Confronting “Victim” Discourses: The Identity Work of Battered Women

In this article I explore how battered women both draw from and reject victim discourses in their processes of self‐construction and self‐representation. Data gathered from semistructured interviews with forty women who experienced violence from an intimate partner in a heterosexual relationship demonstrate that available “victim” discourses are both enabling and constraining. Four common representations of a victim emerged as most influential to women's identity work: as someone who suffers a harm she cannot control; as someone who deserves sympathy and/or requires some type of action be taken against the victimizer; as someone who is culpable for her experiences; and as someone who is powerless and weak. “Victim empowerment” and “survivor” discourses also played a role in how women understood and made sense of their experiences. In their attempts to construct identities for themselves, battered women become caught between notions of victimization, agency, and responsibility.     

Meaning and Identity in “Cyberspace”: The Performance of Gender,Class, and Race Online

This article explores issues of gendered, classed and raced identities using examples drawn from my research on a type of online forum known as a mud. I critique previous accounts of research regarding identity online which have suggested that online interactions encourage greater identity fluidity and multiplicity. Drawing on examples from face-to-face interviews and online interaction, I discuss several aspects of identity. I first examine participants' efforts to meet face-to-face and discuss their privileging of offline information regarding identity. Using two examples of “gender-switchers,” I then show how some participants distance themselves from experiences of gendered identities which might otherwise disrupt previously held beliefs about gender. Next I discuss classed and raced identities, which participants express in conversations about income and ethnicity. These discussions point to the interconnections between online and offline interpretations of class and race. Thus, in discussing these examples, I emphasize the need to examine not just online performances, but also the participants' interpretations of such performances. Despite the potentially disruptive effects of online ambiguity, many participants continue to believe in essence and continuity of identity.     

“We are a people,one people”: How 1967 Transformed Holocaust Memory and Jewish Identity in Israel and the US

This paper examines how the “narrative‐identities” of Jewish communities in Israel and the US were unified through the events surrounding Israel's 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Using a range of historical materials, I show how key elements of the two communities' identities were rearranged and untied through a new, shared narrative that linked the Holocaust, Jewish victimhood and Israel. I argue that the old Zionist narrative enabled the new one, which in turn helped bind the two communities discursively, materially and politically. Finally, I discuss the implications for our understanding of identity change and the conflict over Israel/Palestine.     

“Phil's Calling Grandma… ”: The Role of External Support in Human–Companion Animal Identity Pairings

This exploratory paper deals with human–animal role identity pairings such as parent–child or sibling–sibling and the necessity of support from other actors both for the formation of these idiosyncratic identities, as well as for their situational placement in social environments not limited to the nonhuman animal. Taken from a qualitative study examining identity formation counter to the nonhuman animal, I use in‐depth interviews of both people with and without human children to demonstrate how human‐to‐human relationships are formed by categorizing the companion animal as a “child” of sorts within the family structure. These relationships prove integral to the continued development and enactment of identities such as the animal “parent” or the animal “sibling” via three different groups: their own parents, partners, and, in one case, adult siblings. This creates positive affect and commitment to the identity across other social situations. Implications of these findings for identity theory and family research are discussed.     

Digitalization as “an Agent of Social Change” in a Supermarket Chain: Applying Blumer's Theory of Industrialization in Contemporary Society

In this article I pursue Blumer's argument in Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change that social changes are the consequence of people's interpretation of technology. By examining oral history interviews with managers and other staff of the British supermarket chain Tesco I explore the relationship between “digitalization” and the organization of the business. The analysis reveals how the interviewees interpreted emerging computing technologies, and how the deployment of these technologies in the business impacted the material and ecological arrangement and the distribution of knowledge in the company. The article ends with a discussion of the relevance of Blumer's framework for contemporary studies of “digitalization” and social change.     

From “Swinging Hard” to “Rocking Out”: Classification of Style and the Creation of Identity in the World of Drumming

This article takes a social constructionist approach to the study of a seldom considered subculture—the “world” of drumming. I describe this subculture from both the “etic” and “emic” perspectives, showing how drummers and drumming are perceived and experienced by the musicians themselves (insiders) as well as the “outside” public. The main focus is on the drummers' intersubjective “mental maps” of their world, specifically exploring how they create musical and personal identities by adhering to a rigid classification scheme surrounding “styles” of drumming. I demonstrate how drummers use drumming equipment, personal appearance, education, and “purist” attitudes to separate styles of drumming and to construct distinct social selves. Of special interest is how drummers are cognitively socialized into “thought communities” which teach and reinforce attitudinal and behavioral norms. I conclude with a discussion of the possibilities of applying my analytical framework to other worlds of music and art, as well as some forms of occupational and avocational specialization.     

Negotiating the “Global” within the Global Playscapes of Mount Everest*

Within the anthropology of tourism, “tourist” and “local” are often used to conceptualize social relations constitutive of international tourism, where “First World” mobile subjects visit stationary “Third World” “Others.” Globalization, as both discourse and condition, is changing the contours and conceptualizations of tourist spaces. In this paper, I show how “the global” is negotiated by different subjects, and how recreational mountain climbers from Nepal negotiate their identities as “locals” as well as global, mobile, travel subjects within “the global playscapes” of Himalayan mountaineering. I suggest that the question of who can be a tourist within a globalizing world should be closely examined.     

Herbert Blumer and the Study of Fashion: A Reminiscence and A Critique

Recounting my late 1940s graduate student contacts with Herbert Blumer on the topic of fashion, 1 go on to assess his important contribution to the sociological study of fashion. Conceptually rich, the corpus of Blumer's writing on fashion is yet surprisingly small. His major opus on fashion, anticipated only in part by several of his earlier, less exhaustive writings on the subject, did not see print until 1969 with the publication of the justly famous Sociological Quarterly piece “Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection.” There Blumer pursues two aims: (1) to challenge the then prevalent functionalist view of fashion as a “trickle down” symbolic mechanism for effecting social class differentiation, a view associated with such sociological eminences as Simmel and Veblen, and (2) to offer in its place his own quite original approach to fashion as a massive “collective selection” process wherein choices are guided more by the elusive lure of modernity than by invidious class tinctions as such. Prominent among the strengths of Blumer's position is the demonstrably greater empirical validity of “collective selection” as compared to “class differentiation.” Among its shortcomings are Blumer's slighting of a salient social psychological theme in Simmers dialectical approach to fashion and, more important, his failure to address in any sustained way the role of the fashion industry in the fashion process. The recently emerging, symbolic interactionist concept of social world offers a means for redressing this omission and for advancing further upon the ground opened by Herbert Blumer's still exciting breakthrough in the sociology of fashion.     

The Spirit of Blumer's Method as a Guide to Sociological Discovery

Herbert Blumer did not offer textbook-style instructions for how to do research. What he offered, in his classic 1969 essay “The Methodological Position of Symbolic Interactionism,” is a broad account of what research must entail to accord with symbolic interactionist premises that human social life depends on meanings, interpretation, and interaction. Blumer's essay also voices a spirit of research that is ardently empirical, sociological, and creative. It is this spirit, I argue, that holds great value for guiding sociological research toward fresh discoveries. I make this argument by reviewing what Blumer meant by exploration and inspection, and then drawing out five Blumerian principles of inquiry. By embracing these principles we can avoid the problems of inadvertent theorizing, unreflective mesearch, analytic foreclosure, excessive subjectivism, and aprocessuality. I also suggest how we can enhance the sociological value of Blumer's method by paying more attention to power, inequality, and our own institutional biases. Embracing the spirit of Blumer's method, I conclude, can help a new generation of symbolic interactionists do more imaginative and insightful work.     

The “Homeless Problem” and the Double Consciousness*

The purpose of this article was to identify manifestations of a social discourse that construct those who are homeless as an existential problem. Based on 4 years of ethnographic data and grounded theory analysis, we illustrate the nature of exclusionary social practices that emerge from discourse on the “homeless problem” as well as the conflicting identities experienced by those who are homeless. Herein we frame the data using DuBois concept of “double consciousness.” Our findings indicate that those who are homeless mix together discourses of value and legitimacy with self‐applied stigmas and self‐denigrating political perspectives in ways that directly mirror DuBois’ notion of the conflicting nature of African and American identities around the end of the nineteenth century. We illustrate identity problems that manifest in the contemporary conflict between being both “homeless” and “American.”     

The Aural and Moral Idylls of “Englishness” and Folk Music

The idea of “Englishness” is explored as an historical social construction that is subject to ongoing negotiation. Important features of “Englishness” are embedded in the sacralized symbolism of the “rural idyll,” which represents traditional English values. “Landscapes” and “soundscapes” are utilized to construct personal and national identities in periods of “revivalism.” By viewing English folk music through an interactionist framework, responses to the music build upon earlier collective works that have shaped traditional song. “Englishness” is problematized as either an inclusive, or exclusive, identity. Ideational artifacts thus provide a foundation for social action.¹     

Negotiating Clothing Identities on the Sales Floor

How do salespeople negotiate “clothing identities” with customers? To answer this question, I conducted fieldwork in the women's departments of several luxury goods stores in Paris that sell ready-to-wear clothes. In this negotiating context of personalized service, lower-status individuals (salespersons) propose new identities to higher-status consumers. This comparison of how saleswomen and gay salesmen negotiate clothing identities with women customers examines both their identification with the customers and the role-playing involved. The sales area as a “backstage” permits the “expertise” of the sales staff to mitigate the status differences and gives gay male sales staff latitude in their interactions with female clients. Through a construction of clothing identity from articles from the store, saleswomen present an image of possibilities to customers. Playing the role of personal audience, gay salesmen use their ambiguous gender identity to sell clothing.     

“I” and Self-Consciousness in the Japanese Language and in Sociology

Abstract It is often said that the Japanese lack the firm consciousness of “self” namely, they yield to groups and are absorbed in an anonymous state. Some ascribe this to the Japanese language, in which the first and the second person are expressed by various pronouns (or, in many cases, are even omitted) in accordance with the relationships between persons. By contrast the Westerner's “I,” which is usually the only pronoun for the first-person, is rarely omitted. They conclude from this that the Japanese individual does not possess as clearly defined a conception of “self” as does the Westerner. Underlying this issue are the fundamental, interwoven questions of language and self-consciousness: does “self” really exist, and does the analysis of the I in language pertain to the first question? This paper discusses these questions by considering Wittgenstein's argument that “I” does not refer to self-consciousness: rather, “self” is a metaphysical reification of “I.” These problems concern sociology, in which the “subject” of action has been the focal point of methodological arguments. I will show that Meadian interactionism and critical theory are deeply rooted in the metaphysical, subjectivist understanding of “I,” while ethnomethodology offers a perspective which overcomes both subjectivism and objectivism for studying communication.     

Mind,Self, and Human-Animal Joint Action

Abstract

Because Herbert Blumer maintained that symbolic interactionism was useful in examining all realms of social behavior, and advocated what Martin Hammersley refers to as “critical commonsensism,” this paper focuses on one of the most common contemporary social relationships—that between people and companion animals. I first examine the basis for Blumer's (like Mead before him and many interactionist scholars today) exclusion of nonhuman animals from consideration as “authentic” social actors. Primarily employing the recent work of interactionists Eugene Myers, Leslie Irvine, Janet and Steven Alger, and Clinton Sanders, this paper advocates the reasonableness of regarding nonhuman animals as “minded,” in that mind, as Gubrium emphasizes, is a social construction that arises out of interaction. Similarly, I maintain that animals possess an admittedly rudimentary “self.” Here I focus special attention on Irvine's discussion of those “self experiences” that are independent of language and arise out of interaction. Finally, I discuss “joint action” as a key element of people's relationships with companion animals as both the animal and human attempt to assume the perspective of the other, devise related plans of action and definitions of object, and fit together their particular (ideally, shared) goals and collective actions. I stress the ways in which analytic attention to human-animal relationships may expand and enrich the understanding of issues of central sociological interest.     

On Being Not Canadian: The Social Organization of “Migrant Workers” in Canada*

Se fondant sur la méthode d'ethnographie institutionnelle de Dorothy E. Smith, l'auteure étudie l'organisation sociale de notre connaissance des gens catégorisés comme non‐immigrants ou « tra‐vailleurs migrants ». À la suite de l'étude du Non‐Immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP) du gouvernement canadien (1973), elle montre l'importance de la pratique idéologique raciste et nationaliste des États à l'endroit de l'organisation matérielle du marché du travail compétitif « canadien » dans le cadre d'un capitalisme mondial restructuré de même que la réorganisation qui en résulte des notions d'esprit national canadien. Elle montre aussi que la pratique discursive des parlementaires qui consiste à considérer certaines personnes comme des « problèmes » pour les « Canadiens » ne provient pas de l'exclusion physique de ces «étrangers » mais plutôt de leur differentiation idéologique et matérielle des Canadiens une fois qu'ils vivent et travaillent dans la société canadienne. Utilizing Dorothy E. Smith's method of institutional ethnography, I investigate the social organization of our knowledge of people categorized as non‐immigrants or “migrant workers.” By examining Canada's 1973 Non‐immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP), I show the importance of racist and nationalist ideological state practice to the material organization of the competitive “Canadian” labour market within a restructured global capitalism and the resultant reorganization of notions of Canadian nationhood. I show that the parliamentary discursive practice of producing certain people as “problems” for “Canadians” results not in the physical exclusion of those constructed as “foreigners” but in their ideological and material differentiation from Canadians, once such people are living and working within Canadian society. Expressions such as…“foreigner”… and so on, denoting certain types of lesser or negative identities are in actuality congealed practices and forms of violence or relations of domination… This violence and its constructive or representative attempts have become so successful or hegemonic that they have become transparent—holding in place the ruler's claimed superior self, named or identified in myriad ways, and the inadequacy and inferiority of those who are ruled. — Himani Bannerji.     

The Whitening Hypothesis Challenged: Biculturalism in Latino and Non‐Hispanic White Intermarriage

Assimilation theory holds that intermarriage between minorities and non‐Hispanic whites is a gauge of integration and assumes that minorities jettison their ethnic identification in favor of whiteness. Drawing on race relations theory to argue that intermarriage is potentially transformative for non‐Hispanic whites as well as Latinos, this article challenges assimilation theory's bias that minorities (should) undergo cultural change and that non‐Hispanic whites remain unmoved. This article uses in‐depth interviews with Latino and non‐Hispanic white married couples to assess the consequences of ethnic intermarriage from the perspectives of both partners. Interethnic partners engaged in four “ideal types” of biculturalism, running largely contrary to assimilation theory's social whitening hypothesis. Due to boundary blurring, exemplified by affiliative ethnic identity, non‐Hispanic whites can migrate into Latino culture.     

Discrimination and Reaction: The Practical Constitution of Social Exclusion

This article explores and extends Blumer's work on race prejudice and discrimination by using empirical data from an ethnographic study of minority communities in Greece. Blumer explains prejudice as the result of an interactional process through which one group defines itself as superior or dominant in relation to the other. His work on race prejudice has often been misinterpreted as emphasizing the individual's subjective imaginary of the “other.” Here I illustrate the importance of the intersubjective processes involved in defining a particular social situation as discriminatory. A central point of the article is to elaborate on his analysis by looking at the experience of prejudice and discrimination from the receiving end, through the participants' interpretation of their social interactions with the dominant group. Therefore I focus on how members of the subordinate group interact with the process that Blumer identifies.     

Cognition in Situations

The symbolic interactionist tradition can contribute to advancing sociological studies of cognition by setting dual process models on more solid ground. I draw on Blumer's epistemological statements and the interactionist tradition more broadly to consider how dual process models of cognition could be applied to naturally occurring situations. I suggest that attending to the ways the past and the future are handled and modified within social interaction provides a usable inroad for the sociology of cognition to engage with situational analysis. I identify “resonance” and “iterative reprocessing” as concepts that are suitable to this end.