 provide the animus for this
chapter, and our reflections on the nature and meaning of trust, for individuals
and for society. We briefly address the issue of how trust arises in the life of
most individuals, what it means for their lives, and how disruptions or
betrayals of trust are dealt handled. We conclude these reflections with an
assertion of our position that, for Ukrainian society the ‘‘problem’’ of
distrusting citizens should be recast or reformulated as an issue of social justice.
THE NATURE OF TRUST
For the overwhelming number of human beings, arguably in the range
98–99%, a condition of trust is present in their lives from the moment of
12
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
birth, even before that (during pregnancy) in most cases. Mother–infant
bonding is a profound, primordial, and foundational experience for most
individuals. The caring love shown by mothers toward infants is idealized and
symbolized in all known cultures. In science, the world-renowned researches
of Barry Brazelton (Brazelton, 1963, 1980; Brazelton, Kowslowski, & Main,
1974; Brazelton, Troncik, Adamson, Als, & Wise, 1975) have shown the
profound significance of mother–infant bonding, and the well-known threevolume work by Harvard’s John Bolby (1971–1979) has shown the significance of this bonding for the larger issues of human attachment. The human
animal has the longest period of dependency, when compared to other
primates, so the first months of life are very important for what follows in an
individual’s life.
In his famous work The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm (1974) argues that
early bonding or attachment is very important in terms of subsequent
development, especially whether or not the child develops deep feelings of
security or insecurity. Thelma Rowell (1972, p. 137) has additionally asserted
this importance for other primates:
Many primates are captured as infants and hand-reared as pets, then transferred to zoos
when they get older. Attempts to use such animals as breeding stock have a very low rate
of success: typically these ex-pets show little or no mating behavior, and the females do
not care for their infants, which are then hand-reared, thus creating the breeding
problems of the next generation. The histories of these zoo animals are of course varied,
and the fact that some of them do breed suggests that one might be dealing with quite
short critical periods during which social experience is necessary. This was investigated in
rhesus infants. Isolated for the first three months produced no permanent effects, if the
infants were then placed in a group, but isolated for the whole of the first year destroyed
all social ability. The period between three and nine months seemed to be critical for
establishing normal social behavior, although the communicative gestures have nearly all
appeared in the first three months.
The significance of mother–infant bonding and these early attachment
experiences can be dramatically seen in cases where the bonding is not
present, or those few cases where the mother has rejected the newborn.
Again, the researches of T. Barry Brazelton provide many examples of this.
Other widely known examples include the many Romanian babies who were
institutionalized shortly after birth during the 1970s and 1980s, during the
repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu: even when many of these babies
were later adopted by loving families, many proved incapable of
transcending these early months or years of social isolation. Other wellknown examples of maternal rejection are some of the notorious mass,
Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology
13
spree, or serial killers, such as Theodore Bundy, who killed 33 women
(abandoned by his mother Elizabeth Cowell), Henry Lee Lucas, who
confessed in killing hundreds of women across the United States (savagely
beaten by his mother, who became his first murder victim), David
Berkowitz, the infamous ‘‘Son of Sam’’ shooter who killed 11 people in
New York during the summer of 1976 (abandoned by his mother at birth,
and who rejected him later after he had located her in his late teenage years),
Charles Starkweather, who killed 7 people during an 11 day spree in
Nebraska (abused by his mother), and so on (see Hickey, 2005).
Maternal mortality has been high historically, but in many of these cases
there are maternal surrogates who step in and take the place of the mother,
most commonly aunts, sisters, or grandmothers, and if possible even fathers.
Infant bonding and attachment does occur with the father and others in the
family, such as aunts or grandmothers, and in such cases the bonding
attachments may have a cumulative effect, thus helping to produce feelings
of security and being loved. Many developmental psychologists have been
influenced by the seminal work of E. H. Erikson (1963) who said that
children developed a sense of ‘‘basic trust’’ with their environment and its
caretakers, or a sense of ‘‘basic distrust.’’ Basic trust means that the child
has a generalized expectation that the external environment they encounter
is basically good, and that good and positive things will most likely happen;
basic distrust is the opposite. This is not to say that children do not
encounter bad or untoward or inconsistent things. They do. Life is difficult
and problematic. But the important point is that a child or person who has
developed a sense of basic trust will process these untoward events in a
different manner than the child or person who is distrustful. The distrustful
child will begin to develop psychologically defensive expectations and
adaptations to these untoward events or actions.
Successful mother–infant bonding, especially when combined with other
significant bondings and attachments within the home (father, siblings,
grandparents, and aunts), lays an important foundation for later developmental success. This is not a simple, mono-causal, linear process, but one with
many disjunctions and perturbations. Young children encounter conflicts and
tensions within any family, and all adolescents encounter conflicts and
tensions with other children and adolescents. Successful bonding tends to
produce other successes in these problematic human relations, and bonding
failures tend to produce other failures. Successful bonding within the home is
associated with success in developing early friendships and alliances, and these
are often important relationships to have when encountering life’s difficulties.
14
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
EARLY BETRAYALS OF TRUST
Although forms of trusting relations are found early in most lives, early
disruptions, conflicts, and betrayals of trust are found too. These may come
from within the family, with conflicts between siblings being common, or
they may come from outside the family, with adolescent conflicts being
common. Such conflicts or betrayals may be serious and consequential, or
less serious and mild in their consequences. For young children, they may
‘‘patch up’’ or repair such disruptions, and continue their friendships. For
older children who experience a ‘‘betrayal,’’ the more common pattern is to
transfer one’s loyalties to a different friend, or to build a new friendship.
Serious betrayals of trust possess the potential to be emotionally overwhelming, at any age. For more serious betrayals, an individual may
respond with violence, revenge, or perhaps more commonly, to become less
trusting.
Childhood sexual abuse and childhood physical abuse can be mild or
severe, but when it is in the severe range, the consequences may be profound.
These are forms of betraying trust which may affect the individual for the rest
of their life, in the more serious cases. During the past four decades there has
developed a vast scientific literature on these topics (for a summary, see
Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2005).
The important research of Heinz Kohut (1971, 1977) shows that infant
and early childhood aggression is extremely common, and furthermore it
arises as a reaction to significant others not providing crucial developmental
needs. His term for this is ‘‘empathic optimal frustration,’’ which refers to
the social process during which infants learn that it is not possible to have all
of their needs met all of the time. This does not result because of some
failure or neglect on the part of the caretakers, but because they cannot be
there every minute of the time. Infants respond to the ‘‘optimal frustration’’
period with assertiveness or healthy aggression, and from this eventually
learn that life is not perfect, and that the world does not exist for the sole
purpose of providing for their needs. Infants also learn about their own
healthy aggression from this process, and how to use it in interaction with
significant others. In situation where the unmet needs are consistently and
continually unmet, however, or in situations where young children are
subjected to continual abuse or abandonment, then the healthy assertiveness
can break down into hostile assertiveness. In the researches of Lonnie
Athens (1992), for example, in severely abusive situations where the young
child is ‘‘psychologically broken,’’ then the early (benign) assertiveness can
become transformed into defensive or destructive rage, hostility, and
Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology
15
violence toward others. In the most extreme cases of continual abuse or
abandonment, the end result can be an individual who is paranoid, or even
in the case of the Athens research a ‘‘dangerous, violent criminal.’’
The condition of trust is not intrinsic to the human being. Trust is learned
and is learned in a slow, gradual, developmental process, a social process
which includes conflicts, tensions, problems, even betrayals. Individuals learn
from the betrayals of trust, just as they learn from the establishment and
development of trust. As the individual grows and develops, there is an
accumulation of trusting and distrusting experiences. These experiences are
socially structured and stratified; those who grow up in large urban
metropolises do not grow up trusting in the same manner as more isolated
rural peasants.
DISTRUST IS NOT THE PROBLEM: JUSTICE
IS THE PROBLEM
Trust is learned. It is learned during the course of a developmental social
process, often taking a considerable period of time. Distrust is also learned.
Though an individual may learn to distrust over a longer period of time, it is
more common for distrust to result from violations or betrayals of trust. If
the citizens of Ukraine express such a high level of distrust toward their
national political, state, and civil institutions, it is not because something is
‘‘wrong’’ with them as individuals, or as citizens. The distrust is a result of
their lived experience of betrayal, that is, the betrayal of the political
promises and expectations made by political or party leaders. In a later
publication by Ukrainian sociologists and pollsters Evgeniy Golovakha and
Natalia Panina (2000, p. 118), they seem to recognize this when they say:
This conflict between democratic ideals and realities has a rational foundation. It
influences the formation of negative evaluations regarding both the rate and depth of
democratic transformation. The current duality in attitudes about democracy reflects
this ambivalence in social and individual consciousness. Social-psychological ambivalence divides the society into supporters and opponents surrounding the myth of equality
and security for people living under socialist state patronage. Proof of individual
ambivalence is evident in perspectives of Ukrainian political and economic development.
These may be mutually exclusive, for instance, support for market economy and price
controls or approval of a multi-party system and distrust of all parties.
Spreading fear and distrust are ancient political tactics, and their use has a
long history in both totalitarian and democratic societies. In totalitarian
political orders spreading fear and distrust can be used to justify more
16
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
central or totalitarian powers, commonly made with the promise of greater
social order. But spreading fear and distrust are used in democratic societies
too. The United States has a long history of ‘‘moral crusades’’ which were
animated by fears of different racial or immigrant groups, drugs, alcohol,
marihuana, sexual predators, and recently terrorists (see Altheide, 2006).
Spreading fear in society can be a tactic to create social distance and isolation
between groups, a ‘‘divide and conquer’’ strategy long favored by Western
imperialists. In commenting on the death of the Russian brief experiment with democracy, former journalist (assassinated in 2005) Anna
Politkovskaya (2007, p. 255) observed:
Our society isn’t a society any more. It is a collection of windowless, isolated concrete
cells. In one of these are the Heroes, in another are the politicians of Yabloko, in a third
there is Zyuganov, the leader of the Communists, and so on. There are thousands who
together might add up to be the Russian people, but the walls of our cells are
impermeable. If somebody is suffering, he is upset that nobody seems concerned. If, in
other cells at the same time, anybody is in fact thinking about him, it leads to no action,
and they only really remember he had a problem when their own situation becomes
completely intolerable y The authorities do everything they can to make the cells even
more impermeable, sowing dissent, inciting some against others, dividing and ruling.
And the people fall for it. That is the real problem. That is why revolution in Russia,
when it comes, is always so extreme. The barrier between the cells collapses only when
the negative emotions within them are ungovernable.
The founding fathers of the United States were very distrustful indeed. The
leaders were highly educated men who had received a classic education. They
felt that human history had been the history of tyranny, for the most part, and
they elected to institutionalize their distrust in how the American constitution
and government were formed. The U.S. Constitution institutionalizes distrust.
They distrusted all branches of government, the executive branch, the
legislative branch, and the judicial branch, and assumed that, if any or all of
these had their way, the result would be the abuse and corruption of power.
They created ‘‘checks and balances’’ of power, so that each branch of
government was constrained in their powers because of the powers
institutionalized for the other two branches. In the political oratory of
politicians it is common to hear rhetorical flourishes about how Americans
love liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or whatever, but in fact the
foundational legal documents of the United States institutionalize distrust.
Distrust is a distinct value for one who is interested in political and social
justice. It is important to distrust the lofty proclamations of politicians and
other institutional leaders, to cut beneath the political rhetoric to discover
who is doing what to whom, and where the trails of money and profits lead.
Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology
17
The checks-and-balances of the U.S. Constitution seem to have worked
reasonably well for approximately 200 years, but the recent emergence of the
Imperial Presidency and the subjugation of the legislative and judicial
branches to executive power reminds us again of the wisdom of the founding
fathers, that political tyranny has been the dominant theme of history, and
that any and all political forms may transform into something entirely
different over time.
The meaningful institution of democracy always occurs in an historical
and cultural context. It emerges and develops over time. It is unclear if the
massive distrust of Ukrainian citizens will be transformed by progressive
political action and social change, efforts to make the political decisionmaking processes open and transparent to all parties, efforts to create
procedural justice and an independent judiciary, efforts to expand social
justice to a broader spectrum of groups, interests, and organizations. But
until large numbers are certain of such an accomplishment of social justice,
it is wise to be distrustful of the political rhetoric and vacuous promises of
politicians.
REFERENCES
Altheide, D. L. (2006). Terrorism and the politics of fear. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.
Athens, L. (1992). The creation of dangerous, violent criminals. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press.
Barnett, O., Miller-Perrin, C., & Perrin, R. (2005). Family violence across the life span (2nd ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Bolby, J. (1971–1979). Attachment and Loss, 3 volumes. New York: Basic Books.
Brazelton, T. B. (1963). The early mother-infant adjustment. Pediatrics, 32, 931–938.
Brazelton, T. B. (1980). Behavioral competence of the newborn infant. In: P. Taylor (Ed.),
Parent-infant relationships. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Brazelton, T. B., Kowslowski, B., & Main, M. (1974). The origins of reciprocity: The early
mother-infant interaction. In: M. Lewis & L. Rosenbaum (Eds), The effect of the infant
on its caregiver. New York: Wiley.
Brazelton, T. B., Troncik, E., Adamson, L., Als, W., & Wise, W. (1975). Early mother-infant
reciprocity. In: M. A. Hofer (Ed.), Parent-infant interaction. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Cicourel, A. (1964). Method and measurement in sociology. New York: Free Press.
Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.
Fromm, E. (1974). The art of loving. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Golovakha, E., & Panina, N. (2000). The development of democratic political identity in the
contemporary ukrainian political culture. In: E. Golovakha, N. Panina & V. Vorona
(Eds), Sociology in Ukraine: Selected works published during the 90th (pp. 117–126). Kiev:
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
18
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
Golovakha, E., Panina, N., & Vorona, V. (Eds). (2000). Sociology in Ukraine: Selected works
published during the 90th. Kiev: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Hickey, E. (2005). Serial murderers and their victims (4th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publication Co.
Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: International Universities Press.
Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press.
Panina, N. V., & Golovakha, E. I. (2001). Tendancies in the development of Ukrainian society
1994–2001: Sociological indicators. Kiev: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Politkovskaya, A. (2007). A Russian diary. London: Random House.
Rowell, T. (1972). The social behavior of monkeys. Baltimore, MD: Penguin.
SITUATING PUBLIC
PERFORMANCES: FOLK
SINGERS AND SONG
INTRODUCTIONS$
Scott Grills
ABSTRACT
This chapter pays particular attention to the place of song introductions
as an integral feature of public performance. Locating this analysis within
the subculture of contemporary folk music, I demonstrate how song
introductions can accomplish six important things: (1) provide an
interpretive frame for understanding a performance, (2) cast performances in emotive terms, (3) situate performances in the larger context
of marketing and sales, (4) contribute to moral entrepreneurial agendas,
(5) align the performer’s actions, and (6) offer a venue for making
disclaimers. By demonstrating how performers accomplish these things, I
locate song introductions within the larger context of situating public
performances more generally.
$
Chapter originally presented at the Couch-Stone Symposium, Champagne-Urbana, May 4–5,
2007.
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 19–34
Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033004
19
20
SCOTT GRILLS
At the risk of stating the obvious, there is much more to the performance of
folk music, than is to be found within musicianship alone. Technical
competency is, in and of itself, inadequate for understanding an audience’s
reaction to a musical performance (Becker, 1973). In this chapter, I encourage
the reader to attend to the performance aspects of onstage narrative utilized
by contemporary folk musicians. My purpose in this chapter is to articulate
the interactional strategies used by folk musicians to locate and otherwise
situate their public performance and their place within this diverse
subculture.1 In this context, I am particularly interested in: the development
of interpretive frames, offering claims to legitimacy and the contextualization
of repertoire.
First a bit of a perilous exercise – what do I mean by ‘‘contemporary folk
musicians?’’ The contemporary part is straight forward enough; I am
limiting my analysis to people who are writing and performing today. That
is, the reader would, in Schutz’ (1962) terms, have the theoretical possibility
to be co-present with the artist. I, therefore, am rather deliberately excluding
an analysis of archival footage, or the wonderful Smithsonian collections. A
related and important point is that my analysis is limited to artists whose
languages include English. My ability to chat with artists in languages other
than English is too weak to be helpful. Happily, many international artists
are more linguistically competent than I, and are able to accommodate my
shortcomings.
But, what do I mean by ‘‘folk music?’’ Theodor Adorno (1974, p. 204)
offers that ‘‘everything that has ever been called folk art has always reflected
domination.’’ Although folk music has often been associated with protest,
conflict, and various other manifestations of unrest (Dunaway, 1987;
Rodnitzky, 1976), I am more inclined to assert, in a Blumerian fashion, that
the definition of ‘‘folk music’’ is not to be found in the object itself or in an
attribution of a rhetoric of domination.2 I would suggest that the most
sociologically appropriate means of understanding ‘‘folk music’’ as a
meaningful distinction from other musical forms is to locate the distinction
within the subculture itself. What forms of music do members accept as
‘‘folk music?’’ What is played on folk radio stations’ play lists, what music is
included as a part of folk festival lineups, what varieties of artists do record
labels that self identify as ‘‘folk oriented’’ sign and support, and where are
the debates and tensions located that result in the differentiation between
subcultural membership and those that are excluded? Artists whose work is
represented in this chapter include traditional acoustic singer-songwriters,
vocalists, blues performers, Celtic artists, world music specialists, bluegrass
artists, gospel performers, and a range of instrumentalists (e.g. fiddle
Situating Public Performances
21
players, percussionists, guitarists, dobro players, and harmonica/harp
players). For the purposes of this chapter I am limiting my discussion to
the perspectives and work of professional performing musicians – those who
make a living, at least in part, in the music business.
This chapter is based on an extended ethnographic research project that
has involved observation, participant observation, and informal interview.
Participant roles have included the following: audience member (at
numerous venues and festivals in England, Canada, and the United States),
conference delegate (at national and regional meetings for the folk industry),
folk festival volunteer, folk festival board member a
INTERACTION
STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC
INTERACTION
Series Editor: Norman K. Denzin
Recent Volumes:
Volumes 1–32:
Studies in Symbolic Interaction
STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION VOLUME 33
STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC
INTERACTION
EDITED BY
NORMAN K. DENZIN
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
EDITOR OF BLUE RIBBON PAPER SERIES
LONNIE ATHENS
Department of Criminal Justice, Seton Hall University,
South Orange, NJ, USA
EDITOR OF COMMODITY RACISM
RICHARD KING
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies,
Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA
MANAGING EDITOR
MYRA WASHINGTON
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
CO-MANAGING EDITOR
DONG HAN AND YING ZHANG
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
United Kingdom – North America – Japan
India – Malaysia – China
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK
First edition 2009
Copyright r 2009 Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Reprints and permission service
Contact: [email protected]
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any
form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting
restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA
by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of
information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed
in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Editor or the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-84855-784-0
ISSN: 0163-2396 (Series)
Awarded in recognition of
Emerald’s production
department’s adherence to
quality systems and processes
when preparing scholarly
journals for print
CONTENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
ix
PART I: BLUE RIBBON PAPERS
INTRODUCTION TO ‘BLUE RIBBON PAPERS’:
INVESTIGATING THE EMPIRICAL WORLD
Lonnie Athens
3
THE WISDOM OF DISTRUST: REFLECTIONS
ON UKRAINIAN SOCIETY AND SOCIOLOGY
John M. Johnson and Andrew Melnikov
9
SITUATING PUBLIC PERFORMANCES: FOLK
SINGERS AND SONG INTRODUCTIONS
Scott Grills
19
THE MUSIC RINGTONE AS AN IDENTITY
MANAGEMENT DEVICE: A RESEARCH NOTE
Christopher J. Schneider
35
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Jude Robinson
47
THE STRUCTURE OF FLIRTATION: ON THE
CONSTRUCTION OF INTERACTIONAL AMBIGUITY
Iddo Tavory
59
BECOMING A SOCIOLOGIST: ONE WOMAN’S
JOURNEY
Virginia Olesen
75
v
vi
CONTENTS
PART II: COMMODITY RACISM: REPRESENTATION,
RACIALIZATION, AND RESISTANCE
COMMODITY RACISM NOW
C. Richard King
97
COMMODITY RACE AND EMOTION: THE
RACIAL COMMERCIALIZATION OF HUMAN
FEELING IN CORPORATE CONSUMERISM
Jeffrey Santa Ana
109
THE PRINCESS AND THE SUV: BRAND IMAGES
OF NATIVE AMERICANS AS COMMODIFIED
RACISM
Debra Merskin
129
YEAST: CANNIBALIZING THE ORIENT IN AMERICAN
CULTURE
Sheng-mei Ma
149
IT’S GOTTA BE THE BODY: RACE, COMMODITY,
AND SURVEILLANCE OF CONTEMPORARY
BLACK ATHLETES
David J. Leonard
165
CONSUMING ‘‘POLYNESIA’’: VISUAL SPECTACLES
OF NATIVE BODIES IN HAWAIIAN TOURISM
Vernadette V. Gonzalez
191
CINCO DE MAYO, INC.: REINTERPRETING LATINO
CULTURE INTO A COMMERCIAL HOLIDAY
Jose´ M. Alamillo
217
IF SANTA WUZ BLACK: THE DOMESTICATION
OF A WHITE MYTH
Charles Fruehling Springwood
239
vii
Contents
UNSETTLING COMMODITY RACISM
C. Richard King
255
PART III: PETER M. HALL LECTURE SERIES
INTRODUCTION TO DAVID ALTHEIDE’S
TALK: ‘‘TERRORISM AND PROPAGANDA’’
Susan Stall
277
TERRORISM AND PROPAGANDA
David L. Altheide
279
THERE’S OUR HITLER ENVY! ALTHEIDE’S
VERSION OF FEAR IT NOW
Michael A. Katovich
297
PART IV: NEW INTERPRETIVE WORKS
THE ESSENTIALS OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM:
A PAPER IN HONOR OF BERNARD N. MELTZER
Gil Richard Musolf
305
COMMUNICATIVE SUSTAINABILITY:
A FRAMEWORK FOR PERFORMANCE
ACCOUNTING
Wayne D. Woodward
327
THE INTER-PLAY OF POWER AND META-POWER
IN THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF
‘‘ENTREPRENEURIAL’’ PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
FIRMS: A PROCESSUAL ORDERING PERSPECTIVE
Mark W. Dirsmith, Sajay Samuel, Mark A. Covaleski
and James B. Heian
MYSTIFICATION OF ROCK
Michael A. Katovich and Wesley Longhofer
347
389
viii
CONTENTS
NARRATIVE FORM AND TEMPORALITY
IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE: ROMANCE, TRAGEDY,
AND AMERICA’S PRESENCE IN IRAQ
Robert L. Young
417
FOUR ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL PARADOXES:
REFLECTIONS ON THE WORK OF KENNETH
LIBERMAN
Scott R. Harris
443
LEAVING BLACK ROCK CITY
John F. Sherry, Jr.
459
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Jose´ M. Alamillo
Chicana/o Studies, California State
University Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA,
USA
David L. Altheide
School of Justice and Social Inquiry,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Lonnie Athens
Department of Criminal Justice, Seton Hall
University, South Orange, NJ, USA
Mark A. Covaleski
School of Business, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Mark W. Dirsmith
Smeal College of Business and the social
thought program, Penn State University.
University Park, PA, USA
Vernadette V.
Gonzalez
American Studies Department, University
of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
Scott Grills
Department of Sociology, Brandon
University, Brandon, MB, Canada
Scott R. Harris
Department of Sociology and Criminal
Justice, Saint Louis University, St. Louis,
MO, USA
James B. Heian
Division of Social Sciences and
Management, Utica College of Syracuse
University, Utica, NY, USA
John M. Johnson
School of Justice and Social Inquiry,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
C. Richard King
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies,
Washington State University, Pullman, WA,
USA
ix
x
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Michael A. Katovich
College of Liberal Arts, Texas Christian
University, Fort Worth, TX, USA
David J. Leonard
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies,
Washington State University, Pullman, WA,
USA
Wesley Longhofer
Department of Sociology, University of
Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA
Sheng-mei Ma
Department of English, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Andrew Melnikov
Department of Sociology, Eastukrainian
National University, Legansk, Ukraine
Debra Merskin
School of Journalism and Communication,
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
Gil Richard Musolf
Department of Sociology, Anthropology,
and Social Work, Central Michigan
University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA
Virginia Olesen
Department of Social and Behavioral
Sciences, University of California-San
Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Jude Robinson
The Health and Community Care Research
Unit (HaCCRU), University of Liverpool,
Liverpool, UK
Sajay Samuel
Smeal College of Business, Penn State
University, University Park, PA, USA
Jeffrey Santa Ana
Department of English, Stony Brook
University, Stony Brook, NY, USA
Christopher J.
Schneider
Irving K. Barber School of Arts and
Sciences, University of British
Columbia-Okanagan, Kelowna,
BC, Canada
John F. Sherry, Jr.
Department of Marketing, University of
Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
xi
List of Contributors
Charles Fruehling
Springwood
Sociology and Anthropology Department,
Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington,
IL, USA
Susan Stall
Sociology Department, Northeastern
Illinois University, Chicago, IL, USA
Iddo Tavory
Department of Sociology, University of
California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA,
USA
Wayne D. Woodward
Department of Language, Culture, and
Communication, University of MichiganDearborn, Dearborn, MI, USA
Robert L. Young
Department of Sociology and
Anthropology, University of Texas at
Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA
PART I
BLUE RIBBON PAPERS
INTRODUCTION TO ‘BLUE RIBBON
PAPERS’: INVESTIGATING THE
EMPIRICAL WORLD
Lonnie Athens
I am pleased to introduce the second issue in Studies in Symbolic
Interaction’s ‘‘Blue Ribbon Paper’’ series. In contrast to the chapters in
the first issue that focused exclusively on theoretical matters, the chapters in
this one are focused on empirical problems. In John Johnson’s and Andrew
Melnikov’s provocative article, ‘‘The Wisdom of Distrust: Reflections on
Ukrainian Society and Sociology,’’ they examine the results of a nation-wide
poll that shows among other things that Ukrainian citizenry paradoxically
displays little faith in any of the branches of their democratically elected
government. On the one hand, this finding is paradoxical because
democracy is a relatively new experience for present day Ukrainians. Since
their country had been for years a puppet state of the former Soviet Union,
one would think that they now would be elated by the opportunity to elect
their leaders. On the other hand, the founding fathers of our nation also
displayed considerable distrust in government, including democratically
elected ones, such as our own. In fact, their distrust was so great that it led
them to build into our constitution an intricate system of checks and
balances of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of
our government. Although conventional psychological wisdom is that
distrust of others is a sign of paranoia, Johnson and Melinkov conclude that
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 3–7
Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033002
3
4
LONNIE ATHENS
being wary of governmental institutions and politicians may be a healthy
state of affairs for a country’s citizens.
The authors of our next three chapters all examine different aspects of
popular culture. In ‘‘Situating Public Performances: Folk Singers and Song
Introductions,’’ Scott Grills analyzes the introductions that folk singers
often provide to their songs during live performances. He collected his data
primarily from conducting informal interviews with folk singers and
participant observing their performances over a four year period at various
folk festivals held across North America. Grills, an accomplished
saxophonist, who has played in several blues bands, found that introducing
a song serves a purpose other than merely killing time between tunes.
According to him, ‘‘song introductions provide additional information to
the audience that would be otherwise unavailable, provide the artists with an
opportunity to influence audience interpretations, allow for legitimizing
strategies to be utilized and, importantly, allow artists an opportunity to
invoke disclaimers, accounts, and justifications’’ for their performances.
Thus, they afford singers the opportunity to ‘‘situate’’ a song and, thereby,
help the audience to place the right accent on the meaning of their
performance. As Grills points out, prefacing a public performance is not a
practice unique to folk singers or even singers, but is one that writers,
filmmakers, magicians, musicians, comedians, and others also use to help
insure that an audience will interpret their work in the proper light.
Hopefully, Grills will push his enlightening analysis even further by
identifying the properties of introductions that increase the likelihood of
their success in making an audience respond positively to an artist’s
performance.
In ‘‘The Music Ringtone as an Identity Management Device: A Research
Note,’’ Christopher Schneider provides another study of popular culture. To
collect data on the tunes that American youth select for the ringtones on
their mobile phones, he drew on his participation observation at a secondary
school and information gleaned from census data and trade association
publications, such as Billboard’s ‘‘Hot Ringtones Chart.’’ To provide a
framework for understanding his findings, he drew on the work of Erving
Goffman. He found that for, at least, members of the American youth
culture, the tunes that they select for their mobile phones’ ringtones serve as
what Goffman calls a ‘‘tie-sign,’’ or critical indicator of who they are and
what they are about. According to Schneider, however, this can often create
potential problems of what Goffman like to refer to as ‘‘information
control.’’ The ringtones on our cell phones may reveal personal information
about us that we may sometimes prefer to keep hidden from others.
Introduction to ‘Blue Ribbon Papers’
5
Although we can switch the ringtones on our mobile phones ‘‘on’’ and
‘‘off,’’ this may not always be a practical option. Thus, depending on the
audience, a ringtone can potentially reveal harmful or helpful information
about our identities, and thereby, operate as either a positive or negative
‘‘tie-sign.’’
In ‘‘There’s No Place Like Home,’’ Jude Robinson examines still another
important aspect of popular culture – the documentary film. She turns her
perceptive eye on director Jeff Togman’s award-winning documentary,
‘‘Home,’’ which covers 10 weeks in the life of a Black middle-aged mother
and her six children. The mother is confronted with the problem of whether
to move her family from their present residence in an urban slum to a new
residence in a ‘‘better neighborhood.’’ At first glance, the answer to this
problem seems to be a no-brainer. As Robinson sees it, however, ‘‘Home’’
raises this problem to the level of a serious existential dilemma for this
mother. On the one hand, she has the opportunity to move her family into
bigger and better housing in a swankier part of town. On the other hand, she
is reluctant to take advantage of this seemingly ‘‘golden opportunity’’ that
has been handed to her on a silver platter. According to Robinson, the
answer to this paradox is ‘‘Home is where your heart is.’’ As she explains,
this mother’s ‘‘heart was never into moving away to a new house and
neighborhood where she would be a nobody by leaving her old house and
neighborhood where she was a somebody.’’ In her present neighborhood,
this single-parent mother with six dependent children was a ‘‘somebody’’
because she was doing the seemingly impossible – raising good kids in a bad
neighborhood. In a good neighborhood where the odds would be stacked
much more heavily in her favor, however, she knew that she would no
longer be considered anybody special because she would be doing only what
every mother living in that neighborhood was expected to do.
In Iddo Tavory’s ‘‘The Structure of Flirtation: On the Construction of
Interactional Ambiguity,’’ the topic of analysis switches from popular
culture to everyday life. During the course of a 14 month study, he observed
over 65 incidents of flirtation, most of which took place in cafes and bars.
Tavory places flirtation inside a larger class of interaction, which he labels
‘‘suspended interactions.’’ According to him, suspended interaction occurs
when the interactants intentionally hold the outcome of their interaction in
abeyance. In the specific case of flirtation, a possible sexual advance is made,
but its ultimate meaning is purposefully left ambiguous. He argues that
flirting can be advantageously viewed as social interaction that unfolds over
three stages. During initial stage, the interaction between the actors has a
nonsexual tenor. During the middle stage, however, an advance is made that
6
LONNIE ATHENS
changes the tenor of the interaction to a possible sexual one. During the
final stage, the sexual advance that was made during the middle stage is
further clarified making clear that it was a sexual advance. According to
Tavory, the flirtation ceases as soon as the meaning of an ambiguous sexual
advance becomes determinate. Thus, for him, flirtation is limited to the
social interaction that takes place during this middle stage which lies
somewhere ‘‘between and betwixt’’ making normal, everyday chit chat and
an explicit sexual proposition. Tavory deserves credit for opening up for
empirical investigation a class of interaction that Simmel and others have
long speculated about, but few have subjected to direct empirical
examination.
In the last chapter, ‘‘Becoming a Sociologist: One Women’s Journey,’’
Virginia Olesen describes the circuitous route that she followed in becoming
a sociologist. She organizes her narrative around what her former mentor
and later colleague, Anslem Strauss, called ‘‘turning points.’’ Although all
the turning points that resulted in her becoming a distinguished medical
sociologist cannot be mentioned here, I will highlight some of the key ones
to give the flavor of her journey. Although an undergraduate at the
University of Nevada at Reno, Olesen dreamed of becoming a journalist.
After earning bachelor’s degrees in both history and english at Nevada, she
landed a job at local newspaper on Mare Island, California where she
worked first as a cub reporter and later as the editor. Despite her obvious
success at this newspaper, she became bored with working on local news and
personal interest stories. An early important turning point in her career
came when she applied for a fellowship to attend graduate school at the
University of Chicago. Though studying communication at Chicago, she
met several outstanding sociologists, including Anselm Strauss, on whom
she apparently made a good impression.
After finishing up her work for her master’s degree in communication at
Chicago, she decided to switch to Stanford University for her doctorate
degree. However, she quickly became disenchanted with the intellectual
content of its communication’s programme. The next major turning point in
her career occurred when she decided to transfer from the university’s
department of communication into its department of sociology which she
found much more intellectually satisfying. After earning her Ph.D. in
sociology at Stanford, she found herself once again in the job market.
Another important turning point came in her career when Anselm Strauss
and Fred Davis offered her a soft money position to work on a research
project on nursing careers at the University of California at San Francisco.
With a great deal of hard work, tenacity, and a bit of good luck, she worked
Introduction to ‘Blue Ribbon Papers’
7
her way up from a soft money research position to a tenured, full professor
in its College of Nursing’s Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
that Anselm Strauss help create and later headed up. I think that Olesen’s
chapter should be required reading for all students in the social sciences
considering a career in academics. Among other things, it shows how she
deftly managed her professional life during the difficult years before
affirmative action had been instituted. It also demonstrates more generally
that academic careers do not always follow a straight line, that personal
contacts can play a big role in your success or failure, and that you must be
ready to seize opportunities when they knock at your door.
THE WISDOM OF DISTRUST:
REFLECTIONS ON UKRAINIAN
SOCIETY AND SOCIOLOGY$
John M. Johnson and Andrew Melnikov
THE WISDOM OF DISTRUST
Ukraine regained its independence in 1991, following over 7 decades of soviet
domination, and about 300 years of Russian domination. Democracy and
stable institutional development have proven problematic for Ukraine since
1991, arguably more so than any of the other Eastern European countries.
Unlike the increasing economic development in the other countries, for
example, per capita GNP in Ukraine has decreased by approximately 50% in
the last decade. President Viktor Yushchenko’s ‘‘Orange Revolution’’ has
promised certain westernized economic reforms, but political opposition has
forced a new election scheduled for September 30, 2007.
During the summer of 1993, the director of the Ukrainian National
Academy of Sciences commissioned a sociological survey to monitor the
current social situation in Ukrainian society, its perspectives, structures and
institutions, economics, politics, and national and cultural features reflected in
Ukrainian public opinion. Sociologists Natalia Panina and Evgeniy Golovakha were asked to head the survey team. In 2001, they produced a volume
$
Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction,
New York City, August, 2007.
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 9–18
Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033003
9
10
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
Tendancies in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001: Sociological
Indicators, which reports the results of the first seven years of this exhaustive
survey in Ukraine (Panina & Golovakha, 2001). Their report includes over 170
tables to summarize the polling data on citizen evaluations of the economic
situation and attitudes toward economic reforms, standards of living and living
conditions, consumption orientations, working activities, employment, and
satisfaction with jobs. Also included are attitudes toward political orientations,
social and political activity, toward state and institutional power structures,
religion and beliefs, effectiveness of the legal system, the state of health,
environment, and attitudes toward medical service. Everyday life, leisure,
cultural activities, and interpersonal relations and psychological conditions are
additionally included, as are education, mass media, knowledge, and attitudes
about national identity and migration. Even the most casual reader is
impressed with the exhaustive nature of the survey and the issues addressed.
A close reading of the report produces an unmistakable emphasis on the
high level of distrust expressed about virtually all aspects of life in Ukraine.
The authors refer to these ‘‘conditions of mass distrust of the state (and)
civil society institutions’’ (p. 123), and further observe, ‘‘You can only look
at the population’s trust in main social institutions and power structures and
see that in the average citizen’s field of trust, there are only the citizen
himself, the family, and God.’’ (p. 122) To further dramatize this, one
table showing the comparative trust scores across realms of Ukrainian life
(Table B2, p. 53) reveals that the trust scores for astrologers are higher than
those of all official state institutions, specifically the Supreme Court, the
Parliament, the Presidency, the militia, the political parties, the traditional
trade unions, the private entrepreneurs, and the new trade unions. The high
level of distrust is so overwhelmingly pervasive throughout the report that,
when combined with the very high No Response levels, a serious reader
develops a healthy skepticism about whether to even believe any of this;
after all, with such high levels of distrust expressed about all aspects of the
social order, by what warrant would one accept these responses and trust
them? This is a very serious question, and one we cannot here answer. Even
if we were to hypothetically speculate that Ukrainian citizens had a higher
level of trust for the pollsters than they expressed for any other official,
state, or civil institution (which would put it at the lower middle level on the
scale), this would involve such a high rate of error that it would compromise
the survey as a whole. It remains highly plausible that such polling results
from Ukraine are severely and fatally flawed.
If Ukrainian polling respondents responded to the polling situation with no
more trust than they expressed about all other state and civil institutions in
Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology
11
Ukraine, then why did they bother to respond at all? Another good question
we think. Scholars trained in symbolic interaction would likely observe that
the polling situation itself should be studied as an instance of a complicated
social interaction, commonly between two or more persons who are
previously unknown to each other in any intimate manner, and thus a
context where the emergent meanings of specific statements or questionnaire
items are negotiated in a face-to-face situation. This is the message to be taken
from Aaron Cicourel’s (1964) book Method and Measurement in Sociology,
where he asserts that interview or questionnaire results cannot be taken as
unproblematic ‘‘data,’’ but should be examined to see how it is that pollsters
and relative strangers manage and negotiate meanings during a face-to-face
encounter. Those familiar with the writings of Herbert Blumer would
additionally emphasize that meanings in face-to-face encounters have an
emergent quality to them, that they flow out of a social process (the interview
or questionnaire encounter) which cannot be assumed as a ‘‘given’’ in the
research (Blumer, 1969). Without really knowing these aspects about the
Ukrainian questionnaire interviews, one plausible speculation is that some of
them may have interpreted the polling questions as an occasion to ‘‘vote’’ for
a response, perhaps intending to ‘‘send a message’’ to those in power,
concerning their elected options, independently of how they ‘‘really felt’’
about the question, or what they ‘‘really thought’’ about it. Whatever the
answer is to this, it is clear that Ukrainian scientists and scholars take this
high level of distrust as a serious problem for the immediate national future of
Ukraine, as expressed by many of the selected essays edited by Golovakha,
Panina, and Vorona for the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
(Golovakha, Panina, & Vorona, 2000).
The survey polling results reported by Panina and Golovakha in Tendancies
in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001 provide the animus for this
chapter, and our reflections on the nature and meaning of trust, for individuals
and for society. We briefly address the issue of how trust arises in the life of
most individuals, what it means for their lives, and how disruptions or
betrayals of trust are dealt handled. We conclude these reflections with an
assertion of our position that, for Ukrainian society the ‘‘problem’’ of
distrusting citizens should be recast or reformulated as an issue of social justice.
THE NATURE OF TRUST
For the overwhelming number of human beings, arguably in the range
98–99%, a condition of trust is present in their lives from the moment of
12
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
birth, even before that (during pregnancy) in most cases. Mother–infant
bonding is a profound, primordial, and foundational experience for most
individuals. The caring love shown by mothers toward infants is idealized and
symbolized in all known cultures. In science, the world-renowned researches
of Barry Brazelton (Brazelton, 1963, 1980; Brazelton, Kowslowski, & Main,
1974; Brazelton, Troncik, Adamson, Als, & Wise, 1975) have shown the
profound significance of mother–infant bonding, and the well-known threevolume work by Harvard’s John Bolby (1971–1979) has shown the significance of this bonding for the larger issues of human attachment. The human
animal has the longest period of dependency, when compared to other
primates, so the first months of life are very important for what follows in an
individual’s life.
In his famous work The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm (1974) argues that
early bonding or attachment is very important in terms of subsequent
development, especially whether or not the child develops deep feelings of
security or insecurity. Thelma Rowell (1972, p. 137) has additionally asserted
this importance for other primates:
Many primates are captured as infants and hand-reared as pets, then transferred to zoos
when they get older. Attempts to use such animals as breeding stock have a very low rate
of success: typically these ex-pets show little or no mating behavior, and the females do
not care for their infants, which are then hand-reared, thus creating the breeding
problems of the next generation. The histories of these zoo animals are of course varied,
and the fact that some of them do breed suggests that one might be dealing with quite
short critical periods during which social experience is necessary. This was investigated in
rhesus infants. Isolated for the first three months produced no permanent effects, if the
infants were then placed in a group, but isolated for the whole of the first year destroyed
all social ability. The period between three and nine months seemed to be critical for
establishing normal social behavior, although the communicative gestures have nearly all
appeared in the first three months.
The significance of mother–infant bonding and these early attachment
experiences can be dramatically seen in cases where the bonding is not
present, or those few cases where the mother has rejected the newborn.
Again, the researches of T. Barry Brazelton provide many examples of this.
Other widely known examples include the many Romanian babies who were
institutionalized shortly after birth during the 1970s and 1980s, during the
repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu: even when many of these babies
were later adopted by loving families, many proved incapable of
transcending these early months or years of social isolation. Other wellknown examples of maternal rejection are some of the notorious mass,
Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology
13
spree, or serial killers, such as Theodore Bundy, who killed 33 women
(abandoned by his mother Elizabeth Cowell), Henry Lee Lucas, who
confessed in killing hundreds of women across the United States (savagely
beaten by his mother, who became his first murder victim), David
Berkowitz, the infamous ‘‘Son of Sam’’ shooter who killed 11 people in
New York during the summer of 1976 (abandoned by his mother at birth,
and who rejected him later after he had located her in his late teenage years),
Charles Starkweather, who killed 7 people during an 11 day spree in
Nebraska (abused by his mother), and so on (see Hickey, 2005).
Maternal mortality has been high historically, but in many of these cases
there are maternal surrogates who step in and take the place of the mother,
most commonly aunts, sisters, or grandmothers, and if possible even fathers.
Infant bonding and attachment does occur with the father and others in the
family, such as aunts or grandmothers, and in such cases the bonding
attachments may have a cumulative effect, thus helping to produce feelings
of security and being loved. Many developmental psychologists have been
influenced by the seminal work of E. H. Erikson (1963) who said that
children developed a sense of ‘‘basic trust’’ with their environment and its
caretakers, or a sense of ‘‘basic distrust.’’ Basic trust means that the child
has a generalized expectation that the external environment they encounter
is basically good, and that good and positive things will most likely happen;
basic distrust is the opposite. This is not to say that children do not
encounter bad or untoward or inconsistent things. They do. Life is difficult
and problematic. But the important point is that a child or person who has
developed a sense of basic trust will process these untoward events in a
different manner than the child or person who is distrustful. The distrustful
child will begin to develop psychologically defensive expectations and
adaptations to these untoward events or actions.
Successful mother–infant bonding, especially when combined with other
significant bondings and attachments within the home (father, siblings,
grandparents, and aunts), lays an important foundation for later developmental success. This is not a simple, mono-causal, linear process, but one with
many disjunctions and perturbations. Young children encounter conflicts and
tensions within any family, and all adolescents encounter conflicts and
tensions with other children and adolescents. Successful bonding tends to
produce other successes in these problematic human relations, and bonding
failures tend to produce other failures. Successful bonding within the home is
associated with success in developing early friendships and alliances, and these
are often important relationships to have when encountering life’s difficulties.
14
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
EARLY BETRAYALS OF TRUST
Although forms of trusting relations are found early in most lives, early
disruptions, conflicts, and betrayals of trust are found too. These may come
from within the family, with conflicts between siblings being common, or
they may come from outside the family, with adolescent conflicts being
common. Such conflicts or betrayals may be serious and consequential, or
less serious and mild in their consequences. For young children, they may
‘‘patch up’’ or repair such disruptions, and continue their friendships. For
older children who experience a ‘‘betrayal,’’ the more common pattern is to
transfer one’s loyalties to a different friend, or to build a new friendship.
Serious betrayals of trust possess the potential to be emotionally overwhelming, at any age. For more serious betrayals, an individual may
respond with violence, revenge, or perhaps more commonly, to become less
trusting.
Childhood sexual abuse and childhood physical abuse can be mild or
severe, but when it is in the severe range, the consequences may be profound.
These are forms of betraying trust which may affect the individual for the rest
of their life, in the more serious cases. During the past four decades there has
developed a vast scientific literature on these topics (for a summary, see
Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2005).
The important research of Heinz Kohut (1971, 1977) shows that infant
and early childhood aggression is extremely common, and furthermore it
arises as a reaction to significant others not providing crucial developmental
needs. His term for this is ‘‘empathic optimal frustration,’’ which refers to
the social process during which infants learn that it is not possible to have all
of their needs met all of the time. This does not result because of some
failure or neglect on the part of the caretakers, but because they cannot be
there every minute of the time. Infants respond to the ‘‘optimal frustration’’
period with assertiveness or healthy aggression, and from this eventually
learn that life is not perfect, and that the world does not exist for the sole
purpose of providing for their needs. Infants also learn about their own
healthy aggression from this process, and how to use it in interaction with
significant others. In situation where the unmet needs are consistently and
continually unmet, however, or in situations where young children are
subjected to continual abuse or abandonment, then the healthy assertiveness
can break down into hostile assertiveness. In the researches of Lonnie
Athens (1992), for example, in severely abusive situations where the young
child is ‘‘psychologically broken,’’ then the early (benign) assertiveness can
become transformed into defensive or destructive rage, hostility, and
Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology
15
violence toward others. In the most extreme cases of continual abuse or
abandonment, the end result can be an individual who is paranoid, or even
in the case of the Athens research a ‘‘dangerous, violent criminal.’’
The condition of trust is not intrinsic to the human being. Trust is learned
and is learned in a slow, gradual, developmental process, a social process
which includes conflicts, tensions, problems, even betrayals. Individuals learn
from the betrayals of trust, just as they learn from the establishment and
development of trust. As the individual grows and develops, there is an
accumulation of trusting and distrusting experiences. These experiences are
socially structured and stratified; those who grow up in large urban
metropolises do not grow up trusting in the same manner as more isolated
rural peasants.
DISTRUST IS NOT THE PROBLEM: JUSTICE
IS THE PROBLEM
Trust is learned. It is learned during the course of a developmental social
process, often taking a considerable period of time. Distrust is also learned.
Though an individual may learn to distrust over a longer period of time, it is
more common for distrust to result from violations or betrayals of trust. If
the citizens of Ukraine express such a high level of distrust toward their
national political, state, and civil institutions, it is not because something is
‘‘wrong’’ with them as individuals, or as citizens. The distrust is a result of
their lived experience of betrayal, that is, the betrayal of the political
promises and expectations made by political or party leaders. In a later
publication by Ukrainian sociologists and pollsters Evgeniy Golovakha and
Natalia Panina (2000, p. 118), they seem to recognize this when they say:
This conflict between democratic ideals and realities has a rational foundation. It
influences the formation of negative evaluations regarding both the rate and depth of
democratic transformation. The current duality in attitudes about democracy reflects
this ambivalence in social and individual consciousness. Social-psychological ambivalence divides the society into supporters and opponents surrounding the myth of equality
and security for people living under socialist state patronage. Proof of individual
ambivalence is evident in perspectives of Ukrainian political and economic development.
These may be mutually exclusive, for instance, support for market economy and price
controls or approval of a multi-party system and distrust of all parties.
Spreading fear and distrust are ancient political tactics, and their use has a
long history in both totalitarian and democratic societies. In totalitarian
political orders spreading fear and distrust can be used to justify more
16
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
central or totalitarian powers, commonly made with the promise of greater
social order. But spreading fear and distrust are used in democratic societies
too. The United States has a long history of ‘‘moral crusades’’ which were
animated by fears of different racial or immigrant groups, drugs, alcohol,
marihuana, sexual predators, and recently terrorists (see Altheide, 2006).
Spreading fear in society can be a tactic to create social distance and isolation
between groups, a ‘‘divide and conquer’’ strategy long favored by Western
imperialists. In commenting on the death of the Russian brief experiment with democracy, former journalist (assassinated in 2005) Anna
Politkovskaya (2007, p. 255) observed:
Our society isn’t a society any more. It is a collection of windowless, isolated concrete
cells. In one of these are the Heroes, in another are the politicians of Yabloko, in a third
there is Zyuganov, the leader of the Communists, and so on. There are thousands who
together might add up to be the Russian people, but the walls of our cells are
impermeable. If somebody is suffering, he is upset that nobody seems concerned. If, in
other cells at the same time, anybody is in fact thinking about him, it leads to no action,
and they only really remember he had a problem when their own situation becomes
completely intolerable y The authorities do everything they can to make the cells even
more impermeable, sowing dissent, inciting some against others, dividing and ruling.
And the people fall for it. That is the real problem. That is why revolution in Russia,
when it comes, is always so extreme. The barrier between the cells collapses only when
the negative emotions within them are ungovernable.
The founding fathers of the United States were very distrustful indeed. The
leaders were highly educated men who had received a classic education. They
felt that human history had been the history of tyranny, for the most part, and
they elected to institutionalize their distrust in how the American constitution
and government were formed. The U.S. Constitution institutionalizes distrust.
They distrusted all branches of government, the executive branch, the
legislative branch, and the judicial branch, and assumed that, if any or all of
these had their way, the result would be the abuse and corruption of power.
They created ‘‘checks and balances’’ of power, so that each branch of
government was constrained in their powers because of the powers
institutionalized for the other two branches. In the political oratory of
politicians it is common to hear rhetorical flourishes about how Americans
love liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or whatever, but in fact the
foundational legal documents of the United States institutionalize distrust.
Distrust is a distinct value for one who is interested in political and social
justice. It is important to distrust the lofty proclamations of politicians and
other institutional leaders, to cut beneath the political rhetoric to discover
who is doing what to whom, and where the trails of money and profits lead.
Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology
17
The checks-and-balances of the U.S. Constitution seem to have worked
reasonably well for approximately 200 years, but the recent emergence of the
Imperial Presidency and the subjugation of the legislative and judicial
branches to executive power reminds us again of the wisdom of the founding
fathers, that political tyranny has been the dominant theme of history, and
that any and all political forms may transform into something entirely
different over time.
The meaningful institution of democracy always occurs in an historical
and cultural context. It emerges and develops over time. It is unclear if the
massive distrust of Ukrainian citizens will be transformed by progressive
political action and social change, efforts to make the political decisionmaking processes open and transparent to all parties, efforts to create
procedural justice and an independent judiciary, efforts to expand social
justice to a broader spectrum of groups, interests, and organizations. But
until large numbers are certain of such an accomplishment of social justice,
it is wise to be distrustful of the political rhetoric and vacuous promises of
politicians.
REFERENCES
Altheide, D. L. (2006). Terrorism and the politics of fear. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.
Athens, L. (1992). The creation of dangerous, violent criminals. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press.
Barnett, O., Miller-Perrin, C., & Perrin, R. (2005). Family violence across the life span (2nd ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Bolby, J. (1971–1979). Attachment and Loss, 3 volumes. New York: Basic Books.
Brazelton, T. B. (1963). The early mother-infant adjustment. Pediatrics, 32, 931–938.
Brazelton, T. B. (1980). Behavioral competence of the newborn infant. In: P. Taylor (Ed.),
Parent-infant relationships. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Brazelton, T. B., Kowslowski, B., & Main, M. (1974). The origins of reciprocity: The early
mother-infant interaction. In: M. Lewis & L. Rosenbaum (Eds), The effect of the infant
on its caregiver. New York: Wiley.
Brazelton, T. B., Troncik, E., Adamson, L., Als, W., & Wise, W. (1975). Early mother-infant
reciprocity. In: M. A. Hofer (Ed.), Parent-infant interaction. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Cicourel, A. (1964). Method and measurement in sociology. New York: Free Press.
Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.
Fromm, E. (1974). The art of loving. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Golovakha, E., & Panina, N. (2000). The development of democratic political identity in the
contemporary ukrainian political culture. In: E. Golovakha, N. Panina & V. Vorona
(Eds), Sociology in Ukraine: Selected works published during the 90th (pp. 117–126). Kiev:
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
18
JOHN M. JOHNSON AND ANDREW MELNIKOV
Golovakha, E., Panina, N., & Vorona, V. (Eds). (2000). Sociology in Ukraine: Selected works
published during the 90th. Kiev: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Hickey, E. (2005). Serial murderers and their victims (4th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publication Co.
Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: International Universities Press.
Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press.
Panina, N. V., & Golovakha, E. I. (2001). Tendancies in the development of Ukrainian society
1994–2001: Sociological indicators. Kiev: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Politkovskaya, A. (2007). A Russian diary. London: Random House.
Rowell, T. (1972). The social behavior of monkeys. Baltimore, MD: Penguin.
SITUATING PUBLIC
PERFORMANCES: FOLK
SINGERS AND SONG
INTRODUCTIONS$
Scott Grills
ABSTRACT
This chapter pays particular attention to the place of song introductions
as an integral feature of public performance. Locating this analysis within
the subculture of contemporary folk music, I demonstrate how song
introductions can accomplish six important things: (1) provide an
interpretive frame for understanding a performance, (2) cast performances in emotive terms, (3) situate performances in the larger context
of marketing and sales, (4) contribute to moral entrepreneurial agendas,
(5) align the performer’s actions, and (6) offer a venue for making
disclaimers. By demonstrating how performers accomplish these things, I
locate song introductions within the larger context of situating public
performances more generally.
$
Chapter originally presented at the Couch-Stone Symposium, Champagne-Urbana, May 4–5,
2007.
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 19–34
Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033004
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SCOTT GRILLS
At the risk of stating the obvious, there is much more to the performance of
folk music, than is to be found within musicianship alone. Technical
competency is, in and of itself, inadequate for understanding an audience’s
reaction to a musical performance (Becker, 1973). In this chapter, I encourage
the reader to attend to the performance aspects of onstage narrative utilized
by contemporary folk musicians. My purpose in this chapter is to articulate
the interactional strategies used by folk musicians to locate and otherwise
situate their public performance and their place within this diverse
subculture.1 In this context, I am particularly interested in: the development
of interpretive frames, offering claims to legitimacy and the contextualization
of repertoire.
First a bit of a perilous exercise – what do I mean by ‘‘contemporary folk
musicians?’’ The contemporary part is straight forward enough; I am
limiting my analysis to people who are writing and performing today. That
is, the reader would, in Schutz’ (1962) terms, have the theoretical possibility
to be co-present with the artist. I, therefore, am rather deliberately excluding
an analysis of archival footage, or the wonderful Smithsonian collections. A
related and important point is that my analysis is limited to artists whose
languages include English. My ability to chat with artists in languages other
than English is too weak to be helpful. Happily, many international artists
are more linguistically competent than I, and are able to accommodate my
shortcomings.
But, what do I mean by ‘‘folk music?’’ Theodor Adorno (1974, p. 204)
offers that ‘‘everything that has ever been called folk art has always reflected
domination.’’ Although folk music has often been associated with protest,
conflict, and various other manifestations of unrest (Dunaway, 1987;
Rodnitzky, 1976), I am more inclined to assert, in a Blumerian fashion, that
the definition of ‘‘folk music’’ is not to be found in the object itself or in an
attribution of a rhetoric of domination.2 I would suggest that the most
sociologically appropriate means of understanding ‘‘folk music’’ as a
meaningful distinction from other musical forms is to locate the distinction
within the subculture itself. What forms of music do members accept as
‘‘folk music?’’ What is played on folk radio stations’ play lists, what music is
included as a part of folk festival lineups, what varieties of artists do record
labels that self identify as ‘‘folk oriented’’ sign and support, and where are
the debates and tensions located that result in the differentiation between
subcultural membership and those that are excluded? Artists whose work is
represented in this chapter include traditional acoustic singer-songwriters,
vocalists, blues performers, Celtic artists, world music specialists, bluegrass
artists, gospel performers, and a range of instrumentalists (e.g. fiddle
Situating Public Performances
21
players, percussionists, guitarists, dobro players, and harmonica/harp
players). For the purposes of this chapter I am limiting my discussion to
the perspectives and work of professional performing musicians – those who
make a living, at least in part, in the music business.
This chapter is based on an extended ethnographic research project that
has involved observation, participant observation, and informal interview.
Participant roles have included the following: audience member (at
numerous venues and festivals in England, Canada, and the United States),
conference delegate (at national and regional meetings for the folk industry),
folk festival volunteer, folk festival board member a