Kafkaesque Bureaucracies as Natural Breaching Experiments: Interactional Failures and the Search for Institutional Agency

In accord with scholars who have suggested extending the symbolic interactionist perspective to investigate interactions with macrolevel structures, we argue that symbolic interactionism provides valuable tools to understand how bureaucratic breakdowns are interpreted by individuals. In this article, we use the experience of interacting with a Kafkaesque bureaucracy as a natural breaching experiment in order to outline the subjective effects of large‐scale institutional failure. In particular, we look at homeowners' interpretations of a flawed program initiated by the Obama administration to stem the tide of foreclosures. We conclude that persistent interaction failures with the bank divisions charged with modifying mortgages led frustrated and confused homeowners to question the nature of the bureaucratic interaction. This produced a search for a blame‐worthy agency and revealed the ways that agency was conceptualized in this complex and obscure institutional setting.