Personal Sociology
Edited by Paul C. Higgins John M. Johnson
PRAEGER New York Westport, Connecticut London
First published in 1988
Contents
Acknowledgmentsvii
Introduction 1 Paul C. Higgins
1 It's Good for 'Em: Object Lessons in Youth Sports13 Jeffrey E. Nash
2 Social Roles and Interaction29 Louis A. Zurcher
3 Growing Up Among Ghetto Dwellers51 Stanford M. Lyman
4 The Sociologist as Stranger: The Power Games of Race Relations67 John H. Stanfield II
5 Battered Flesh and Shackled Souls: Patriarchal Control of Women81 Kathleen J. Ferraro
6 Rationality and Practical Reasoning in Human Service Organization103 Jaber F. Gubrium
7 Work and Self119 Jeffrey W. Riemer
8 Political Activist as Participant Observer: Conflicts of Commitment in a Study of the Draft
Resistance Movement of the 1960s133 Barrie Thorne
Bibliography153
Index163
About the Contributors167
Acknowledgments
We appreciate the support of the Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina, in
particular, the assistance of Mrs. Debra Brown and the late Mrs. JoAnn Hess, and the support of
the School of Justice Studies, Arizona State University.
Introduction
Paul C. Higgins
Art "comes from the life of the artist -- out of his own life, his own environment."
David Smith Painter, sculptor, draftsman
You and I create the social world in which we live. Through our thoughts and actions, both
individually and collectively, we develop and give meaning to the practices and products which
constitute our world. In starring roles and in bit parts, on important stages and makeshift
platforms, and before appreciative audiences and those who leave early, we "perform" the
dramas of our lives. Without our involvement, whether it be willing or reluctant, recognized by
us or not, the dramas of family, education, politics, community, religion, art, work, athletics,
love, hate, friendship, growing up, growing old, and so much more, which constitute the social
world, would not be possible. Yet, while we create that social world, we are also constrained by
it. Social worlds created by others (and ourselves) in the past, the present, and in anticipation of
the future set the stage upon which we act. And our own actions become part of the social world
with which we must further contend. Therefore, while the dramas of life are not nearly so
scripted as are plays, the actors do not perform those dramas anew. Instead, given the
conventions of their times -- the scenery, props, costumes, scripts, and such -- the actors create
and recreate the dramas of life and, in doing so, transform those conventions and themselves.
Sociology seeks to understand that creation, constraint, and transformation. Yet, ironically,
almost incredibly, sociology has been increasingly questioned as to its relevance for our lives.
Personal sociology addresses that question.
PERSONAL SOCIOLOGY
Conventional sociology is little understood and even less appreciated. Society's humor
concerning sociology underscores this point. A society's humor reflects its beliefs about the
topics of that humor. However, with sociology not part of our popular imagination, there is little
humor concerning sociologists. Jokes made about topics which are not part of common
understanding are likely to fall flat ( Berger, 1963:1). Those Jokes concerning sociology suggest
that sociology either restates what everybody knows already or absurdly challenges common
sense. Either way, sociology is irrelevant. Thus, sociologists are fellows who spend "$100,000 to
find (their) way to a house of ill repute" ( Berger, 1963:8). Or, in working at a placement bureau,
sociologists may decide that a foreign applicant who "cannot speak a word of English," has
"never driven a car," and "come(s) from a rural community" is "qualified for only one job:
driving a cab in Los Angeles" ( Bombeck, 1981). Without any trace of humor though, no matter
how disparaging, a recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature stated that one of the many
reasons for which he wrote for children was that they detested sociology. Children, of course,
have no idea what sociology is. Yet, when they grow up, they may conclude that, whatever it is,
it is irrelevant to them.
Consequently, too often students of social life, whether having earned Ph.D.s or embarking on
college degrees, sense little connection between their lives and their study of social life.
Sociologists "segregate their professional insights from their everyday affairs" ( Berger,
1963:21). Their everyday affairs are not taken to be serious concerns, or if they are seen as
serious, they are not taken to be understandable through sociology. Consequently, sociological
insights are developed about and applied to "those people over there," never about or to oneself.
Similarly, students, properly concerned about earning a living but in the process too often
neglectful of learning about living, see no relationship between the systematic study of social life
and their lives.
Personal sociology weds our lives with the study of social life. Those who practice personal
sociology attempt to make sense out of their lives, out of their experiences and concerns. They
use those experiences and concerns both as the reason for and as a resource in understanding
social issues, issues which transcend their immediate experiences. In doing so, personal
sociologists seek to transform not only their understanding but themselves and others as well (
Morgan, 1983:405). Personal sociologists 'live in society, on the job and off." Inevitably, their
lives are "part of (their) subject matter" ( Berger, 1963:21).
Personal sociologists exploit their lives in order to understand social life ( Mills, 1959). They
take advantage of their experiences, whether they be unique experiences such as confinement to
a tuberculosis hospital or a prisoner of war camp, familiar social situations such as behavior in
public places, or special expertise developed in being a musician, police officer, ex-con, or priest
( Riemer, 1977). The most mundane of life's activities and the most awful, both awe-inspiring
and terrible, may become the basis for personal sociology; so too may childhood interests.
Living in a city may seem inconsequential, but a personal sociology draws insight from that in
order to understand the nature of public relations among strangers ( Goffman , 1971; Lofland,
1973). The suicide of a brother is traumatic, but in that loss a personal sociology develops an
understanding of how those involved in various ways in the crises of a suicide make sense of
them as meaningful social actions ( Douglas, 1967). And from being a "dedicated spaceflight
nut" as a youth, a personal sociologist investigates the early spaceflight movement in Europe and
America ( Bainbridge, 1985:520). Few experiences are too trivial or too sacred to be left
unexamined. And none are wished away ( Zola, 1983:306). Personal sociology celebrates our
experiences.
By necessity then, personal sociology is reflexive ( Gouldner, 1970). Those who practice it view
their own lives in the ways that most now view the lives of others. There are no subjects to be
studied, but people to be understood -- others and oneself.
The personal sociologists' experiences give rise to concerns that transcend those immediate
experiences. The sociologist who is a musician seeks to understand art worlds ( Becker, 1982).
The ex-con turned sociologist investigates the transformation of prisons and prison reform (
Irwin, 1980). The sociologist, involved in the women's movement and a student of organizations,
examines men and women in corporations ( Kanter, 1977). "Navel gazers" they are not.
Collective Activity
While personal sociology is personal, it is neither individualistic nor idiosyncratic. While our
lives are unique, we also share experiences and concerns with one another. While we may
sometimes believe otherwise, we are not alone in the acts of life: the mundane and the dramatic,
the routine and the unexpected, the sorrow and joy, which constitute the social world. Thus, one
individual's personal sociology is likely to be in various ways many other people's personal
sociologies. In pursuing one's own concerns, one necessarily confronts the similar concerns of
others, providing insight to them and taking insight from them. Thus, personal sociology is
ultimately a collective activity because people's lives are collectively lived.
Personal sociology is a collective enterprise in a second, related way. Not only are the
experiences and concerns of people shared, but in order to understand the experiences and
concerns of particular people, their lives must be viewed within the larger social and historical
worlds in which they live. Personal concerns must be understood within the public contexts (
Mills, 1959). The personal troubles of poor people cannot be understood apart from such public
issues as education, the economy, discrimination, and governmental programs. The plight of
crime victims, oneself or others, may be more fully understood through observing society's
responses to crime -- family members', neighbors', the criminal justice systems' and others' -- but
so too may the practices of criminals. Or, in order for me to begin to understand the lives of deaf
people, in particular my parents', I needed to locate their lives and the lives of other deaf people
within a world which is largely created and controlled by those who hear. The assumptions and
practices of hearing people, often well-intentioned ones, have created a world in which deaf
people are outsiders. "They live within a world of sounds but are not fully part of that world" (
Higgins, 1980:22). Perhaps more important, not being seen as fully human, they have been
denied full participation in society's activities. Whatever personally concerns us must be
understood within public contexts. That necessity makes personal sociology a collective
enterprise once again.
Personal Concerns
Out of those concerns and experiences grows the study of social life. And out of that scholarly
confrontation develop responses to those concerns and experiences. Concerns give rise to study
which leads to responses to those concerns. Political action, public presentations (including those
made in classrooms), community organizing, and personal involvement, these and other
responses complete the cycle of personal sociology. Some personal sociologists stress the study
of social life. Others emphasize the responses to their concerns. After taking students to see
poverty in order to teach about it, one personal sociologist decided to do something about
poverty by opening and managing full-time a soup kitchen ( Will, 1983). Personal concerns,
scholarly work, and responses to those concerns are interwoven in personal sociology. In no
ivory tower dwells the personal sociologist.
Personal sociology does not grow out of idle curiosity or merely the desire to solve academic
puzzles. Instead, personal sociologists are bedeviled by their concerns. Their need to understand
those concerns drives them onward. Thus, personal sociology is passionate. There is no
"objective" detachment here. To divorce one's work from the basis for engaging in that work is
to needlessly and harmfully estrange one's self from oneself. However, to be passionate does not
mean to be blinded by passion. Personal sociologists use their passions in pursuing their
concerns. They develop insight about their concerns from their passions that have given rise to
those concerns. They recognize that others involved in their collective concerns may be less
passionate or passionate in different ways than are they. Yet, that recognition itself provides
further understanding to personal sociologists.
Being passionately concerned to understand their concerns, personal sociologists are
unashamedly moralistic, but not moralizing. What is studied, how it is studied, why it is studied,
and the consequences of that study are addressed within a world of ethical choices. In their work,
personal sociologists choose or choose not to undertake, investigate, reveal, conceal, inquire,
ignore,, provide, withhold, and much more. Once made, those choices may be regretted, but they
are never claimed to be unimportant or irrelevant. Personal sociologists do not deceive
themselves that their work, which, of course, means their lives, can be conducted free of values.
Similarly, personal sociologists do not permit methods to determine what matters. The "stuff" of
social life that personal sociologists confront cannot always or readily be reduced to that which is
easily researched. No matter how "messy" social life may be to confront, personal sociologists
resist the temptation to reduce its significance to that which is neat and tidy ( Westhues ,
1982:16). For example, the great power of physicians to control medicine, which developed and
has been transformed over the past two centuries in America ( Starr, 1982), cannot be reduced to
a prestige rating of 93 out of 100 as some would like to do.
Because personal sociology springs from the lives and concerns of those who practice it, it
cannot be "hired-hand" work. While personal sociology may be supported by others -- by those
who provide the opportunity and the resources to do it -- personal sociologists do not seek to do
the bidding of others. Instead, they address their own bedeviling concerns, and in doing so they
may address the concerns of those who support their work. Thus, personal sociology answers the
question asked over and over again "Sociology for whom?" ( Lee, 1978), with the reply: First for
the personal sociologists and then for those who are concerned by their concerns.
Unlike "hired-hand" social science, personal sociology is not alienating, though it may be, of
course, very demanding. In so much of what we do, sociology included, we are estranged from
what we do. We do not realize our selves in our work but deny our selves through our work.
Work is imposed upon us, not taken up by us. Demands, not challenges, drive us on. External
gratifications, not internal satisfactions, enable us to struggle through our work. Instead of being
caught up in the challenge of what is personally meaningful, we are trapped by the tiresome
requirements of what is meaningless. The quitting siren sounds, and the workers, including those
who do "hired-hand" sociology, gladly turn their backs on the work. No quitting siren sounds for
personal sociologists. Instead, they seek to expand the day in order to address their concerns.
Turning their backs on their work would be turning their backs on themselves.
Personal sociology embraces people and their behaviors. Even if personal sociologists disagree
with what is done, they realize that it is people who are doing. In quiet desperation and in
overwhelming joy, in cooperation and in conflict, with conviction and contempt, rationally and
absurdly, people work, play, create, destroy, organize, and do so much more -- in short, live.
Social life is lived drama. No puppets or cartoon characters here.
In contrast, much conventional social science disembodies social life. Whether through
"biologizing the individual" or "naturalizing the social," much conventional social science
extracts the meaningful, if not well understood, actions of people from social life. Either people
behave according to their biologies, their hereditary endowments, or more typically, they act
according to natural laws ( Stewart and Reynolds, 1985). For example, people are violent
because that is human nature, or they are violent because frustration produces aggression. Or,
members of some minority groups commit more crime than other people (though such
pronouncements focus on street offenses such as assaults, not "suite offenses" such as corporate
fraud) because of their intelligence, or they commit more crime because blocked opportunities
propel them into it. But where are the people who create, confront, and recreate social life? They
have been pushed off the stage, and social life is thereby cheapened.
Risky Business
Personal sociology is difficult and dangerous. Pressures and problems of all kinds become
reasons for students of social life to abandon or never take up the task of personal sociology.
Instead, they flee into other orientations for studying social life. Support for personal sociology,
whether it be material or social, is often unavailable. Personal sociologists are likely to be
stigmatized because their work is all too personal; it does not conform to the "proper" forms for
studying social life. As one personal sociologist realized, "I have been continually struck by how
much the events of my life have influenced what I do, see, and write about. It is not that I have
been wholly unaware of this, but like most social scientists I have been loath to admit it. To do
so, I feared, might open me and my work to the criticism of being tainted by personal
involvement" ( Zola, 1983:3). No doubt, there is much more personal sociology than
practitioners care to admit or even realize.
In personal sociology one confronts the danger of offending others and oneself. Unlike a polite
science which strives not to offend those who support it, personal sociology's goal -- to respond
constructively to one's personal concerns and in doing so to create and recreate the social world
is too important to be sanitized by the possible discomfort of those to whom it is addressed, most
importantly oneself. The understanding one creates may upset one's own and others' safe
assumptions about the social world and our places in it. When we do personal sociology, our
unexamined faith may be shaken. The resulting uneasiness, sometimes only in anticipation, may
be enough to make one abandon the pursuit. The emotional costs of seriously examining, and,
hence, often questioning what is personally meaningful can be overwhelming. Thus, those who
have undertaken personal sociology have often taken years to do so, and often only in retrospect
have they realized what they have done. Personal sociology is personally and professionally
risky business.
But the early masters of sociology embraced that risk. They could not do otherwise. Their lives,
their sociologies, and the eras in which they lived were interwoven. Karl Marx could not separate
his concern about class exploitation from the repressive government of his early adulthood nor
from the burgeoning industrial revolution that seemed to make workers mere appendages of
machines. Emile Durkheim's lifelong interest in understanding and promoting social solidarity
and civic morality grew out of the political, moral, and economic "disorders" France experienced
throughout the 1800s. Max Weber's explorations of the link between religion and capitalism, the
functioning of bureaucracies, forms of authority, and much more were his responses to the
progress and pains of modernization ( Coser, 1971). In the work and lives of these and other
masters, sociology was personal.
Students and Social Life
However, students may respond that their lives are not yet worth serious examination. After all,
they are "just" students. They have yet to do anything of significance to others (or even to
themselves). But even if students have not recognized that their lives make up the drama of
social life, at least social scientists have. Social scientists are greatly interested in the behavior of
youths and young adults. Much of that interest unfortunately, but also characteristically, treats
youths and young adults as objects to be studied. Whether social scientists are interested in
childhood and youth socialization, family dynamics, juvenile delinquency, education,
occupational aspirations, sex role development, or many other concerns, they recognize that the
lives of youth and young adults make up the dramas of social life.
The dramas of social life do not begin only after a college degree is earned, and many which
unfold later in life began much earlier. Those dramas that concern social scientists (which are
often dryly discussed in introductory texts) such as inequality, deviance, minority-majority
relations, socialization, sex roles, organizational dynamics, social mobility, and social conflict
are experienced in personal ways by students and will be experienced by them when they are no
longer students. Students who are the first in their families to go to college are involved in
dramas of social stratification and mobility, but so too are the third-generation medical students.
Black students experience daily the dramas of racial relations, but so too do white students, even
though they may less likely realize it. Female students, contemplating the demands of careers
and families, participate in conflicts concerning sex roles, but so too do males, even though they,
like white students, may less likely realize it. Members of oppressed groups are more likely to be
aware of the dynamics of oppression than are members of oppressive groups. All students play
roles in group and organizational dynamics, roles that often conflict with one another. The
nursing major is being socialized into an occupation in which the socialization will continue long
after graduation, but so too are the business major and the psychology major ( Conrad, 1986).
Those who cheat on exams, do drugs, or steal from their employers may be caught in dramas of
deviance. Students' protests are part of social conflict, whether university regulations or federal
policies are being protested. And those protests may lead to change. Students are involved in the
dramas of social life, dramas that extend well beyond their participation, and they will continue
to be involved when they are no longer students.
Within a personal sociology, students may become collaborators in understanding social life. For
example, through the reports of students, one social scientist has developed an understanding of
how family members and close associates manage the "madness" of troublemakers through
accommodation practices, through attempts to "live with" the troublemakers day to day ( Lynch,
1983). Another sociologist developed an understanding of how people account for their not
being criminal through the use of students' accounts ( Rogers, 1977). If social scientists can take
seriously the lives of students, then so too can students.
However, just as the roles that actors perform can only be understood within the plays in which
they unfold, so too must our experiences and concerns be set within the social world that gives
rise to them. Therefore, while few people become professional sociologists, we might all
consider practicing personal sociology. To do so may enable us to better understand ourselves
and others and the social world in which we live.
PLAN OF THE BOOK
We may be amazed at the personal experiences and concerns explored in the following chapters.
Our lives may seem so mundane, so uneventful compared to what the contributors discuss.
However, we all live enormously complex lives, even if we do not realize it. The contributors do
recognize the complexity of social life. In doing personal sociology, they use their lives to
develop an understanding of the social world and to become actively engaged in it.
As a parent of two children who are actively involved in youth sports, Jeffrey E. Nash has been a
long-time participant in and observer of the games youth play. Nash finds that youth games,
whether ice hockey, baseball, or bicycle motorcross, are not "child's play." Instead, they are
"serious leisure." Through youth sports, participants encounter opportunities to learn lessons,
lessons that might enable them to deal better with modern society.
For decades, as participant, as observer, and as participant and observer, Louis A. Zurcher has
been involved in a wide variety of roles -- a Navy trainee -- a "boot" (and later a reservist), a
hasher -- a male who works part-time as kitchen help in a sorority, an airline passenger, a
member of a volunteer work crew who helped in the cleanup after a tornado touched down, "one
of the boys" in a long-established poker group, and many others. Our lives are lived to a great
degree through the roles we enact in interaction with others. Zurcher explores the complexity of
social life and the roles which make it up.
Stanford M. Lyman grew up among ghetto dwellers in San Francisco. For approximately 15
years he worked in his immigrant parents' grocery store, whose clientele changed from Soviet
Jews to primarily black Americans and some Japanese-Americans. During the rationing and
price controls of World War II, Lyman learned firsthand about the intricacies of relations
between organizations (in his case, relations between wholesale companies and local, retail
groceries) and about deviance -- the blackmarket. Lyman's experiences indicate that deviance
often involves more than individuals by themselves violating rules and regulations. Through
growing up in the ghetto, Lyman also learned about the lives of ethnic Americans, a continuing
concern of his. Through his many experiences, Lyman had become an astute personal social
scientist before he became a professional one.
Many keen observers are marginal people. They are not fully, unreflectively a part of the social
scenes in which they are involved. Instead, they become fascinated with the scenes and with
making sense of them. John H. Stanfield, a black social scientist grew up in rural, white, upstate
New York. He was never fully a part of the rural white community nor the more fast-paced black
community of a nearby metropolitan area. Out of the experiences of family members and his
own grew an appreciation of the subtleties of intergroup relations. Stanfield observes the games
majorities play to oppress minorities. Even science and philanthropy can be used to keep
minorities in their place.
As a victim of domestic violence, Kathleen J. Ferraro explores the mix of feelings that battered
women experience and the responses from service professionals to such women. Ferraro argues
that in order to understand domestic violence, we need to be aware of patriarchy -- a social
system in which men exercise power and authority. "Band-aid" programs that address the
immediate wounds (both physical and emotional) suffered by women are important, but such
programs do not address the underlying social arrangements that give rise to such wounds.
Like most of us in modern society, Jaber F. Gubrium spends much of his life in large
organizations, in bureaucracies. But Gubrium is impatient with classical social scientists' views
of bureaucracies as well-planned, rulegoverned, highly rational organizations. Where are the
people who, with great ingenuity, get the work done of organizations in spite of the red tape,
mounds of paperwork, and conflicting concerns? From direct observation in nursing homes, a
residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children, a rehabilitation hospital, and
other human service agencies, Gubrium explores how those involved in human service
organizations do their work and make sense of what they do.
Before he became a sociologist, Jeffrey M. Riemer apprenticed and worked as a construction
electrician for approximately ten years. As he worked in his profession, he became disillusioned
with his job and began taking college courses. He found that his sociological understanding
helped him to understand his work and his work experience made his sociological study more
meaningful. Drawing upon his experiences as a "hard hat," Riemer explores three features of
workers, their work, and their selves: autonomy, mistakes, and deviance. After reading Riemer's
chapter, we may think differently about the buildings within which we live.
Barrie Thorne was a participant in the draft resistance movement in the late 1960s before she
began to make sense of it as a sociologist. As soon as she began to do personal sociology, she
was caught between her roles as a member of the draft resistance movement and her role as a
social scientist. The members of draft resistance groups expected total commitment. Thorne was
not able to give it. Because of her outside commitments (for example, being a graduate student)
and her keen interest in making sense of the movement, Thorne was suspected at times of being
an infiltrator from a law enforcement agency. Out of her involvement in the draft resistance
movement and complimentary experiences, Thorne has developed a continuing interest in and
involvement with the women's movement and the dynamics of gender oppression.
The following chapters provide glimpses of personal sociology. The social scientists use their
experiences and concerns in trying to understand and deal with the social world. Their efforts
challenge us to take up personal sociology, too.
REFERENCES
Bainbridge William Sims. 1985. "Collective Behavior and Social Movements". In Sociology, by
Rodney Stark, pp. 492-523. Belmont: Wadsworth.
Becker Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Berger Peter L. 1963. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Garden City:
Doubleday.
Bombeck Erma. 1981. "It's Hard to Find Anyone Who Speaks English". Columbia Record,
November 4, pp. 2-D.
Conrad Peter. 1986. "The Myth of Cut-Throats Among Premedical Students: On the Role of
Stereotypes in Justifying Failure and Success". Journal of Health and Social Behavior 27 (June):
150-60.
Coser Lewis A. 1971. Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Douglas Jack D. 1967. The Social Meanings of Suicide. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Goffman Erving, 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York:
Harper and Row.
Gouldner Alvin W. 1970. The Coming Crisis in Western Sociology. New York: Avon.
Higgins Paul C. 1980. Outsiders in a Hearing World: A Sociology of Deafness. Beverly Hills:
Sage.
Irwin John. 1980. Prisons in Turmoil. Boston: Little, Brown.
Kanter Rosabeth Moss. 1977. Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.
Lee Alfred McClung. 1978. Sociology for Whom? New York: Oxford University Press.
Lofland Lyn H. 1973, A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space. New
York: Basic Books.
Lynch Michael. 1983. "Accommodation Practices: Vernacular Treatments of Madness". Social
Problems 31 (December): 152-64.
Mills C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. London: Oxford University Press.
Morgan Gareth. 1983. "In Research, as in Conversation, We Meet Ourselves". In Beyond
Method: Strategies for Social Research, ed. Gareth Morgan, pp. 405-7. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Riemer Jeffrey W. 1977. "Varieties of Opportunistic Research". Urban Life 5(January):467-77.
Rogers Joseph W. 1977. Why Are You Not a Criminal? Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall.
Starr Paul. 1982. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books.
Stewart Robert L., and Larry T. Reynolds. 1985. "The Biologizing of the Individual and the
Naturalization of the Social". Humanity and Society 9:159- 167.
Westhues Kenneth. 1982. First Sociology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Will George F. 1983. "Washington's Little Miracles". Newsweek, December 5 p. 134.
Zola Irving Kenneth. 1983. Socio-Medical Inquiries: Recollections, Reflections, and
Reconsiderations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
1. It's Good for 'Em: Object Lessons in Youth Sports
Jeffrey E. Nash
Sociology can be detached from the concerns of everyday life. However, sometimes what we
think we know as sociologists forces us to examine in critical relief some of our common social
practices. This happened to me and is the basis of my personal sociology.
I have been involved in youth sports activities for several years. Like other parents, I worried
when I observed the remarkable capacity of children to log five to seven hours of television
watching in a single day. I fretted over the lack of supervised play for children, and I had the
usual parental concerns for my own children as they played in the streets of a large American
city. Hence, I became involved in organized sports as a typical father in many ways -- wanting to
help his children have fun, participate in sports, and develop "character."
But I am also a sociologist. I discovered myself in a strange relationship with the play of my
children. While part of my activities were guided by the attitude of parent and sports enthusiast,
another part was influenced by my sociological commitment to understand social life.
I would tell my classes about how cultures may be organized into contradictory values. In
lectures, I would discuss how the play of people in a given society helps them form ideas about
themselves (self-concepts) and how the ideas they have of their place in society are shaped by
their socialization experiences.
Then, I would watch children on the baseball field struggling to learn how to judge a fly ball, or
see a young hockey player confused about what a "charging" penalty is really about. My
scholarly/teaching activities, in effect, spoiled my play. I could not help but see the young
hockey player as someone undergoing socialization, or the BMX racer learning something about
what it means to be a citizen of modern society.
Rather, than ignoring the potential data that confronted me daily, I started asking questions like:
"What type of people do children become by virtue of participating in organized sports?" "Are
such sports as football and hockey promoting violence and antisocial behaviors in general?" Or,
on the other hand, "Does participation in sports serve to buffer children from strong negative
influences in society to use drugs and otherwise go astray?" In other words, I started doing
sociological field research.
A NOTE ON OPPORTUNISTIC METHODOLOGY
Since I will offer to you a series of interpretations which go far beyond my own direct
experiences, I should tell a little about how I functioned as a field-worker among children.
Several sociologists have written about the issues involved in this kind of research and I refer
you to the excellent article by Gary Alan Fine and Barry Glassuer ( 1979). Here's how I did it.
Every weekend for more than three years during the summer months and sometimes even on
weekdays, I worked at bicycle motorcross (BMX) tracks performing several jobs. The one I
finally settled into was "starter." I would stand at the top of the starting hill surrounded by the
racers and give the commands that started the races and watch the action out on the track. I have
reported on the details of the organization of BMX elsewhere ( Nash, 1984; and forthcoming).
Here, I want to underscore how my personal involvement in this sport gave me an opportunity to
"collect data" about the practices of this sporting event and, much more importantly, about the
talking, thinking, and actions of a very large group of young people, mostly boys from four to
seventeen years of age.
I simply became a part of the background on race day. I was seen as an official who helps make
the elaborate event of the BMX race possible, but I was a presence so familiar that unguarded
comments about other adults and fine samples of natural talk and interaction were easy to
observe. My personal involvement in BMX drew me into helping make decisions about whether
a racer had "jumped the gate," (started too soon), and even, on occasion, as settler of disputes
whenever a parent protested a judgment, or complained about the manner in which a racer rode,
or a race was organized. So complete was my personal involvement in the organized play of
children that, to use a phrase coined by ethnomethodologists ( Mehan and Wood, 1975), I
became the phenomenon.
My personal involvement in youth sports have not been limited to BMX. Weekday evenings in
the warm summer months belong to baseball and soccer and hockey camps take up the fall and
winter. I also rely on several published studies of youth sports, but the bulk of my observations,
where I really saw the kids in action, comes from countless hours logged in frigid ice rinks;
cheering my son's team and giving often unheeded advice and counsel, from the 100 degree, hot
dust of the neighborhood baseball field; and from my practice of simply being with the kids
during their participation in organized play.
MODERN SOCIETY
My scholarly activity lead me to consider critically the nature of modern society. It seemed to me
that few other concepts in sociology have generated as much research and controversy as that of
modernity. Some sociologists think modern societies (those with high technology, relatively
large portion of their economic system given over to "disposable income," slow population
growth and urban life-styles) represent radical and novel forms of social organization. For
example, in modern society, people often struggle with questions of personal identity and
belonging -- they experience "identity crises" ( Weigert, 1983), "homelessness" ( Berger, Berger,
and Kellner, 1974) and "individualistic psychology" (Inkeles, 1983). Modern society seems to
challenge more traditional ones. Moreover, to sociologists, the shift toward modernity seems to
be, if not universal, at least pervasive worldwide ( Parsons, 1971).
To the degree that modern societies require new skills of their members-such as how to deal with
strangers, think rationally about everyday life, and be highly individualistic and manipulative of
self and others traditional institutions may simply not be socializing people in ways consistent
with the needs of modern life (cf., Lofland, 1973). Hence, traditional institutions become less
powerful and change to accommodate the needs of people who must live under the conditions of
modernity.
At the personal level, the weakening of traditional institutions translates into genuine concerns
and fears. The anxiety parents experience is clearly related to dramatic changes in the structure
of the modern American family. Increasing numbers of working mothers, divorce, single parent
families, increased mobility, and the effects of mass media exposing children to the darker sides
of adult life at earlier and earlier ages come together in a revealing way in the question of
children's play. In America in the early decades of this century, children were absorbed in the
activities of their families. But for at least the past four decades, in increasingly more families,
children have become economic and social liabilities. In modern society, the question of care and
responsibility for children assumes a new form: "What are we to do with the children?"
Adult responses to this question can be seen in the growth of organizations dealing with children.
To fill the void between home and school a host of youth activities and programs have appeared.
Each of these aims to socialize children in healthy environments, suitable to the complex task of
preparing the younger generations for the admittedly difficult world of their future adulthood.
The Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA, Boy's Club, Campfire Girls, and a host of religious and
sectarian organizations represent early responses to the problem. Today virtually any activity one
can imagine from learning to skate with a puck to programming a computer has been organized
as a "place" to send children to give them something to do.
In modern society, the very idea of unsupervised, idle, energetic young people simply doing
nothing on the streets of major cities strikes fear in the hearts of those responsible for the
maintenance of cultural goals and values; and no traditional institute in Western society
sanctions idleness. Of course, in reality, millions of children have, in the most literal sense
possible, nothing to do. Adults and parents know this, and the tension between what is supposed
to happen and what does is further cause, in the minds of many, to introduce still more
organization in the worlds of children's play. Organized sports stand as one way to dealing with
children. Hence, to study what children might learn by participating in sports helps to complete
the picture of the "fate of children" in modern society.
This is a brief sketch of scholarly issues that took up a large part of my sociological imagination.
I knew I would never settle the fundamental issues of the effects of modernity by studying the
children I came into contact with, but I did think that many of the questions I dealt with as a
sociologist were reflected in the experiences of children engaged in organized play.
What I offer below consists of selected and condensed observations and of sociological
interpretations of them in light of the greater question of what is the meaning (modern or
otherwise) of the experiences children have in organized play.
THE OBJECT LESSONS OF ORGANIZED PLAY
I did not set out to answer the question of how well children learn the lessons of organized play.
It seemed to me that a prior question is, what are the lessons? In this sense, I functioned like an
anthropologist who attempts to uncover the "structure of meaning" in a culture ( Spradley, 1981).
I wanted to find basic values, or lessons, so that I could see the ways in which organized play
serve as a socialization experience for children in modern society.
I decided to select "specimen experiences," or things that happened to parents and children
which seemed to be especially revealing of the ways that parents and children interpret their
participation in organized play ( Ogles, 1980). I believed that if I analyzed these experiences,
carefully applying sociological concepts to them, I could uncover some object lessons of
organized play. Even though I would not be able to say whether or not these lessons become a
part of the moral character of children, I could identify the character of the lessons. In this
fashion, I address how well these lessons match the sociological view of what a modern society
requires of its members.
THE SERIOUSNESS OF LEISURE
The alarm rings at 5 A.M. Saturday. A sleepy arm reaches from a warm bed into the cold
morning to shut it off. A man slowly stretches from the bed muttering to himself as he
immediately begins to dress. He skips his usual working habits, and moves to the business at
hand. He wakes his nine-year-old son from his deep sleep and admonishes him to "get ready."
The young boy does not resist, He gets up and starts putting on his equipment, first the protective
cup and shin pads, then socks and garter belt, shoulder pads, breezers, and jersey. He puts his
gloves, helmet, and skates into his hockey bag. Together, father and son head to the car through
the still dark morning for a 20-mile drive to the ice rink.
Sports is serious business. To sacrifice a Saturday morning for the game of hockey says
something about a father's attitude toward sports. An object lesson of sports for children is that
sports is serious. A contemporary sociologist, Robert Stebbins, has coined a phrase which aptly
captures the essence of this lesson: "serious leisure" ( Stebbins, 1982). This term refers to a
special variety of leisure time activity in which the participants take seriously their activities.
Hence, they may train for a weekend footrace, invest money in restoring an old automobile, or
even engage in scientific observations of the movements of stars. In serious leisure, a person
merges play and work. Energy expended in this type of activity is not thought of as a time-out or
a break from one's regular occupation. Instead, people think about the pursuit of leisure in a very
serious and often personally meaningful way. In serious leisure, a person thinks of his energies
as molded and shaped by personal decision, not by requirements of formal organizations or
obligations of contract.
Several scholars have pointed to what might well be new lessons for citizens of modern societies
where work becomes more routine and even professional accomplishments are circumscribed by
impersonal, seemingly shallow layers of social structure which drain any sense of personal
achievement ( Irwin, 1977). In the boring world of everyday life, one viable escape route is
serious leisure. In the middle-class world where the economic means to pursue such endeavors is
more or less available, serious leisure helps people deal with alienation, restlessness, and
impersonal daily routines. Stebbins ( 1982:267) concludes his article by criticizing modern
educational institutions because they do not promote the "skills and knowledge, the
accumulation of experience and the expending of effort" that serious leisure requires. I observe
that organized play gives children opportunities to prepare for an adulthood of serious leisure in
ways that, perhaps, traditional institutions do not. When a child learns how to ride a new bike,
when he or she acquires an attitude necessary to see riding a small bicycle around a dirt track, or
slapping a hard rubber object into a nylon net as important, they may be getting ready for their
adult pursuits of serious leisure.
In their study of Muncie, Indiana, conducted during the 1920s, Robert and Helen Lynd ( 1929)
remarked that people often use the same attitudes they have about work to guide and shape the
vigor and meaning of their leisure life. What I see in my experiences with organized youth
activities is play as work to be sure, but more than this. With the prospect of less meaningful
work, more routine practices and more time off from work, less time taken up in conventional
parenting and finally with the expectation of more expendable income that adults have for the
current generation of youngsters, learning to be serious about play emerges as a "rational" object
lesson for adulthood.
To observe that serious leisure often is an expensive affair, and the successful pursuit of this
form of play requires learning how to consume hardly breaks new sociological ground. However,
as I focused on the everyday economics of organized play for children not only was I able to
verify costs in dollars and cents, but I noticed what I thought was a curious kind of spending.
BMXers will spend over $500 for a bicycle, and they will gladly travel hundreds of miles to race,
pay for motel rooms, and pay perhaps $25.00 or more in registration fees for important races. A
father of a hockey player must accustom himself to at least $100 for good skates, and of course
there is always need for a new stick, at an average of $12.00 a piece. But this is merely a ledger
of expenses. What I noticed for all the sports'I observed (BMX, horse riding, and skiing are
merely spectacular examples) was that participants regularly destroyed, in what seemed to be a
systematic fashion, the very items they had just procured. Further they did this with little remorse
associated with the lost valued object. Of course, I am referring here primarily to the children,
but after awhile even the parents who might have at first objected most strongly to this practice
become accomplices in it. I observed that destroyed items were speedily replaced by the child or
the sponsor (usually a parent), but the children seemed to derive some measure of
accomplishment from destroying equipment. I investigated by watching closely for the
circumstances under which equipment was destroyed and the reactions of parents or other adults
who by conventional standards should know better.
RITUAL WASTE
Both 14 years old, Kevin and Bob talk while waiting for their age-group practice at the starting
gate.
"Nice frame you got there, Bob."
"Yea, I got three more at home, but I trashed my Hutch and I'm waiting for the guarantee."
"Hey, what happened?"
"Oh, I got radical at the triple jumps at Ridgefield. I took the jumps with too much air and 'pop' it
busted right at the gusset!"
"Wow, really great, Bob."
I discovered there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to destroy equipment. If a BMX racer
"trashes" a pair of pedals by "spinning" during a race (this means beaking the pedals by really
pedaling hard), or if he attempts a particularly difficult maneuver during a warm-up session with
the style and control expected of an accomplished racer, and equipment breaks, the boy accrues a
measure of status from other members of this BMX scene. Newcomer parents often fail to
appreciate this pattern of behavior and may even influence their sons to quit this sport, but those
who are in BMX, or hockey or any other sport requiring "high quality" equipment are party to
the practice.
As I thought about what I repeatedly saw and as I observe the ridicule and laughter evoked
whenever a youngster would break something in an inappropriate way-throwing a bicycle in
frustration or breaking a stick by violently slapping it against the ice, for example, I searched for
a way to describe and account for the practice. I was reminded of potlatch, the curious practice
of the Kwakuitl Indians of the Pacific Northwest. These Indians, on occasion, would either give
away or destroy valuable property in public. Anthropologists were, at first, stymied in their
efforts to discover what purposes and ends this practice served ( Piddocke, 1969; Orans, 1975;
Rochberg-Halton, 1982). Although there is still disagreement about the details of the practice,
now forbade by law, scholars seem to agree it could best be explained by focusing on the
reciprocity among members of a village. The potlatch was a way to gain and reassure status in
dimensions of community life other than the economic. It was a means to symbolically reinforce
membership, a membership which entailed reciprocal relationships among the members of a
given community. By wasting something valuable in public, a person incurs debt by
necessitating borrowing and bartering. In effect, he places himself in the middle of the
organization of the culture by making himself vulnerable. His show of faith in the efficacy of the
ways of his culture worked promoted his rank.
In organized sports and highly competitive activities where equipment, its possession and
refinement is both necessary to and a symbol of membership, a similar reciprocity system
develops. Most sociologists regard pure play as without instrumental value -- it serves no
purpose other than play. In a sense, then, to participate in play means that certain core values of
society like frugality, industriousness, and a serious attitude about success through the
established channels of achievement in school, either academic or athletic are being challenged.
When pursued at the serious level of deep involvement, any sport can become an all-consuming
activity. In BMX, this deep degree of involvement is called "chasing points." In other sports it is
referred to as "being into the sport." In BMX, for example, when "chasing points" the children
miss school, stay up late, and travel on long, hard trips from race track to race track.
An adult editor of a popular BMX magazine wrote an article in which he responded to a parent's
complaints about the deleterious effects of BMX on his child's academic performance. The editor
replied that most of what he learned in school served no end for him in adulthood, and though he
stopped short of an indictment of school, he clearly stated that the lessons of BMX are truer to
the "real life" problems children will face in their adulthood.
One of these lessons is apparently that of the mastery of ritual waste. By buying the same things
repeatedly and breaking them in pursuit of BMX goals, the child incurs rank in the BMX world.
To loan equipment with disregard for the possibility of damage to it is a strong example of the
BMX potlatch. An object lesson of organized play is that a necessary condition for membership
in many competitive groups is the economic ability to have the appropriate equipment, but that
equipment alone does not ensure full membership nor does it guarantee rewards deriving from
membership. By conspicuously wasting the very objects of membership, the child demonstrates
his understanding of membership requirements. Like the Kwakuitl Indian who trusts his fellow
community members to give him a warm coat for winter after he has publicly torn his to shreds,
the BMXer trusts that if he really needs a wheel for the last race of the day after having broken
his own, a fellow BMXer will loan him one.
ACCOMPLISHING A SENSE OF WELL-BEING
It's the third inning of a cub baseball game (10- and 11-year-old boys) and Mike is playing
second base. He has not played infield much this year and has been having trouble with ground
balls. There are two outs and one man is on base. The batter hits a ground ball right at Mike. He
goes down on one knee and does not cleanly field the ball, but he keeps it in front of him. He
picks it up from the dust and makes a good throw to first. The runner is out, and the side is
retired. As Mike comes in from the field, he cannot suppress a wide grin on his face -- his coach
looks at him while making a thumbs-up gesture and says, "Way to stay with it, Mike."
A third lesson which is embedded in the organization of youth play in modern society is a
dramatic illustration to children of the accomplishment of a sense of well-being. In the play of
hockey, baseball, or soccer, in the mastery of a skating routine or a maneuver on the uneven
parallel bars, there is more built into the activity than just a chance to win. Adult or ganizers
struggle to achieve balanced leagues and install rules to equalize playing time for all children
regardless of their ability. Although the ideal of equality of participation decreases with older age
groups of children until, as they approach adulthood, the lessons of team membership are well
enough learned so that coaches can more nearly emulate professional sports and play only the
best, still a subtle but powerful lesson remains: what is required to feel good about oneself and
one's performance is not necessarily to be the best. Rather, one learns to interpret performances
in terms of highly individualized procedures. A child learns, then, that his mediocre play in
baseball is offset by his proclivity for ice hockey, or his inability to shoot baskets is balanced by
his good sportsmanship.
In other words, a child's multiple involvements condition the ways he can interpret his own
worth. He can evaluate his activities relative to his other interests. In adult society, well-being
has been shown to derive from the segmented and proliferated opportunities people have to
judge themselves positively ( Nash, 1979). Although not all people succeed in finding something
they do well, apparently enough do so that socioeconomic indicators alone do not fully predict
the distribution of feelings of well-being among the members of society. As several researchers
have concluded, in complex, modern society, the things people can do to distinguish themselves
from others are rich in variety and large in number ( Irwin, 1977).
It is not so much that a child learns to do one thing well, but that youth activities are, in a sense;
a set-up. They are planned to increase the chances that a child will do something in the play that
in some way can be interpreted as successful. This ploy is not so much for the "good of the
children" as it is an embodiment of a feature of citizenship in modern society, namely the belief
that the individual can master himself and his environment. By sampling the menu of things to
do and experiencing the reactions of peers and parents to what is done, most children are
exposed repeatedly to the idea that they can accomplish things through using their own ability.
Most importantly, even though they may not actually feel good about themselves (they could
have low self-esteem, for example) their participation in organized youth activities has presented
them, firsthand, with an object lesson for the achievement of a sense of accomplishment.
Ironically, learning to figure out a variety of ways to think positively about oneself is bound up
in mastering ways of thinking about failure. In this sense a very important lesson of sport is
learning how to lose. Indeed, in a well-balanced, carefully managed youth sport league the odds
for winning and losing should be nearly even. Even if adults in charge have arranged teams so
that the best players are concentrated into "powerhouse" teams, failure is an inescapable, even
structural feature of sport. It comes with the hitless game, with four penalties in a single period
of hockey, or with fouling out of an important basketball game.
HANDLING FAILURES
It's the game for the PeeWee league championship. The boys have been skating hard for three
periods and there are just a few seconds left in the game. Jerry's team is one goal behind. A
defenseman digs the puck out of the corner and skates down the ice with it. He looks up and sees
his left winger is open. He passes cleanly to him and the winger breaks out, he's clear to the net.
He closes on the goalie and does a head-fake. The goalie goes down. He shoots -- too high and
wide to the right. Ice time is up, the game is over. There are moans from the parents, friends, and
other players who had been watching. The winger says nothing. His teammates console him and
the coach tells him he played a great game. "Take more time with those easy shots," he says, as
the boys prepare for the long, quiet ride home.
How children learn to interpret these experiences is largely a matter of learning how to organize
and interpret their failure. Children discover that there are set procedures for doing this, and they
find these "models" in the actions of coaches, parents, and other players. Although there are
surely excitable parents, and even the most cool of hockey moms or dads will blow their tops on
occasion, after years of observing at a variety of different kinds of sporting events, I am
impressed with the degree of "coolness" exhibited by most adults involved with children's sports.
Moreover, when anger and frustration are expressed, these emotions are often displayed
according to some model of sports behavior. Hence, when a child strikes out during a baseball
game, he must figure out how to deal with that experience, that is, place it within a context of
organized experiences. At first, among the very young t-ball players, before they are able to
manage the full range of throwing, catching, and hitting skills required to play the game, and
before they grasp the mature meanings of the game, they may not understand what it means to
strike out. It may simply appear to them as though their turn is over which, at one level, is a
correct understanding. Later, as they gain mastery of the game, they interpret striking out in
highly personal terms. They may cry, throw their bat or sulk, perhaps, to the embarrassment of
their parents.
What embarrasses the parent is the child's incomplete playing of the game. It is not so much that
the child "failed" to hit the ball, it is the child's reaction to his failure that is embarrassing. The
meanings of failure are specific to each particular game. It means one thing to fail in BMX,
another in hockey, and so on. But the experiences of failing are often surrounded by supporting
organizational apparatus. Just as a con man "cools out" his "mark" after he has swindled him, the
child who has spent large sums of money and energy to get a BMX bicycle only to fail to win a
trophy race after race can be cooled out by his knowledge that he tried and, after all, got the bike
he really wanted. Or, he may simply have learned to enjoy the values and goals of BMX as
reflected in the supporting organization of BMX: the magazines, bike shop culture, clothes, and
the friendship groups which shore up and maintain consumption and particular values of the
BMX scene.
In order to fail in an appropriate way, to learn to exhibit the right attitude and display selfcontrol, the child must discover the appropriate organization for these matters. He has help, but
he must frame his own activities in the end, trying out displays of emotions, various approaches
to thinking about his shortcomings, until he organizes these acts so that they work. In practical
terms, this means he can continue to participate and still order his experiences in ways that other
members of the sport scene recognize. Youngsters learn to play by organizing their experiences
in ways similar to all others involved in the activity. What the child is learning, often the hard
way, is a specific instance of the more general skill of staging emotions in situationally
appropriate ways.
The young hockey player learns that it is not the anger which causes trouble with the referee, but
the manner in which it is expressed. Even fighting in a sport like hockey or football seems to
have its place. Rules strictly prohibit fighting in youth sports and coaches and league organizers
will tell you that there are no fights in their sports. But anyone who has the opportunity to stay
with a single team over a season, as I did, to get close to the team members so that you are with
them before, during, and after games, will have a decidedly different view.
STAGING EMOTIONS
In the locker room as the boys ready for a high school junior varsity hockey game, their
conversations reveal they are anxious about what they know will be a physical game.
"These guys are chippy, real hacks, last time we played 'em they really took it to us."
"Yea, I hope Jim (the team's biggest and roughest player) really sticks someone--'specially that
number sixteen guy -- he really stinks!"
Jim looks up and smiles. "I'll get'em," he remarks. The coach comes in and gives the team a talk
about playing hard but clean and "keeping it under control."
Halfway through the second period, there's been hard checking but few penalties. The referees
are on top of the calls. Suddenly number 16 comes on the ice during Jim's shift. Sixteen skates to
center ice with the puck and Jim lines him up, He has perfect position, he digs in his skates, and
throws a check squarely on target. Number 16 goes down and the puck comes free. There are
moans and cheers from the spectators. Next time Jim is on the ice, he draws a penalty for a minor
infraction and sits quietly for his two minutes in the penalty box.
The serious fight is indeed a rare occurrence. When it happens, great alarm and concern are
expressed and closer supervision inevitably follows. I am not referring to the spectacular brawl
which most sports fans have witnessed at professional games or on television reports. These
fights occur whenever emotions come out of frame and must be restrained in physical and direct
rather than social and indirect ways. I have in mind the small fights which happen in the form of
punches, kicks, and bumps during a game.
In hockey, there is perhaps no harder lesson for the child to learn than to take a hit without
retaliating in anger, or more to the point, to retaliate in anger without breaking a rule of proper
play, as in the case of a hard, clean hit on a boy who has been playing "chippy" (dirty or on the
verge of loss of control). The young player, through team cheers, customs of hard skating, and
the results of hard, violent play learns the lessons of the importance of coolness in staging
emotions. I do not mean to imply that cool means the lack of excitation, instead it means the
stance of being in control in the face of danger or risk ( Lyman and Scott, 1970). Certainly, an
object lesson of organized sport activities for children is to learn the art of staging and
controlling emotion ( Zurcher, 1982).
CONCLUSIONS
This chapter began with my account of how my personal experiences in youth sports activities
became my data for describing and understanding the way such participation teaches children
about the society in which they live. While I enjoyed, at times, being with youngsters and
watching them grow, learn, and have fun, I was also critical of the rationale that I heard for what
youth sports was supposed to be all about. My study forced me to distinguish between what
lessons were supposed to be and how they appeared to the children, or, from a sociological
perspective, how they actually were.
I discovered that adages about the lessons of sports as a character builder, as molder of morals,
and as a buffer against the evils of life in modern society all contained elements of truth.
However, my sociological training forced me to examine these precepts of commonsense
knowledge critically.
Whether the popular idea that sports builds character is a scientifically defensible hypothesis, I
cannot directly answer. However, insofar as the object lessons embodied in the organization of
youth sports are concerned, I offer a strong conclusion. Youth sports embody character-building
lessons. They offer children examples of the skills they need as adults. They illustrate the
appropriateness of being serious about play and the degree to which play can be important in
modern life. They teach "wasteful consumption" as a means of gaining membership in a group.
They demonstrate the complexity of processes of accomplishment and of handling failure, and,
perhaps, above all else, they allow for the practice of staging emotions.
To be sure, the consequences of these lessons are probably mixed in the actual lives of the
children who participate in youth sports, with some children learning well and others not at all.
But for all children who participate, because they are segregated into age groups, organized
sports provides a measure of protection from the real and imagined dangers in society. However,
whenever children are isolated in this fashion, it is possible that they will develop their own
versions of what society is about which may be at odds with adult society. For example, Fass (
1977) traces the origins of today's youth culture and its anti-adult themes to changes in society
requiring special provisions for the prolongation of childhood dependency. Kid society may not
always accurately reflect adult society.
Youth sports originated partially as an attempt to isolate children from the influence of such
alternative versions of culture. However, unlike many youth culture movements, adults are an
integral part of youth sports. They serve as coaches, directors, and sponsors. These adults
provide for young people opportunities to make sense out of the basic values of society. The
concerns of adults to protect and prepare young people are inseparable.
When children participate in organized play, they are confronted with forms of social life which
are mixtures of youth play and adult definitions of appropriate participation. While children do
have some freedom to decide for themselves, among themselves the meanings of their
participation, adults are always there to intervene. The interaction between what sports are
supposed to be and the way they are played by children provided me with information necessary
to learn a little more about how children learn what kind of adults they should become.
But has my sociology of children provoked in me "practical or public" response? Have I become
an outspoken critic of little league bseball, or Northstar BMX? To be sure, some sociologists
engaged in the study of youth sports are outspoken critics of what they study. Vaz (' 1982), for
instance, concludes his book on youth hockey by suggesting a major revamping of the rules of
the game. He favors not keeping score in the conventional sense, but developing an alternative
scoring system which acknowledges the child's gradual mastery of the skills of the game. His
ideas, of course, have not been adopted.
My own reaction to what I learned instilled in me an appreciation of organized play. I saw little
of the "evils" often attributed to youth games. I saw, for example, no life-threatening injuries, no
ruined pitcher's arms, no front teeth on the ice. While insurance statistics show that sometimes
these injuries do occur, and while many, perhaps even most, children simply do not want to
engage in youth sports, and surely should not be forced to, overall I was impressed with the
appropriateness of the organization of youth play. Parents do yell and criticize referees and
umpires; coaches do often mistake a kid's football game for an NFL play-off match. But all of
this I saw in a new light once I worked out the character and function of organized play in the
context of modern society. The friends children make on the playing field may not become the
friends they play with after school, but they learn about the situational nature of modern
friendship; the emotions they experience may well be quite intense, but the way they attempt to
deal with them is practice in the presentation of self ( Goffman, 1959).
At the most personal level, my sociology allowed me to simply partici pate. It redefined my
ideas about being a "modern" father, and gave me an appreciation of the overall "good
judgment" that untrained, volunteer fathers exhibit as sponsors and organizers of youth play.
Perhaps, most importantly, my sociological quest lead me to a feeling that modern society is
developing a structure to the socialization experiences of children, and, perhaps after all, there
really are "places for children to play."
2 . Social Roles and Interaction
Louis A. Zurcher
INTRODUCTION
As members of society each of us occupies a remarkable diversity of social positions, called
statuses by sociologists, during the course of our lives. We are, for example, daughters, sons,
spouses, mothers, fathers, students, professors, vice-presidents, clerks, joggers, voters,
automobile drivers, customers, club members, volunteers, and so on. Some of the positions are
central to our lives and to how we perceive ourselves; some are only incidental. All of the
statuses we occupy, whether of major or minor importance to us, involve expectations for our
behavior. Depending upon the kind of status, the associated behavioral expectations, called roles
by sociologists, are more or less formalized. The student role primarily is formally defined
within educational organizations -- expectations regarding course requirements, class attendance,
class performance, interactions with instructors, study techniques, graduation criteria, typically
codified in written academic documents. The customer role in a supermarket is informally
defined-procedures for picking items from shelves or bins (for example, do not poke holes in the
tomatoes, do not take cans from the bottom of the display stack), rules of the road for driving
shopping carts, guidelines for deportment at the checkout counter, typically not codified in
written documents.
Because of our many everyday experiences with statuses, we are all experts in role enactment. It
seems common sense to us that we are involved in a network of social positions and related
behavioral expectations. How we have become part of that network, how we are affected by and
affect the statuses and roles, usually is less clear to us. Though we routinely enact roles, we tend
not to examine systematically why we have decided to conform to them, to reject them, to
resolve conflicts among them, or to impose our own creativity on them. That examination is an
important part of the scholarly scope of sociology.
Dramaturgical analysis is one of the sociological approaches to understanding role enactment. It
suggests that social life usefully can be conceptualized as theater, each social setting a unique
stage involving roles specific to the immediate situation ( Goffman, 1959; Brissett and Edgely,
1975). Role enactors are players on the stage, influenced by the pertinent scenarios and scripts.
Dramaturgical analysis differs from commercial artistic productions in that everyday life is not
so contrived, predictable, or easily condensed. Broadway and Hollywood scripts might
eloquently highlight some crucial social realities, for example: occupational role decay in Death
of a Salesman, organizational role dilemmas in Mission, family role conflict in Hannah and Her
Sisters, role rejection in Children of a Lesser God, role distortion in Being There, and role
confusion in Platoon. Dramaturgical analysis attends to the fuller range of our social activities,
most never to be immortalized commercially but all constituting the fabric of our lives. We
everyday folks have much more latitude than professional actors to negotiate the character of our
roles through interaction with significant others in our social settings ( Strauss, 1968). That
interaction involves the ability to communicate with each other by a complex system of verbal
and nonverbal. symbols, by language and gestures ( Mead, 1934), a process known to
sociologists as "symbolic interaction" ( Blumer, 1969). Because of that ability, we can develop,
assign, and share with others the form and meaning of role behavior.
PERSONAL SOCIOLOGY AND ROLES
In this chapter, I will focus on aspects of interactionally based role behavior toward which my
personal sociology has taken me and which have shaped my personal sociology. I will include
examples of role learning, conflict, creation, balance, and emotion. The major theme throughout
the examples will be how people in varied social settings exercise autonomy and individuality in
role enactment. That theme, best exemplified by such scholars as Allport ( 1955), Murphy (
1947), White ( 1959), and Turner ( 1962, 1976), has been and still is the domain concept in the
work I have done as a personal sociologist.
Since this book innovatively explores the relation between the experiences and the research
endeavors of the chapter authors, I must make a confession. I am only partly a sociologist,
personal or otherwise. All of my university degrees are in psychology, social psychology to be
more specific. I have had joint teaching affiliations with departments of psychology, sociology.
social work, and psychiatry. Those affiliations involved role enactments, sometimes
corresponding, sometimes conflicting. The other chapter authors also have had considerable
cross-disciplinary experience. The broad conclusion might be that the role of personal
sociologists. should you want to enact it, involves your attention to other social science
disciplines. The narrow conclusion is that my chapter will most certainly be biased in that
direction.
LEARNING ROLES
Recruits and Sailors
We learn about role expectations from many sources in a variety of settings: for example, parents
and siblings in the family, teachers in the school, clergy in the church or temple, friends in the
peer group, supervisors in the workplace, quasi- or pseudo-sages in the media, colleagues in
clubs and other voluntary associations, acquaintances in leisure activities, and so on. The process
of learning role expectations can be summarized as socialization. We develop not only an
understanding of the expectations but of the rewards/punishments for the degree of effectiveness
with which we enact them.
Some settings allow more flexibility for role enactment than others. A university is less rigid
than a maximum security prison (though you might not agree with the distinction while you are
being processed through school registration lines). Prisons represent what Goffman ( 1961: xiii)
termed "total institutions -- places of residence and work where a large number of individuals,
cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed,
formally administered round of life." Other examples of total institutions include asylums,
monastaries and cloisters, military recruit training centers, and ships at sea. The administrative
control of member role socialization in those settings is intense and extensive, affecting all
aspects of everyday interaction. Total institutions are extreme but ideal locations for observing
the role enactment process.
Thirty years ago I volunteered for four years active duty in the United States Navy. I became a
trainee, a "boot," in a total institution, the Naval Recruit Training Center. It was there, prodded
by the gentle, delicate, guidance (irony intended) of my recruit company commander, that I
began seriously reflecting about the process of role learning. Partly to retain my sanity and partly
because I became intrigued by the manner in which role lessons were being presented, I kept a
log of my experiences in boot camp. (Personal sociologists are notorious log, diary, and note
keepers.)
The function of the Naval Recruit Training Center was to convert the boots from civilian to
sailor role enactment. The first task was to decivilianize the recruits, to strip them of most of the
role inclinations they previously embraced. Those inclinations included civilian-based notions
about independence, privacy, and physical image. Assuming that to have been accomplished, the
next task was to provide recruits with a viable alternative for role enactment -- the sailor role.
The recruit training system offered a rich array of lessons for enacting the sailor role: the
company commander and other supervisors as role models; formal courses in the training
sequence; pointed contrasts between the accomplishments of the chronologically more advanced
recruit companies and the lowly status of your own company; and encouragement of peer
pressure for conforming to the sailor role.
Recruits either accommodated the sailor role learning or they did not. If they chose not to, they
were discharged from the Navy or assigned to a "retraining" track for further socialization. Those
who successfully accommodated the role did so in different ways. Some totally embraced the
sailor role; they were sailors first and other roles were secondary. Their self-concept was
primarily that of sailor. Some successfully enacted the organizationally appropriate behavior, but
actually were only "playing" the role for assorted reasons -- training, opportunity to travel,
preparation of civilian occupation. The sailor role was part of but not primary in their selfconcepts. Theirs was an autonomous decision in service of other rolesalient goals they had.
Navy officials did not care why boots conformed to the expected behavior. All that mattered was
that they did conform. For purposes of career retention, the officials hoped that recruits would
incorporate the sailor role deeply into definition of self, and they did what they could to make it
so. But the officials were not naive. They knew that would happen only in some cases. They
necessarily and readily accepted the conformity of boots who were only playing the sailor role,
so long as it advanced the work of the organization.
When they graduated from the Naval Training Center, and perhaps after additional technical
training in navy schools, most sailors were assigned to sea duty. Their introduction to life aboard
ship involved additional role learning. The two and a half years I lived on a naval vessel
sharpened my personal sociology about that phenomenon.
Boot camp mostly concentrated on teaching young sailors about the role expectations of the
navy's formal organization. A navy ship is a formal organization, indeed when at sea a total
institution. It presents a set of statuses and behavioral expectations which are outlined in
organizational charts, job descriptions, and books of regulations. After they reported aboard ship,
the young sailors were obliged to learn and enact those formal expectations, many of which were
consistent with what they learned as boots. They were taught those lessons in lectures, as
apprentices in assorted work stations, and by assigned supervisors. But they also were challenged
to learn a network of informal statuses and roles which were not published in any ship's
document and which were barely addressed in recruit training.
They were taught those lessons in informal settings by individuals who had served on ships
longer than they. Learning the formal roles made the new sailors part of the ship's formal
organization. Learning the informal roles made them part of the informal organization.
Sometimes the two sets of roles corresponded, sometimes they conflicted. But it was necessary
to enact both sets in order to become an accepted member of shipboard society. That
circumstance was not different from what happens in any organization -- the presence of formal
and informal roles is typical. However, on a ship the informal roles seemed to be more powerful,
more visible, and more dominant in everyday activities than in most organizations.
The new sailors were subjected to a series of role-related initiations by the informal instructors.
They were ordered to carry out all sorts of tasks which were fictitious but about which they were
expected to be naive. For example, they were asked to get a bucket of steam from the engine
room, to get some "numeral" paint from the storeroom, or to get a "seaweed wrench" from the
tool locker. They were told that a rare "sea bat" bad been captured and were invited to view it in
its cage on deck. They were sent to the ship's post office to get some "sea stamps." They were
provided outlandish advice about how to prevent seasickness (particularly if they were showing
signs of malaise) -- "get a dozen raw eggs from the galley and swallow them with cold coffee."
(In today's more sophisticated electronic navy, they are ordered to get some " salt-resistant"
computer disks from the supply officer.) As they rushed about to accommodate the assignments
and "opportunities," they sooner or later were greeted with uproarious laughter by the informal
role teachers.
The new sailors, whether or not genuinely naive about the initiation processes, were expected to
conform with good humor and to display at least some embarrassment when "caught" in the
foolish act. They were being socialized into shipboard life by their informal seniors. They were
being involved in the necessarily close interaction patterns aboard ship. Following the rather
frivolous initiations, they were instructed about a serious informal role expectation --" working
deals" with peers in order to more effectively get assigned jobs done and to make life aboard
ship more tolerable. These "deals" primarily involved circumventing the chain of command and
unofficially exchanging goods and services. For example, the electrical shop repaired the
medical department's coffee percolator, and in return the electricians were provided a more
flexible schedule (shorter lines) for receiving required shots. The result was that the electricians
spent less time in line and more time on ship's work. The medical staff did not have to go to the
galley for coffee and therefore were not distracted from their duties.
The informal roles aboard ship, though typically taught to new sailors with as much pressure for
conformity as they were taught formal roles, provided considerably more latitude for autonomy.
Sailors were able to use the informal organization with greater innovation, to interact with
humor, to make deals that were consonant with their inclinations and needs. The informal
organization and its roles were their properties.
Summary
My personal sociology was instrumentally shaped by the experiences I had as a boot and as a
sailor aboard ship. Those experiences pressingly informed me about social life in total
institutions and in other demanding organizations. They especially informed me about role
learning and how actors on such stages negotiate situational degrees of role conformity and
autonomy. I was impressed that even in very constrictive structural settings, human beings find
ways to implement their self-based inclinations, indeed toward that end playing behavior which
on the face seemed to be conformity.
The boot and ship experiences set the course for my continuing interest in voluntarism. Why do
people volunteer for specific role obligations? What is the basis for their choices? What are the
consequences of the choices? Why might they subsequently abandon a choice and replace it with
another? How do the consequences of volunteering for role obligations differ from involuntarily
being thrust into them?
RESOLVING ROLE CONFLICT
Sorority Hashers and Airplane Passengers
All of us occupy many statuses in everyday life and consequently we are called upon to enact
many roles. We possess sets of repertoires of roles ( Merton, 1957; Biddle and Thomas, 1966;
Gross and Stone, 1964). Sometimes, in a given situation, the behavioral expectations conflict.
For example, a woman experiences role conflict between being a full-time student and being a
single parent of a small child. Sometimes, in a given situation, the expectations for role
enactment contradict how we perceive ourselves. For example, a party-goer enacting that role
becomes uncomfortable with it when the celebration becomes rowdy as he or she does not
perceive self to be a rowdy person.
The conflict a problematic role, giving the impression of disaffection with it ( Goffman, 1961).
When I was in graduate school, I became intrigued by the role situation of hashers -- males who
were working part time as kitchen helper-waiterdishwashers in campus sorority houses. In return
for their work they received free meals and a small monthly salary. Some of them experienced
conflict between their roles as hasher and as college student, between menial labor and
preparation for a white-collar job. Generally, they easily resolved that conflict by considering the
hasher role as not more than a temporary necessity, one financially serving their higher
aspirations.
In the sorority most closely studied, the women were forbidden to date the hashers. Furthermore,
the women in that house routinely treated them as servants. The hashers thus experienced intense
conflict between their job and male student roles. Since the hours were flexible and the
workplace convenient to classes, the hashers chose not to resolve the conflict by quitting.
Instead, they distanced themselves from the hasher role by humor and hostility. They laughed at
their plight, engaged in all sorts of frivolous games in the kitchen (their refuge and place of
withdrawal), and richly interacted with each other not as hashers but as friends. They played
practical jokes on the sorority women, developed derogatory nicknames for them, and did
whatever they reasonably could to "get the girls' goats." Though their strategy was not always
admirable nor seemingly mature, the hashers did autonomously find a way to resolve or at least
tolerate the role conflict.
After graduate school I found myself being a frequent passenger of airplanes. I became
impressed with the process of passenger role enactment: making reservations; arriving at the
airport; checking in; boarding; taking off, flying, and landing; offloading; leaving the airport.
Each of those phases imposed specific role expectations for passenger behavior, including
conformity and passivity during processing. Taken together, the phases were representative of
the manner in which we are processed through "people pipelines " -- organizational settings
where we are customers, clients, patients, registrants, and the like. The phases are not the same
across settings, but there are always role-shaping phases of some sort. There are also always
pressures for conformity and passivity.
The airplane passenger experience suggested to me that we sometimes move through people
pipelines in "encapsulated groups." Those groups are collectivities of individuals who voluntarily
or involuntarily are clustered together in close proximity by ecological constrictions, mechanical
boundaries, or equipment designed for the purpose of attaining some goal or reaching some
destination. The airplane in flight restricts passengers in an encapsulated group -- there is no exit
from it when six miles above the ground. One's choice of interactions with others is limited to
the members of the group.
I noticed that some airplane passengers found ways to skip phases, to shorten them, and to
increase personal autonomy during them. Those individuals did not perceive themselves as
conforming or passive individuals and refused to be processed like a commodity. The typical
passenger role conflicted with their self-concepts. They quickly learned how the people pipeline
operated and manipulated it to their own advantage. They legitimately avoided having to stand in
long lines (used advanced reservation, ticketing, and check-in procedures), knowledgeably
arranged the best flights (assembled information from their personal flight guides), carefully
insured the greatest possible privacy and the least possible discomfort (avoided public airport
waiting areas), requested assignment to specifically preferred airplane seats, and judiciously
selected the interactions they wished to have with others in the encapsulated group (mastered
techniques for rejecting, inviting, and ending interactions). Those innovative passengers dealt
with the conflict between self and the passenger role by modifying the role so it would be less
conflicting.
Summary
Having the opportunity to analyze the hasher situation influenced by personal sociology by
alerting me to the reality of role conflict. As a student I already had learned about that concept,
and could ground it in some of my own experiences. But studying the hashers demonstrated
directly and concretely to me that role conflict had a structural basis, a situational uniqueness,
and that individuals suffering the conflict engaged in versatile if not creative ways to resolve it.
Dramaturgically considered, the actors do not always internalize their parts nor slavishly follow
the organizational script. I was never a hasher but two undergraduate students in one of my
introductory psychology discussion sections were hashers. They did the observing and the
experiencing; I supervised and analyzed. Personal sociology is not always influenced by first-
hand observations. Sometimes the substance of others' reports is equally compelling. Being a
member of the audience can be just as influential as being an actor on the stage.
That I was by circumstance cast so often in the role of airplane passenger yielded the "people
pipelines" and "encapsulated group" notions. The passenger experience especially informed my
personal sociology about how conflict between an organizational role and one's own self-concept
in a quite routine setting can be troublesome. It further informed me about how individuals can
and do effectively ameliorate the conflict by taking steps to modify the role. I was particularly
impressed with how individuals converted organizational expectations for passive conformity to
behaviors which fit with their self-definitions of active autonomy. That I was flying so often was
inadvertent. I am never comfortable in airplanes, in fact, some of my colleagues have teased me
that I wrote about airplane passengers (while I was in the air) in order to distract myself from
that discomfort. Personal sociology is just as readily influenced by experiences that we find
unpleasant as by those we find pleasant.
CREATING ROLES
Disaster Workers and Poker Players
Up to this point in the chapter I have indicated that my personal sociology had been instructed by
what I learned about how people in constrictive organizational settings do what they can to
maintain a sense of autonomy and self-consistency, how they work to turn conformity into
autonomy, role taking into role making. The examples I presented revealed the creativity of the
actors, but the creativity was seriously constrained by structural imperatives. There are many
situations in everyday life when people are challenged to or have the opportunity to create
entirely new role expectations for themselves. They usually do that in interaction with others in
similar situations. My personal sociology about that was educated by two incidental experiences.
While I was a postdoctoral trainee at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, the city
suffered disaster from a destructive tornado. The everyday statuses and roles of the community
members were disrupted. The disaster had established a role void, a moratorium on usual roles (
Taylor et el., 1970; Erikson, 1950). Innovative roles were demanded. As a member of the
community, I felt the role void. Like others, I searched for a role that would at least temporarily
help me fill the gap. My choice was to serve as a member of a volunteer work crew that cleared
tornadic debris from the houses of those directly in the path of the destruction. I did not initially
engage that task with the intention of studying role creativity. But as I labored in the work crew,
it struck me that something special was happening, a clearcut example of innovative emergency
roles. So I took on my experiences.
During the first day of my involvement with the volunteer work crew (seven people) we had
little direct role interaction. We were privatized individuals, hacking away at trees felled on
damaged houses as best we could. We were each isolates in interaction, slashing, chopping, and
sawing at impediments for whatever satisfaction it gave us. During the second day, we
developed as a coherent group. We evolved a division of labor, recognized each other in terms of
those work roles, mutually shared an argot (a vocabulary specific to our group), and developed a
sense of autonomy regarding our volunteer crew. When other individuals wanted to join the
crew, we gently rejected them if they did not conform to our expectations. During the third and
last day together, we recognized that our crew was only part of a community striving to recover
and that our emergency roles were being made obsolete by disaster recovery specialists. The
disrupted community was becoming whole again. Our disaster work crew roles were no longer
needed nor expected and therefore we disbanded. We had created temporary roles, useful to us
and to the community, but only for the moment.
Also while I was at The Menninger Foundation, I was invited to become a member of a longestablished poker group. The group was friendly, the stakes small, and the game enjoyable. I
joined because I like to play poker. But as I played with the group during the first night I was
impressed with the role creativity that was occurring. So I began to jot down my observations
whenever I could -- and continued to do so for twice-monthly games over a period of 18 months.
The poker players had established their game as a private little world. They briefly chatted about
general matters before the game began and after the game ended, but not during it. While poker
was being played, no conversation was tolerated that distracted from the game. The player role
had been informally but sharply defined by the group members. He should demonstrate enough
skill to enhance the competitive spirit, be able successfully to bluff, serve to sustain the action
and rapid pace of the game, be able humorously to tease and be teased about particular plays, and
faithfully abide by the group rules for game conduct.
Within the context of the roles and rules they had created, the players interacted intensely and
with obvious enjoyment. Each new hand was an adventure, more important than whether having
won or lost overall by the end of the evening. When the group recruited a new player, the
members quickly taught him their behavioral expectations by word, example, and gesture. If he
accommodated the expectations by the end of the first night, he was made a member; if not, he
was not again invited. Teaching the new members was an additional source of pleasureable
interaction for the players.
By creating and maintaining the poker group, the players had formed a microcosm in which they
could enact roles of their own design and choosing. They could show skill, control action,
compete, tease, bluff, recruit, and teach in ways not so readily accessible to them in role
enactments outside the game.
Summary
The volunteer work crew and poker game experiences significantly impressed my personal
sociology. Situationally, the two events were quite different. The first involved an emergency
role created by individuals to replace everyday roles which had been disrupted by natural
disaster. The second involved a leisure role created by individuals to broaden opportunity for
enjoyable interaction and role enactment. However, the inclination to create roles and the
interactive process underlying the innovations were similar in the crew and the game. Because of
those observations I suggested the idea of "ephemeral role" as an explanatory concept.
An ephemeral role is a temporary or ancillary position-related behavior pattern chosen by
individuals to satisfy social-psychological needs incompletely satisfied by the more dominant
and lasting roles they regularly must enact in everyday life positions. The dominant roles usually
are situated in work and family. Ephemeral roles, like those the crew members and poker players
experienced, usually are situated in voluntary associations. Since there are so many kinds of
ephemeral roles from which to choose, and so many ways we can create our own, the term
encompassed the essentials of autonomy which conceptually had become central to my personal
sociology.
I noticed an irony in the role innovations accomplished by the work crew and poker group
members. They created roles, then demanded their own and others' close conformity to
behavioral expectations. I was reminded that social behaviors which appear contradictory are not
always so. The crew and poker players indeed were conforming, but to expectations and rules
that they themselves had created. The newer members had less chance to affect role creativity,
but their decision to join and to conform (to pick a particular already established ephemeral role)
was itself an autonomous act.
From disaster to poker seems a rather tenuous conceptual leap. Personal sociologists, however,
tend to weave disparate life threads into what they think is a useful conceptual fabric. Like any
human endeavor, that is accomplished with greater or lesser success.
BALANCING ROLES
Civilians and Reservists
Given that we have repertoires of roles learned and enacted in all kinds of settings, how and why
do we add or subtract from them? More specifically, how do we assemble a role repertoire which
taken as a whole provides us with a generally satisfying life?
Twelve years after completing my active duty enlisted hitch, I accepted a Medical Service Corps
commission in the Naval Reserve. There were several reasons for my doing so, important among
them the opportunity to study the ephemeral role elements of being a Naval Reservist. For
several years I conducted research on why people join the Reserve, why they stay in, and why
they get out. I did so as a participant observer, myself enacting the ephemeral role, and as
director of or consultant to several large-scale navy surveys.
Reservists "drill" one weekend each month and serve on active duty two weeks each year. Nearly
all of them are paid for participation. All earn credit toward retirement and are granted limited
insurance, medical, and PX/commissary benefits. All had volunteered for the navy, though some
were under contractual obligation to remain in the Reserve until completion of their enlistments.
The navy involvement provided me an interesting look at how people choose ephemeral roles
and how they maintain a balance of satisfactions among roles in their repertoires. I was able to
compare their role satisfactions during full-time active duty (most of them had served two years
in that status), on Reserve duty and in civilian occupation. The satisfactions compared were:
authority, responsibility, prestige, use of talents and abilities, recognition for work, sense of
accomplishment, comradeship, promotions, training, supervisors, facilities/equipment, pay, and
fringe benefits. For the Reservists active duty was a past dominant role which functioned as a
model influencing their decision to participate in the Reserve. Reserve duty constituted an
ephemeral role. Civilian occupation (including being a full-time student) was a current dominant
role. Indeed I was analyzing only three roles among hundreds in the repertoires of the
approximately 10,000 respondents. But it was a beginning.
The findings and interpretations essentially were these. If the respondents had found at least
some satisfaction with the active duty dominant role, they were inclined to affiliate with the
Reserve. (People who were completely or predominately satisfied with the active duty role
remained in that status as a career. People who found no satisfaction in active duty avoided all
further contact with the navy.) If they discovered that Reserve duty did not continue to provide
those satisfactions, or to provide some others, they quit. Most importantly, the respondents likely
to stay in the Reserve were those who found some satisfactions in the Reserve that they did not
find in their civilian occupations. That is, they found satisfactions in the ephemeral role that did
not exist in the current dominant role, for example: a low prestige civilian job but a prestigeful
reserve rank; little enjoyable interaction with fellow workers but a keen experience of
comradeship with fellow Reservists; less sense of accomplishment in or recognition for civilian
than Reserve work; more authority or responsibility in the Reserve than in the civilian job. They
had established a balance of satisfactions between the Reserve and civilian roles, between the
ephemeral and dominant roles. If for some reason the Reserve satisfactions began to overpower
those in the civilian job, the individuals requested return to full-time navy duty (the current
dominant role was dropped and the model dominant role reinacted). If for some reason the
civilian job satisfactions began to overpower those in the Reserve, the individuals quit the
Reserve (the ephemeral role was dropped and usually a different one was sought).
One of the Reserve units with which I was affiliated received unanticipated orders to serve its
annual two-week active duty with the U.S. Marines in an amphibious invasion exercise. It was a
medical unit. Many of the members were employed as civilian health professionals or were
university students in that field. The unit was not affiliated with the Marines. Its members
usually performed annual active duty in hospitals, laboratories, or preventative medicine centers.
I previously had gathered data on their balance of satisfactions with Reserve (ephemeral) and
civilian (dominant) roles. This was an opportunity to observe the effect on role balance of being
thrust into a drastically different setting.
The Marine exercise was physically very demanding. Living conditions in the field were
unpleasant. Military discipline was accentuated. I had hypothesized: (1) That the unit members
whose balance of role satisfaction notably favored civilian occupation over the Reserve would be
the most disturbed by the exercise. (2) Those whose role balance notably favored the Reserve
over civilian occupation would be the least disturbed. (3) Those whose role satisfaction with
civilian occupation and the Reserve were about equal would be disturbed less than (1) and more
than (2).
I was partially correct. The members with the strongest orientation toward the Reserve liked the
experience. They fully participated in the activities. They were gung ho. Some of them requested
a return to full-time active duty after they got home (changing the ephemeral role back to a
model dominant role). The members with the strongest orientation toward civilian occupation
disliked the exercise. They escaped participation whenever they could (for example, hid in the
bushes, made jokes about the exercise events, played "MASH"). Some of them quit the Reserve
after they got back home (dropping the ephemeral role). However, the members whose
satisfaction with the civilian occupation and reserve roles was about equal absolutely hated the
experience -- much more so than any of the others in the unit. They were not so civilian-oriented
that they could avoid participation in the exercise. They were not so reserve-oriented that they
could engage in gung ho participation. There was no effective action by which they could handle
the disruption of their role balance. Some of them transferred to another Reserve unit when they
got home (not changing the ephemeral role, but moving it into a setting where the role balance
was less likely to be disrupted).
I noticed that the relatively role-balanced Reservists attempted to deal with their frustration by
scapegoating the unit commanding officer as a villain. They lampooned his orders and his
energetic leadership style. The Reserve-oriented unit members cast the commanding officer as a
hero, heaping praise upon him and using him as a role model. The civilianoriented members cast
him as a fool, and simply ignored him. (See Klapp, 1962, on leaders as heroes, villains, or fools).
Summary
The quasi-equations about role balance I have outlined might seem complicated to you. They
certainly were to me. The findings challenged some of the simplistic notions I had in my
personal sociology about role enactment. I remind you again that I was looking at only two or
three roles in vastly more complicated repertoires. Imagine, as the results forced me to do, the
remarkable way that human beings establish, balance, and refine a network of satisfactions
among hundreds of roles, dominant and ephemeral, in their repertoires. It is indeed a wonderous
social and psychological feat.
The role balance studies constructively sharpened my personal sociology about the delicate but
definite manner in which role repertoires can be affected when the actors are thrust into new
settings. I was informed that disruption to role balance can be quite frustrating, and the
frustration can lead to such hostile releases as scapegoating. Lastly, I saw again the autonomy
and creativity by which individuals negotiate their roles in specific settings, however restrictive.
EXPRESSING ROLES
Football Game celebrants and War Game Casualties
The roles we enact sometimes include our own and other expectations for the expression of the
appropriate emotion. Many roles are emotionally neutral. We do not expect shoe store customers
to be emotionally effusive when shopping. Other roles are emotionally laden. We expect funeral
attendees to display grief, sadness, or at least a somber demeanor. It is quite possible for us to
express the appropriate emotion in a specific setting and yet feel differently, or feel nothing,
inside ourselves. Perhaps we are buying a $1,000 pair of hand-crafted boots with some of the
million dollars we have just inherited. We might feel very excited about being able to make the
purchase but prefer to present ourselves as unemotional and matter-of-fact because that is what is
expected in the situation. Perhaps we inherited the million dollars from the person whose funeral
we are attending, a relative we in fact disliked. We might feel delight with having received the
money and a degree of satisfaction that "the old wimp is dead." But we prefer to show respectful
somberness at the funeral because that is what is expected in the situation.
I had been invited by a head coach from a major state university to spend the entire day with the
varsity football team for all the pregame, game, and postgame activities. I was behind the scenes,
on the "inside." I was particularly curious about how the team was being emotionally prepared
for the game -- that is, how they were cued to express the appropriate emotions. My observations
revealed that there were several discrete phases of preparation, each supervised by the coaching
staff. The most important stages were: the pregame meal, the team meeting, the suiting-up in the
locker room, the pregame warm-up on the field, and the head coach's locker-room speech just
before kickoff. The coaches encouraged the players first to display the appropriate mood for the
game -- seriousness, quiet intensity, controlled nervousness, courage, absolute loyalty. Then the
coaches (and to some extent the team cocaptains), especially during the warm-up and pre-kickoff
phases, urged the players to convert this mood to more flamboyantly expressed emotion -- shouts
and screams of pride, pronouncements of affection for our team and disaffection for the
opponent, explosions of bravado, and joyous proclamations of "we're number one" (totally
exaggerated, since the team was unranked nationally and ranked low in the conference). The
coaches, especially the head coach, reinforced those expectations during halftime in the locker.
The team was substantially but not comfortably ahead. The emotional expressions now called for
were pride (and the reciprocal, shame, if the team were to lose) and courage (in the face of
fatigue and pain). The players responded appropriately.
The team fans also had been prepared for the appropriate expression of emotion. Before the
game they had attended rallies and parties, where the intent was to kindle or rekindle school
"spirit " -- pride, loyalty, affection, frivolity. During the game, cheerleaders heightened,
sharpened, and directed the fan spirit into more specific, game-related, expressions of emotion
(for example, cheers, reactions to individual plays or players, reactions to the cheers of the
opponents).
When the game was over, our team had won. The locker-room celebration was tumultuous. The
setting called for unabashed expression of joy and pride, and everybody responded accordingly.
Then the head coach entered the room and announced his retirement after 20 years of coaching.
Everyone became silent. The situation called for expression of sadness or silent respect and
everyone responded accordingly. The head coach left the room, and immediately again there
were loud expressions of joy and pride for having won. Within a period of about 20 minutes, the
people in the crowded room had in unison expressed first joy/pride, then sorrow/ respect, and
again joy/pride.
These findings might seem to suggest that people conform mindlessly to expectations for rolerelated emotional expression. That would be a serious misinterpretation. Indeed people generally
do conform, that is they choose to conform, to setting-demanded emotional expression. When
the situations change, the actors usually chose to change emotional expression. That
phenomenon is less an indicator of slavish conformity than of an autonomous versatility in
recognition of situational realities. Remember we are speaking about overt emotional expression,
not internal feeling states. The two realities can and often do differ and, very importantly, we
know when they differ. We play the situation as we see fit, not with conscious cynicism but with
adaptive choice.
After I had observed the staging, the social construction, of emotional expression in the football
game setting, I was given another research opportunity. The navy asked me to be an evaluator in
a reserve "war game." I carried what I had learned in the football game study about situational
shaping of role-based emotional expression with me into that setting. I hoped to find validation
and expansion of those findings. The results were similar in several respects but added some
additional notions.
The war game was deliberately constructed with a scenario about friendly and unfriendly forces.
The "friendlies" were to attack and take a geographic objective. The primary evaluation aspect of
the war game was the performance of medical support teams under fire. Formal organizational
officials clearly indicated that medical participants were to express the emotions of enthusiasm,
unit pride, and bravado in the exercise. In the early part of the war game (which was three days
in duration), they did precisely that. In the later part, because of organizational inconsistencies
and unexpected weather and habitable discomforts, several participants "privatized"
(individualized and detached from interaction) their emotional expression. They did not
demonstrate enthusiasm, unit pride, or bravado. They silently yielded to exhaustion, temporarily
offset only by such organizationally independent events as a brush fire in the field when they
responded to the exigency and then subsequently withdrew from the dictated scenario.
I was instructed by this experience that actors on an organizational stage generally enact
prescribed emotional role scripts. But when the situation resulted in physical exhaustion, the
actors would be inclined to privatize emotional expression unless exceptional circumstances
emerged. My personal sociology was advised that though role enactments are importantly shaped
by social factors, the physical circumstance of the actors is an important consideration. We are
social animals, gifted with potential to formulate, present, understand, and exchange
symbolisms, emotional and similarly behavioral. But as social animals we are vulnerable to
fatigue and other physical fallibilities which disrupt our capability or desire to interact as the
setting might demand.
Summary
The character of emotional expression is an important part of role expectations. In the past it has
been less closely studied than other aspects of role enactment; surely it will be a focus in future
research. Somewhat accidentally, my personal sociology was sensitized to the affective
concomitants of role behavior -- invited to observe the staging of emotion in a football game and
incidentally ordered to observe the staging in a military war game. Those experiences enhanced
my understanding about the versatility of human beings to express setting-relevant emotions,
whatever their own feelings might be. The experiences also informed me that though social
expectancies are instrumental, sometimes physical factors take precedence. Indeed we are social
animals, but we are physically finite.
Emotion is a fact of everyday life. It is not a role, but it is role related. Some of the roles we
enact include behavioral expectations for the "appropriate" expression of emotion. Those roles
typically are embedded in organizational settings where "supervisors" orchestrate how we are
supposed to express affect. It is not unusual for there to be "scenarios" or "phases" which we are
to accept as guidelines for role-related emotional expression. We might decide to conform fully
to those guidelines. Indeed, we might even voluntarily pay dollars for the opportunity to be
exposed to them (for example, movies, plays, concerts, athletic events). The key term here is
"voluntarily." We might invite and enjoy an orchestrated trip through a contrived, staged, range
of emotional expressions. That trip represents a sociological irony -- the autonomous choice to
conform in an audience, because we find the experience enjoyable.
Role enactment, and any attendant emotional expression, is structurally and situationally
influenced. It also is shaped by the role-meaning negotiations of actors living within the social
structure or situation. I knew that fact prior to my observations of the football and war game
episodes. But I had underestimated the versatility of actors regarding emotional expression and
neglected the physical finiteness of those actors whatever the setting. Roles are social. Human
beings are social and physical. My personal sociology was informed that inattention either to the
versatility or finiteness would be a mistake.
CONCLUSION
I began this chapter with a brief reminder about the complexity of our everyday status sets, role
repertoires, and interactional networks. I then presented some examples of learning roles,
resolving role conflict, creating roles, balancing roles, and expressing roles.
Role learning was discussed in the total institutional settings of a naval recruit training center and
a naval vessel. The sailors revealed an assortment of strategies for accommodating that role and
varied in the degree to which they identified with it. Aboard ship, they used and maintained an
informal organization in order to provide greater role latitude.
The situations of sorority hashers and airplane passengers were presented as illustrations of role
conflict and its resolution. The hashers were uncomfortable with the conflict between their work
and student roles. They eased the conflict by distancing from the hasher role, particularly
through humor and hostility in the work setting. The airplane passengers were expected to
conform passively while being processed as commodities through a "people pipeline." That
organizational role expectation tended to conflict with the passengers' self-perceptions as active,
in control, individuals. Some passengers abated the conflict by learning the system well enough
to discover shortcuts which minimized discomfort, time waste, invasion of privacy, and
constriction of choice.
A disaster volunteer work crew and a long-established friendly poker game were offered as
settings in which role creativity had emerged. Tornadic disruption had caused temporary role
voids in the community. Members of the crew filled the void for themselves by creating a set of
emergency, group-specific roles. The poker players had also created a set of group-specific roles
for themselves, but for leisure not emergency purposes. The player role provided satisfactions
unavailable or uncompleted in other roles. Both the crew and game roles were created in the
context of extensive interaction among group members, including the socialization of new
members. The socialization ironically demanded conformity to the created roles. The crew and
game settings illustrated the operation of ephemeral roles: temporary or ancillary position-related
behavior patterns chosen by individuals to satisfy social-psychological needs incompletely
satisfied by the more dominant and lasting roles they regularly must enact in everyday life
positions.
The social and psychological process of role balancing was demonstrated by the case of naval
reservists. They had established a balance of satisfactions among past active duty (model
dominant role), the ephemeral role (reserve participation), and current civilian occupation
(operating dominant role). The distribution and perceived importance of the satisfactions among
those role components determined whether the reservists would stay in the reserve (maintain the
ephemeral role). When a reserve unit was placed in a military situation that severely challenged
members' established role balance, the reservists reacted strongly, some by scapegoating the unit
leader. Though considering only a tiny portion of individual's role repertoires, the reserve
illustration suggested the versatile manner by which the repertoires are assembled.
The expression of role-related emotions was examined in a college football game and in a
military war game. Supervised primarily by their coaches, the football players were exposed to a
carefully staged preparation for appropriate expression of emotion during the game. The fans
similarly experienced an orchestration of affect, supervised primarily by cheerleaders. The
emotional expression was remarkably facile. It could change, for example, instantly from
consensually shared joy to sadness, depending on the situation. In the war game, participants
were urged, even ordered, by supervisors to express the appropriate emotions. At first the
participants conformed to the scenario and affective script. Later, as fatigue set in, some of them
privatized their emotional expression and detached from interaction. In the football and military
settings, participants revealed voluntary compliance to organizationally expected role expression,
were able to comply with notable versatility, and actually enjoyed conforming. But the
participants differed in the degree to which their actual feelings were represented by their overt
emotional expressions. Sometimes because of the feelings individuals opted not to express the
expected emotion.
The role illustrations I have picked for this chapter are rather diverse. I could have used only
navy illustrations, since the Naval Reserve is one of my ephemeral roles and most certainly the
military experience has influenced (if not traumatized) me. That focus would have been
misleading, because my personal sociology goes well beyond the military. It is not unusual for
personal sociologists to assemble a diversity of scholarly and everyday life experiences into a
broad but individualized academic perspective. Typically, those experiences include such close
involvements as participant or nonparticipant observation with significant others or in
meaningful groups. For me the individualized academic perspective, influenced by the
illustrations I have offered in this chapter, is that human beings are active organizing social
agents in their environments. I find it difficult to see role enactments in any other light, a
reflection of dramaturgical analysis and symbolic interactionism. I could have used role
illustration from work I have done on social movements, mental health, social change, and social
problems. But in those studies I generally enacted the role of researcher without participation or
first-hand experience in the setting. Personal sociologists can and do teach classes or conduct
research on substantive topics beyond those most directly personal to them.
The illustrations I chose seemed to fit well into the categories of role learning, conflict resolving,
creating, balancing, and expressing (much expanded in Zurcher, 1983). I encourage you to
explore your role repertoires for better examples, ones which represent your own budding
personal sociology. Do not forget those roles which are imbedded in the routine of everyday life.
Watch and experience how others around you and interacting with you enact situational roles.
You will most certainly be impressed, as I have been, with the autonomy, purposiveness,
negotiation, and creativity of which we are capable in the role process.
Be aware of the practical implications of personal sociology, your own or that of others. It will
influence not only how you interpret human behavior but will be part of your assumptions about
human nature and societal ideals. Furthermore, personal sociology will cut across theory and
method into choice of application or activism. For personal sociologists, the roles of scholar and
practitioner often are merged more fully than for other professional sociologists. The studies I
have reported in this chapter, for example, have compelled me to become an activist for
increased recognition of autonomy within and civilian influence upon the U.S. military. They
have influenced me as a consultant to advise key officials in bureaucracies that they must not
ignore the inherent dignity and purposefulness of their exployees and clients. The studies, as part
of my personal sociology, have convinced me that voluntarism, that is citizen freedom to become
involved as volunteers in groups concerned with social issues, is one of the most crucial
components of a democratic society. I do what I can accordingly, best indicated by having been
active in the Association of Voluntary Action Scholars and by having a joint faculty appointment
within the School of Social Work.
Personal sociology essentially is personal biography incorporated in a particular professional
discipline, and is an open recognition of how biography is intertwined with society, whatever
one's profession or occupation. This chapter will not provide you specific direction about how to
develop your own personal sociology. To my mind, there is no best or predictable path toward
that end. Individual experiences and inclinations are too complex and idiosyncratic for such
certainties. I hope, however, that your reading this chapter will show you that personal
sociology, though sometimes influenced wholly by a single important issue or experience, also
can be influenced by a diversity of issues or experiences. I also hope you will see and agree that
whatever the path or paths toward personal sociology, the trip is enjoyable and the destination
productive.
3. Growing Up Among Ghetto Dwellers
Stanford M. Lyman
My interest in sociology, especially racial minorities, phenomenology, and social structure grew
out of two incidents of my childhood and adolescence. The first of these was growing up in and
spending my childhood working at my parents' grocery store in the heart of that section of San
Francisco called the Western Addition: the area that comprised the black and Japanese ghetto. A
second shaping incident occurred during my high school and early college years when I became
an active and participating member in two all Chinese American youth groups and one Japanese
American youth club. Long-term association with Asian Americans taught me much about the
quality of life among minority peoples and focused my attention on the social and
characterological differences that distinguished Chinese Americans from Japanese Americans. I
think it best to discuss each of these shaping aspects of my presociological career separately.
THE GROCERY STORE IN THE GHETTO
From 1939 until 1955 I weorked in my parents' grocery store. That store had been established in
1920 by my father and mother who had reached San Francisco after emigrating to the United
States from Lithuania at the close of the First World War. Meeting in an immigrant reception
center in Boston, my father and mother became engaged; subsequently, my father worked his
way across the United States, ultimately settling in San Francisco, opening a grocery store,
inviting my mother to join him in the venture and proceeding to carry on that business and to
raise a family there. When my father and mother first began the grocery business the
neighborhood around Octavia Street, where the store was located, was a Russian Jewish
settlement area. Because my father spoke Russian and Georgian, as well as German, French,
Spanish, Yiddish, and English, he was able to become a local figure of some importance to the
lives of the European immigrants in San Francisco in the 1920s. The store became a depot for
the newly arrived, especially those departing for San Francisco from Vladivostok. The store
became so well known that we were told that immigrants departing from the Pacific ports of the
Soviet Union were told, "Look up Mr. Lyman in the grocery store in San Francisco. He will help
you." Immigrants from other areas also found their way to the store. One who became a lifelong
friend of my father and made irregular reappearances in our store and home was a Norwegian
sailor who had "jumped ship" in San Francisco. Through his contacts at City Hall my father was
able to help this man regularize his status in the United States. The Norwegian sailor never
forgot this; after he became a seasonal laborer in Alaska, he would visit our family every seven
years or so, flush with money from his savings, and spend it on my father and mother. The he
would return to Alaska.
Over the years the social composition of the neighborhood changed, forming and reforming in
much the way that Chicago sociologists described as the processes of "invasion" and
"succession." By the time ( 1937) our family had grown to include six children, my four brothers
and one sister, the neighborhood had become predominantly black and Japanese and the Russian
Jews and other Russians had moved on to the slightly better-off neighborhoods in other parts of
San Francisco. The grocery store remained a neighborhood institution, providing not only goods,
free home delivery, credit, and services but also adjusting the commodities for sale to accord
with the cultural and subcultural food habits of the new inhabitants.
By the late 1930s and early 1940s a racial division had become established among grocers and
their clientele. In addition to my father's store there appeared a few Japanese-owned grocery
stores in the neighborhood. Customers chose their grocer according to ethnocultural food habits
and customs. Most of the Japanese shopped at the local Japanese store, while blacks and a few
Japanese bought their food, meat, and -- after Prohibition ended in 1933 -- their liquor, wine, and
beer at our grocery. What this meant was that we did not lay in a large supply of Japanese food
for sale. On the other hand, the food items that became staples in our store included white corn
meal, collard greens, mustard greens, chitterlings, hog maws, blackeyed peas, salt pork and other
meats, vegetables, and fruits essentially associated with the eating habits of the Deep South.
Our grocery store was small but divided into sections, each of which took on a certain
specialization of labor for my brothers and myself. Thus it was that my oldest brother
concentrated on learning meat cutting and meat marketing. Another brother developed such an
interest in the proper display and the problems of spoilage of fresh fruits and vegetables that he
later majored in botany and biology and today has carved out a career for himself in the natural
sciences. I was eventually selected by my mother to be a counterman, that is, to be at the cash
register counter and to take charge of the selling of groceries and liquor and the collection of
money from charge accounts. My two younger brothers were essentially stock boys and allaround utility men used for whatever jobs arose on a day-today basis. My sister worked
occasionally as a clerk. The store was open seven days a week from 7:00 A.M. until 2:00 A.M.
During the weekdays when my brothers and sister and I attended school we worked after school,
and on weekends we worked the entire day. Among other things this provided me with an
entirely different outlook on the organization of sleep than that of other children my age. On
Saturdays and Sundays my brothers and I usually went to bed sometime after 2:00 A.M. after
working a shift that had begun at 7:00 A.M. on the previous morning. The notion of an early
bedtime for children was unknown to me. Indeed, it came as quite a shock when at the age of 18
or 19 I discovered that children between the ages of 6 and 15 were put to bed by their parents
sometimes as early as 7:30 in the evening. Such an idea was so bizarre to me that I at first could
not imagine how children's lives could be organized around such an early bedtime.
Our grocery store operated like so many other immigrant shop-keeping institutions -- as a
proprietorship with unpaid family labor. We were not unaware of the differences between paid
and unpaid labor and of the regulations governing hours, wages, and even the employment of
children. As a bitter joke my brothers and I used to threaten to go on strike against our parents. In
response to our threat our father would threaten us with a denial of food. All of this was done in
a less than serious manner; nevertheless, it brought home to me an awareness of the differences
between an economy rooted in family business and that of an industrial society.
WORLD WAR II AND THE BLACK MARKET
The most significant incident of my childhood working career occurred during World War II,
when our store became one of the many thousands of black markets that operated in violation of
the federal regulations on pricing and rationing that had been put into effect by the newly created
Office of Price Administration ( OPA). The official outlook of the OPA has been admirably
described by Marshall Clinard ( 1969) in his book The Black Market: A Study of White Collar
Crime. However, Clinard's study focuses on the dilemmas and problems of administering price
control and rationing from the point of view of the new bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., and
perceives the malefactors as white-collar workers. My own experience is that of the underside of
this situation, that is, the black market as one aspect of a family business operated by immigrant
shopkeepers that was evoked by the exigencies of wartime.
When World War II broke out, the U.S. government instituted nationwide price and wage control
and began the rationing of a wide variety of goods, including groceries, meats, shoes, clothing,
and gasoline. Private businesses found themselves subject to new and onerous federal controls; a
specialty created administrative police force -- OPA investigators -- was empowered to surveil
and to arrest violators of the new pricing and rationing regulations. (It is interesting to note that
the recruitment of OPA investigators led to the employment of a number of sympathizers with
the Communist Party, among whom was Jessica Mitford ( 1978:42-61), who was assigned to San
Francisco and who took to her assignment so zealously that she was once reprimanded for
violating the Constitutional rights of shopkeepers.)
Grocery stores were divided into four categories by the OPA. Each category was obligated to sell
groceries at prices standardized according to its classification. Price lists were printed in
Washington, D.C., and distributed throughout the United States to grocery stores according to
their category. By law these lists had to be prominently posted in the store; moreover, each item
for sale had to be marked with the OPA price. Thus began the unit pricing of goods, hitherto
only an occasional practice of large chain stores. The sale of any price-control item for as little as
one cent above the OPA price was subject to a penalty of ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Radio stations, newspapers, and magazines put out continuous propaganda in behalf of OPA
surveillance. Every American was urged to watch his grocer and to report any violation of OPA
rules as a patriotic act. Rationing was organized on the basis of the monthly distribution of
colored ratio stamps and tokens, the color of the stamp and the token indicating the kind of
goods it might be used for. Each item for sale required the payment not only of cash, but also of
ration stamps or tokens. Stamps and tokens were given a unit value called "points" so that the
price of any commodity now included a governmentally established cash value and a
governmentally established point value. The grocer, as well as the shoe store operator, the
gasoline attendant, and any other proprietor of a commodity outlet under regulation by the OPA,
was required to collect the correct amount of cash and points under penalty of law.
The outbreak of World War II and the establishment of price controls and rationing came hard
upon the Great Depression with its vast dislocation of the economy, millions of unemployed, and
wreckage of many small businesses. When the war promised on the one hand to enhance the
economy on the "home front," as it came to be called, but at the same time to introduce hitherto
unexperienced scarcities of goods and services, the small retail businesses and the wholesale
houses that had survived the Depression were determined to make the best of a limited but new
opportunity. Early in 1942, along with virtually every other family grocery in San Francisco and
probably throughout the United States, our grocery store was visited by sales representatives of
the wholesale grocery companies. At that time wholesale grocery companies were relatively
small and local operations. The salesmen they employed were often carefully screened to accord
with the ethnic makeup of the storekeepers and neighborhoods that they served. Hence, a sense
of familiarity and good fellowship prevailed between the wholesale salesman and the proprietors.
These salesmen informed my father and mother that a new relationship would have to be
established because of the wartime situation. They called this new relationship "cooperation,"
though this did not mean the establishment of the kind of small-scale cooperative that had been
evidenced by W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki when they wrote the final pages of The Polish
Peasant in Europe and America ( 1958:1, 822-27). Rather, "cooperation" meant the introduction
of a complex set of new commercial relations between wholesaler and retailer. In practice the
new cooperation required the following: (1) the retail proprietor would no longer be able to order
goods from a wholesale house in accordance with the needs and desires of his customers; (2)
commodities that were in short supply would be available only in amounts to be determined by
the wholesaler, provided that the proprietor agreed to purchase substantially large amounts of
those commodities that the wholesaler wished to "dump" on the market; (3) the prices for scarce
items would be determined by the wholesaler without necessary regard for the established OPA
price; (4) the wholesaler, who, like the retailer, was required to charge ration points for his
goods, would be inattentive to the collection of these points if the retailer would acquiesce to the
new understanding of the wholesale-retail relationship; (5) should the retailer indicate that he did
not care to participate in this unlawful activity the wholesaler would boycott his store and would
no longer sell any goods to that retailer.
The retailer was thus invited to become a link in a chain of criminally liable activities regarding
the sale and distribution of goods during wartime. Should the retailer refuse the invitation, he
would in effect lose his business altogether. In this post-Depression era it was unlikely that
retailers who had barely kept alive during the 1930s would choose voluntarily to go out of
business because their commercial transactions would violate wartime regulations. The black
market became an unopposable way of life for the small business proprietor from 1942 until
1946. With only slight variations wholesale supply houses and grocery stores introduced the new
method of "cooperation" as the uniform basis of doing business. Wholesalers in meat, groceries,
liquor, cigarettes, and virtually every other scarce commodity required that the proprietor accept
dumping of unwanted goods in return for a limited supply of items that were in short supply.
Moreover, some small-time wholesalers became illegal sellers of commodities that were not part
of their regular business operation. For example, I vividly recall the Chinese wholesale cigarette
and candy jobber who informed me that he could get rubber tires for our truck should we ever
need them. We did need them; rubber tires were virtually impossible to obtain during World War
II, especially after Malaya fell to the Japanese and rubber imports to the United States were cut
off. This salesman told me that he would bring four tires to our store at midnight, but that I was
never to ask him where he obtained them. In another instance, a meat wholesaler showed up at
our store one day and announced that he had 12 cases of canned peaches in his closed panel
truck. If we would care to buy them at a price he would set, he would be most happy to unload
them from his truck. We immediately accepted his offer.
The violation of price and rationing regulations by the wholesaler led in turn to the establishment
of black-marketing in goods by the retailer. Our store became such a market, and my brothers
and I played a central role in the establishment of the new stock and selling relationships
required by this kind of business operation.
The racial and ethnic composition of the clientele of our store had become fixed shortly after the
attack on Pearl Harbor. Early in 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9,066,
forcibly removing all persons of Japanese descent from then what was called Western Area #1,
that is, the coastal regions of California, Oregon, and Washington; 120,000 persons of Japanese
descent were subsequently incarcerated in newly constructed prison camps in the interior of the
United States. In our neighborhood the homes and apartments that had been occupied by
Japanese were soon filled by blacks arriving from the South to take up the many wartime jobs
that had opened up in San Francisco, especially in the ship-building industry. The neighborhood
became a virtual black ghetto with no Japanese to be seen and the occasional white visible only
in the persons of alcoholics, drifters, and the aged pensioners who had not been able to move out
of the ghetto. The new black families included working men and women many of whom, perhaps
for the first time, were earning substantial wages. Our store became the place where this
working-class black community could open charge acounts, cash their weekly paychecks, and
purchase groceries, meat, and liquor. Many of these people could not read or write and were
faced immediately with the problem of how to endorse a paycheck so that it might be cashed. I
found a way to solve this problem. I had regularly begun to accompany my father to the local
bank, where every week he transacted business of various kinds and deposited the excess cash
that had been made. I discussed the problem of illiterate check cashers with the tellers at the
bank and offered them the following proposition. Because our store cashed approximately
$5,000 worth of checks every Friday night and most of the checks were from illiterate people, I
proposed to endose each check myself after the payee had put an x on the back. If the bank
would recognize my handwriting of the payee's name, I would deposit these checks in the bank
on the following day. The tellers agreed that this would be an acceptable practice, provided that I
would supply them with certain rationed grocery items that they could not otherwise obtain. I
promptly agreed and there developed a weekly practice in which I would show up at the bank
with a brown bag containing pounds of bacon, jars of mayonnaise, and cans of cranberry sauce,
together with a fistful of checks, all endorsed by me. The tellers would take the groceries, pay
me cash but not ration stamps for them, and willingly deposit the checks.
At the request of my parents, my brothers and I reorganized the store to accord with the new
business procedures. Scarce commodities were no longer put on the shelves and no longer
marked with the required OPA price. Insofar as the shelves were stocked, the goods on display
consisted primarily of those items that were not in short supply and often of items that had been
dumped on our store by the wholesaler. These items were sold in accordance with the established
prices and ration points. Scarce goods were hidden in the stockrooms at the rear of the store. No
customers were ever admitted to these stockrooms. Ultimately, using orange crates, my older
brother built an entire set of shelves in one of the stockrooms, and the scarce goods were placed
on these makeshift shelves. No price was ever marked on these goods. In a similar fashion the
popular and scarce bottles of liquor, especially 100 proof bourbon whiskey and the better brands
of Scotch whiskey were hidden in the stockroom. Behind the counter, on the shelves where we
ordinarily kept liquor for sale, the only items on display were bottles of corn and potato whiskey,
the latter a kind of alcoholic spirit that had been manufactured because of the scarcity of grain
alcohol, and liqueurs, which were unpopular in a black working-class neighborhood and which
had been forced on us by the dumping practices of the liquor wholesalers. In the meat-market
section of our store the cuts of beef and pork were no longer put on display, but kept in cold
storage lockers out of sight. Bacon and salt pork were also hidden from view. We sliced pound
after pound of bacon on Sunday mornings after 2 A.M., when we had closed the store and shut
off the lights. Sausages and various other unpopular cuts of meat were the only items on display,
marked with an appropriate OPA price.
The relationship between customer and proprietor changed dramatically during this period, and I myself
participated, in effect as an impresario in a new dramaturgy of retail life. The customers were divided by
us into two role categories: "good" customers and "strangers." Good customers were those who by
various signs and signals had indicated their willingness to participate in our version of the retail
cooperative relationship. Strangers were those persons who had not so agreed or who were
unknown to us and eligible only to purchase goods on display in the public part of the store. The
new processes of retail purchase had the following features:
1. A good customer no longer decided what he or she would purchase in the course of acquiring
a week's supply of goods. Rather, the good customer would say to me or to my mother, "I would
like my order, please"; then I would go into the stockroom with a very large bag and arbitrarily
choose a host of items from the scarce goods on the shelves, seal them in the bag, bring them to
the front of the store, and announce a net price. The customer would give me the cash I had
requested without so much as looking at the goods or inquiring about the respective value of
each item, and that would constitute the end of a transaction.
2. A good customer would present to us the ration stamp books and tokens supplied by the
government to his family every month. In return, we would guarantee an unlimited supply of
every kind of rationed goods to that customer without regard to whether there had been enough
ration stamps in his monthly supply to cover the purchases.
3. The prices for scarce goods were determined solely by myself or my mother and were in fact
made up on the spot. Only one rule prevailed in this: to charge the highest imaginable price for
any set of scarce or rationed goods. A coordinate understanding was that the customer would
never complain about the price of goods charged. A complaint would likely result in the
customer being reclassified as a stranger; such a customer would no longer be eligible to receive
scarce goods. I do not recall receiving a single complaint from any of the good customers
throughout the entire period of World War II.
4. Another understanding upon which this entire black market operation depended was that the
customer would not report the violations of OPA rules to the authorities. Although there was
considerable mass media pressure, there was little real incentive to make such a report; there was
much to be gained by participating in the black market. Participants received whatever goods
they wanted at a time when most of the basic foodstuffs -- canned fruits, coffee, sugar,
mayonnaise, eggs, beef, pork, and such luxuries as bourbon, scotch, and the popular brands of
cigarettes -- were virtually unavailable over the counter. Turning one's grocer over to the OPA
authorities meant cutting oneself off from the supplier of valued goods.
Of course, we had to avoid being discovered as black marketeers. This proved to be a relatively
easy task. The investigatory police employed by the OPA were civilians drawn from the
Caucasian middle classes. Their method of surveillance was to enter a store, request the purchase
of a scarce item, and hope to apprehend the grocer selling the commodity at a price higher than
that on the official OPA list or without collecting the ration stamps. Spotting an OPA detective in
our neighborhood was very easy. These detectives invariably were white, wore business suits,
and carried briefcases. In a black working-class neighborhood where no one wore suits and
carried attachè cases, a nattily attired Caucasian stood out.
When approached by such a person and asked for a can of cranberry sauce, I replied in mock
anger and disbelief, "Cranberry sauce! Don't you know there's a war on?" The litany "Don't you
know there's a war on?" had become a slogan on the home front, justifying commodity shortages
and all other difficulties of everyday life, but it also served as a cloak of cover for our black
market operation.
Because my brothers, sister, and I attended public school every weekday, our activities as black
marketeers were vulnerable to an inadvertent disclosure to school authorities or to classmates.
My parents urged upon us the necessity of keeping quiet about what we did in our store and
warned us never to talk about business matters with our schoolmates or our teachers. We never
did, and although our schoolmates and some of our teachers knew that we worked after school
and on weekends for our parents, they never made anything of this.
There nevertheless remained the need to justify to ourselves our violation of wartime regulations
and to indicate to ourselves that we were doing our patriotic duty for the war effort. We
accomplished these goals by employing a variant of what Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza (
1957) would later call the "techniques of neutralization," by which people commit crimes
without feeling like criminals. In our case, my father took the lead in providing these
neutralizations of our apparently criminal and unpatriotic acts. He asserted that there were in fact
no real food or beverage shortages, but that the government, in order to make the people on the
home front feel that they were participating in a war, had instituted planned artificial scarcity.
The governmental interest in establishing a wartime psychology was so great, my father
continued, that readily available meats and groceries were actually being destroyed rather than
distributed. This argument was given some substantive support by the wholesale meat
merchandisers association; it published a monthly magazine at that time that gave particular
prominence to reported sightings of Coast Guard ships dumping sides of beef and pork into the
ocean.
Another justification for noncompliance with OPA regulations was provided by dissident
members of the media. For our purposes the most important of these during the Second World
War was the conservative news commentator, Fulton Lewis, Jr. Mr. Lewis delivered a 15-minute
radio broadcast every afternoon during which he concentrated his withering critical rhetoric on
the excesses of government regulations, particularly the malfeasances and injustices of the OPA.
Despite the fact that my father regarded himself as a socialist and thought of himself as an avid
student and interpreter of Karl Marx, he regarded Mr. Lewis's broadcasts as essentially correct
and as providing one more justification for our own refusal to go along with the regulations of
the OPA.
Still another technique of neutralization was to point to the actual character and condition of our
clientele. My father observed that our customers comprised a great number of black people who
had only recently migrated from the South. These people had been the victims of pervasive racial
discrimination, been denied opportunities to make a living, or to have even the ordinary comforts
of family and domestic life. Now, because of the newly opened war industries and the shortage
of labor, they could at last leave the caste-ridden South and move to cities where they could earn
a decent living. Moreover, he added, these people did not take to their new and increased source
of income with anything like excessive hedonism or debauchery. Rather, in contrast to the
stereotypes and prejudices about them, the blue-collar black families in our neighborhood sought
only to have a good solid dinner and a good drink at the end of a hard working day. Providing
groceries, meat, and liquor to such people, my father argued, was not only not a violation of the
spirit of the war but, in fact, a patriotic act.
Finally, as a last resort, my father pointed to the ubiquity of OPA violators. If we did not engage
in flouting the regulations of the OPA, other people would. Behaving lawfully at this time would
accomplish nothing more than driving oneself out of business altogether.
Wartime experience as a participant in the black market helped me understand what later
sociologists would call the normalcy of deviance and the capacity of excuses and justifications to
set things right for the accused. Our family drifted into black-marketing quite matter-of-factly
during World War II. There seemed to be no other way for the grocer too conduct himself in that
situation at that time. Just as easily we were let out of the black market by the ending of the war,
the cessation of price control and rationing, and the abolition of the OPA. On the basis of my
own experience moving out of lawful activity and back into it again appeared as something in
great measure conditioned by exigencies of policy, practice, administration, and local condition.
Such could not, of course, account for the individual delinquent or the adult robber or murderer,
but for me, at any rate, the crimes associated with our family operation of a black market came to
be seen as products of a larger political and economic situation to which any family would
respond in accordance with its capacity to define the situation in a certain way and reconstruct
the social and economic reality to relative advantage.
ASIAN AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS
ASIAN AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS
Although I had witnessed the forced removal of the Japanese Americans in 1942 and had
expressed to anyone within earshot my shock and disapproval of that act, I did not come to know
on an intimate level any Asian American until I entered high school. In San Francisco at that
time there seemed to have been no neighborhood organization of high school attendants. The
school that I attended enrolled students from a great many neighborhoods. One outstanding
group, noticeable to everyone at the time, was the large number of Chinese who crossed virtually
the entire length of San Francisco to attend George Washington High School. Informal
understandings governed the educational choices of two ethnic groups in San Francisco schools
at that time. Established and aspiring German and Reform Jewish families sent their sons and
daughters to Lowell High School, a school that was regarded as preparatory for university. The
brighter Japanese American and Chinese American students also attended Lowell, but Chinese
American students were to be found in considerable numbers in such lesser high schools as
Commerce, Galileo, and George Washington. George Washington probably ranked second to
Lowell in the preparation of its students for college and university life. Although it would be
incorrect to say that its student body was integrated at that time ( 1948- 51), it is fair to suggest
that the school enrolled whites, Chinese Americans, a sprinkling of blacks, and a few Japanese
Americans. In my case, I discovered and was discovered by two cliques of Chinese American
students who invited me to join in their social and recreational lives. How this came about
describes the intersection of a personal situation with a social setting. I entered high school three
years after World War II ended. The Japanese Americans had returned to the West Coast and
were beginning to resettle in some of the areas from which they had been forcefully removed in
1942. The condition of the Chinese Americans was such that a recent amelioration of the sex
ratio since the 1930s had produced a not insignificant number of American-born Chinese youths
seeking to find their way out of Chinatown into selected aspects of the American mainstream. I
suspect that George Washington High School appeared attractive to some of these Chinese
Americans because, though it was not as rigorous and demanding as Lowell, it was far removed
from Chinatown and from the isolated communal life that Chinese young people led in that
ghetto. As a student of Eastern European Jewish background with the usual parental
encouragement and personal aspiration toward intellectuality, scholarship, and seriousness of
purpose that defined so many young Jewish Americans of that period, I did not fit into the White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant mainstream youth subculture of the high school. Not an athlete,
relatively unpopular with my peers, and required to work at my parents' store after school and on
weekends, I was regarded and regarded myself as something of an isolate from the sportive,
social, and recreational life of the high school. It was through my academic interests -- and
weaknesses -- that I first became acquainted with Chinese Americans. Though generally a good
student, I found physics and the higher mathematics difficult to understand. I noticed that one of
the Chinese American students in my class was very good at these subjects and began to phone
him for help with my homework. This led to an invitation from him to have lunch and to meet
his other friends, all of whom were Chinese. In a short time I found myself a member of a
Chinese American circle, or, more precisely, though at first I did not realize this, a member of
two Chinese American circles, some of whose members interacted with one another. I became a
habitué of Chinatown, spending evenings and weekends in that quarter of the city and, as part of
my new social life, coming to know some of the everyday aspects of family and street life in that
neighborhood. I had no conception of sociology as a discipline at that time; indeed, I had never
heard the term. In fact, however, I was observing and participating in the social and subcultural
patterns of Chinese American life and absorbing many of its features. Certain things began to
stand out in my observations and in relation to getting along with my new Chinese American
friends. I noticed, for example, that the Chinese Americans whom I knew lapsed into Chinese
dialect in the middle of an English sentence and then came out of it back into English later on in
the same sentence. This conversational style only occurred when Chinese Americans were
talking to one another, and they did not display such interesting bilingual combinations while
performing orally in the classroom. As a result of my regular extra curricular participation with
Chinese Americans I came to understand some of the phrases that were said in Chinese and
occasionally came to use them myself. What I learned mostly, however, was how to curse and
make obscene statements in Sz yup dialect.
The Chinese in San Francisco at that time were divided into dialect groups, each speaking a
variant of the Chinese language, which, despite its vocal differences, has a common written
script. The two largest dialect groups in San Francisco Chinatown were the Sz yup and Sam yup
speakers. As I later learned, the circles of Chinese Americans with whom I interacted constituted
two different dialect groups, and it was this fact, combined with the status differentials that
characterized the two different dialect groups, that made for their social distance from one
another.
Chinatown became a familiar place to me. I soon saw that Chinatown was a neighborhood which
was in operation 24 hours a day. I knew it mostly at night and in the early hours of the morning
on weekends. Many of the restaurants and coffee shops that catered to youths and workingclass
Chinese were open 24 hours a day. The waiters and busboys who worked in these restaurants
included some of my classmates and their age peers as well as Chinese immigrants of all ages.
These restaurant workers were overworked and underpaid, and I came to realize that it was not
impossible for me to come upon a Chinese American or Chinese immi grant waiter working the
morning shift in one restaurant and the evening or all night shift in another in the same 24-hour
period. No unions served the interests or protected the wages, hours, and conditions of these
Chinese workers.
I also came to appreciate the intramural organization of Chinatown and began to understand that
organization, especially traditional associations, were the basic units of this community. The
Chinese American boys and girls I came to know were deeply aware of their membership in
clans, a term they never used but one that refers to associations of persons bearing the same
surname and believed to be descendants from a common male ancestor. As a practical matter my
Chinese American friends were concerned not to date or to become romantically involved with
persons bearing the same surname as themselves. I vividly recall how a young friend of mine
named Fong worriedly said to me, "I am dating a girl with the same name as myself. If my
mother found out, she would kill me." Thus, I became aware, in a practical way, of what
anthropologists and sociologists call the incest taboo as it operated among Chinese Americans in
San Francisco in the 1940s.
I became more conscious of the dialect differences among my friends and of the associations
which have been formed around dialect groups. Later I would come to know that the dialect
groups had been the major organizing associations of Chinatown and that they constituted not
merely associations of persons who speak the same language but that they also established
commercial and petty craft monopolies and labor guilds in the Chinese quarter of the city. Clans
also established communal and guild monopolies. In the nineteenth century the clans and the
dialect associations had grudgingly confederated to form a supracommunal association that
sought to regulate Chinatown affairs, mediate commercial disputes, keep public order, and
represent the Chinese people to both the U.S. government and the regime in China. Although I
did not fully appreciate the fact when I was a teenager hanging around Chinatown, I was dimly
aware of the third type of association, the secret society, which had found its way into overseas
Chinese communities and was a traditional association of crime, resistance, and rebellion in
China as well as in the overseas colonies.
My youthful forays into Chinatown permitted me the opportunity to learn a little about the
underlife of the community. I was a regular at one of the Chinatown bars and became so familiar
to the bartender that he came to call me "the professor" and filled my drink order before I even
asked for it. I was able to enter and observe a few of the gambling houses that operated in the
basements of Chinatown buildings. When, together with my high school classmates from
Chinatown, I first entered one of these gambling houses there was a noticeable murmuring
among the players and the dealers. However, activities quickly returned to normal when it was
decided, so my Chinese pals told me, that I was probably a juvenile delinquent, one of those
Caucasian youths who from time to time attaches himself to a Chinese American youth group
and who could be regarded as "safe" from the point of view of the illegal Chinese gambling
house operator. With this identity established for me by the Chinese gamblers who had observed
my entrance into their place of business, I was left alone to observe and learn what was going on.
In one instance I witnessed a cash payoff to the police. Familiar as I was with illegal operations
from my black market days, I was not surprised to discover that illegal gambling operated in
Chinatown with impunity, and that there were practical ways to keep the forces of law from
intervening with a profitable enterprise.
Much of what I discovered about life in and around Chinatown deepened my understanding of
the actual processes of race and ethnic relations. I had wondered whether the presence of a single
Caucasian in an all-Chinese American social group would have a negative or depressing effect
on sociability. When my Chinese American friends first invited me to a party in Chinatown, I
promised myself that if I noticed that my presence caused a certain stiffening or rigidification of
social relations, I would politely excuse myself and leave. Much to my relief and gratification no
such thing occurred, and I found that, at least in my own case, social acceptance seemed to be
moving in a natural and virtually effortless manner.
When I entered the University of California at Berkeley a number of my Chinese American
friends from high school also began their college education. Some of them also chose Berkeley.
One of these fellows introduced me to a Japanese American whom he knew slightly. It turned
out that this nisei lived only a few blocks from my parents' store and he and his circle of nisei
friends all lived in the Western Addition neighborhood where my family's store was located.
Like all other Japanese Americans, he and his family had spent the war years in an internment
camp, and he had been back from the wartime detention only six years when he entered the
university. We soon became fast friends, and he in turn invited me to join his circle of
companions who constituted a continuation of a YMCA club that had been organized by nisei
youths upon their return to San Francisco in 1945. Somewhat fearful of how they might be
treated by Caucasians, these adolescent nisei had clubbed together under the watchful eye and
protection of an astute YMCA social director (who would later become the first Japanese
American president of the Board of Regents of the University of California). Even after they had
outgrown their YMCA association, this nisei group continued to interact as a group. As college
youths they held parties and dances and continued using their club name in an informal way to
identify themselves. Among other Japanese Americans this club was well known, and, as I
quickly discovered, there were many Japanese American clubs of a similar character that
continued to exist and to organize the social and recreational lives of Japanese Americans
through their college years.
It did not take long for me to become an insider within the nisei group. Although the basis of my
social acceptability to this group remains somewhat of a mystery to me, as did my acceptance in
the Chinese American high school cliques, I nevertheless experienced deep and long lasting
friendships and privileges of participation not merely in the everyday lives of this group of
Japanese Americans but in the triumphs, tragedies, and rites de passage that marked their lives.
As these Japanese American young men reached the marriageable age, I became a regular figure
at their weddings. Japanese custom requires that there be a master of ceremonies at the reception
held for a newly wedded couple. The origins of this role is traceable to the villages of old-time
Japan where a master of ceremonies entertained the local community and the guests and family
of the married couple by telling ribald jokes and establishing an earthy but convivial sensibility
for the wedding occasion. Among nisei the custom has continued, but the quality of activities has
been modified out of status considerations. The master of ceremonies is still expected to
entertain the guests of the wedding couple by telling jokes, but these jokes are to be kept within
the bounds of propriety. In addition, the master of ceremonies is required to formally introduce
the wedded couple and their parents to the guests, to propose a carefully worded toast to the
wedded couple, to cajole members of the wedding party to join in the telling of jokes or singing
of songs, and finally to present a speech about the groom that will in some original way indicate
that the young man has lived up to Japanese ethical codes. I served as master of ceremonies in
several nisei weddings and became such a familiar wedding participant in the Japanese American
community that a local community newspaper invited me to write a special column about the
unusual situation of the Jewish American young man who participated in the intimate social
occasions of Japanese Americans.
Throughout all of these experiences I had not perceived myself as either doing or learning
sociology. These experiences constituted what for me was my everyday life with my friends and
my associates. At the same time I was majoring in sociology, though I had at first elected to
study economics and then criminology and quite by accident came to discover sociology. My
first sociology course was taught by Herbert Blumer. It was in that introductory course that I was
astonished to learn that there was a discipline that proceeded in accordance with the manner that
I thought as part of my own personal mentality. I elected to major in sociology and concentrated
in studies of social organization, political sociology, culture, stratification, and social
psychology. I never took a course in race and ethnic relations. When in 1959 I passed my oral
examinations for the Ph.D. in sociology at Berkeley, Reinhard Bendix said to me, " Lyman, you
seem to know more about Chinese and Japanese Americans than anyone I have ever met. Why
don't you write about that." Until that statement had been made to me, I had not realized that in
living my life I had also been a sociologist. My doctoral dissertation entitled "The Structure of
Chinese Society in Nineteenth Century America," and in fact containing a comparative analysis
of Chinese and Japanese American communities, began my formal career. Although that career
has taken on the trappings associated with the professional discipline, it is clear to me that what I
know about social life and the way I perceive it arises primarily and fundamentally out of those
experiences of my childhood and youth. I would not want it to be otherwise.
During my 30-year academic career I have taught many college and university courses, including
many on the topics discussed here earlier, such as deviant behavior, race relations, and Chinese
and Japanese Americans. I have published many books and articles on these topics, and in each
case have recognized that my early life experiences represented a critical foundation for my later
scholarly and research interests. At various times I have involved myself in practical activities
which stem and are consistent with my long-held intellectual interests; perhaps the best example
of this is my support of the massive class-action legal suit in behalf of the thousands of loyal
Japanese Americans who were wrongfully and unjustly detained by the U.S. government in
"relocation camps" during World War II. The suit was prepared in the late 1970s and early
1980s, and gained an initially favorable Federal Court judgment in 1984, but is still under appeal
by the U.S. government. Through monetary support of the suit, and more importantly, through
lectures and discussions at many universities and public meetings, I have sought to bring
attention to this issue. My personal sociology has become a public matter.
4. The Sociologist as Stranger: The Power Games of Race Relations
John H. Stanfield II
Picture, if you can, a young mother of African American descent finally giving in to the pleas of
her eight-year-old son to listen to what he was going to read in class the next day. At high risk,
his teacher told her students to write a highly imaginative short story for "show and tell period."
He decided to do his on how several explorers captured by cannibals were chopped up and
stewed by the tribe. He had worked all evening getting the details right about how the explorers
were tracked down systematically by the cannibals and the rituals that were used to cut up, spice,
and cook the human meat. Next, all he needed was the usual endorsement of Mom, even if it was
just a nod in the affirmative.
Surprisingly, as he unraveled the story, his mother became increasingly horrified. She forbade
him from taking the story to school and could only shake her head since there was seemingly no
end to the wild turns of her son's imagination. Although he could not understand why Mom was
so upset, he obeyed her as usual and wrote a story for class that pleased her.
The woman was my mother and I her son. As the above story illustrates, ever since middle
childhood, I have exhibited a vivid knack for anthropological and sociological analysis. So much
was this the case that by the time I entered undergraduate school I initially resisted majoring in
sociology. The subject matter was too second nature for me and therefore I spent two years
avoiding my true vocation, looking for a more "challenging field." I finally bit the bullet when in
quest for deeper training in the ways of human nature to enhance my writing of psychological
thrillers, I decided to become a sociologist.
My native knack for sociology and my eventual professional expertise in the sociology of
knowledge and race relations are both derived from what Georg Simmel ( 1971) would call a
stranger status in an atypical childhood and adolescent environment for an African American.
Our typifications and stereotypes of The Other are in a sense the result of historical demographic
trends and the ecology of population concentrations. For instance, when we think of Mexican
Americans, we equate them with the Southwest since that is the region of their historical
concentration. When we have the opportunity to converse with a black neighbor, it is easy to
presume that the person must be from the Deep South or from the ghetto. After all, that is where
most blacks have lived historically.
Therefore, I continue to get strange looks and inarticulate comments when I tell people where I
was reared. No, I am not from Camden, South Carolina; Selma, Alabama; or Detroit, Michigan. I
am from upstate New York. No, not the Bronx or Tarrytown. I was born in Rome, New York
(no, not Rome, Georgia) and for most of my childhood and adolescence I was reared in a rural
community eight miles out of that upstate New York city. Besides our occasional and indeed,
transient bean-picking families, we were the only African American family for miles around
among the sons and daughters of Polish, Italian, and German immigrant dirt farmers.
Although I was reared completely as an upstate New Yorker, like many if not most African
Americans, I do have southern roots. By the time I was born in 1951, it can be said that both of
my parents came from wellentrenched upstate families: my father from Rome and my mother
from Rochester. Both of their families migrated from the Deep South when my parents were
very young. My mother was carried in my grandmother's arms as an infant as her extended
family made a long trek from Arkansas to Rochester in 1924. In 1927, my father and his
identical twin were five when their parents decided to leave Mississippi for Rome.
Unlike other southern migrant families in the North who maintained ties back home, the families
of my parents and their family of procreation disassociated themselves from the South
completely. Thus, I never had the cultural experience of many black baby-boomers who were in
the North but stayed southern by going "back home" every summer. The only remembrance of
the South in our home was the cuisine -- the greens, sweet potatoes, and chitterlings -- my
mother learned from her mother and which we consumed wholeheartedly with no ethnoregional
awareness. I did not go South until I was away from home and on my own as a young adult.
When I was six, my parents decided to purchase an old farmhouse on ten acres of land eight
miles outside of Rome. They wanted their four children (three girls and one boy, one to one-anda-half years apart) to have plenty of romping room. Also, having land enabled them to grow their
own food and raise a few farm animals to cut down on living costs.
Moving into the country did something else. It put us in a hostile white environment. Although
the schools were academically excellent, we chil-dren had a long uphill battle being accepted by
our peers and teachers. The battles were often in the plural as we at times had to fight white kids
who taunted us on the bus, on the playgound, or even in the classroom. It was in that rural setting
that I developed an awareness of how much racism is a synthesis of social construction and
power and authority relations, ( Stanfield, 1985b).
I developed this awareness because my parents had an interesting childrearing strategy that
enabled their children to survive in an isolated, ultraconservative, all white world. My parents
made my sisters and I acutely aware of how much race was a social construction and thus racial
stereotypes could be deconstructed and even manipulated. They did this by telling us not to be
ashamed about being black. They warned us constantly about how whites set blacks up to get
their negative views confirmed. For instance, we were told that whites loved seeing blacks eat
watermelon and therefore we were forbidden to eat watermelon at school picnics. We were told
that white people thought blacks were dumb and had inferior genes. Therefore we were
encouraged to excel academically not only because my parents highly valued education, but also
since our achievements would contradict standing racial stereotypes.
This child-rearing philosophy my parents held complemented what I was experiencing in school
and in friendship and adversary social relationships I developed. That is, I learned very early that
human qualities such as moral fiber and intellect were random phenomena. I had smart white
friends and some were quite, quite dumb. I had some classmates who were trustworthy and
others you could not trust with anything. My parent's astute knowledge about "white behavior"
and my own experiences taught me the game whites, particularly white males, play to appear to
be superior. It is no wonder that since I had to learn such gamemanship so well during childhood
to protect my self-esteem that my professional interest in race relations centers around questions
of how socially superior groups produce images and myths that maintain their privileged status (
Stanfield, 1985a, 1985b; Johnson, 1987). As well, my professional political activism focuses on
causes which demystify structures and policies that act as barriers to social equality in elite
institutions such as universities, professional associations and foundations (a point to be
discussed later).
The power component of race and racism was a staple in my childhood and adolescent
socialization experiences equal to my awareness of race as a social construction. Given the
indifferent if not hostile reception we were given during the first few years in the country, I was
very much aware early in life that African-American survival and its difficulties were power and
privilege issues well before the black power movement [ Carmichael and Hamilton, 1967].
Concretely, as a child, I knew that we kids were not harassed because my father and his family
were officers in the active Rome chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored Peo-ple. My father warned school officials more than once that if his children were
bothered, the school would be reported to the state. In general, my parents closely monitored our
activities in school and in extracurricular affairs. Moreover, I had a grand maternal uncle in
Rochester, who, as a prominent clergyman, was a central civil rights activist in that city.
Everywhere I turned in the family tree, there were models of African Americans who struggled
against racism as a power issue.
The realities of the negative virtues of racism as power and privilege phenomena were kept alive
through "family stories and case studies." My father often, sometimes too often, reminded us
how he was discouraged from becoming a lawyer because he was black and was held back in the
army for the same reason. We were made aware that my maternal uncle's alcoholism was not a
source of family shame since his problem was due to how he had been treated by whites. As a
brilliant young man, whites stifled his efforts to attain academically (in the 1970s my uncle
would beat the addiction; earn his associate of arts degree and become a tax accountant for a
government agency).
These negative family stories and cases about what white people could and would do to African
Americans developed in me a healthy skepticism toward white systems. My parents taught us to
be cordial and encouraged us to have interracial (whites and others) friends. In a sense, they
taught us how to draw distinctions between white individuals (with the expected range of human
qualities) and white systems (institutionalized forms of racial domination). But, they also taught
us not to be surprised if so-called white friend(s) turned on us, especially if we became too
successful and too independent. When we came home as children distressed over how some
"friend" told a racial joke or wouldn't talk to us anymore, our parents would say, more or less, of
course, he or she is jealous because you're black and are not supposed to be so smart -- or have
the nerve to talk back and be an individual.
I have indeed learned through the years that few whites are willing to have African. American
friends who are not deferential to white society and who are not apologetic or ignorant of their
racial heritage. In other words, seldom do whites befriend African Americans who are not afraid
to be ethnically proud and independent individuals. Indeed, in general, healthy interracial
friendships or more intimate ties in this society are still quite rare ( Fernandez, 1975; Hernton,
1965).
This type of awareness of "how most white people really are" has been of great assistance in my
upward mobility and has influenced tremendously how I study racism and its affects on African
Americans. In every stage of educational attainment, I have been aware acutely of how much my
relations with whites has been a power struggle. It has been a difficult struggle because I have
seldom lost. It has been most instructive observing the reaction of whites whom I have bettered
by earning higher grades, getting more fellowships and grants; and getting better scholarships.
Whether it is in sixth grade, twelfth grade, the last year in undergraduate school, in graduate
school, or in professional life, their reaction is usually silent envy, or the usual mutterings that
I'm "getting over" because I'm black. Usually the former response occurs because not a few
whites, particularly males, become paralyzed verbally when confronted with a black with
intellect, particularly with intellect more superior than theirs. At most, they congregate in the
cozy comforts of their homes and clubs, degrading their own humanity in lashing out against the
uppity black you-know-what. In this sense, I believe in the Malcolm X view on how not a few
whites view blacks after "we leave the room" ( Haley, 1965).
Though I must admit that some whites are still bold and, indeed, ignorant enough to tell blacks to
their faces about how they really feel, such as the colleagues during a recent American
Sociological Association who jokingly suggested in a public place, that I was genetically
inferior. Given the fact that he is employed in a nondescript "university" in the southwest, I did
not bother to respond.
What has amazed me the most is that the games so many whites play to appear to be so superior
and the excuses they give when they cannot compete successfully against African Americans
tends to remain constant in configuration. Only substances and circumstances change with time.
Sometimes when I observe my white peers in academia; or even whites I pass on the street
engaging in their superiority rituals (like pretending they do not see you or that your work is not
all that relevant), I cannot help but think of the little boys I used to play and fight with in the
countryside of upstate New York.
RACE AND RACISM IN SCIENCE
Since I am so keenly interested in white behavior patterns, it is no coincidence that my basic
concern has always been exploring white consciousness and institutions. My interest in how
whites structure and institutionalize superiority complexes is seen in my use of life history
analysis ( Stanfield, 1987b) in my work and my attraction to psychiatrists of racisms such as
Franz Fanon ( 1967) and Albert Memmi ( 1965, 1984). These scholars suggest how psychiatric
data can be used to understand how those of European descent build institutions and status
distinctions that enable dominant racial groups to maintain an aura of superiority while
innoculating racial minorities with inferiority complexes -- a must for their continued oppression.
Ever since undergraduate school, when a classical social theory professor captured my attention,
I have been most interested in how science as an institution produces racism and other modes of
social inequality. Concretely, I have done much thinking about how science as a powerful Eu
rocentric method of interpreting realities produces distorted images of racial minorities and
women ( Stanfield, 1985a, 1986b).
Although traditionally historians and social scientists of science view science as knowledge
systems void of values, self-interests, and other forms of human intervention ( Barber and
Hirsch, 1962; Merton, 1973), there is an emerging literature that clothes science in "flesh and
blood." These "flesh and blood" studies demonstrate the ways in which sciences are cultural
products; forms of social organization; and are structured through power and privilege
relationships. In a word, sciences are of the world and are in it ( Schwendinger and
Schwendinger, 1974; Noble, 1977; Holton, 1979; Oleson and Voss, 1979). Science as a goddess
has human feet.
Ethnocentrism and racism in science issues are part and parcel of the growing though still
marginal "flesh and blood" perspective on the origins, evolution, and use of science. The extent
to which scholars have discussed ethnocentrism and racism in science issues usually has been
histories of ideas and biographical analyses ( Gossett, 1963; Higham, 1969; Gould, 1981;
Horsman, 1981). Some analyses, for instance, present chronologies of the evolution of
ethnocentric or racist theories in biological and social sciences. Other studies offer biographical
accounts of ethnocentric or racist scientists.
Not a few of these conventional studies offer excellent analysis. Yet, all fall short of articulating
how race, culture, and ethnicity, like class and gender, are part and parcel of the institutionbuilding, network formations, and political economy that characterize the origins and
development of science. That is, race, culture, and ethnicity are organizing and stratifying
phenomena in American sciences just as they are in other major and marginal institutional
sectors.
When we accept that observation as empirical fact, we seek to go beyond history of ideas and
biographical analyses of ethnocentrism and racism in science by asking questions about how
socialization experiences and cultural baggage create and transform the social structures of
sciences. We become aware that in a race-centered and ethnocentric society such as the United
States, science, like all other institutional forms, became fashioned within the context of, not in
spite of, race-and-ethnocentric specific norms and values. It is in this sense that in the United
States and in other industrial, multiracial societies, sciences have race relations (intergroup
attitudes, beliefs, values, and interaction styles); racial inequality (resource maldistribution
among "defined races"), and racial etiquette (interaction styles that reproduce race through rules
of social condescension and difference). Such race-related issues in sciences are only
qualitatively different (that is, a distinct history) from what occurs in other institutional spheres.
The meaning of it all is that the sciences, like other elite institutional spheres, are under the firm
hegemonic control of the European-descent affluent and their Eurocentric racial minority
collaborators. In a word, as is seen so obviously in the racial composition of the central
structures of scientific knowledge production and utility, the sciences are entirely white
controlled. The white dominance over the institutional and ideological instruments of scientific
knowledge production is seen in how hegemonic Eurocentric concepts and methods severely
distort racial minority experiences. It is also apparent in how much historically whites have
insisted in being the major authorities on "the race question" and have gotten their way through
the iron-clad grip they have on resource and reward resources such as funding agencies,
academic institutions, and learned societies. Consider, for instance, Gunnar Myrdal An American
Dilemma ( Stanfield, 1985b), and the National Academy of Science's Black American projects
which at most had "black administrative input" while major decision making was in the hands of
white-dominated executive committees and study panels.
My Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science ( 1985b) and other publications
have represented my efforts to demonstrate the structural qualities of race and ethnocentrism in
the development of the sciences. Most of my work is derived from archival data banks composed
of the papers of pre-World War II philanthropists, philanthropic organizations, and their favorite
race relations beneficiaries. My focus on such data sources offers unique insights into how
powerful elite white circles construct, legitimate, and transform sciences in their effort to
maintain their racial hegemony in larger society.
RACE RELATIONS IN INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
My fascination with the historical sociology of philanthropy and race relations has begun to raise
a number of issues in my mind that are evolving into other areas of research and commentary.
First, it is becoming more than apparent to me that our conventional paradigms of racial
inequality are sorely incomplete without an historically grounded understanding of the interests,
life-styles, and organizations of the wealthy and of elite policymakers. We tend to dwell on the
sociology of the racially oppressed with no concrete sense of the social organizations of
oppressors, who are structurally above the white middle class. This neglected area of inquiry is
partly due to the dominant liberal race relations paradigm that locates the cause of racism among
the white working class and celebrates the innate goodness of white affluent classes. I feel so
strongly about this view that in 1984, 1 established the JAI Press research annual series,
Research in Social Policy: Critical Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Research in
Social Policy publishes papers that explore the ways in which the values, life-styles, and
organizations of the powerful, socially and politically, construct policies that create and produce
inequality patterns.
Second, I have been intrigued by the profound contributions private g the 1930s and 1940s, the
Julius Rosenwald Fund Fellowship Program for Negroes was the major subsidizer of what would
become an expanding, black intelligensia active through the 1960s. During the 1960s and 1970s,
the Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellowship Program for Black Americans played a crucial role in
developing the first generation of African American scholars to become employed significantly
in major white universities (I was a "Ford" baby myself). Realizing this critical role of
foundations in the development of African American intellectual talent, I became quite curious
about the organization and politics of foundation fellowship programs for racial minorities.
My curiosity was spurred on when I was asked to write a report for a foundation in 1984 (
Stanfield, 1987a). The report was to be a history of an academic enrichment program the
foundation sponsored between 1966 and 1971 that enabled a small cohort of African Americans
from nonaffluent backgrounds to attend white medical schools. Since I had access to foundation
files, I had a ball reconstructing the premises of the selection processes under which fellows
were selected.
Besides exploring issues about selection, the foundation project formulated the blooming of a
new area of research I was beginning to turn my attention to when I was commissioned to do the
study: the social organizational origins of intellectual giftedness among African Americans from
nonaffluent communities. I need to back track and explain a few things.
In the spring of 1983, a colleague in psychology asked me to join him in a study on African
Americans from disadvantaged backgrounds who had attained a high degree of worldly success.
He also asked me to do a literature review paper of my choice for a journal he edited. I decided
to write a literature review on intellectually gifted children with an emphasis on studies of racial
minority gifted children. Although the paper would never be published, the exhausting research
that went into it yielded an unanticipated answer to lifelong questions and created a new area of
research.
The more I reviewed the literature on the gifted, I became aware of why I was always the odd
person out from elementary school to my professional years; besides the salient factor of race, I
began to understand why I always seemed to be ahead of my peers and why academic matters
came so easy. I began to realize why those who were more concerned with the material things
than intellectual concerns could not deal with me. Believe it or not, I did not know I had been an
intellectually gifted person until age 32. When I realized that, many questions I had about my
marginality in black and white institutions began to be answered.
In my literature search, I became aware of how little social scientists know or care about
intellectually gifted African Americans. I became disturbed at how much social scientists, like
publics at large, were more content at studying black underachievement than intellectual
superiority. I decided that I would do a field study the first chance made available to me. The
chance came in December 1983 when I was asked to write the history of the foundationsponsored program discussed above. I jumped at the offer since I would not only be given access
to foundation files, but would also be given funds to travel around the country interviewing a
small sample of the fellows. Also, the foundation gave me permission to write a book manuscript
( Stanfield, 1987a) as well as program history.
I decided to use my access to fellows of their program to study the social and cultural contexts of
their intellectual development during childhood and adolescence. In other words, unlike
conventional studies on the intellectual accomplishments of the disadvantaged which ignore the
contributions of community and family of origins, I wanted to study the roles of such indigenous
phenomena ( Bond, 1972). Thus, I constructed a life history instrument and proceeded
interviewing 21 young African-American physicians practicing medicine in various parts of the
country.
The experience of interviewing the physicians and writing the data gave me a collective sense of
(1) how much indigenous African-American social organizations have been ignored as inhibitors
and supporters of intellectual talent and (2) the problems and stereotypes intellectually gifted
African Americans confront in African American and in white settings.
This new area of research I am pursuing certainly is a perfect example of personal sociology. It
comes directly out of my autobiographical experiences as an African American young adult and
has helped me resolve some serious lifelong dilemmas generating from the socioemotional costs
of being an intellectually gifted African American male. A number of structural conditions and
cultural traditions among African Americans as well as white racism have inhibited the
nurturance of intellectually gifted black children and adults. This is particularly the case when it
comes to African American males who are made to feel that being book-oriented rather than
being into sex or sports is to be a sissy (African American assumption) or strange (white
assumption). An African American male who prefers to construct mathematical models on a
Saturday night rather than pop his fingers on the dance floor defies stereotypes in both African
American and white cultures.
African American women geniuses have it rough too, but at least women in African American
culture are expected to have a brain; an ability to express themselves as well verbally; and
aspirations to be a responsible person. Such an image of black males does not exist in African
American or in white popular cultures.
ACTIVIST VERSUS IVORY TOWER SOCIOLOGIST
I have never been comfortable with weaving theories that only my colleagues believe in or
debate over. Yet, as sociology continues to voca tionalize and isolate itself from empirical
realities, it is becoming increasingly easy to do so. This is particularly the case since publish or
perish pressures, the growing dependency on computer-based data sets, and the relative lack of
professional rewards for community work in research universities all mitigate against being a
truly activist sociologist.
Over the years I have gradually developed an activist style that some may view as elitist. Perhaps
it is. My research on philanthropy has lead me to believe that I can be the most effective assisting
the oppressed by contracting my services out to well-placed circles of influence and through
serving on policy-setting and evaluating commissions and governing boards of major nonprofit
organizations. My "community work" is related intrinsically to my research. I have already
mentioned the foundation project. I have also worked on a major civil rights case as an expert
witness which requires my expertise as a specialist on philanthropy and the politics of African
American education. Lastly, recently I have been appointed to a four-year term on the
Connecticut State Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities.
Also, this philosophy of activism is carried over in my professional associational involvements. I
am a firm believer in using appointed and elected offices I hold as instruments of change,
especially change related to race and gender equity issues. I'm not one to hold office for the sake
of "being seen."
My emerging research on the African American gifted is proving to be a fascinating synthesis of
my academic and activist interests. There is a growing concern for developing innovative
community and school programs to identify, cultivate, and mentor exceptionally intellectual
racial minority talent. The problem is, there is no theoretical or policy paradigm necessary to
carry out this work effectively. Increasingly, I am being called upon to use my research findings
to develop such systematic ways of designing policies and programs for African-American and
other racial miority gifted children and adults (for example, New Haven Register, 1987: 3,5; Yale
Weekly Bulletin and Calendar, 1987: 1,8).
BITTER CANAAN
As much as my work on the gifted is an exciting venture derived in part from my life history, my
research on Charles S. Johnson Bitter Canaan ( 1987) is the most significant example of my
scholarly interest in personal sociology. Charles S. Johnson ( 1883-1956) was one of the most
prominent social scientists during the inter-world war era. He was the first black student of
Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park in the late 1910s; worked for the National Urban League up
to 1928; was director of the Fisk Department of Social Science from 1928-47; and was the first
black president of Fisk from 1947 until his death in 1956. During Johnson's lifetime, the
breathtaking number of commissions, policy councils, foundation boards, and research institutes
he participated in were indicative of his interest in making sociological reasoning practical for
resolving social problems.
Although all but a few of Johnson's publications were grounded in statistical data analysis, he
never forgot that he was studying human beings and did so to eradicate social injustices (for
example, Johnson, 1941).
Bitter Canaan was the pinnacle of Charles S. Johnson's effort to use sociological research and
concepts to advocate reform. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover appointed Johnson to a threeperson international commission charged to investigate allegations that Liberian government
officials were selling natives as slaves domestically and abroad. During Johnson's six-month
stint in Liberia, he became appalled at how the Liberian elite, descendants of ex-slaves and
freedmen from the United States, created a caste-ridden, politically corrupt society. What
Johnson saw and heard moved him so much that upon his return to the United States, he
embarked on a labor of love that would be written and reworked for 17 years, but never
published: Bitter Canaan. Bitter Canaan, which Johnson considered as his best work, was a
critical historical sociological analysis of the development of the underdevelopment of Liberia. It
is a sad commentary that explores how the underdevelopment of Liberia was a product of
Liberian elite attitudes and beliefs about natives and nation-state building; U.S. neocolonialism;
and aggressive European colonial powers. The book manuscript is unlike any Johnson ever
wrote and published. It is written in a pro-native, moralistic tone relying upon archival,
biographical, demographic, and interview data. It is clearly a precursor to what scholars of today
call dependancy theory; that is, analyzing the marginal character of a society or a region in terms
of how it is subordinated to more powerful regions and societies. It is also a classical example of
muckraking sociology.
Bitter Canaan is the fine-tuned draft of the commission report Johnson submitted to the State
Department. That earlier draft, with its recommendations for reform, greatly influenced how the
U.S. government proceeded to pressure the Liberian government to institute major reforms;
especially the discontinuance of the enslavement of natives. Like its earlier draft, Johnson Bitter
Canaan, unlike his other major writings, explicitly advocates reform. He makes his points in a
stimulating discourse style which displays his longtime interest in synthesizing literary and
social scientific concepts (during the 1920s, Johnson was a major patron of the Harlem
renaissance; a group of young African-American literary figures. During that same period of
time, he encouraged social scientists to write literary essays.)
Bitter Canaan was never published because it was too pro-native for the black establishment of
Johnson's age. The black establishment may have been greatly differentiated along status lines
but agreed in large part that Liberia was the Canaan land of the African descent. Therefore, its
elite should be defended, celebrated, and subsidized while the country's native populations were
held in great disdain or indifference.
I ran across Bitter Canaan in Johnson's papers while I was doing doctoral research. Although
many people knew the work existed, for years complications prevented it from being published.
In 1980, I gained permission from his daughter to publish the manuscript. During the next six
years, I pieced together the historical background of Bitter Canaan and how the work influenced
Johnson's intellectual development. I became both intrigued and inspired by how much Johnson
intentionally used the tools of the social sciences to do realistic analyses of social injustices for
the sake of reform. This discovery made me aware of how erroneous it is to assume, as many do,
that just because Johnson believed in the validity of scientific analysis that he was antireform. He
viewed social science and social reform as two sides of the same coin, not as an apple and an
orange.
Reconstructing the real, more complex Charles S. Johnson has served as the central role model
of my career. I believe that like prominent white sociologists who are researchers who also
engaged in reform efforts, (for example, William Ogburn, Edward Ross, James S. Coleman),
those of us who are racial minorities have every right to follow the same career path. To
presume, as so many do, that African-American scholars can become prominent only by doing
abstract empirical work smacks of a double standard that gives substance to a peculiar form of
academic racism.
CONCLUSION
I should not continue without revealing what really makes me tick and what really holds me
together and is the source of my intellectual strength and professional orientation. Those few
persons who have followed my life from childhood to young adulthood can only shake their
heads in amazement. I was a chronic stutterer in grammar school and high school and am now
known for my public speaking talents. I grew up in the countryside of upstate New York but am
known more for my urban outlook. I entered undergraduate school as an educational opportunity
student and graduated in three years magna cum laude, and was the first black to receive the
Outstanding Senior award because of my extraordinary academic and extracurricular activities. I
attended a graduate school in a prestigious private university; taught four years in the South and
then, at age 29, went to Yale. Two years later, I was an associate professor. Meanwhile, I
married at 26, was divorced at 31; and my former wife died when I was 34.
Through my roller coaster life, God has been my anchor. Especially after I made a firm
commitment to Christ at age 22. He has held me together and kept my sanity through my rapid
climb upward. I am a devout believer in intercessory prayer and in the ability of God to reveal,
counsel, and lead those who love Him. My born-again experiences -- repentance, re generation,
restoration, etc. -- have served as the theological premises of my interests in advocating the
rights of the oppressed. The higher up I go the greater my love for God becomes since it
becomes increasingly apparent that the Emperor has no clothes and only God knows where the
Emperess is.
5. Battered Flesh and Shackled Souls: Patriarchal Control of
Women
Kathleen J. Ferraro
THE ANDROCENTRIC WORLDVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY
The discipline of sociology has developed over the past 200 years as a body of theory and facts
that describe and explain various aspects of human society. While this body of knowledge is
purported to be scientific and objective, it has become quite apparent that the content of
sociology has been heavily influenced by the gender, race, class, and culture of those who have
produced it ( Oakley, 1974; Vidich and Lyman, 1985; Gouldner, 1962). Not only have certain
groups of people been overlooked and/or misrepresented by most sociological writing, the logic
and method of research and analysis has represented the worldview and cognitive preferences of
middle-class white males. Given this bias, it is not surprising that the sociological literature did
not address the issues of violence against women until the 1970s. Until that time, analyses of the
family ignored the criminological data which indicated that most women who were murdered
were murdered by their husbands ( Wolfgang, 1958). In fact, a survey of the marriage and family
literature for the years from 1939 to 1969 did not find one article with the word "violence" in its
title ( O'Brien, 1971).
The first sociological research on battering appeared in 1971 when a special issue of Journal of
Marriage and the Family was devoted to spouse abuse. Since then, battering has received a great
deal of sociological attention. However, the attempt to incorporate women's experiences and
women's knowledge into mainstream sociology is still an uphill battle. Violence against women
has been recognized as a legitimate area of research, but a great deal of that research utilizes a
perspective which is oblivious to and in opposition to the everyday experiences of women, and
of most men. This perspective depends on definitions, scales, and indexes that are completely
removed from the daily struggles for physical survival with which most of the world's population
is concerned. That is to say, if a woman who has been violently assaulted by her husband were to
read the sociological research analyzing her situation she would be hard-pressed to recognize
herself in much of that research. The point is not that individual images are not discernable in
group data, but that sociological analyses are grounded in material experiences which are very
different than the experiences of those who are being analyzed.
For many women sociologists, traditional sociology represents an androcentric worldview which
has distorted the experiences of women. Feminist sociologists are attempting to redress this bias
by questioning the assumptions and methods of sociology. Their work is based on the life events,
feelings, and thoughts of women. (See Sherman and Beck, 1979; Millman and Kanter, 1975;
Ferguson, 1984; Stanko, 1985; Smart and Smart, 1978; MacKinnon, 1982; Bart and O'Brien,
1985; Hamner and Maynard, 1987, and Stacey and Thorne, 1985, for examples of the feminist
critique and feminist analyses.)
My own experiences with sexism, partriarchy, and male violence have influenced my choice of
research topics, methods of investigation, analyses, and approach to social change. My
understanding of violence toward women has been influenced by my own victimization. But, at a
broader level, my approach to knowledge and its uses has been informed by the experience of
being a woman in a patriarchal society.
MY SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND SOCIOLOGICAL GOALS
When I began my sociological studies in 1968, I was extremely naive about the sources of
injustice in our society and about ways to eliminate them. My conceptions of social problems
were simplistic visions of powerful bad guys mistreating powerless good guys, where "guys"
referred primarily to males. I had amorphous thoughts about the oppression of women which
developed from my own childhood, but certainly did not view patriarchy as the underlying
source of injustice.
My family followed the traditional model of the male breadwinner and female household
laborer, and I was aware of the power inequities produced by that relationship. My father made
the decisions in our household, and my mother acquiesced, usually with considerable resentment,
expressed confidentially to me. I knew at an early age that I would have to struggle to avoid the
traditional female role of subservience. Still, my father's life as a factory worker was not an
enviable one, and I had no desire to fill his shoes either. Although our family was working class,
we were far better off materially than the majority of families in our rural area, and than my
grandparents had been. Thus, while I was aware of the unhappiness and unfairness traditional
sex roles created in my family, I was also aware of extreme poverty, and the deadening life of
factory labor. Men dominated women, but the men were dominated by larger social forces.
I did not want to be trapped by the same circumstances that limited the lives of my parents and
other adults I knew. I thought the only way out was to be involved in the struggle against those
"larger social forces," although I did not know what they were. I knew that fathers worked tenor
eleven-hour days, six days a week, to pay rent on houses constructed with chicken wire. I knew
their children rarely had new clothes or shoes, toys or treats. But while these families lived on
the edges of poverty, the mothers did not leave their homes to work. They stayed at home
cooking, cleaning, and raising babies. It was quite obvious the poverty I observed was not
produced by laziness or low moral character. Rather, it existed because resources and power to
distribute them were in the control of other people, whom I never knew or even saw. I wanted to
become a sociologist to escape both the roles of traditional wife and factory worker, and to gain
knowledge about the sources of social inequities. Self-righteously, I believed that knowledge
would help me change the world. However, my first encounters with the world beyond my
family's home had a much greater impact on me than I had on it.
THE GAP BETWEEN EXPERIENCE, EDUCATION, AND UNDERSTANDING
I moved from rural Pennsylvania to inner-city Cieveland for my undergraduate education. In my
first two years of college, I had a number of encounters with male violence. I was sexually
assaulted, and threatened at knife point. When I reported the incident to the police, their response
so humiliated me that I chose not to press charges. Many of my women friends were also
sexually assaulted and injured. One of my closest friends broke both of her legs jumping from a
moving car in which she had been kidnapped at gun point. We all limited our movements and
avoided certain parts of campus. I also experienced male police brutality during peaceful antiwar
demonstrations. I was teargassed and chased by mounted police. I saw other students clubbed in
the head while attempting to run away. On the following day, at nearby Kent State, four students
were murdered by National Guardsmen during a demonstration. While these experiences of
violence were shattering and caused me to be fearful and distrustful, I was unable to focus on
male violence as a specific issue apart from the general corruption and injustice which surround
me. And I did not understand their connection with patriarchy.
When I entered graduate school at Arizona State University in 1973, I still viewed social
problems abstractly and without a clear idea of how or where to begin. My classes developed my
theoretical understanding of society, my methodological skills, and knowledge of substantive
issues. But I felt a great distance between most of what I learned and myself. While the materials
were interesting, and some were exciting, they seemed to involve spheres of activity in which I
had never participated. My political sociology course taught about the military-industrial
complex, but not about why women did not play significant roles in this complex. My deviance
course taught about male gangs and the creation of deviance by male interest groups, but not
about why there was very little officially recognized female deviance (except prostitution, which
was female behavior in relationship to men), or how women suffered uniquely from male
deviance (violence). My theory courses presented only theories developed by men and talked
about the division of labor, class conflict, and system needs, but never about gender as a primary
form of domination. And my methods classes introduced me to positivism, causal analysis,
multiple regression, and paradigm revolutions, but did not broach the androcentric bias of
traditional approaches. All but one of the courses were taught by men, and no courses on women
or gender were offered.
Finally, in my fourth year of graduate school, I began to draw my own experiences into my
intellectual work. My deviance class required a paper based on our personal experiences with
deviance. As I waited outside my professor's office to explain that I had no such experience, I
struck up a conversation with another student. Our conversation was about violence in our
intimate relationships -- hers with her lover, mine with my husband. I had recently left my
husband because of his violence toward me. In that hallway conversation it occurred to me for
the first time to think of his violence in sociological terms. As with my earlier experiences with
male violence, I failed to define my battering as a social issue until others, directly and
indirectly, provided the basis for that interpretation.
MY EXPERIENCE OF BATTERING
I married at age 23, after a year of living with my boyfriend. I was in graduate school and we
shared an apartment with two other students. My husband-to-be worked in a car wash. During
this year, I became convinced that my partner was a kind and gentle man whose outlook on life
matched well with my own. While he had no personal career goals, he did not seem opposed to
my work. In fact, he was supportive of my efforts. We returned to our hometown in the East to
work and live. I dropped out of graduate school and took a job as a landscape worker. My
husband did carpentry, and we lived in a tent, saving all our money to return to Arizona. At least
I thought that was why we were saving money.
The day we were married, our relationship began to change. My husband seemed to be angry
with me most of the time, for no apparent reason. He often questioned me about prior
relationships with men, and why he should trust me. He was enraged when I told him my plans
to enter a doctoral program. He wanted us to remain in our hometown, working at manual labor
jobs. I explained to him that I intended to return to the university with or without him, and, after
much protest, he agreed to accompany me back to the Southwest.
Over the next year, my husband became more bitter and resentful about our situation. He
apprenticed to a silversmith, and earned some money making Indian jewelry. Most of our
meager income came from my graduate teaching assistantship. Money was a major problem, and
my husband monitored every penny we spent. We lived on canned soup and grilled cheese
sandwiches, never went to movies or restaurants, and dressed in old blue jeans and T-shirts.
Our limited resources did not bother me. Most other students lived with similar restrictions.
What did begin to bother me, however, was my husband's need to monitor my spending. More
importantly, he began to monitor me, with more criticism and hostility than before. He objected
to any efforts to make myself attractive, such as curling my hair or wearing make-up. He
watched my eyes when we drove down the road, and objected if I turned to watch a man. He
dropped me off at school in the morning, and picked me up at night, so there was no possibility
of meeting with friends. He even became angry because I spent so much time studying, and
demanded that I stay away from school to watch him make jewelry.
The constant supervision and criticism made me feel trapped and my love for my husband turned
to indifference. Communication between us became less frequent, and more conflictual. My
husband ridiculed my studies and everything important to me. After completing my
comprehensive exams, a major hurdle for graduate students, he told me it was no big deal and to
fix his supper.
I rapidly lost all feelings of love for this man, but I did not consider divorce a legitimate option.
He did nothing that I thought would justify a divorce. He did not drink, use drugs, see other
women, or beat me. It was not long, however, until his mental cruelty took the form of physical
violence.
The first time he assaulted me was during a discussion about money. He was angry that my
mother had offered to help us financially. He screamed at me and kicked my legs out from under
me with his heavy work boots. When I got up and contended that it was his refusal to take a job
that forced us to rely on others, he started slapping my face, pinning me against the wall and
screaming at me. Finally, after pushing me back to the floor, he sneered and walked away. I
hated him then, but did not leave because I was too scared, hurt, and upset to know what to do.
Although the literature on battering describes scenes of hearts and flowers following beatings,
my husband was not apologetic for this assault. I cried myself to sleep, and nothing was ever said
about it. In fact, we seldom spoke to each other. When we did talk, we disagreed, and the
arguments were settled with his fist.
After each assault I left home to stay with a classmate. But I came back within a day or two
because I did not have the physical or emotional energy to leave him. Although I managed to
meet the monthly rent on our apartment, I could not afford the advance payments and deposits
required for a new apartment. I tried several times to find a place to live which I could afford, but
they all seemed so tacky and ugly. I was physically ill because of the strain in our marriage while
trying to maintain my studies. Finally, he made the decision for me.
My only social activity was attendance at a weekly study group. My husband disliked this
activity, but I went anyway. On the evening of my twenty-fifth birthday, he slapped me and
threatened that things were going to get a lot worse for me if I did not start doing things his way.
I assured him I would not, and he hit me again. I ran out of the apartment and drove to my
meeting. My friends surprised me with cake and presents, and our celebration made me an hour
late returning home. The lights were out, the door was bolted, and I received no response to my
request for entry. I drove to the home of some friends and never returned.
The next day he called my friends' and first pleaded with me to return, and then threatened me if
I did not. He told me that if I did not come back, they would find me "in a bloody pool" in my
office. When I refused to talk on the phone anymore, he came to the house to get me. My friends
tried to get him to leave while I cowered in the bedroom closet. They called the police who came
within ten minutes. The officer came in, found me shaking in the closet, and asked if I wanted to
see my husband. After I said no, he went out and spoke kindly to him, telling him he knew how
he felt. He was divorced and had gone through the same problems. If I did not want to see him, I
wasn't worth it. My husband said he would leave, but would be back later to "do something
through the window." The officer said, "Ah, you don't want to do something like that. Go on
home now," and he and my husband left. I was very grateful to the police for getting my husband
to go away.
The threat on my life created overwhelming fear and sent me into hiding. My friends transported
me on the floor of their car, covered with a blanket. We were all scared to death of his revenge.
They took me to a woman's home on the other side of town. Although I barely knew her, she
took me in. Five women stayed up all night, comforting me, retelling the story, crying, then
laughing at our cloak-and-dagger getaway. I stayed there for two weeks without venturing
outdoors. My husband gave up looking for me, and returned to our hometown. I obtained a
single party, no-fault divorce, and I never saw him again.
EARLY WORK ON BATTERING
When I first began to explore my experiences through sociology in 1976, there was very little
information on battered women. The terms domestic violence and battered women were
unfamiliar to most people. But a few sociologists and feminists were beginning to explore the
issues. The literature that did exist helped me start making sense of what had happened to me.
The first thing I learned was that woman-battering is not unusual. The available statistics at that
time indicated that about one in every six women were battered. Current estimates range between
one in five and one out of every two. More importantly, however, I saw striking similarities
between the descriptive accounts offered in the feminist literature and my own marriage.
The most consistent themes in the stories of battered women were male dependency,
possessiveness, and jealousy. Women described their husbands as children, demanding constant
attention and nurturance and threatening or using violence when they did not receive it. Women
also spoke of the loss of control over their own lives as their husbands dominated even the most
minute aspects of their social and personal lives. And almost every story referred to violent
men's pathological jealousy, accusing faithful wives of every form of secret and perverted
sexuality. These themes were consistent with my own situation, but there were others that were
not. Women were tortured and killed by their husbands. They were violently raped and forced to
perform sex in repulsive and painful ways. They often mentioned alcoholism, and some saw
their children abused as well. All spoke of their fear and confusion at the danger they faced from
the person they believed loved them.
LOCAL SHELTER WORK
After reviewing the small body of literature that existed in 1976, I decided to investigate the
shelters for battered women in our area. Two of the first women's shelters to open in this country
were located in the Phoenix area, Rainbow Retreat and Faith House. I interviewed the directors
and several residents at both shelters, and signed on to do volunteer work at Rainbow Retreat. I
was surprised by the discrepancy between what I read about woman-battering and what I saw
and heard at these shelters. There I was told that 99 percent of battering stems from alcoholism,
and that wives of batterers are just as sick as their abusers. The literature, on the other hand,
reported that alcoholism was not a cause, but an excuse for violence. Empirical data found that
only 48 percent of cases involved alcohol abuse ( Gelles, 1974). The feminist research rejected
the notion of "sickness" for either abuser or abused, but objected particularly to the idea that
women contributed to their own victimization ( Martin, 1976). These "facts" were presented to
residents who had no context in which to critique them. However, they are both myths which are
not supported by any empirical data. These myths fit with the stereotypes and ideologies of the
shelter directors, and so were perpetuated in both the form and content of shelter services.
Both shelters were founded on the Al-Anon philosophy and were oriented toward alcohol-related
battering. Their directors were both ex-wives of alcoholics. Simply stated, the Al-Anon
philosophy is that wives must give up responsibility and guilt for their husbands' drinking, or
else they perpetuate the "disease." My first article was a description of the "hard love"
philosophy embodied in the Rainbow Retreat and Faith House programs ( Ferraro, 1979a). The
idea of hard love is to recognize that women's nurturing and caring for alcoholics makes it easy
for them to hide their problem drinking from themselves and others. If people truly love their
alcoholic family member, they will take a hard-line approach and refuse to help them until they
help themselves. The counseling and literature women received at the two shelters instructed
them in this Al-Anon approach. Women who did not accept this solution to their situations were
given no alternatives.
My official role at Rainbow Retreat was child care worker, but I was able to have considerable
contact with residents and staff. I was even permitted to run several "rap sessions." It was
obvious from my weekly visits that the orientation of the founders and staff at Rainbow Retreat
was strictly imposed on women staying there. There was a rigid schedule of events for women to
follow, including the amount of time to be spent "putting on make-up." They were required to
attend alcohol education sessions, rap sessions, and individual counseling sessions. The walls
were covered with Al-Anon sayings, such as "Let go, and Let God." Since my own experience
was so different from that described by the shelter administrators, it bothered me that women
were forced to accept this interpretation of their experiences in order to gain shelter. The attitude
toward residents was expressed by one administrator who told me, "They are in shock when they
come in here. You have to structure things very tightly, tell them what to do every minute,
because they don't know what to do for themselves." Women who refused to follow the routine
were reprimanded, and if they still refused, were asked to leave. Technically, women who were
not involved with an abusive alcoholic were not permitted residence, due to requirements of
funding agencies which were oriented toward alcohol problems. In 1976, family violence was
not a legitimate social service category for funding purposes. Agencies receiving state behavioral
health services funding were required to categorize their clients as having one of three types of
problems: alcoholism, drug abuse, or mental health. Since violent assault by one's husband did
not necessarily produce any of these problems, battered women did not "fit" into the vocabulary
of social services.
CREATING A SHELTER
In the fall of 1976, I became involved with a group of people in establishing an alternative
shelter which was not tied to alcoholism or alcoholism funding. There were five other people
involved in the founding group, two women and three men. Most of the people had known each
other prior to formation of the shelter group, and had become aware of battering through the
media. None of them had any personal experience with battering, social services, feminism, or
government funding. One of the members was a sociology professor who was specifically
recruited to lend legitimacy and expertise to the group. Together we wrote the grant for state
funding which allowed the initial start-up of the shelter.
My interactions with this group of "moral entrepeneurs," and the community politicians we
worked with were my first experience with social service decision making. I found that having a
Ph.D. after one's name made a difference when attempting to influence the state's decisions to
help people. We placed a number of people with Ph.D.'s on our "board of advisers"as a technique
of bolstering respectability, even though these individuals had nothing to do with the shelter, nor
any knowledge of battering.
All of the people in positions of authority with whom we negotiated were white males. None of
them were familiar with the problem of womanbattering. Our task was to convince the funding
agencies and the community that a shelter was needed, and that it was the state's responsibility to
provide the support. The ideas we had about running a shelter were drawn from my interviews
and experiences at Rainbow Retreat and Faith House and my reading of the literature. For
example, I drew up a list of house rules which were used in other shelters. Women who came to
the shelter then had to follow these rather arbitrary rules. We did not have a solid, welldeveloped philosophy about the goals and structure of the shelter. But I was determined that our
shelter would be more responsive to and respectful of battered women than the existing shelters I
had observed. My ideas, however, were not consistent with those of our funding agency.
COOPTATION OF THE SHELTER
The men we negotiated with were trained as social workers and counselors, although they held
administrative positions. They had worked their way through the ranks from drug counselors.
They wanted to know what "treatment modalities" we planned to use, how we would set up our
treat ment plans, and how we would monitor progress on those plans. They spoke another
language. Their language was that of therapeutic social control. That is, their approach to social
problems was to provide psychological services through trained experts. From their perspective,
the way to stop woman-battering was to counsel battered women. We learned that in order to
please the funding agency, we would have to adopt their perspective, and translate our shelter
work into traditional mental health service ( Ferraro, 1981a, 1983a).
From our first contacts with the funding agency, I was opposed to the definition of shelter
services which they imposed. The focus on counseling for the women at the shelter seemed
inappropriate. I felt I was able to leave my violent husband because I was financially
independent, had a career goal and a network of supportive friends. I did not need a shelter or the
law, because I had financial and emotional resources. But the people giving us money to run the
shelter wanted us to "fix" the damaged battered women, and quickly return them to society. As a
state agency, it was not concerned with redistributing power in society so that women would not
need shelters. Instead, it operated from the "therapeutic ideology," which focuses on
rehabilitating the individual suffering from social pathology. It was important for the state to
maintain a pro-family image. Their support was contingent upon our compliance with an official
stance which did not advocate divorce for battering victims, and which limited service to six
weeks of crisis intervention. More long-term aid was viewed as inherently anti-family. 1
Unfortunately, my colleagues at the shelter were only too happy to adopt this approach. 2 For a
variety of reasons, staff at the shelter also wanted to counsel battered women, and rejected
women who failed to conform to their expectations. The board decided to professionalize
counseling services by eliminating paraprofessionals and hiring M.S.W.'s. Intense conflicts
between board and staff members ensued, involving vicious personality attacks. By the end of 14
months, all of the original eight staff members were gone.
It was obvious upon walking into the shelter that staff members were in at least as much
emotional turmoil as the battered women they were supposed to be serving. At one point of
crisis, all the women residing at the shelter left and returned to their husbands, as an alternative
to staying in the chaos and despair at the shelter. Throughout all of our problems, the funding
agency refused to intervene. Their only concern was that we meet our quota of monthly services.
The power plays between board and staff, and among staff members resulted in a particular
definition of services that dictated the appropriate conduct for shelter residents. The help battered
women received was dependent on their acceptance of this behavioral rule. Women who
indicated that counseling was not their primary need were not accepted at the shelter.
Some were asked to leave after demonstrating their lack of commitment to changing themselves
through counseling.
Many of the shelter's problems stemmed from the fact that the "do gooders" who started the
shelter had no idea what to do for battered women. Neither did the agency which gave us money.
Yet our purpose fit the political needs of the social service community at that time. We provided
a place for battered women to stay, without demanding that ongoing food, shelter, and support be
provided so they could remain free of abusive relationships. The need for shelter services was
great, and we easily met our quotas. What happened to the women after they left the shelter was
really irrelevant to the funding agency. And the shelter staff was too busy with organizational
crises and the ongoing crises of new clients to contact women who had left.
A few years after those disastrous beginnings, the shelter became a much more stable, efficient
organization. It was professionalized, focusing on counseling women and their families, but it
helped a number of women with no place else to go. Still, it continued to suffer from conflicts
among staff and board members, and limited resources for making better lives for battered
women. Confronted with limited resources and avenues for social recognition, women are forced
to compete against each other in their mutual goal Of ending violence. In the summer of 1986,
the shelter closed due to financial problems.
My own view of the role of social scientists in helping people is now embedded in the
experience of a service agency that tried to help others without knowing about them or their
needs. In my graduate studies and in writing my dissertation, I discovered that I belonged to it
tradition of white, middle-class people whose goal is to help those less fortunate than
themselves. While many of these people are humanitarians with benevolent concerns, the overall
impact of their helpful efforts has been to increase the levels of social control over those they
wanted to help. They have imposed their own value system on people whom they assumed
would be grateful to become like them. At the same time, they have created an image of solving
social problems, and have largely diverted attention away from the more serious, structural
sources of the problems.
Working with the shelter was a humbling experience. I learned that woman-battering is a
complex, multifaceted problem. In helping to create an agency to serve battered women, I
became part of the competitive politics of social services. People working to help others in that
network are caught in their own needs, perspectives, and problems. I learned that giving help to
people without adequate respect for their strengths is a form of paternalism which contributes to
their problems. In assuming that battered women were helpless victims who required experts to
oversee their decisions, the shelter became one more patriarchal institution with control over
women's lives.
LEARNING FROM BATTERED WOMEN
My dissertation research was a participant observation study of the shelter we created. A great
deal of that study involved the organizational features of the shelter, but I also interviewed and
became friends with the 120 women who stayed there. I wanted to learn about how women made
sense of the fact that the men who were supposed to love them beat them up. That is, I wanted to
know how women got out of relationships with men who threatened their physical safety, yet
with whom they shared deep emotional bonds. While this research question was based on the
literature on deviant behavior, my primary motivation for exploring it was personal. I wanted to
understand why I had such a difficult time getting out of an abusive relationship.
In retrospect, it seems clear that I was waiting for a "legitimate" excuse to end an unsatisfactory
marriage and that violence provided that excuse. While I now believe that I would not tolerate a
single violent event in a relationship, it was not long (five months) before I ended my marriage
once physical violence occurred. My emotional involvement with my husband had ended, and I
was able to leave without a great deal of regret. In another, nonviolent relationship which
involved a great deal of painful psychological abuse, however, I was not able to withdraw my
emotions. It took numerous separations to end that relationship, and my feelings of love and
commitment continued long after we stopped seeing each other. Although I knew that
relationship was extremely destructive, I did not want to end it because I also experienced the
positive aspects of deep emotional involvement and commitment.
The women I met at the shelter expressed the same feelings about their physically violent
marriages. Although some women were horrified of their husbands and had no desire to ever see
them again, many of the women did not want to leave their abusive husbands. They did describe
extreme possessiveness, jealousy, and dependency in their husbands, similar to what occurred in
my own marriage. They hated this aspect of their relationships, and the physical abuse they were
attempting to escape. Yet they were still bonded to and in love with their husbands. Many talked
about what wonderful, loving people their husbands could be, and cried about the loss of their
relationships. About half of the women who came to the shelter went back to their husbands.
Most, of course, were financially unable to survive at a decent level without their husbands'
incomes. A few were convinced that no matter where they went, their husbands would find them
and hurt them and their children. But some returned because of an inability to dissolve the
emotional bonds of their marriages, even in the face of servere violence.
Experts on battered women have talked about the low self-esteem, and even "learned
helplessness" of women who remain in violent marriages ( Gelles, 1976; Pagelow, 1984; Walker,
1984). This interpretation seems biased and inaccurate to me, because I understand these
women's commitment to relationships which appear totally destructive from an outsider's
perspective. Yet the "destructiveness" that outsiders see in a battering relationship is only more
visible and concrete than the abuse which occurs in many relationships. As a culture, we place a
high value on marriage and on heterosexual couplings. We also support economic and parenting
dependencies which make it extremely difficult to disengage from marriages. Women who are
married to violent men are not different from women who are in nonviolent but unsatisfactory
marriages, except that battered women have the additional threat of physical punishment if they
attempt to leave.
When I interviewed and worked with women at the shelter, I assumed that they were competent,
self-respecting individuals who were unhappy with aspects, or perhaps the entirety, of their
relationships. My own hesitancy to end an abusive relationship led me to explore the process
through which women moved from initial acceptance to eventual rejection of their husbands'
violence. 3 None of the women I interviewed defined the first instance of battering as assault.
They rationalized and excused their husbands'violence as unique, understandable deviations from
their true selves. Some women continued to excuse the violence, even as it gradually escalated,
and were aided in this process by their husbands, relatives, and police officers who assured them
it was nothing to worry about. Faced with the threat of great emotional and material loss and the
absence of any support for leaving, they constructed mental images which made staying in the
violent marriage sensible to them. They did not begin to define themselves as victims until these
techniques of rationalization were rejected. As long as the battering made sense in the contexts
of their relationships, it was not necessary to view them as women with low self-esteem, or
learned helplessness. They were just working very hard to protect a vitally important, intimate
relationship from the painful realities of their husbands' violence. The definition of themselves as
victims was not an automatic response to being battered. It occurred only after a process of
rejecting rationalizations, experiencing the emotions of betrayal, despair, and confusion, and
reinterpreting past events as victimization. For some women this process took months, for some,
years, and for some, the process was never complete.
The women who came to the shelter spoke openly and at length with me about their feelings for
their husbands. I told all of them that I also had been battered. Most women were surprised that
other women were battered, but they were expecially surprised that someone who worked in the
shelter had been battered. They were not ashamed or embarrassed to talk to me about their love
for their husbands. However, many said, "I know this sounds stupid," or "I know this seems
crazy," as they spoke of lingering feelings of love. Empathic acceptance of their feelings helped
them feel better about themselves, and helped me to learn what their feelings were.
I am keenly aware of the discrepancy between what uninvolved outsiders observe and battered
women feel. People who have never been in a battering situation do not usually understand how
a woman could allow herself, or especially her children, to be abused and remain in the
relationship. When people look at battered women from this aloof position, they fail to consider
the emotional turmoil battered women experience. That turmoil interacts with practical
constraints to compound women's uncertainties about divorce. Their ambivalence is not unique,
but is experienced by most people contemplating divorce. Battered women are immersed in an
absurd world, and whichever choice they make, they will be hurt. 4 If they stay, they will be
battered and abused. If they leave, they will lose their dreams, and face an uncertain future. They
usually also continue to experience their husbands' harassment and abuse.
What I did not recognize as I began my study was the unique strengths and positive qualities of
all women. The women who came to the shelter did not want revenge against their abusers. The
majority of them wanted help for their husbands. Many of them demonstrated incredible
personal strength by maintaining jobs, households, and children while supporting alcoholic,
abusive husbands. While at the shelter, they nurtured each other, displayed great humor, and
mourned for the loss of their hopes and dreams. I saw in these women important, beautiful
qualities that I admire and emulate. The women showed the ability to think about and care for
others while suffering personal pain, to laugh and joke while surrounded by despair, to cry until
no tears were left to cry, and still to endure. If these abilities were more highly valued in our
culture, the levels of violence would certainly be reduced.
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF BATTERING
One characteristic of traditional sociology is that it tends to divide things into categories.
Categorization allows events to be counted and compared, but often when this process is applied
to social behavior, it produces distortions. In the area of woman-battering, this tendency has
resulted in analyses which assume that all battered women are the same, and that physical and
emotional battering are entirely separate phenomena.
Physical battering covers a broad spectrum of behaviors, and is experienced in many varying
contexts. It ranges from a single punch once a month to beating into unconsciousness, rape, and
games of Russian roulette several times a week. Battered women are young, childless, highincome professionals and they are middle-age, mothers of six children who speak no English and
have no job skills. It is not possible to talk about all of these situations in one sweeping term,
battering, but that is certainly done, and has even been done in this essay! Answers to questions
about why men batter, if they also batter their children, or why women stay in violent
relationships will not be meaningful if "battering" is considered to be one, unitary phenomenon
which can be clearly categorized.
Similarly, the tendency to dichotomize physical and emotional abuse leads to the inaccurate
assumption that they occur independently, and can be considered as separate behaviors ( Ferraro,
1979b). All physically abused women talked about the severe emotional pain they experienced
as a consequence of physical violence, and also through emotional abuse. Many indicated that
physical violence was less painful, and less enduring than emotional abuse. They also described
physical consequences of emotional abuse, such as rashes, and sleeping and eating disorders.
When sociologists neglect the connection between the body and emotions, as they are trained to
do, the phenomenon of woman-battering is inevitably distorted.
It is also distorting to ignore the emotional context in trying to understand men who beat their
wives. Telephone calls to the shelter from husbands reflected the despair of men whose wives
had left them. They tried everything from promises to go to counseling to threats of suicide to
get their wives to come home. Many of the men were more emotionally dependent on their wives
than the women were on their husbands. Their violent actions reflect intense emotional
insecurity and are an index of the depth of their need for a sense of control and domination of
their wives ( Ferraro, 1987).
CONNECTING PATRIARCHY AND VIOLENCE
As I sat in on "rap sessions," and talked casually with the women at the shelter, I heard the same
stories over and over. Women talked of their husbands' extreme possessiveness and jealousy.
The women commented on the similarities in their situations. "We must be married to the same
guy," was a phrase heard during more than one discussion. And, of course, that same guy
sounded very much like my own former husband. But he also sounded like my father, and like
every man I had known while growing up. While my father and other males in my youth had not
been violent, they did control their households. They determined whether their wives could
work, go out with friends, or even have friends. While both men and women were emotionally
dependent on their spouses, the men were the ones who used violence when they felt their
dependency threatened. I had always assumed a connection between sexism and battering, but at
the shelter, I was presented with countless specifics of that connection.
Men were the ones battering women, physically and emotionally. They often did so because they
viewed their wives as their possessions, as extensions of themselves. When women did anything
to upset that impression, they were punished. They were also punished for doing nothing. A bad
day at work, or just a bad mood followed by a few drinks, could set off an attack. Men seemed to
believe they had the right to control their wives, and to use them as objects on which to vent their
frustrations.
In 1979, Rebecca and Russell Dobash published their book, Violence Against Wives: A Case
Against the Patriarchy ( 1979). This book spelled out the historical contexts which encourage
wife-beating, and analyzed the cases of 109 battered women. Their analysis concludes that
patriarchy inevitably produces violence against wives. Patriarchy is a social system in which
power and authority are vested in mates. Social institutions are defined and controlled by males,
and women must accommodate to the system as mates desire. Women, therefore, have secondary
status, both legally and morally. Historically, patriarchal societies have prescribed the control of
women by men through whatever means necessary. In Europe and North America throughout the
eighteenth century, males were legally permitted to physically torture their wives. In some
patriarchal cultures males maintain this right today. In the United States, the courts did not
declare woman-battering to be illegal until 1871 ( Pleck, 1983).
The book was very influential in both the academic and feminist community, and its ideas are
now common knowledge in the world of domestic violence. But in 1979, the historical facts
were an important influence on how I perceived woman-batterings. The Dobash's work,
combined with what I was hearing at the shelter and my own experiences, drew me to conclude
that patriarchy was, in fact, the underlying cause of violence against wives. At the same time I
was developing this conclusion, I was forced to leave the shelter because I disagreed with the
focus on professional counseling. Connecting patriarchy with battering was not acceptable in the
coopted shelter. The shelter was there to work on the psychological problems of individual
women and not to challenge the system.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AS A CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL PROBLEM
In 1985, woman-battering is internationally recognized as a serious social problem. There are
over 700 shelters in the United States. There is a separate category of mental health services for
"domestic violence," in Arizona, and a specific domestic violence law. Recently, the focus of
attention for those concerned with domestic violence has been the criminal justice system.
Efforts are being made to increase the arrests of batterers, and their prosecution by the courts.
Most battered women's advocates see this as a good thing. Two social scientists produced
research evidence that arrest is the best deterrent to future violence ( Sherman and Berk, 1984).
My current research project is an examination of the impact of legal sanctions on womanbattering. I have spent a number of Saturday nights riding in police cars to observe their
interventions in "family fights." I am also interviewing battered women and their husbands,
trying to find out what happened to violent relationships after the police and/or court systems
intervened.
"Domestic violence" has been reified as an abstract, objective behavior which can be controlled
by state force. Sociology has contributed to this process by providing research data which is
severed from the contexts, political and individual, in which violence occurs. Sexism influences
the daily lives of all men and women, and the ways in which they conduct their social roles. The
need for men to possess and control women, and women's financial and emotional dependency
on men are integral parts of the fabric of our culture. When men beat women, and women stay in
violent relationships, they are enacting behaviors which they have inherited, not from their
parents, but from their culture. If we use state force to deter men from beating their wives, will
that alter our culture? Many people hope that it will be a beginning. From what I have seen in my
own relationships, my experiences with the police, and my research, it seems like one of the less
important needs of battered women. Increased educational, social, and economic opportunities
seem to be much more central to violence-free relationships. 5
TOWARD A VIOLENCE-FREE SOCIETY
My original and naive goal of trying to help remedy injustices has been honed by my experience
in the real world. Unfortunately, there are no bad guys whose elimination will free women from
battering relationships. Locking up every man who batters his wife would certainly reduce the
free male population, but would not change the barriers that prevent people from creating
violence-free relationships.
Women are still subordinate to men throughout the world. In the United States, women are
systematically paid less than men for the same work. In 1981, women's earnings were only 59
percent of the median for men. Two out of three poor adults in the United States are women.
Families with female heads have a poverty rate six times that of male-headed households (
Pearce and McAdoo, 1981). Divorce lowers the standard of living for women and their children
by 73 percent in the first post-divorce year, while divorced men experience a 42 percent rise in
the same time period ( Weitzman, 1985). White women are awarded child support payments in
71 percent of divorce cases, Hispanic women in 44 percent of cases, and black women in only 29
percent of cases. These awards are small, usually less than $3,000, and in most cases, men fail to
pay what the court has ordered ( Pearce and McAdoo, 1981). When men do request total custody
of their children following divorce, the court tends to grant it. Chesler's survey found that 70
percent of custodially challenged mothers lost custody to challenging fathers, 83 percent of
whom were previously uninvolved in providing child care and 62 percent of whom physically
abused their wives ( Chesler, 1986). Welfare payments are not adequate for survival, ranging
from 49 to 96 percent of the poverty level, depending on the state the woman lives in ( Levitan,
1980). Women clearly face economic oppression which makes it difficult for them to leave
unsatisfactory marriages, or to invest their energies in anything other than basic survival.
However, even if women were to obtain incomes equal to men overnight, male violence against
them would not disappear, nor would all women leave violent men. Physical violence against
women is only the visible manifestation of a much deeper level of violence. The hearts of
women are frozen and perverted in a culture which rejects them. Many women are still trying to
conform to a mold which has been created to suit the needs of men. Their bodies are starved into
the shape that fashion dictates is sexy, or they feel guilty and ugly if they are not thin. They
spend enormous energy trying to attract the "right man" because of the heavy cultural emphasis
on heterosexual coupling as the most fulfilling aspect of women's lives. When a man takes
interest in them, their women friends usually take on secondary importance, and they often
accommodate to whatever lifestyle the man chooses. Women have been socially and culturally
defined as adjuncts to men for so long that many remain dependent on men for feelings of selfworth. Identifying with male interests saps their energies and turns them against themselves and
other women.
Our social institutions are structured deliberately to encourage the separation between public and
private lives. The marketplace is intended to be a male-dominated sphere in which competition
and self-interest define relationships. The private realm is supposed to be the haven from this
heartless world of toil. While power and authority in the marketplace depends on class position
and gender, power within the family depends on gender and age. Men are to be nurtured on their
own terms within the home, and women are to provide that nurturance. As long as the family is
considered a private haven, separate from the community, politics, and the economy, women will
continue to be isolated from one another, carrying out the endless tasks of housework and child
care. Violence against women will not end until, as a society, we reject the assumption that these
social tasks belong to individual women.
Sociologists can play a role in changing the social structures which oppress women. The
underlying assumption of all sociology is that the social structure of human relationships, from
the world system to intimate dyads, is a primary influence on behavior. Although I have
concentrated on the androcentric biases of sociology in this essay, there is a large body of
sociological literature which focuses on oppression and power relationships. Scholars who have
been immersed in these investigations are now including women in their analyses. And feminist
sociologists are producing empirical and theoretical work based on the experiences of women
which is creating an entirely new understanding of social life. Their work is not limited by
traditional male methods and assumptions, and is guided by a commitment to empowering
women.
My own role in this process involves personal, scholarly, and political action. At the personal
level, I am working to develop my own strengths and potential without catering to male-defined
terms. I pursue feministcreated options to mass media, relgion, health care, and entertainment. I
am raising my daughter and son, and imparting my values and knowledge to them. Creating a
new definition of mothering, which retains the positive qualities of gentleness and nurturing but
rejects the repressive traditions of self-abnegation and obsessive dependency is a political
process.
My involvement in social change is primarily scholarly, as I believe that feminist theory and
research provides the understanding which is a prerequisite for positive social change. My
experience with the shelter convinced me that action in the absence of understanding is
dangerous. Thus, I read as much as I can by and about women, including history, biography,
poetry, fiction, theory, spirituality, and social science. These are all new topics when they are
viewed from the perspective of women. I feel that I am only beginning to understand women's
realities, 6 and that I must constantly battle with the blinders imposed by my androcentric
training. I teach courses on women, and try to bring my new knowledge to students in a
nonpaternalistic manner. That is, while I lecture to my students, I also remain open to
information from them and to their desires in structuring the course. And I continue to study
forms of violence against women and attempt to develop feminist-based solutions.
At a political level, I work for candidates who support women's rights and against social policies
that encourage violence and oppression, such as our national commitment to nuclear stockpiling.
I no longer believe I can eliminate inequities through sociological knowledge, but I still believe
that knowledge can provide the basis for action which will create a more just world for women
and men.
NOTES
1
Most U.S. shelters have a time limit ranging from three days to six weeks, but the typical time
limit is a month or less. In Great Britain, on the other hand, women may stay as long as they
need to in shelters. In the U.S., transition homes are being developed in some communities to
serve as an intermediate step between the shelter and an independent home.
2
The entire conflict alluded to here is described in my dissertation, "Battered Women and the
Shelter Movement", ( Ferraro, 1981b).
3
See, Ferraro ( 1983b) and Ferraro and Johnson ( 1983) for a description of my findings on this
issue.
4
The fact that battered women often feel ambivalent about divorce or believe their husbands'
threats to murder them if they leave does not indicate "learned
helplessness," or any other characterological defect. Walker's own data on this issue found that
battered women in her sample had higher levels of self-esteem than the general population of
U.S. women and did not attribute power over their lives to other people. They did, however,
demonstrate high levels of depression (see Walker, 1984).
Pleck ( 1983) describes feminist efforts between 1868 and 1896 to protect battered women which
closely resemble the current responses. During the Progressive Era, feminists worked to reform
laws and invoke stronger criminal sanctions against batterers. Their critique relied on moral
indignation over the actions of individual men against whom they advocated harsh punishment.
Their efforts failed, and public awareness of crimes against women was submerged until the
1970s.
6
The plural of reality should be emphasized here, as the experiences of women vary widely,
especially along the lines of nation-state, skin color, social class, and sexuality.
6. Rationality and Practical Reasoning in Human Service
Organization
Jaber F. Gubrium
Max Weber ( 1946) left a legacy of ideas about bureaucracy, officeholders, rules and regulations
that continues to inform and irk us. Weber's was a complex and rational view, featuring
hierarchies, well-delineated offices, formal procedures, and impersonal commitment. He saw the
configuration as increasingly pervasive in daily life. As a vision of the future, it presented a
depressing picture of ironclad organizational regimentation. Weber referred to the overall
process as the "rationalization" of human relations. Together with economic and cultural
imperatives, he took rationalization to be the key to modernity.
While we all no doubt have experienced the infringement of rationalization on our lives, Weber's
representation seems overdrawn. In one sense, we are told that conduct is virtually caged by
organized rules and regulations. In a deeper sense, the cage becomes our very selves, bereft of
wile and whimsy. While this may be a shadow of modern living, something or other must keep it
going. How do we experience it? Who does the rationalizing of daily living? Certainly, it is done
somewhere, by someone or other. Surely, it is not simply a matter of being the way things are.
It is with this intellectual heritage and these questions that I have studied a hallmark organization
of contemporary life -- the human service institution. Its agents and agencies provide many of
the cares which, some say, were once the haven of home and family: teaching, helping,
consoling, healing, understanding, supporting, keeping ( Lasch, 1977). The particular
organizations I have observed are the nursing home ( Gubrium, 1975), the residential treatment
center for emotionally disturbed children ( Buckholdt and Gubrium, 1985 [ 1979]), the
rehabilitation hospital ( Gubrium and Buckholdt , 1982), the day hospital and family support
groups ( Gubrium and Lynott, 1985a; Gubrium, 1986a). Among their agents are physicians;
psychiatrists; psychologists; physiatrists; special education teachers; social workers; physical,
occupational, and speech therapists; child care workers; nurses; activity and leisure therapists;
pastoral counselors; dietitians; aides and orderlies.
PERSONAL SOURCES
What I eventually saw as the organized rationalities and rationalizations of service provision was
informed by an appreciation of Weber's legacy as well as an impatience with it. A sociological
heritage led me to consider rationality a central theme of organizational life. It was part of the
knowledge from which I expected to frame a long-term look at service provision. My impatience
was rooted in the suspicion that the rationality I would see would not be as singularly neat and
prevalent as Weber portrayed it. I was leery of any theory taken to universally represent the
reality to which it was applied without addressing the question of differential needs and interests
(see Gouldner, 1970). In the social sciences, it is not easy to keep representation separate from
interests, the possibility that a particular understanding -- like Weber's vision of bureaucracy -might be of greater interest to some organizational parties than others. Weber straddled the fence
over this ( Löwith, 1982: 51-52). He offered us a general rules-and-regulations view, yet he was
terribly annoyed by the portrayal, wanting to be both critical and objective.
Weber's view of bureaucracy resembles the proper contents of organizational charts and job
descriptions. It does not sound at all like the "wheels and weasels" who can, and do, fix things,
anything, in and about formal organizations. It is far removed from the activities of those who
cut through red tape or those who represent their firms or facilities as well-organized and orderly
to others who officially require such portrayals, fine Weberian presentations all.
A social theory is both a vision and visionary, a depiction of social life as well as a preferred way
of seeing and describing it. Taken together, the existing spectrum of sociological theories is not
far removed from the ways by which socially diverse sets of laypersons see their respective
activities and the wider contexts of which they are a part. As Weber's legacy sounds much like
an administrative gloss on organizational affairs, others' theories better represent the
organizational world, say, in accordance with the view of certain lower level participants. The
parallels between social theories of organizations and diverse native portrayals behooved me to
question received wisdom.
A combined appreciation and impatience with Weber was fueled by a personal habit of being
circumspect with single interpretations. It seems that this had three sources. One was an old
concern with the relationship between what people say and why they say so. It is not that I have
always felt that people did not say what they meant so much as that what people said things
meant seems to have had so many interpretations. From the time I was a child growing up in
French Canada, going to an English school, and coming home to both French Canadian and
Lebanese grandparents, I had heard things put one way only to be understood otherwise. These
were not merely disagreements, for I learned that unless I was continually willing to perceive the
underlying senses of spoken words, I would not understand what words could (not did) mean. As
much as it was disciplined study, it was the "could" quality of the relationship between saying
and meaning that, for me, was later to draw a connection between what I thought I knew about
rationality and what I came to see. What is more, what seemed to have been a good dose of
French Canadian stubbornness combined with Lebanese wariness to reflect back to me in the
people I observed a world of persistent explainers, describers, interpreters, liars, apologists,
sincere advocates, and truth tellers -- a full range of adamant, both temperamental and benign,
asserters of things.
A second source was an eventual taming of the personal habit by my introduction to Schutz's (
1963a; 1963b; 1970) distinction between first- and second-degree constructs. Schutz chose to
focus his thinking about social life on people's interpretations of it, which he called "first-degree
constructs." Accordingly, he called sociologists' descriptions of people's interpretations of their
lives, "second-degree constructs." Sociological theories, thus, were constructs of constructions or
interpretations of interpretations, twice-removed from the concrete matters of everyday life. The
distinction served to remind me that a great deal of thinking and defining of the world takes
place before, during, and after we, as sociologists, choose to study and describe it. In a word,
people are "up" to a great deal in the world, engaged in all sorts of complicated practices and
communications that make it seem to take on different realities at varied times, in diverse places.
As such, I came to realize that to understand human service reasoning, I might well attend to
how the practices and communications entered into the organizational realities presented to me.
A third source was a commitment to the working spirit of what has been called Chicago
sociology, as exemplified by Hughes ( 1971) and his followers. A good share of their research
dealt with the world of work and the professions. As Larson ( 1977: vii) presented its tone,
Chicago sociology offered portrayals of the work world that did not as much reveal what a job or
profession is, as what it pretended to be. Hughes urged his students to conduct actual
observations of the concrete practices of work and professional activity. For example, rather than
limiting sociological data to respondents' testimony, the sociologist was to participate in the
work alongside those whose activity was under study. Participant observation revealed social
realities not readily captured by more detached methods, realities practiced but not necessarily
preached, what might be called the "underlife" of work.
But unlike Hughes, I came to be as much concerned with the variety and practical logics of
everyday reality. As applied to service provision, my approach was not to doubt that providers
and professionals had special characteristics that distinguished them from nonprofessionals.
Certainly, nurses and doctors, for two, had special training and skills. No doubt these affected the
competence of their care. I guessed that many of them, if not most, were probably seriously and
conscientiously devoted to the wellbeing of their clients and patients. Rather, what I was
concerned about was its practical wherewithal. How was the special training articulated? How
did experience enter into professional know-how? Focal was the gap between formal skill and
knowledge, on the one side, and practice, on the other. Physicians have an apt way of referring to
the gap; they call it the "art" of medicine.
A word of caution before I turn to two substantive by-products of my personal sociology. The
approach I have described might seem cynical, suggestive of a view of the world where nothing
is real, all mere appearance. There is, indeed, a strain of this in sociology, in what has come to be
a virtual debunking tradition, where the surface features of all social forms -- from complex
organizations to families -- are cast aside as trivial veneers covering the real connivances of
social relations. That is not my view. Rather, whether we focus on that part of human conduct
which formally services it or some other one, I take it that their realities are as intact as they are
understood to be by those engaged. It is not my intention to question the fact that people have
troubles, be they emotional disturbances, physical disabilities, deformities, or disorientation, or
that people can treat the troubles. My concern is with the meanings and interpretive organization
of troubles and treatment as a commentary on institutional rationality.
TWO BY-PRODUCTS
I shall consider two by-products of the approach and compare them with the Weberian view. The
first one reveals the multiple worlds of rationality in the care planning of nursing home staff
members, the second in staffs's behavior assessments in the psychiatric conferences of a
residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children.
Care Planning in the Nursing Home
Murray Manor is the name I gave to a nursing home I virtually lived in doing participant
observation in 1973. I took many roles, from toileting patients in the company of nurse's aides
engaged in "bed-and-body" work, to participating in care conferences where patient problems
and treatment plans were considered. My working question was "How is care in a nursing home
accomplished by those who participate in its everyday life?" ( Gubrium , 1975: 1). It was not as
much a question about work performance as it dealt with how those concerned made practical
sense of the facility's diverse goings-on in terms of caregiving.
Officially, the answer to the question sounded Weberian and was fairly straightforward, centered
in the routine details of planning and caring for patients and residents, the applications of formal
job descriptions. Ideally, the rules and regulations of the home, together with the professional
and nonprofessional standards of employees and officeholders, provided the basis of what would
be more or less accomplished. The credits and debits of care would be calculated against the
organization's overall mission and each component's expected contribution to the whole.
Following a Weberian sense of rational organization, what I could have seen, and later written
about, was precisely how parts of the whole were connected in the service of patient care:
hierarchically and laterally, officially and unofficially, casually and formally. But a personal
impatience and skepticism underwrote a refusal to readily accept this organizational prevalence
and interconnectedness. Despite what many, in and about the nursing home's staff, would say
they were doing in contributing to the facility's program, it was evident to me that they could
speak different working languages of care, which suggested that contrasting social logics might
be at stake in their work. It is not so much that they were sometimes right and sometimes wrong
about how they presented care-giving, but that there were a number of ways of being either. It
soon became clear that I would never understand the practical meaning of the working languages
until I was ready to set aside a Weberian measure of their testimony.
While all parties to the care process, from administrators to floor staff and patients, used much
the same words for care, custody, treatment, and troubles, they did not always mean the same
things by them. This suggested that an answer to the question as originally posed, which took all
Manor folk as speaking out of the same frame of reference, would never convey the different
worlds of care embedded in a single organization (cf. Gubrium , 1987). It suggested, too, that
Murray Manor was not one, but many organizations in the everyday experiences of its members
(see Jehenson, 1973: 231). I began slowly to come around to an old feeling that words do not
simply represent the reality to which they apply but that, in variously entering into everyday life,
people do things with words, differentially casting and conveying senses of what they engage in
and diversely acting upon the world as known to them in terms of the senses.
Consider the development of the individual patient care plan, a document that every nursing
home is required to keep and periodically revise. At the Manor, care plans were discussed in
patient care conferences (staffings), which were attended by select members of the top and floor
staff.
On rare occasions, a nurse's aide would be invited for her knowledge of hands-on experience
with the patient.
Conference proceedings had a regular format, which upon further study, proved to be fairly
typical of other facilities ( Gubrium, 1980). In time, I learned that proceedings were informally
divided into two portions, varying in duration from one staffing to another and between facilities.
(In some nursing homes, the second portion spilled over the scheduled conference proper into the
post-conference deliberations of individual participants.) In the first portion, the intended
audience was the staff members themselves. Patients' diagnoses and immediate or persistent care
problems were discussed. Participants considered how best to deal with patient management
problems suggested as in need of attention and general consideration.
Participants did not always agree about what the specific care issues were in individual cases.
Indeed, part of the proceedings usually was devoted to figuring what the real problems were or
convincing those in attendance that a problem raised was, in fact, one of general concern,
apparent to anyone carefully monitoring the patient. A wide range of problems were raised and
discussed, as specific and different as broad spectrum of trials and tribulations of each staffpatient encounter. There was no question that the care problems broached by individual
participants were ral enough. They spoke handily and in detail about them, each in their own
professional and personal ways. They brought concrete evidence to bear in support of their
concerns. The question at stake in the first portion of a proceeding was how to discern the true
and immediate care problems of each patient.
The second portion of the care review was informally announced when a participant would, in
some way, ask how the results of the proceedings "should be put." In this portion, the intended
audience switched to third parties such as insurance companies and the department of health,
those to whom the facility was accountable for payment, certification, and licensing. For these
audiences, care planning required a formal, written document for each patient with therapeutic
goals and approaches to treatment clearly indicated. As in the first portion, participants
contributed according to their formal and practical knowledge and skill but, this time, to "putting
it right" or to "sounding good" for different purposes than before. They were now to do a
different thing with professionalized facsimiles of the words they had used otherwise in the first
portion.
The descriptive outcomes of the two portions differed. Problems identified or agreed upon, and
suggestions or approaches offered, in the first portion were more heterogeneous and attuned to
specific aspects of therapeutic and custodial routines. The second portion produced formularized
goals and approaches, adequate to the assumed standards of third party reviews and inspections
(also see Gubrium and Buckholdt, 1982). Their respective outcomes meant different things to
those who produced them, as if the organizational segments that served them had, in time and
circumstance, two different faces. However, it is important to point out, too, that participants
were not being two-faced. Rather, in accordance with the social logic of each portion of the
conference, they acted with good organizational reason ( Garfinkel, 1967). They behaved quite
rationally, at times with considerable wit and charm. In the first portion of the conference,
participants conferred and commiserated about the real problems confronting them, day in and
day out, working with patients in their charge, an important organizational undertaking, one
serving its mission. In the second portion, proceedings aimed at making care activities
acceptably rational, also serving the organization's mission. The practical reasoning interpreting
routine care was followed by practical reasoning on behalf of external organizational rationality.
Now according to official understanding, both inside and outside the nursing home, what gets
formulated in patient care conferences -- the care plan -- is to be applied in the care and custody
of patients. What is accomplished in staffings is assumed to be, more or less, rationally
connected with what gets done on unit floors. This assumes, of course, that the organizational
relevancies and contingencies at stake in patient conferences are identical to those engaged on
the floors. The two portions of conference proceedings challenge the assumption.
Weber's model of bureaucracy portrays it as penetrating the nooks and crannies of organizational
activity, not being a model that members themselves use, abuse, and disabuse as they see fit. The
field data suggest otherwise. While care plans have select usage in and about conference
proceedings, their usage is further transformed on the floor. When the plans do come into play in
the latter's routine bed-and-body work, their meaning is assigned in accordance with floor
relevancies and conditions. By and large, though, the written care plans are deposited in patient
charts or files and remain there, unattended, until the next scheduled care conference. As such,
formal care planning references a different service organization from the one at stake in
ostensible application.
Floor work and life are organized around routine cares and the ongoing social relations of floor
staff (mostly nurse's aides), patients, and, at certain times, the latter's families. For aides, work
spans the margins of a job for which they are paid and are accountable to superiors, on the one
side, and patients' diverse definitions of caring, on the other. For patients and their families,
theirs is a world of living and dying, made more or less difficult by regulations and the human
complications of passing time. The social logic of their separate existences in the nursing home
generates entirely different forms of organizational rationality. Indeed, a good share of the
episodes that staff call patient confusion, disorientation, or agitation, is a product of clashes
between separate worlds of sound folk reasoning. For example, what to a patient is a rightful
access to cigarettes, upon his insistence, may easily be seen by staff members as unreasonable, a
sign of confusion in someone who unrealistically insists on smoking on demand. While jobs
allegedly serve the care and custody of patients, it is clear that they also stand in considerable
tension with the latter.
The goals and approaches of the patient care conference serve a different social logic on the
floor. On occasion, charts are consulted for official justification of floor activities. For example,
a charge nurse who grows impatient with an aide who persists in ignoring the nurse's directive
that the aide not be so attentive to a particularly demanding patient, may consult the patient's care
plan for official backing. A plan that lists "encourage independence" as a goal can be used by the
nurse to confirm that the nurse, after all, knows "what's best" and that the aide should follow
official policy. Should the contents of care plans prove to be useless in this respect, or even
contrary to immediate staff or patient management needs, they are just as likely to remain
unconsulted. On the other hand, I have seen instances where aides themselves use care plans to
promote their particular interpretations of "what's best" for individual patients. The same goal,
"encourage independence," might be read by an aide as a directive to continue working closely
with the patient on behalf of the latter's selfreliance. As such, the care plan does not as much
contain a rational blueprint for individual care and custody as it differentially enters into the
practical utilities of ongoing floor relations.
This picture of the embedded worlds of a single formal organization shows how multiple forms
of rationality can secure the affairs of its participants. The view from the top, the official one,
tends to denigrate competing or separate institutional logics, casting agents as more or less
organizationally rational. When we set aside the rules-and-regulations view as the basis for
interpreting organizational rationality and, instead, treat that view, like others, as only one among
other human service rhetorics (see Gubrium and Lynott, 1985b), we begin to see the "good
reasons" behind any number of consensual and dissenting, coordinated and organizationally
uncoupled activities.
Organizational Reasoning in Progress Reviews
The book Caretakers ( Buckholdt and Gubrium, 1985 [ 1979]) begins with the following tenet: ".
. . emotional disturbance, as it occurs in the varied situations of everyday life . . . is as much a
feature of professional practice as it is a characteristic of children's conduct" (p. 11). This does
not say that labeling, or some other professional activity, inappropriately produces disturbance
where none exists. Rather the argument is that, in the matter of disturbance, as in other areas of
everyday life, it "takes two to tango," in a manner of speaking. It is amazing how social
scientists, let alone professionals, seem to ignore the folk adage. Simply, its wisdom is that it
requires someone other than the object of interest to appreciate it; the appreciation provides
recognition. Conversely, without appreciation, an object remains unknown, out of awareness,
experientially nonexistent. So it is with emotional disturbance.
Return, once again, to the human service settings studied. This time, we focus on the consulting
psychologist or psychiatrist as a professional agent, applying expert skill in support of staff
members in a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children, called Cedarview.
As in most service organizations, Cedarview staffers periodically gathered in conference to plan
for, or assess the progress of, the children in their care. At Cedarview, staff members were
required to conduct semiannual reviews or staffings of each child and to submit results, written
by the child's social worker, to the appropriate county welfare department. Regular staffers
included the social worker, special education teacher, cottage (dormitory) parent, the cottage and
social work supervisors, and the school's principal. Other staff members participated according
to their interests or the special services they provided. During the study, three consultants served
the staff: two psychologists and a psychiatrist. They would rotate, somewhat irregularly, in
staffings. The same consultant might not serve a child's staffing in successive six month reviews.
The psychiatrist was a Freudian, one of the psychologists was a behaviorist, and the other
psychologist was relatively eclectic in that he combined personality and behavioral principles.
What the differences meant was that the nature, scope, and treatment of the disturbances, as
understood by each, varied considerably. The Freudian saw disturbance as deeply rooted in
personality and the family's emotional history; the child's daily activities and prevailing
environmental conditions paled in comparison. The behaviorist, in contrast, had a decided
aversion to so-called depth psychology, although he, like all concerned, readily entered into deep
reasoning on occasion. The other psychologist contributed to staffings according to the particular
analytic approach he judged best suited the case under consideration, periodically cautioning that
behavior was neither all mind nor all environment.
A "two-to-tango" approach orients the study of staffings when we take serious account of the
practical organization of consultation in center staffings. Consider the first semiannual review of
a boy named Tony. According to his social worker, Tony was very big for his age, acted
precipitously, and often appeared more unruly and threatening than he actually was, something
that was said to contribute strongly to his disturbance. This had combined with his persistent
concern with fairness to make him a troublemaker at home and at school. His behavior had
became so difficult to manage that there was cause for concern. A multidisciplinary review team
had found that there was a lack of emotional control evident, manifested by frequent episodes of
"acting out." Tony eventually was referred to Cedarview for treatment and placed in residence.
It was agreed in Tony's first staffing that the child was deeply disturbed. The psychiatric
consultant had suggested that the source of Tony's outbursts was his reaction to the unfair
expectations placed on him by his parents as a young child. Taller for his age than his brothers,
sisters, and playmates, the parents' attitude toward him had been consistent with that normally
expected for an older boy. The parents always insisted that he be fair with other children, which
meant to give them the advantage in games and contests. The psychiatrist explained that, because
of this, it was reasonable to conclude that the boy had matured carrying with him his family's
overripe sense of justice, playing out the parents' rigid expectations in his relations with others.
The explanation appealed to Cedarview staffers who, in the first staffing, contributed supporting
evidence of their own. Based on their contacts with the parents, siblings, and others acquainted
with Tony, the family's overripe sense-of-justice theme was substantiated as the underlying
principle connecting all the relevant facts. As staffers deliberated the case, they elaborated the
mutual significance of theme and evidence. Evidence presented by one staffer in support of the
theme reminded others of additional supporting data, all culled from Tony's draconian, early
moral life. In turn, the growing stock of data bore out the validity of the theme suggested by the
psychiatrist. With the psychiatrist's further theoretical elaboration, staffers offered even more
supporting evidence from their own experiences with the boy.
Like other staffings, the first one had been a study in the organized production of rationality.
Whereas the varied facts of Tony's life, as simply listed, showed marked inconsistency, their
overall interpretation by staff members drew reasonable links between them by means of the
theme being entertained. Even when Tony's social worker, for example, had mentioned that
home visits showed that perhaps Tony "really wasn't that much bigger, physically, than any of
the other kids in the family," that fact was interpreted as still relevant and consistent, for it was
suggested that the "real" problem then probably was the way Tony was seen by all, not his actual
height. Indeed, for a short time, the distinction between body perceptions and physique became
its own theme for linking the diverse, now related facts of the case.
As we turn to Tony's second semiannual review, we find the behavioral psychologist serving as
consultant. As usual, Tony's case was introduced with a background briefing and short review of
the last staffing. Questions were raised over select details and comments made about Tony's
progress in residential treatment since then. This time, descriptions of the boy's conduct oriented
to the consultant's interest in, and formulation of, be havioral explanation, not so much Tony's
early moral life and affective bonds. For this consultant, it was how Tony now behaved and what
could be done to control it that was at stake, whether the occurrence and frequency of overripe
sense-of-justice episodes could be contained. Attention focused on how the boy currently
controlled his emotions and activity in an environment designed to modify bad habits. While the
boy's past was of interest, it was treated as an extension of the present state of Tony's selfcontrol.
The descriptive dynamics of the behavioral staffing resembled the first one. As before, the
consultant offered reasons for why Tony acted as he did, but this time emphasizing the
consequences of the boy's actions. According to the consultant, what was missing in Tony's
approach to life was a reason to approach others with a sense of give and take, not an absolute
code of justice. Tony's behavior could be modified if properly structured. The theme was
developed by those in attendance and, as in other staffings, elaborated in the developing
communications. It was concluded that Tony would be put on a program to reward behaviors
exhibiting fair play and to withhold rewards for his application of absolute justice.
The children's social workers were responsible for writing the semiannual reports based on
conference proceedings, which they considered none too pleasant. As one social worker put it in
exasperation, "The rhyme and reason for why the kids are here has to be documented and what
we're doing about it, and it better sound like we know what we're doing." Reminiscent of the
audience orientation of the second portion of patient care conferences, the writers of the reports
were assigned the implicit task of reconstructing the official rationality of staffings. At
Cedarview, each social worker was required to submit a draft of the report to the social service
supervisor before it was sent to a welfare department so as "to make sure it sounds like we're
doing what we're supposed to be doing and not just failing all over each other." Although, by and
large, the reports were competently completed, there were many expressions of resentment over
the need to present overly rational accounts. It was one thing to entertain and iron out the
complexities of emotional disturbance and its treatment; it was quite another to make it all sound
"perfect and reasonable," as if the only problems confronting the staff were the disturbances
themselves. Yet, accountability was understood to be a necessary drawback of service provision,
the price paid for the commodification of help.
While in Tony's case, as in many others, consultants' theoretical orientations were formally at
odds -- one grounding behavior in early emotional life, the other in the reward structure of its
environment -- there was no evidence of the differences in the report. Although it was clear that
theoretical orientations and explanatory themes guided participants' discourse and substantive
concerns in the staffings, it was evident that the reality taken to be at stake in the reports was the
substance and assessment of the child's behaviors, not theory. While the social workers who
wrote the semiannual reports expected to base the reports on the proceedings, they were also
cognizant, and even reminded at times, of the center's behavioral commitment and behavior
modification program. Accordingly, the written product of each semiannual review was a more
or less behavioral homogenization of what had been diverse, sometimes formally contradictory,
ways of thinking about conduct. At the same time, it was productive of an organizational
rationality professed by the institution and coincident with the formal expectations of outside
agents.
CONSEQUENCES
In retrospect, I don't believe it was my aim to prove that Weber was dead wrong about the
rationalization of human affairs. My concern was to learn how his ideas fit in with data generated
out of a skeptical examination of human service provision. Yet, Weber's view was irksome
because it seemed too pat, too universal, not tuned to the fine details of everyday organizational
life. Still, there was something compelling about it -- the orderliness of the view fit
organizational aims so well.
Weber, himself, was inclined to present certain descriptions as "ideal types." The ideal type
contrasts with ideal representation in that the former is an analytic purification of an existing
social form, for example, bureaucratic rationality being the final state toward which certain
organizational forms tend. The rules-and-regulations view offers a model of what formal
organizations all were more or less like or, in any case, eventually become. In contrast, my
appreciation of Weber's view as an ideal representation puts it closer to how Schutz defined ideal
types. For Schutz, an ideal type was not uniquely a sociological formulation but, rather, anyone's
conception or model of experience. As such, for me, Weber's ideal representation of bureaucracy
is not a picture of rationalized service provision but a representation, by those concerned, of what
bureaucracy should be, pretended, or was expected to be, not a second, but a first-order,
construct.
In the field settings, it was obvious that there were many who were, in one way or another, sold
on a Weberian portrayal of their work. Regulating agents asked for rational care plans, with
goals, procedures, and progress statements. They expected the organization to come up with the
plans, put them into effect, and make good on them. In the agents' official view of things, there
was no place for serious consideration of varied worlds of "good organizational reason." In
principle, rules were not to be bent nor broken on behalf of what was taken to be the common
good. To the extent that working goals, procedures, and interpretations of progress did not jibe
with official ones in the long run, it was considered irregular. Service providers themselves were
sensitive to this and presented their work accordingly. In fact, they took the same view in
formally communicating with each other. Clients, too, were apprised of service provision in
terms of the overall rational planning of caring, curing, and custody.
In the facilities I studied, I found much time and effort devoted to Weberian representation. In a
manner of speaking, everyone in and about the world of service provision was an idealized
Weberian when needed, adhering to overall rational organization as a tacit blueprint for proper
presentation. Yet, at the same time, what made what they did work was that, in practice, they
took into consideration the multiplicity of good reasons for doing what might otherwise have
been seen as two-faced, contradictory, or contrary to official understanding.
The contrast I saw between the organization of practical reasoning, on the one hand, and
organizational rationality, on the other, had a moral career. My entry into the field with the
Weberian legacy not only provided a means of framing and potentially understanding service
provision, but unbeknownst to me at the time, it enticed me into being considerably annoyed by
what I first witnessed. Because I was prepared to see things "rationally," I was awed when I saw
things done out of expedience, for public consumption, or to satisfy "naive" paper requirements.
I began to think that there was no organizational rationality to speak of anywhere in institutional
life, that all was downright sham and pretension, certainly not what it was touted to be. This, of
course, affected my feelings about the meaning of human service provision, about care,
treatment, and recovery.
My initial research experience with the rules-and-regulations view of organizations led me to a
good deal of private debunking, enhanced, of course, by personal sociological skepticism. I was
invidiously comparing a view of the way organizational life ideally was supposed to operate with
the knowledge that it operated quite differently. An emerging question I confronted was how was
I prepared to see the relationship between the two. My first inclination was to denigrate the
former for the latter, which I now believe was due more to the moral underside of my
sociological sympathies at the time than it was to earlier sources of my approach to people's
daily lives. While my writings on Murray Manor took Schutz's idea of worlds of experience as a
framework for organizing observations, some say that a distinct debunking tone nonetheless
came through.
As I spent more time in human service settings, putting myself in both clients' and providers'
shoes, and began thinking over what I was writing about all of them, it became increasingly
evident to me that I might have been awed by what I found precisely because of what I
sociologically began with. Despite an impatience with Weber and my empirical skepticism, I am
now surprised by how deeply I had come to hold to a rules-and-regulations ideal. Setting Weber
aside, was it possible to begin anew, to took at human service as somehow reasonable on its own
terms?
This quickly led me to some of Garfinkel's ( 1967) ideas about practical reasoning and the
centrality of context for judging rationality (cf. Filmer et al., 1972). At the same time, in
biographical terms, I began to connect with earlier, personal sources of concern with language
and meaning. I reversed the figure and ground of rationality and practical reasoning. Rather than
the Weberian view providing the background for my observations of service provision, which
had generated doubts over organizational rationality altogether, I gradually began to entertain the
idea that rationality of some kind is an essential feature of everyday life. It was not necessarily
the picture of it offered by Weber, but certainly pervasive nonetheless. It was important, no only
for audiences, but for people themselves, to make reasonable what they did for themselves and
others, however they did so and whatever the outcome. As far as practical reasoning was
concerned, it was evident that all the folk I observed were rational in one way or another, not just
the top dogs of the various settings but lower level staffers and clients as well. Everyone was into
the rationality business because everyday life itself was, in a manner of speaking, the practice of
reasoning. Yet, it was, at bottom, not a game nor a mere truth contest; it was a kind of essential
enterprise that made extensive use of the rules-andregulations model.
The upshot of these consequences for an initial concern with human service institutions and their
workings was that my interest shifted from a concern with their rationality to how they were
reasoned about, to the formal articulation of the manifold "good reasons" that guide what is
being done within and outside of their proper confines. The moral outcome was less a sense of
awe and annoyance than an appreciation of diverse voices and conditions of human reasoning. I
now read Weber as presenting to me in his writing on rationality something more about a
particular, but increasingly prevalent, way of conveying experience than an objective
formulation of it.
7. Work and Self
Jeffrey W. Riemer
My interest in the study of work and occupations emerged from my work experiences. Initially, I
had little use for study and graduated from high school with a D average. I could hardly wait to
get a job. For me, work meant independence, freedom from the demands of other persons.
Upon graduation, I signed up for an apprenticeship program for construction electricians that
would take five years to complete. I was placed on a waiting list for one year and worked at a
cookie factory, a tennis court, and packed telephones on an assembly line for Western Electric
while I waited.
When I began my apprenticeship, I felt my life course was set. I would learn my trade,
eventually earn some good money, and have some respect from my family and friends. My
occupation would provide an identity for me and a status that others around me could recognize.
I was to be a highly skilled craftsperson, a well-paid and respected contributor to society.
I learned my trade, was good at it, and completed my apprenticeship early, after four-and-a-half
years. But shortly before becoming a journeyman, I realized that working at this occupation
would mean 40 more years of doing basically what I had been doing for the last four years. I had
learned much about myself during this training period and now felt that I needed more challenge
in my life.
I began college at this time, first with night classes, then including some day classes while
working almost full time at my trade. I shifted around for a major and found that sociology
classes offered many insights into my past and current work experiences. My academic studies
began to mesh with my work experiences and made both more meaningful to me.
Many questions about my work experiences grew out of my studies. I began to apply the basic
sociological concepts I learned -- such as role and status, norm, and socialization -- to my work
setting. I even found myself discussing these concepts and their application and implications
with a few of my fellow workers. Does a set of informal norms exist on a building construction
project? Which building trade is most valued by society? By other tradespersons? Are
apprentices learning more than a set of technical skills from their journeymen trainers? What
does journeyman status really mean?
I soon came to appreciate that all lines of work have similarities that could be understood
sociologically. It is common to think of work as something we ought to try to get out of, as
basically boring, or as something we have to do when we would rather be doing something else.
But working at an occupation, any occupation, provides tremendous insight into social life and
how the individual is coupled to his or her society.
Persons spend a great deal of their lifetime in occupational activities, and their work links them
together in various forms of social interaction. A large share of people's identities, how they view
themselves, is derived from their occupation. People's occupations become very good predictors
of how they will behave in their nonwork lives. And how various occupations are integrated in
cooperative activities (or conflicting activities) provides important clues as to how the larger
society is organized (or disorganized). And, perhaps most importantly, understanding one's work
enables a person to understand oneself.
The writings of Everett Hughes ( 1971) were particularly stimulating to me at this time and
continue to be. As a sociologist at the University of Chicago during the late 1930s into the 1950s,
Hughes taught and encouraged his students to systematically study work and occupations.
Hughes was interested in learning about the nature of society from the study of occupations. He
encouraged a comparative approach wherein similarities and differences of various types of
work would be explored. Hughes believed "that all kinds of work belong to the same series,
regardless of their places in prestige or ethical ratings" ( Hughes, 1971:316). According to this
view, it is possible to learn about doctors by studying plumbers; and about prostitutes by
studying psychiatrists. In Hughes's words,
Both the physician and the plumber do practice esoteric techniques for the benefit of people in
distress. The psychiatrist and the prostitute must both take care not to become too personally
involved with clients who come to them with rather intimate problems ( 1971:316).
To understand work and occupations, Hughes believed that we should search for "themes"
common to all lines of work and describe in detail the behavior of persons in specific
occupations according to these common themes. The remainder of this chapter will do this by
focusing on my research on building-construction workers. (The research discussed here is done
in brevity. For full treatment of these topics and the research methodology, see Riemer, 1979,
1982.) Three "themes" common to other occupations will be explored. These include:
occupational autonomy, worker mistakes, and occupational deviance.
It is important to recognize that I had experience with these topics prior to my research. As a
union electrician, I had concerns about autonomy in my trade, I occasionally made mistakes
while working and observed others do so, and I engaged in acts of deviance with my coworkers.
It made sense to explore these areas as a sociologist.
The research that I report on here is what I call "opportunistic," where the researcher exploits his
or her unique biography, life experiences and/ or situational familiarity to understand and explain
social life ( Riemer, 1977).
OCCUPATIONAL AUTONOMY
All workers have some amount of control over their work. Maximizing this control is an
important concern in any occupation. Worker autonomy represents the level of control that a
worker or occupational group can successfully claim for services offered in the marketplace. The
greater the autonomy of an occupation, the more power it typically has in the areas of earning
power and management of its services. Workers who have a great deal of autonomy can often
determine what work they will do, how they will do it, when it will be done, and the
compensation they will receive for it. Occupational autonomy has been explored across a range
of occupations including physicians ( Engel, 1969), certified public accountants ( Lengermann,
1974), nurses ( Bullough and Bullough, 1982), police officers ( Martin, 1982), artists ( Riemer
and Brooks, 1982) and cab drivers ( Henslin, 1968), among others ( Stewart and Cantor, 1982).
Within the building trades, members gain their power and control from two major sources -- the
publicly recognized skill of the individual worker (individual autonomy) and the collective
support of their organized labor (group autonomy) ( Riemer, 1982).
Everett Hughes's concepts of "license" and "mandate" apply here. According to Hughes:
Not only do the practitioners, by virtue of gaining admission to the charmed circle of the
[occupation], individually exercise a license to do things others do not do, but collectively they
presume to tell society what is good and right for it in a broad and crucial aspect of life (
1971:288).
While individual autonomy is based upon the "license" that is successfully claimed by a skilled
tradesperson to do certain tasks, group autonomy is based upon the "mandate" that successfully
convinces others that the trade organization alone knows best how those tasks should be done.
Individual Autonomy: The License
The construction worker has a great deal of individual autonomy because of three dimensions: a
formal apprenticeship program, tool ownership, and the portable nature of his or her skills.
Collectively, these facilitate the successful claim of "license" by individual workers.
A formal apprenticeship program means apprentices may spend as long as five years learning
their trade. Plumbers and electricians serve the longest period, while carpenters, painters,
ironworkers, and cement finishers serve for a shorter period, usually three years. These
apprenticeships are typically accomplished by a combination of classroom education and on-thejob training under the guidance of established workers. During this time, apprentices experience
a range of installations that those in their trade would be expected to encounter as journeymen.
Apprentices are continually monitored and periodically tested, and, if successful, they become
the certified carriers of their mastered skill and trade culture. Worker autonomy is a by-product
of this socialization process.
Tool ownership by skilled building trade workers is unique. By owning the tools necessary to
perform their work, they own the means of their production.
The purchase of tools begins during the early apprenticeship years and ends with a complete set
of tools by the time journeymen status is attained. This is not a minor investment. Construction
electricians, for example, could easily spend $300 or $400 for their tools, and some would have
to be replaced periodically.
When workers own the tools needed to do the work, they enhance their control over that work.
When each worker owns a standard set of tools, all journeymen can be viewed as being the same
in the provision of their craft. Unions strengthen the individual worker's autonomy by providing
contractors with skilled workers who are "standardized."
Building construction workers have portable skills. The historical term journeyman, if taken
literally, conveys this source of worker control. Journeymen are not bound to their employer as
are most other workers. They are bound to their trade and, as such, can and do move from
contractor to contractor if work is available. If dissatisfied, they can simply pack up their tools
and leave for another contractor or even another city through union referral.
Group Autonomy: The Mandate
The building trades have a great deal of group autonomy because of three dimensions:
recruitment control, informal work group control, and formal union control. Collectively, these
facilitate the successful claiming of an organizational mandate for the sole provision of work.
The building trades have always maintained recruitment control. In the past, this was done
through nepotism (the hiring of relatives or friends). Today, formal apprenticeship programs
have largely replaced that method. The selection of new apprentices is in the hands of joint
apprenticeship and training committees composed of an equal number of representatives from
labor (union) and management (contractors), and coordinated by an appointed apprenticeship
director. All interested persons are required to make application for an apprenticeship slot. These
are evaluated by the committee, with a formal interview with the candidate to follow. The
selection procedure emerges from this. For some trades, certain high school math courses are
necessary, and most require a complete physical examination. Age limitations are also enforced.
Trade unions are very careful in monitoring their total membership. Ideally, the trade union
would have enough workers to supply all contractors while insuring that few workers, if any,
would be out of work. During times of increased construction, more apprentices would be
recruited, while during slow periods this recruitment would stop.
New apprentices would also be carefully monitored throughout their training, and any
undesirables would be terminated. In this way, skill level and loyalty to the organizational goals
of the trade are maintained. Those who become journeymen will have internalized the expected
values of their trade and will be inclined to pass on these values in their training of new recruits.
This recruitment control serves to strengthen collective autonomy.
An informal work group control also aids in the maintenance of group autonomy. Work groups
within each building trade select the work pace and the level of quality in workmanship for a
particular project. This is done informally, with an implicit set of norms enforced by group
members. Workers who work too hard or not hard enough will be managed through informal
means, usually verbal ridicule.
This control over worker behavior by the workers themselves exists because the nature of their
work is flexible rather than made up of routine tasks, and foremen who manage the work are also
trade workers showing primary allegiance to their trade, not to the employing organization.
Moreover, multiple trades on the same project will usually cooperate, thus establishing a more
autonomous labor force.
Ultimately, union control enables group autonomy in the building trades. Trade unions have a
monopoly for providing specially skilled workers who are not easily replaced. Employers have
little control in the selection of employees or in how a particular installation is to be done.
The working agreement between employers and trade union members specifies wage rates,
procedures for hiring and firing, safety rules, and other conditions needing clarification. It is this
contract that protects workers' autonomy and allows them to exercise control over their work.
It might appear that worker control is always positive and that certain occupations could benefit
from increased autonomy. Increased worker control does reduce exploitation by ruthless
employers and does allow workers to provide high quality services and products. But as we shall
see when looking at worker mistakes and deviance in the workplace, some workers may be
viewed by society as having too much control. They may be seen as exploitive, through their
autonomy, of the persons they are being paid to serve.
WORKER MISTAKES
Whenever and wherever work is being done, mistakes are likely to be made. Mistakes are the
unintended consequences of work activity. No occupation is immune. According to Everett
Hughes ( 1971:316), "the more times per day a [person] does a given operation, the greater his
[or her] chance of doing it wrong sometimes." The only way an error will never be made is if the
person never performs the given activity. No work is error free.
These work errors can be consequential for the person making the mistake, for fellow workers,
or for the person(s) for whom the work is being done. As Hughes put it, "Somebody pays, I
suppose, in all cases. But the people who make the errors are not criminals, and are not sinners
anymore than the rest of us" (Personal correspondence with the author, 1 July 1976).
Workers tend to be protective about the occurrence of mistakes. All occupations have an image
to maintain; mistakes could signal incompetence and thus threaten the practitioners' claim of
expertise. It is not uncommon for workers to cloak or conceal their errors to avoid tarnish to their
occupation or themselves. The study of worker mistakes and their management has focused
primarily on physicians ( Strauss, et al. 1985; Millman, 1976; Bosk, 1979) but other occupations,
like funeral directors ( Unruh, 1979), have received some attention.
Within the building construction industry, new buildings can be seen to be constructed out of a
series of mistakes ( Riemer, 1979). These mistakes become part of, and permeate, the entire
constructin sequence. Some of these errors create unanticipated problems for new owners, while
others hinder the progress of construction. Still others remain hidden in the confines of the
building's structure. In all cases, these errors impose an imperfect quality on the building, and
may lead to future difficulties for the consumer.
Workers, as part of their daily work effort, commit errors routinely. These errors become
cumulative, with earlier tradesmen leaving their mistakes behind for future tradesmen who, in
turn, build on these and add their own to them in the process. And workers know and
acknowledge their errors. "If you're not working, you can't make mistakes," is a commonly heard
response.
Although mistakes occur routinely, the reasons they occur vary. Some result from human error,
while others arise from how the work is socially organized. Sill others are due to the social
circumstances surrounding the work. And some errors occur simply by chance, and no person
can be held responsible.
Four varieties of mistakes which routinely occur during the construction of buildings can be
singled out. These are miscalculations, hold ups, circumstantial errors, and natural errors. The
first three can be explained by human or social phenomena, while the fourth can best be termed
an "act of God" in the same sense that the term is used in the fields of law and insurance. All
varieties were observed during the construction sequence and had both major and minor
consequences for either the person making the mistake, fellow tradesmen, or for persons who
would be subsequently affected as consumers.
Miscalculations result from human error. They are errors of judgment and are often referred to as
"stupid mistakes." The person will misperceive or misinterpret and act in error because of it.
Mistakes of this variety include: the bricklayer crew constructing concrete block walls for the
boiler room before the boiler was installed; an unknown craftsman who tracks grease over pale
blue wall-to-wall carpeting that had been installed the day before; the painter who scratches a
simulated marble vanity top with a razor blade while trying to cut a piece of wallpaper; and the
excavation contractor who digs the basement and pours the concrete footings too low, resulting
in the bricklayers and plumbers installing their work at an incorrect elevation.
Hold ups are failures in social organization. Mistakes result from communication breakdowns
between persons essential to get a particular task completed. When a communication network is
impeded, distortions, misinterpretations, and misunderstandings can result, and this can lead to
error.
Mistakes of this variety include: a fleet of semitrucks loaded with precast concrete plank that
fails to locate the project for nearly three hours because of poorly communicated directions given
by the builder to the precast contractor and in turn to the truck dispatcher; a bulldozer operator
who continues to run out of gasoline when critical backfilling was needed and simply sits and
waits for the excavator contractor to deliver more gasoline; and problems in arranging to have
various tradesmen (usually plumbers and electricians) present at the same time so that multiple
connections on appliances (garbage disposals, dishwashers, and heating and air conditioning
equipment) can be made.
Circumstantial errors result from the immediate and prevailing circumstances surrounding a
work event. When one feels pressured, that person is more likely to err. Circumstantial errors are
often due to contradictory role expectations -- the worker is expected to take the time to do a task
correctly in a craftsmanlike manner, but at the same time is expected to complete the installation
quickly.
Mistakes of this variety include: an electrician incorrectly connecting a water-pressure switch
(tripping the circuit breaker and arcing the contacts on the switch) while the owner, the air
conditioning contractor, a plumber, and the estimator impatiently wait and watch; a cementmason apprentice who drives a motorized "power buggy" loaded with fresh concrete too fast and
tips it onto an already finished concrete pad because he was told to work quickly by his foreman;
and a "rough carpenter" crew who were expected to work quickly (wasting nails and lumber in
the process) on the inner framework of the building because their work would eventually be
covered with paneling, siding, brick, paint, and trim.
Natural errors are simply accidents. They are unforeseen events for which no person or group
can be viewed as responsible. They are "acts of God."
Mistakes of this variety include: unexpected erosion problems from rain run-off after excavating,
sometimes causing parts of buildings to collapse; scattered nails on the project causing flat tires
on critical pieces of machinery; the death of the electrical contractor, giving the electricians the
day off in memorium when they were needed on the project; and periodic heavy rain, requiring
the project to shut down because of slippery and hazardous mud.
As part of their training, building trades workers learn how to manage the mistakes that are likely
to occur in their work. Those who learn well become valuable employees for a construction
contractor and are viewed as highly qualified by fellow workers.
Four options are always open to trades workers in the management of mistakes. They can redo
the work affected by the mistake. They can patch up the mistake. They can cover up the mistake,
or they can completely ignore the mistake as if it never happened. Their decision is based upon
how they perceive the error. Is the mistake either dangerous or clearly noticeable? How much
money or time will it take to fix? And who knows about the mistake? Generally, few mistakes
are resolved by completely redoing the affected work. Most mistakes are either covered up or
concealed. Some are simply ignored.
Errors in building-construction work are costly to consumers (and taxpayers). Consumer
exploitation (and fraud) may involve initial added cost, the possibility of future repairs and
general inconvenience. Since private and public buildings are contracted and paid for in good
faith, the builtin errors unknowingly acquired become a social problem.
Of course, workers desire to control their working conditions, but what happens when workers
gain inordinate control over these conditions? The freedom of construction workers to modify
their work in order to take account of error suggests some of the problems that society faces
when workers have this freedom. Occupational deviance presents a similar concern.
OCCUPATIONAL DEVIANCE
Workers in any occupation may, on occasion, choose to engage in activities that other persons
outside the occupation would view as inappropriate for the carrying out of the work.
Occupational deviance is behavior occurring within the context of work that would be
considered objectionable by the general public. This same behavior may be viewed as tolerable
or even acceptable by members of the occupation.
Occupational deviance emerges from the context in which the work takes place. Some
occupations have extra pressures or stressful routines that may encourage members to employ
deviant practices as a means of coping. Other occupations provide more opportunities for
members to choose deviant practices with less chance of recognition or punishment. The study of
occupational deviance has included physician drug addicts ( Hessler, 1974), middle level
managers and officials who drink alcoholic beverages regularly to cope with job-related stress (
Roman, 1974), unnecessary surgery by physicians ( Lanza-Kaduce, 1980), ambulance chasing by
lawyers ( Reichstein, 1965), bribes and shakedowns by the police ( Stoddard, 1968), and
property theft, intentional slowdowns, and sloppy work by production workers ( Hollinger and
Clark, 1982), and restaurant waiters ( Hawkins, 1984).
Within the building industry, the construction project provides a unique and conducive variety of
work setting for the occurrence of occupational deviance ( Riemer, 1979). A building
construction project exists for only a limited duration, and it is ever-changing in physical
structure. These are places where barricades, fences, and temporary (plywood) walls, along with
signs indicating "Hard Hat Area" or "Danger, Keep Out," serve to separate the project "under
construction" from the outside world.
Many varieties of workers come and go during the construction sequence, and they have a great
deal of control over their work. This arrangement of worker and setting provides a freedom that
is unknown to most occupations. This freedom is particularly true on large construction projects
where hundreds of workers are present. It would be difficult to know where a particular worker
was working and what work was being done and why.
This variety of work setting facilitates certain activities that could be considered deviant by
members of the larger society. Two such activities, drinking alcoholic beverages while at work
and "girl watching" will be discussed here.
Drinking
The consumption of alcoholic beverages is not a rarity on construction projects. Beer drinking is
a common practice for many tradesmen, and hard liquor (whiskey and brandy) is consumed
occasionally. Not all workers accept drinking on the job, and most management-related
personnel are openly against it; but it is typically tolerated if not overly disruptive and if
concealed from view.
In many respects, drinking is built into the work culture of the building trades. Historically,
drinking has been included in the celebration of "topping out" the building. When the topmost
beam is fastened in place on a new building, it has been ritualistic for the workers to celebrate.
These topping-out parties are most common on large projects that take a number of years to
complete. Here workers may be given the afternoon off (usually Friday), and food and drink are
provided by the builder. Workers may overindulge at these job-site parties, and fights have been
known to occur.
A similar type of party sometimes occurs in the electrical trade. Scrap copper wire ("rabbit") is
saved and stored during a project, and near the end it is sold to a scrap-metal dealer, and a "rabbit
party" takes place. These parties may take place on or off the job site, but the copper wire used to
finance them is actually stolen, since it belongs to the electrical contractor.
It is common to observe workers in all trades searching for an excuse to celebrate. Birthdays,
holidays or surrounding days, Fridays, and overtime days (Saturdays or Sundays, or days when
more than eight hours are worked) are seen as providing a good reason for a celebration, with
drinking as the primary activity.
New apprentices are initiated into this drinking culture and are expected to engage in it, at least
occasionally. It is not uncommon to hear, "If you're going to be an electrician, then you're going
to have to drink like an electrician." Teasing and joking about drinking ability is common among
construction workers.
All of the building trades have drinkers, but some have more than others. Painters (sometimes
referred to as "drunken firemen") and bricklayers are noted for their drinking. Ironworkers,
plumbers, electricians, and cement masons are also recognized. One bricklayer crew, observed
regularly for three months, covertly drank beer almost daily, hiding the empty bottles in the
hollow spaces of the block walls they were constructing.
For a few workers encountered, drinking begins before work and continues throughout the
workday (including a "drinking lunch"). These workers will typically bring bottles onto the job
site and engage in covert drinking throughout the workday. It may be argued that these workers
are problem drinkers.
The majority of drinking on building projects is done primarily for fun; it is a recreational
activity that workers may engage in when the conditions are appropriate. It is seen by most
workers as a pleasant diversion from work activities. The freedom of their work setting and the
autonomy of their occupations facilitate these drinking activities by trades workers.
"Girl Watching"
"Girl watching" is another activity that building-construction workers engage in for fun. It does
not occur as frequently as drinking, because of decreased opportunity. But when the opportunity
does arise, few workers, including management-related personnel, fail to take advantage of it.
Since "real" women are not always available (to watch) on building projects, it is common for
workers to simulate this activity with sex jokes, pin-up pictures, and sex-oriented books and
magazines. These pictures are usually displayed on the walls of the lunchrooms of the various
trades.
The actual amount of "girl-watching" depends on the location of the project. A new building
being constructed on a college campus during the summer provides an increased opportunity and
is considered "good duty" by the workers. In the same respect, new buildings in downtown areas
are conducive to "girl-watching." It is not uncommon to see workers seated outside these
projects during lunch ogling women who pass by, whistling occasionally, and almost always
making lewd comments among themselves.
A specific illustration of "girl-watching" took place on a 28-story, highrise apartment building
under construction in a downtown area. Directly across the street from the project was a threestory motel with the unit windows facing the street. Workers on the project soon realized that
they could see into the rooms when the drapes were open. They also found that they could see
more details if they used binoculars. They brought in powerful binoculars, telescopes, and even
precision spotter scopes. It was determined that floors five and six were the best for viewing, so
workers on those floors made sure that at least one worker was checking on the motel at all times
during the workday. When any action occurred (and this could mean anything from sexual
intercourse, to a woman walking around the room, to a bellhop bringing new guests into the
room), these workers would alert the others, who would come running with their binoculars. The
tinted window glass on the new building allowed many workers to "peep" on the unsuspecting
motel residents.
Workers would congregate in front of these windows before work each morning, and many
would cat their lunch there. Most of the workday was spent in expectation of things to come.
These activities were seen as fun, as pleasant diversions from work, and most workers
participated at least occasionally.
IMPLICATIONS
The linkage between work and self has been explored here from two dimensions. It was shown
how the author's own research work as a sociologist is linked to his work experiences as a
construction worker. It was also shown that the identity of building-construction workers is
linked to the nature of their work. The ideas of Everett Hughes helped to shape my
understanding of this linkage between work and self, and this influence is reflected in my
research.
Three "themes" common to other occupations were presented from the author's research on
construction workers. Worker autonomy, worker mistakes, and worker deviance were shown to
result from the social context of building-construction work. Skilled trades workers, because of
the autonomy they successfully claim, are able to control the errors they routinely make in their
work. They are also allowed to engage in certain activities that others would define as deviant
because of the unique freedom present in their work setting and the control they have in the
carrying out of their work. Hughes, with his emphasis on the comparative approach in the study
of occupations, would ask, "What can be understood about other occupations from what we have
learned about construction workers?"
Implicit in this chapter is that involvement in personal sociology can become expansive. What
begins as a loosely defined personal question raised from one's life experiences can emerge into
a life mission focusing on broader and more complex socially based concerns. Original attempts
to understand my own work experiences have stimulated a professional career geared to
understanding other occupations and other kinds of work. For me, this has taken the form of
teaching courses on the sociology of work and occupations and doing research in this area.
Within this context of teaching and research I continually try to strengthen and refine my
sociological understandings and to pass on the appreciation I have of the relationship between
work and self.
Also implicit here is a cautionary note -- that personal sociology carries with it the power to do
damage to oneself and others. Personal sociologists know their topics of study rather than know
about them. Being an insider to an area of study allows for no secrets or surprises. The personal
sociologist knows it all. It is this familiarity that can create problems.
As a discipline of study, sociology provides the techniques and understanding which can easily
cut through sacred and secret areas of social life. To subject an area of social life to sociological
scrutiny means that real people may be unhappy with the results, including the researcher. It is
rewarding to have a construction worker tell me, "It's about time somebody is telling it like it is,"
but troublesome to hear complaints about my divulging evidence of their mistakes, drinking, or
girl-watching. Personal sociology forces us to look at and thus better understand ourselves and
our values.
REFERENCES
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University of Chicago Press.
Bryant Clifton C. 1974. Deviant Behavior -- Occupational and Organizational Bases. Chicago:
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Bullough Bonnie, and Vern Bullough. 1982. "Nursing as a Profession". In Varieties of Work,
edited by Phyllis L. Stewart and Muriel G. Cantor pp. 213-24. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Engel Gloria. 1969. "The Effect of Bureaucracy on the Professional Authority of Physicians".
Journal of Health and Social Behavior 10:30-41.
Hawkins Richard. 1984. "Employee Theft in the Restaurant Trade: Forms of Ripping Off by
Waiters at Work". Deviant Behavior 5: 47-69.
Henslin James. 1968. "Trust and the Cabdriver". In Sociology and Everyday Life, edited by
Marcello Truzzi, pp. 138-58, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Hessler Richard M. 1974. "Junkies in White: Drug Addiction Among Physicians". In Deviant
Behavior -- Occupational and Organizational Bases, edited by Clifton D. Bryant, pp. 146-53.
Chicago: Rand McNally.
Hollinger Richard, and John Clark. 1982. "Employee Deviance: A Response to the Perceived
Quality of the Work Experience". Work and Occupations 9 (February): 97-114.
Hughes Everett C. 1971. The Sociological Eye. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.
Lanza-Kaduce Lonn. 1980. "Deviance Among Professionals: The Case of Unnecessary
Surgery". Deviant Behavior 1 (April-September): 333-59.
Lengermann Joseph J. 1974. "Professional Autonomy in Organizations: The Case of CPA's". In
Varieties of Work Experience, edited by Phyllis L. Stewart and Muriel G. Cantor, pp. 173-87.
Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
Martin Susan E. 1982. "Equal Versus Equitable Treatment: Policewomen and Patrol Work". In
Varieties of Work, edited by Phyllis L. Stewart and Muriel G. Cantor , pp. 101-21. Beverly Hills,
CA: Sage.
Millman Marcia. 1976. The Unkindest Cut. New York: William Morrow.
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Riemer Jeffrey W. 1977. "Varieties of Opportunistic Research". Urban Life 5 (January): 467-77.
------. 1979. Hard Hats: The Work World of Construction Workers. Sociological Observation
Series, vol. 8. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
------. 1982. "Worker Autonomy in the Skilled Building Trades". In Varieties of Work, edited by
Phyllis L. Stewart and Muriel G. Cantor, pp. 225-34. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Riemer Jeffrey W., and Nancy A. Brooks. 1982. Framing the Artist -- A Social Portrait of MidAmerican Artists. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.
Roman Paul M. 1974. "Settings for Successful Deviance: Drinking and Deviant Drinking among
Middle and Upper-Level Employees". In Deviant Behavior -- Occupational and Organizational
Bases, edited by Clifton D. Bryant, pp. 109-28. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Stewart Phyllis L., and Muriel G. Cantor. 1982. Varieties of Work. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Stoddard Ellwyn. 1968. "The Informal Code of Police Deviancy: A Group Approach to 'BlueCoat Crime'". Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 59 (June): 201-13.
Strauss Anselm, Shizako Fagerhaugh, Barbara Suczek, and Carolyn Wiener. 1985. Social
Organization of Medical Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Unruh David R. 1979. "Doing Funeral Directing -- Managing Sources of Risk in Funeralization".
Urban Life 8 (July): 247-63.
8. Political Activist as Participant Observer: Conflicts of
Commitment in a Study of the Draft Resistance Movement of the
1960s
Barrie Thorne
Participant observation, it has often been noted, involves a problematic balance, a dialectic
between being an insider, a participant in the world one studies, and an outsider, observing and
reporting on that world. Researchers are cautioned to avoid too much involvement, commitment,
or rapport (for example, Miller, 1952; Gold, 1958); to strive for neutrality ( Gans, 1968; Vidich,
1955) and for empathy rather than sympathy ( Douglas , 1972; Johnson, 1975). These cautionary
statements prescribe a moderate dose of involvement, and like all general prescriptions, they tend
to gloss over the varied experiences and possibilities of actual research ( Glazer, 1972, is a
noteworthy exception).
Field settings vary, for example, in the degree to which neutrality or moderate involvement is
possible, and researchers vary in the ways in which they are drawn into participation in the group
being studied. My experience as a participant observer in the draft resistance movement of the
late 1960s sharpened my sense of such variation. The resistance was a strongly partisan social
world, and intense commitment was expected from those who participated in more than a
fleeting way. I was a participant in the movement, committed to the goals of ending the Vietnam
War and the draft, before I decided to also approach the movement as a sociologist gathering
data for a dissertation. The conflicts I experienced between my position as an active and
committed participant in the resistance, and as a sociologist studying the movement, point to
specific issues bound up in the general problem of conflicting loyalties in field research: the
issue of how one's
Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring, 1979,
pp. 73-88. Copyright 1979 by JAI Press Inc. daily activities are allocated; questions of risk and
the consequences of one's actions; and conflicts over definitions of experience and the casting of
knowledge. These sorts of conflicts can never be fully anticipated when research begins; analysis
of them may shed light both on characteristics of the particular world one is observing, and on
the nature of field research (including the political and institutional context of the social
sciences) as a way of being in and experiencing the world.
to the draft resistance movement in Boston in March 1968, because I was strongly opposed to the
Vietnam War and wanted to be part of organized protest. During the previous summer, I had
been involved in a project called Vietnam Summer, and had helped canvass neighborhoods to
discuss peoples' attitudes to the war. I returned to antiwar activities when a friend told me about
the draft counseling projects of the Boston Draft Resistance Group, and I started training as a
counselor. At the same period of time, I was looking around for a thesis topic, and after about a
month of contact with the draft resistance movement, learning to be a draft counselor and
participating in demonstrations, I decided to become a sociological observer, as well as a
participant committed to the goals of the movement. I anticipated conflict between these dual
purposes-although nothing as intense as I eventually experienced -- but felt good about being
able to gather material for a thesis while also acting on my political commitments. My effort to
combine political commitment with sociological observing was helped all along the way by the
flexible attitude of my thesis advisers, who did not minimize the dilemmas but were always
helpful as I tried to sort them out.
As a point of principle, I wanted to avoid disguised research. From the start, I explained my
research intentions to those I saw on a regular basis, as well as reassuring them that I shared their
political commitments; their responses to my research activity ranged from hostility to mild
tolerance. Overall, I was allowed to hang (often, as will be explained later, under a specter of
suspicion) because I did movement work and professed commitment to the goals of ending the
war and the draft.
Two factors ran against my efforts to avoid disguised research. Like other field researchers (
Glazer, 1972; Gans, 1968), I discovered that people I had told tended to forget about my
sociologist's role; when I realized this was happening, I felt guilt mingled with relief at the
comfort of full acceptance. Futhermore, in the course of draft counseling, going on movement
expeditions, marching in demonstrations, and attending meetings, I encountered many people
whom I had no chance to tell about my research intentions. In these situations I was, in effect, a
disguised researcher; as Roth ( 1962) observes, secrecy is a matter of degree.
CHRONOLOGY AND RHYTHMS OF INVOLVEMENT
There were two draft resistance organizations in Boston; they shared a common origin and
ideology, but differed in tactics. The Boston Draft Resistance Group (B.D.R.G.) focused on draft
counseling and community organizing; the New England Resistance (N.E.R.) developed around
the tactic of noncooperation with the draft, encouraging registrants to sever ties with the
Selective Service, and staging events like draft card turn-ins, demonstrations for those refusing
induction, and symbolic sanctuaries for resisters coming to trial (for more detailed comparison of
these tactics, see Thorne 1975b; on the history of the resistance, see Ferber and Lynd, 1971;
Useem, 1973; Thorne, 1971). From the beginning I sought to be part of both organizations,
partly because I was new to intensive movement activity and did not have a preference of tactics,
but mainly because I wanted to get a rounded view of the movement and observe the range of its
contexts and settings for the sake of my study. 1
In the early stages of my involvement it was relatively easy to float between the two groups,
drawing on the license newcomers are often granted as they get established in a new social
world. Because newcomers tend to be thrust into a watching and listening role, I also found it
psychologically easier to be an intent observer early in the study. For the first few months, I
found my way around the B.D.R.G. by training to be a draft counselor, going on early morning
expeditions to draft boards to talk about the war and the draft with registrants waiting to be
transported to the army base for the preinduction physicals, and by attending weekly steering
committee meetings. At the same time, I began hanging around the New England Resistance,
typing in the office, attending Monday night dinners which were a regular occasion for
sociability among N.E.R. activists, and participating in public events like demonstrations and
draft card turn-ins.
As I got to know, and be known by people active in both groups, I became more fully involved
in various projects. My contact with the B.D.R.G., in keeping with the tempo of the group's
activities, tended to be steady and routine, paced around regular stints as a draft counselor, early
morning visits to draft boards, and regular meetings. The N.E.R. was less routinized; it moved
from event to event in an apocalyptic spirit, building up for periodic crescendos of activity. At
such periods, it was almost impossible to be only marginally involved. One of those times of
white-heat activity, in which I joined fully, although at night I forced myself to undertake the
daily routine of typing field notes, was in April, when a big resistance draft card turn-in
coincided with Johnson's decision not to seek reelection and was followed by Martin Luther
King's death. I participated in the daily marches, rallies, and emotional meetings that marked
those events, and in spare moments, I helped put out special editions of the N.E.R. newspaper;
this was the period in which I was most active in the New England Resistance. Over the summer,
I continued to work on the newspaper, which gave me access to the ongoing office life and
public events of the N.E.R. At the same time, I continued my more routinized involvement in the
B.D.R.G.
By the fall of 1968, the newspaper venture had largely folded, and the N.E.R. was in a state of
internal dissension. The N.E.R. had gradually moved away from organizing around the draft and
had begun to focus on trying to radicalize soldiers and high school students, activities which
interested me less (both politically, and in terms of my research focus) than did antiwar work.
Through regular stints as a draft counselor at the B.D.R.G., I had gradually become (and become
known as) "experienced" at counseling. I felt more knowledgeable politically as well as about
draft details, and realized that my sense of strategy, tactics, and political style fit more closely
with the B.D.R.G. than with the New England Resistance. By November, I had gradually shifted
primary affiliation from the N.E.R. to the B.D.R.G., and although I still attended some N.E.R.
events, I became more caught up in B.D.R.G. activities such as organizing early morning visits
to draft boards.
In the spring of 1969, I became bored with draft counseling. The fact that I had by then
accumulated extensive data on the draft counseling process contributed to the lessened interest;
in addition, persuaded by movement criticisms of the tactic, I began to doubt its political value. I
also tired of my role in organizing visits to draft boards and gradually withdrew from the
position of project head. By that time, many of the B.D.R.G. old-timers had gone on to other
political activities and groups, the N.E.R. had evolved into a small group of activists mainly
working with soldiers and high school students, and around both groups there was general talk
about the "death" of draft resistance. My involvement tapered off as the movement itself
dispersed, though I had contact with both groups until they finally disbanded (the New England
Resistance in July 1969; the Boston Draft Resistance Group in October 1969). 2
During my daily involvement with the resistance, I continually faced two problems: first, how to
respond in a situation where I wanted freedom of movement as an observer, but was forced to
take sides as a member; and second, the related question of priorities, of how, in my daily
allocation of time and effort, to balance my political goals with the needs and demands of
research.
PARTISANSHIP
At every level, the draft resistance movement demanded partisanship. Among the active
members, there was no tolerance for neutrality on the issues of the war and the draft, and the
issues assumed crisis proportions.
nly people with valued resources could free-lance (without inciting suspicion) as full participants
in the B.D.R.G., the N.E.R., and other organizations in the antiwar spectrum. The notable
examples of approved free-lancers were a black man whose race was an asset in such all-white
radical groups, and a resister who had already served a jail sentence for refusing induction and
whose experience and proved commitment became shared resources. My efforts to straddle the
B.D.R.G. and the N.E.R. were regarded with mistrust, and I felt constant pressure to take sides.
Although the B.D.R.G. and the N.E.R. shared an early history, an overlapping set of issues, and a
general loyalty when confronting the outside, they differed on points of strategy, tactics, and
general style. Relations were competitive and sometimes strained. It was easier to be a partial
member of the B.D.R.G. than of the New England Resistance, but even B.D.R.G. people
mistrusted anyone who attempted to belong to both groups.
As a newcomer, I could wander in and out of both organizations, but after that phase, I felt
continually forced into a choice. People in the antiwar movement often inquired and commented
about the affiliations of individual activists. My self-indentification shifted as the year wore on.
Sometimes I tried a complicated formula which approximated how I felt ("I'm working on the
resistance newspaper and I draft counsel at the B.D.R.G."), but the approved slots were less
complex. During the summer, several B.D.R.G. people indicated they regarded me as a member
of the New England Resistance, even though I was a regular B.D.R.G. counselor. But by the fall,
I felt more thoroughly "B.D.R.G." and introduced myself as such. At the demonstration in
September, an N.E.R. activist came over and said, "Hello B.D.R.G." In March 1969, 1 went to a
national resistance conference as a representative of the Boston Draft Resistance Group and
people from the New England Resistance also attended.
CONFLICT OVER PRIORITIES
In choosing how to spend each day -- what meetings to attend, projects to work on, events to join
-- I acted not only out of political conviction, but also out of my interest in observing the
workings of the resistance movement. Initially, I felt relatively detached and went to every kind
of resistance activity; the goal of observation was primary. But as I became more comfortable
with the issues, rhetoric, and style of the radical movement, and as I became absorbed in the
goals and strategies of the resistance, I slipped more fully into the role of participant.
I still observed and recorded whatever I was involved in, but the decision to be there (draft
counseling instead of planning a draft card turn-in; on an early morning visit to a draft board
instead of in the middle of a sanctuary) increasingly involved tension between personal, political,
and research considerations. There was continuous debate about tactics, about whether draft
counseling, draft card turn-ins, and sanctuaries were the most useful activities. I thought through
each issue on political groups, and eventually came to oppose both card turn-ins and sanctuaries
and to support draft counseling as a major direction of effort. This position both led to and grew
out of my closer involvement with the B.D.R.G. during the late summer and fall of 1968. The
B.D.R.G. continually argued against and only minimally participated in draft card turn-ins and
sanctuaries, which for a time were the central activities of the New England Resistance. By early
1969, I, along with many B.D.R.G. activists, had also become skeptical about the political
effectiveness of draft counseling; our doubts contributed to the demise of the group.
Apart from the larger issues, there were smaller decisions about how to allocate time and effort,
and my interest in observing entered into these choices. Wanting to get a rounded view of the
movement, to see if from as many vantage points as possible, I poked in and out of a range of
situations. The ongoing life of both the N.E.R. and the B.D.R.G. included many little
expeditions: visiting draft boards to try to get informatin about dates of physicals and inductions;
ventures to bus stations and inside the army base to leaflet and talk with soldiers; setting up
antirecruitment tables when the Marines came around to colleges. I was a perpetual and eager
volunteer for these expeditions. Mainly because they gave me a chance to see the resistance
movement in a variety of situations (and hence, I believed, enhanced the representatives of my
data).
While on these expeditions, I participated fully: accosting soldiers to engage them in discussions
about the war; doing impromptu draft counseling on every occasion; debating with the Marine
recruiters in front of a group of junior college students. But from the point of view of the
movement and its political goals, my time might have been better spent in other activities such as
organizing projects at the office. I was more a gadfly than a patient organizer. In my efforts to
experience as many different settings as possible, and in my attempts to straddle group
boundaries, I was running against the organizational and purposive grain of the draft resistance
movement.
My style of participation was partly shaped by my role as observer, and that outlook set me apart
from full participants. I was a committed participant, but with limits related to temperament and
reluctance to give up my outside involvements; both of these limits were bound up in the way I
defined my research role. Throughout the experience I had a residue of safety, a horizon of
options that most of the participants lacked. The role of observer provided a defense against
experiences I found fearful; it pro vided me a measure of control in a situation which I was both
strongly drawn to and cautious about. My experience might be seen as an example of a general
option social scientists have created: fieldwork as controlled adventure. 3
FIELDWORK AS CONTROLLED ADVENTURE: CONFLICTS OVER RISK-TAKING
No matter how fully I participated in the resistance, and even in the final days when I was seen
as an experienced draft counselor and old-timer, I still retained a dimension of marginality. In
contrast with anthropologists in foreign cultures and sociologists crossing lines of class, race, or
deviance, this dimension was relatively small. I came from the native population, the central
constituency of the draft resistance movement: white, middle class, young, college-educated, part
of the subculture of metropolitan-hip-university centers. Without these various attributes,
especially youth and comfort with the counterculture, I would not have been accepted in the
daily activites of the resistance.
But, in other ways I was marginal, and as my involvement progressed, I found myself relying on
this sense of marginality not only to lend a degree of detachment, but also to provide immunity
from some of the risks which went along with resistance activities.
My marginality was based partly on sex. The resistance had a sexual division of labor which
placed women in a subordinate and derivative position ( Thorne, 1975a). Exempted from
conscription, women did not personally confront choices about the draft, and they were, at least
initially, exempted from some of the pressures toward risk-taking that were directed at men. If I
had been a male participant observer, especially in the N.E.R., I would have been under
continual pressure to turn in my draft card and risk jail. As a woman, I entered with relative
distance and immunity from risk, although not with as much immunity as I had anticipated.
My strongest marginal trait was my position as a graduate student, a role which evoked suspicion
and mistrust. In the first place, many of the central resistance people had dropped out of college
and were extremely critical of the careerist, business as usual, establishment overtones of being a
student (and especially a graduate student). Some of them had particular mistrust for social
scientists. But, perhaps most important was the fact that my being a student gave me an outside
set of involvements and options which ran against the resistance sense of collectivity and
demand for full commitment and risk-taking.
The central activists of the resistance movement constituted a community of fate. To varying
degrees, they had severed other careers or possible futures and came to regard their lot as being
cast with the resistance, or more broadly, with the radical movement. They were enmeshed in a
fateful situation: Taking the risk of turning in draft cards, refusing induction, harboring deserters,
setting up sanctuaries, aiding and abetting violation of the Selective Service law. They also
confronted hostile political antagonists (hecklers, rather terrifying threats from right-wing
organizations), and continually suspected the presence of Feds (it was presumed that there were
infiltrators from the F.B.I. or the police, that the phone was tapped and the mail watched).
An atmosphere of risk, uncertainty, and danger infused the daily life of the resistance movement,
especially the New England Resistance. The B.D.R.G., though also assuming tapped lines and
infiltrators and working in possible violation of the legal proscription against counseling to
resist, was more bureaucratic, pragmatic, and cautious about taking risks. I felt ready to take
whatever consequences might result from draft counseling, proselytizing in front of draft boards,
and participating in demonstrations and marches. But, beyond that commitment, I did not throw
my fate in with the resistance. Of course, I did not have a draft card to turn in, but I also avoided
any activities which appeared to involve uncertain and high stakes (such as the first sanctuary
and working with deserters). Nor did I drop out of school, an action that many resistance people
felt should accompany radicalization. Unlike those who faced uncertain futures and probably
jail, I could (and fully intended to) go back to having a safe career as an academic. And I always
preserved that option; I was reluctant to place it in jeopardy.
The first sanctuary showed me dramatically that I was ultimately in a different world from fully
involved resistance people. The Arlington Street Church sanctuary in May 1968 was the first, not
only in Boston, but also the first in the country. It was a new tactic for dramatizing the dilemma
of conscience of antiwar draftees and trying to build support around them: A draft resistor and an
AWOL soldier were declared in symbolic sanctuary, and a large and spectacular, week-long
event was built around the occasion, while everyone waited for the government to respond. It
was anticipated that there would be mass arrests, since the sanctuary technically violated laws
concerning aiding and abetting deserters, as well as the Selective Service law. The choice of
entering a state of risk was suddenly sprung on the mass of supporters who came to the press
conference and large public gatherings which announced the sanctuary. The resister and soldier
marched out, followed by a group of 25 to 30 resistance people, and it was announced
dramatically that this group has vowed to "stand with the two brothers, keeping sanctuary with
them and risking possible arrest" and that everyone else who would join the community should
come forward. My field notes show the turmoil I felt as I was faced with this public decision.
As M. began the invitation, I felt fear in my throat. Fear, shame, guilt -- both a desire to join the
group that surged forward after M's invitation and a (stronger) reluctance, since I didn't feel I
could risk arrest and realized that the pressures compelling me to go forward were of a group
rather than individually-thoughtthrough kind. But that realization didn't seem to minimize the
emotion. People began leaving their pews and going forward. Eventually there seemed to be only
a few scattered people remaining in the pews. M. commented over the microphone, "There
seems to be more up here than down there." I felt all eyes were upon me; I was sure my face was
flushed; I found myself fingering my purse, almost in readiness to run up. But I didn't. It
occurred to me that I was feeling the way people feel who can't bring themselves to turn in their
draft cards, but who finally do it under crowd pressure.
The group -- more like a community given its size and solidarity -- stood in a solid bunch,
spilling out over the sides of the front of the shape, but clearly demarcated from those of us,
scattered and far from constituting a group, who remained in the pews. The spatial arrangements
dramatized the gap between the committed and the uncommitted.
As it turned out, the authorities arrested only the resister and the soldier, although there was a
physical confrontation with the police when federal marshals forcibly removed the resister from
the church. But I experienced that occasion as a moment of truth about the limits of my
participation. 4
I was drawn to the total involvement and adverturesome spirit of the resistance. For example, my
field notes detail a long, all-absorbing day that began at 5:30A.M. with an early morning foray to
a working-class draft board and animated talk and exchange of gossip with the little band that
went; then going to the N.E.R. office, which was at a peak of activity in preparation for a large
induction-refusal demonstration. Someone there asked me to drive some resisters and an AWOL
soldier who had decided to turn himself in at a nearby army base, and thus began another spirited
adventure on enemy territory, with our hippy-looking band enjoying the stares and imagined
dangers in the stark, bureaucratic environment of the base. We returned, full of stories to tell the
eight people crowded in the office basement for the weekly N.E.R. dinner. Since the newspaper
was due at the printers, I joined in and we worked late into the night, going out for beer,
laughing, and reaching a state of heady exhaustion. Finally, I was so tired I took my leave and
went home. The next morning when I woke up and realized I would spend the day typing field
notes alone, I felt quite depressed and almost jumped into my car and headed for the printers,
where the gang was.
Throughout my months with the resistance, I sensed, sometimes guiltily, that I could have my
cake and eat it too. I could share in the excitement, the thrills of participating in events that
seemed almost magnetic -- and be spared the costs: the uncertainty of risk-taking, the possibility
of jail.
The ethnographic literature suggests that this is a recurring phenomenon: sociologists and
anthropologists venturing into exciting, taboo, dangerous, perhaps enticing social circumstances;
getting the flavor of participation, living out moments of high drama; but in some ultimate way
having a copout, a built-in escape, a point of outside leverage that full participants lack. The
sociologist can have an adventure, but usually takes it in a controlled and managed way.
CONFLICTS OVER THE INTERPRETATION OF EXPERIENCE
As an active and committed participant, I was pressed to allocate my daily time and effort in
ways structured by the resistance, and to join the movement's community of fate. But my other
role -- as a sociologist gathering data for a thesis -- conflicted with the movement's prescriptions
for activity, pointing to daily agendas geared more to the goals of observing than to being
politically effective, and helping set limits to my willingness to take risks. I also experienced
epistemological conflict: The movement's ways of defining and interpreting experience ran
counter to the more detached and routinizing perspectives I maintained as a sociological
observer.
The resistance was a sectlike organization, emphasizing conformity of belief as well as external
behavior. Movement participants would not have tolerated the intimate presence of an avowed
neutral, but I discovered that partisanship and participation are both a question of degree. I
believed (that is, I opposed the war and the draft, shared the movement's analysis of their origins
and injustices, and generally supported resistance strategies of protest), but I also sought to
assume psychological distance from the daily life and ideology of the resistance, and to refer its
happenings to an outside, comparative framework. I participated, but I also watched carefully
and later recorded and reflected on what had occurred -- for purposes that extended beyond the
movement and its goals.
In general, at least in this society, people tend to feel uncomfortable if they know a participant in
an encounter is also observing, analyzing, and recording the interaction for an outside purpose.
But some situations have a stronger proscription against such detached and instrumental activity
than others. For example, Riesman, Watson, and their colleagues ( 1967) experienced extensive
difficulty in doing participant observation in parties and other gatherings of sociability, perhaps
because such gatherings presume expressiveness, unseriousness, and a suspension of
consequentiality, and these assumptions conflict with the more instrumental and consequential
attitudes involved in doing sociological research. (In contrast, participant observers might
experience less epistemological strain in studying a shopping mall or a bureaucracy -- settings
whose rules for experience are more various, and less distant from the detached and instrumental
behavior, and marginal commitment of sociological observing.)
Some of the difficulties I experienced as an observer stemmed from the rules for experience and
knowing which are basic to highly partisan social movements: demand for complete involvement
based on a totalizing world view; a sense of crisis and apocalypse; and emphasis on collectivity
and control by the group. I discovered the contours and strength of some of these basic
assumptions by trying to mix participation in the movement with the detached, routinizing, and
comparative outlook, and the instrumental purposes, involved in doing sociological research for
a dissertation.
The temporal rhythm of the resistance was very different from the tempo of observation and
research. The movement was infused with a sense of crisis and apocalypse; the present often
overshadowed awareness of either past or future. Although demonstrations, sanctuaries, and
confrontations were located by calendar time, these occasions, which were central to resistance
life, had their own temporal qualities, well described by Schechner's ( 1969:74) phrase, "event
time." Some events, like the massive response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
(which came right after the April 3 draft card turn-in) emerged quickly and unexpectedly, and
had no visible end. On April 11, one resister remarked, "The last week seems like one long day."
The sense of being engulfed by the present and uncertain about the future was expressed in
leaflets distributed at the opening of the Arlington Street Church sancturary. "LiberationRenaissance," one leaflet read, and outlined a long list of political and cultural activities
scheduled "to last for the duration." The event was contingent on government response; its
timing was uncertain; the experience was sharpened and "heated" ( Goffman, 1967:261) by the
presence of risk. People spoke of being "in sanctuary," a phrase which described the sense of
total involvement, of living inside an event, bracketed from both past and future.
This atmosphere of shared crisis (fed by risk-taking, intense activity, irregular schedules, and
lack of sleep) separated the movement from the outside world of business-as-usual and
reinforced individual commitment and a sense of shared fate. During the most intense periods of
crisis, the resistance had the flavor of a millenarian movement. The movement chose the omega
as its symbol partly because of its apocalyptic reference, and the word "apocalypse" was
sometimes mentioned around resistance circles, often in jest, but capturing a mood which was in
the air.
As an active member, I often got caught up in this sense of crisis and apocalypse. I cried with
many others as hundreds came forth to turn in their draft cards during the April 3 demonstration;
when we learned of pending government indictments of draft resisters, I shared the movement
mood of anguish and uncertainty about the future. But, as a sociologist, I made a continual effort
to routinize the sense of crisis through the daily rhythm (often sustained with great difficulty, and
occasionally neglected altogether) of recording happenings and sociological reflections in my
field notes. As I moved back and forth between these two perspectives -- getting caught up in
movement events and emotions, and later recording and analyzing them in a more detached and
objectifying way -- I experienced inner conflict.
From the movement's perspective, "doing sociology" on its activities constituted a sort of
epistemological betrayal. There was general hostility to proclaimed neutrals and observers, and
social scientitst were seen as part of this camp; if the apocalypse is at hand, one should not be
watching and taking notes. During an extended discussion of tactics at a gathering during one of
the sanctuaries for an AWOL soldier, a fellow stood up and prefaced his comments with, "I'm
only here as a witness. . . ." He was cut off with a vehement reply. "There have been enought
witnesses! There were witnesses at Auschwitz and Dachau -- it's time for everyone to stand and
act!"
Individuals and groups in a state of crisis may resist not only detached observation, but also the
comparative attitude which is basic to theoretical understanding of social life ( Hughes, 1971;
Becker, 1964). In comparing the resistance with other social movements, I implied (and one part
of me always believed) that the situation was not unique and final, that it was just another
millenarian movement, rather than the millennium itself.
The conflicts I experienced between being a committed participant and an observing sociologist
often took the form of great pangs of guilt, and a sense that I was betraying the movement. This
issue of betrayal was thrust upon me in a direct and painful way when I eventually realized that
some movement members had come to regard me with great suspicion, wondering if I was a
"Fed."
FIELDWORKER AS FED
A common ritual around backstage resistance gatherings was to play a sort of guessing game:
Who's the Fed? It was generally suspected that there were infiltrators from the F.B.I., military
intelligence, or the local police; the N.E.R. phone was often answered, "New England
Resistance, this line is tapped." Insiders and outsiders said that resistance people were
"paranoid," but it is interesting to note that there is no ready phrase in English for chronic fear
which may turn out to be justified ("paranoid" suggests fear with no factual basis). The resistance
anxiety looked and felt like paranoia, since it had certain basis, but the facts just were not
known. Although, to my knowledge, specific surveillance of the Boston groups has not come to
light, there have been sufficient revelations about government infiltration of other radical and
antiwar groups of the 1960s to make it now seem likely. 5
There were people around the resistance who claimed they had a sixth sense for spotting Feds;
one spoke of a sort of bell that went off in his head when he encountered an infiltrating spy.
Descriptions were offered about typical Fed behavior, and I listened closely, trying to figure out
the mores of this invisible, yet possibly hostile tribe. I was told that Feds could be spotted by "the
kinds of questions they ask" and by biographies that did not check out.
There were other types of infiltrators around the resistance: members of other leftist sects (who
did not always reveal their outside allegiance, and who were often present to recruit from the
resistance membership and to steer it to a given political line), and media reporters, who usually
made themselves known, but sometimes disguised their purpose. It was discovered that a
reporter for the local newspaper most hostile to radical activities had come for draft counseling
posing as a law student and had tried to push the counselor into telling him to resist.
This feeling of being spied upon, of having many unfriendly outside groups trying to siphone
information which could well be used to send people to jail, kept the resistance in a constant
state of nerves. The fear of Feds increased the sense of crisis and apocalypse that underscored
even mundane activities. One learned to be careful while talking on the phone, to be cautious in
draft counseling, and in talking about the plans and workings of the resistance to strangers
around the office or outside.
Although the draft resistance movement began in a spirit of openness, with a strategy of turning
in draft cards and breaking the law in a public, visible, almost proud way, it was hard to sustain
an attitude which seemed almost suicidal, especially as the resistance began working with
AWOL soldiers, and as the possibility of conspiracy indictments (in addition to the charge of
breaking the Selective Service law) became real. The New England Resistance, which operated
in the sphere of risk more than the B.D.R.G., became more and more secretive, especially when
it began planning sanctuaries, which required secrecy in the planning stages to prevent a bust
before the event surfaced.
In that atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion, with a lack of firm factual grounding, my
private anxiety and guilt about being an observer took root and flourished. In the late spring of
1968, I began to sense the people in the N.E.R. regarded me as a likely candidate for a Fed.
When I went to the office, I often received a cold shoulder from people who had previously been
warm and friendly. I watched the way they treated other Fed-candidates, and found the same
cold reception, an attempt to squeeze the suspected person out of the collectivity. Although
several of my trusted friends (and their trust seemed increasingly precious) commented that there
was a lot of Fed-guessing going on, I found that the game was not often played in my presence. I
learned of it second-hand and realized that being included in the guessing ritual of who's-the-Fed
was a proof of trust. Exclusion meant that one was suspect.
I found this attitude of mistrust painful. I also did not know what to do about it because the
implicit accusation was hard to shake. If directly asked, "Are you a Fed?" (as resistance people
often did to one another under the guise of humor but also as a vocalization of generalized
doubt), what could one reply? Too loud or soft a protestation would be equally telling. But the
fact remained that my loyalty was not pure, that I was not giving total allegiance to the
resistance. I not only held out from casting my future with the movement and joining the
community of risk; I also was myself doing a kind of spywork not unlike what I imagined a Fed
would do. I was systematically observing; I kept my ear out for a range of information and detail
that exceeded what was necessary in performing my tasks of being a regular member of the
group. I asked the kinds of questions a Fed would also want to know: "When did you turn in
your draft card?" "What led up to that decision?" "What organization had you been in?" And I
listened attentively, committing the responses to mind for later recording. At demonstrations, in
order to get a range of perspectives, I sometimes left the resistance ranks and walked to the side
to stand with spectators or even reporters (later, when I came to realize the strong symbolic
import of space in expressing partisanship, I did less of such wandering). My efforts to straddle
all the groups in the resistance orbit made me doubly suspicious. One B.D.R.G. activist
exclaimed one day, "Since you jump so much from group to group, all you need is a final tie-up
with the C.I.A." A thrifty kind of Fed, getting double the information.
Although, at the time, I felt scapegoated in being regarded as a Fed, from a later vantage point
the accusation has a certain plausibility. Although I believed in the goals and basic ideology of
the resistance, and acted as a sincere participant, my loyalty was qualified by four undeniable
facts: I had an outside allegiance and tie; I was keeping records (which, in spite of my efforts to
keep them confidential and my intention to burn them if they were subpoenaed, could be stolen
and used against the resistance); the records, which were not under the movement's control,
would go into a report on the resistance made available to outside audiences; and I expected to
receive external rewards (a Ph.D. and publications) from my participation in the movement.
Some movement members realized that I would receive establishment rewards for activities
which in their lives meant giving up safe futures; "I wish I could get a Ph.D. for all this," a
woman activist once said to me with an edge of resentment.
Although I always had a strong intention not to let my study damage the movement or its
members, I could not be sure in what ways the information might be used. My dissertation would
be available to an audience outside the resistance, and would not be under the direct control of
the movement. 6
CONCLUSION
When, near the end of my involvement in the resistance, I became an active and nonresearching
member of the feminist movement, I felt great relief. Now and then in a feminist meeting or
discussion, I remembered how I felt in resistance gatherings, and, in contrast, experienced great
comfort based on unity of self and purpose. To be fully trusted as a movement activist, and to
feel I warranted that trust, was a warming experience which sharpened my memories of what it
was like to live with constant ambivalence and anxiety during my days with the resistance.
Within the women's movement I continued to think and speak in a sociological way and to slip
in and out of an attitude of detachment and observation. I kept a diary, which, although briefer,
resembled the field notes I recorded during the resistance. But my sociological insight took place
and evolved within a movement context; I didn't intend to refine and use this knowledge
primarily within the academic world or to further my own career.
Comparing my experiences in the resistance and in the feminist movement, I realized that the
sociological imagination -- the insight that can come from detachment, comparison, and
systematic analysis -- should be distinguished from other components of the research role.
Sociological understanding and information can be organized in various ways, including as part
of movements for social change. For example, I believe my contributions to discussions of
strategies and tactics in the resistance (for example, in our long debates about the efficacy of
draft card turn-ins and draft counseling) were strengthened by my ability to think sociologically,
and by the systematic observations I had made of the movement over time. However, putting
these insights into a dissertation and journal articles, geared for a different audience, was less
useful for the movement.
One issue, therefore, has to do with the location and distribution of sociological knowledge and
understanding. Hymes ( 1969) has aptly focused some of these concerns: ethnographers deal
with knowledge of others, and that involves special political and ethical responsibilities,
especially since social science knowledge is generally more accessible to elites and to those
protecting the status quo, than to the powerless or to those working for social change. When the
group studied is especially vulnerable to political control, as the resistance was, these problems
become all the more pressing. I emerged from the antiwar movement more keenly aware of the
need to create political and social locations for knowledge which will further social change,
rather than perpetuating existing structures of domination.
This experience also taught me about the limits of sociological knowledge. Detached gathering
and analysis of information, and theoretical reflection, can help inform political action, but such
action always involves stepping into the unknown, beyond the boundaries of the predictable. I
still think back to the Arlington Street Church sanctuary, and the way I held back from the risk,
the plunge into the uncertain, that radical political acts require. Some of this hesitation was
because I was not sure that particular action was politically wise, but I also had to confront my
personal reluctance to take the sort of risks I believe might be necessary to end the war and bring
about social justice.
Others in the movement also felt the dilemmas bound up in political action, as when they
anguished over whether or not to turn in their draft cards or refuse induction as gestures against
the war. But my conflicts had a special twist: My research role became a retreat, a justification I
used to myself for avoiding risks when activism felt threatening. As I made such retreats, I came
to see that strong political commitment and action necessarily involves other outlooks and ways
of experiencing the world. I also discovered ways in which academic careers tend to encourage
investments in the status quo, and to foster individualism instead of collectivism -- they run
counter to the commitments and actions basic to radical politics. These issues remain live ones
for me; participant observation in a draft resistance movement taught me as much about
sociology as about political activism.
THE RESISTANCE STUDY AS PERSONAL SOCIOLOGY: AN UPDATE
It has been almost two decades since I joined the draft resistance movement as both a committed
activist and a sociological observer. Two purposes, both shaded with the personal, drew me to
the resistance. I urgently wanted to take action to help end the war in Vietnam. In addition, I was
searching for a dissertation topic and wanted to be absorbed in the world I was studying.
Over the course of my participation in the draft resistance movement, the dual purposes of
political activism and doing sociological research often seemed to be at odds, leaving me with
feelings of confusion and guilt. Before I could write my study, I felt I had to sort out the
confusion. With cathartic energy, I began by drafting an appendix (later reworked into this
chapter) about my efforts to combine research with activism. The writing helped clarify the
tensions I felt, but it did not lay the issues to rest. Since my days in the draft resistance
movement, I have continued to mix political activism with the doing of sociology, and to ponder
the varied connections, and occasional contradictions, between these activities.
My participation in the resistance deepened my understanding of and concern about varied forms
of social injustice. It also taught me skills of political organizing -- how to frame issues and build
visibility for them; the nitty-gritty of organizing demonstrations, marches, and petition drives;
how to reach the media; how, in general, to take a political stand. More than skill is involved; to
be political is to be ready to act, and, if necessary, to make a scene. In the resistance I developed
a taste for what a friend once called, "that up-against-the-system feeling," the zest of
confrontation, of taking collective action.
It was through my experience in the resistance that I became a feminist -- an unanticipated
outcome which has been a major influence in my later personal, political, and academic life.
When I joined the antiwar move ment, the subordination of women was not at all in the political
consciousness of the New Left. But within the civil rights, antiwar, and student movements,
women activists experienced a deep contradiction. The movements of the 1960s affirmed values
of freedom and equality, but within those very movements, women were subordinate to men
(Freeman, 1975).
In the New England Resistance the women activists (including me) did more than our share of
the busywork -- typing, mimeographing, getting out mailings, making coffee, and preparing
potluck suppers. Men were the decision makers, the public speakers, the media stars; they
monopolized the visible and valued activities. While the men were called "resisters," women had
derivative status as "resister-sisters." The movement slogan, "Girls Who Say Yes to Guys Who
Say No," defined women activists as a sort of sexual prize for men who resisted the draft.
At first I and the other women in the Boston resistance didn't systematically question these
patterns of inequality. Incidents we would now call "sexist" sometimes rankled, but we
expressed annoyance, at most, through private complaining. Our shared annoyance began to take
political form during a national resistance conference in Illinois in 1969, when several activists
from the Chicago women's liberation movement organized a separate caucus for women to
discuss our experiences in the resistance.
Back in Boston, several of us who had attended the conference formed a "women's liberation
group" that met for long sessions of consciousnessraising. In the fall of 1969 our group joined
with several other women's collectives to form Bread and Roses, one of the early feministsocialist organizations in the more radical branch of the emerging women's movement (
Freeman, 1975). (See Thorne, 1975a, for more detail about the emergence of women's liberation
out of the resistance.)
Those were heady days -- affirming and deepening solidarity with other women as we
reinterpreted our personal lives in political terms. Feminist ideas also gave me new perspective
on relationships between politics and the doing of sociology. In the company of other feminists, I
began to think about the politics of knowledge and the absence and devaluation of women within
sociology and other disciplines. In short, my political activism helped reshape my approach to
sociology.
After completing my dissertation and a subsequent study of legal and medical education (which
included some attention to movements for social change within the professions), I began to do
research on issues of gender. I worked on a collective study of gender and patterns of male
dominance in the content and uses of language ( Thorne, Kramarae, and Henley, 1983) and
contributed to feminist rethinking of the social sciences ( Thorne, with Yalom, 1982; Stacey and
Thorne, 1985). And I undertook another lengthy stint of participant-observation, this time in
elementary schools, tracing patterns of sex segregation and sex typing among children ( Thorne,
1986).
Each of these research projects has had an activist dimension. I have given many public talks
about changing sexist language, I have worked with elementary schools to develop ways to
lessen gender stereotyping; I have been active in the nationwide movement to develop
interdisciplinary women' studies programs and to transform college curricula so that "missing
voices" -- of women, blacks, Hispanics, lesbians, and gay men -- are more fully and respectfully
included. Through Sociologists for Women in Society, a national organization, I am currently
involved in efforts to encourage sociologists to become more active -- as citizens, community
members, and experts -- in movements for pay equity or "comparable worth."
In short, with many other colleagues, I have discovered varied ways in which political activism
and the doing of sociology can be mutually enhancing. But one major tension -- an ambivalence
of sensibilities -- remains. The doing of sociology entails intellectual detachment and a search for
complexity. In itself, this way of knowing, especially when conducted within elitist and careerbuilding academic institutions, tends to inhibit action. Political commitment -- especially my
involvement in women's studies -- has helped me move beyond that paralysis, and to be critical
of the hierarchical, often arrogant qualities of the academic profession.
On the other hand, when I am engaged in political action, I am often grateful for the detachment
and skepticism I practice as a sociologist. Political movements are focused and singular in
purpose; I want to participate and to act, but to do so with a nudging sense of complexity.
Tensions between doing sociology and taking political action may sometimes feel confusing, but
in their own way, they may also be continually clarifying.
NOTES
I would like to thank Everett C. Hughes and Kurt H. Wolff, whose wise counsel and insight into
the vicissitudes of field research helped sustain this project. Peter Lyman, Gaye Tuchman,
Murray S. Davis, Charles S. Fisher, and Malcolm Spector.
1
Douglas ( 1976) notes that the extent of a researcher's participation which is tied to the question
of how representative and contextualized the finds are, is somewhat different from the degree or
depth of one's involvement.
2
When to leave the field is an issue much discussed among participant observers. In this study,
when the movement dispersed, the field left me. The quick tempo and rapidly shifting quality of
resistance events made me wish I were omnipresent; I felt anxious when I missed a particular
event because the rapid turnover of tactics and membership gave daily movement life a
nonrepetitive flavor.
3
Larry Rosenberg suggested this term to me.
4
Other participant-observers have described similar moments of truth about boundaries between
them and the group they were studying. Whyte ( 1943) describes helping his Cornertown friends
cheat at the polls, and later regretting the action, partly because it violated his personal
principles. In my case, taking part in the resistance was in accord with my personal principles
(although part of my hesitation
5
Gary Marx ( 1974) observes that as government surveillance of radical movements proliferates,
as it has in recent times, the movements themselves are changed in important ways. This subject
warrants more empirical research, although it is a slippery phenomenon, since surveillance is
usually uncovered -- if at all -- only after the fact. Glazer ( 1972) adds other issues for social
scientists to consider in an era of widespread and secret surveillance: Will research be used and
treated as surveillance work, to the detriment of the subject? How can we reconcile our research
probing with the general dangers of increased invasion of privacy?
6
These specific worries have lessened with time. The movement had dispersed by the time I
finished my dissertation and long before I published anything from the study, although I am still
troubled by the possibility that my research may be put to future use by those seeking to suppress
other radical movements.
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About the Contributors
KATHLEEN J. FERRARO is a professor in the School of Justice Studies, Arizona State
University, Tempe. She has published widely on womanbattering and shelter work. She has been
involved in the issue of domestic violence as an advocate for resources for women in violent
relationships, a worker in a shelter for abused women and their children, a counselor for violent
men, and in community education about battering.
JABER F. GUBRIUM is a professor of sociology at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He
has written extensively on the social practices and organization of human service work from
nursing homes to rehabilitation. His research is grounded in a lifelong interest in the uses and
misuses of rationality.
PAUL C. HIGGINS is a sociology professor at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. He
researches and writes primarily in the area of disability, an interest that developed out of his
experiences of being a son of parents who are deaf. Through support of a local public school
program for deaf students, the development of media stories concerning disability, and other
means, he pursues his personal concerns in public arenas.
JOHN M. JOHNSON is a professor of Justice Studies and Women's Studies at Arizona State
University, Tempe. His early works on bureaucracies developed out of his experiences as a naval
officer during the Vietnam War. He has also written about deviance, family violence, and field
research. He complements his scholarly work with community activities such as numerous
presentations, consulting with government agencies, founding a shelter for battered women, and
administering a diversion program for violent and abusive men.
STANFORD M. LYMAN is the Robert J. Morrow Eminent Scholar and Professor of Social
Science at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton. He has published widely in the areas of
minorities, phenomenological sociology, and the development of sociology. His interests in
Asians and other minorities in America grew out of his childhood and youth experiences in San
Francisco's Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and black ghetto.
JEFFREY E. NASH is a professor of sociology at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota. He
has researched and written about a variety of topics including public behavior in winter weather,
runners, and the sociology of deafness and language. Much of his work on children's play comes
from his personal involvement with youth sports and organizations.
JEFFREY W. RIEMER is a professor in and chairperson of the Department of Sociology and
Philosophy at Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville. He has written widely on work
and occupations. This interest developed out of his being a journeyman construction electrician,
having served an industry certified five-year electrical apprenticeship.
JOHN H. STANFIELD is a professor of sociology and African and AfroAmerican studies at.
Yale University and a faculty affiliate of the Program of Non-Profit Organizations-Institution for
Social and Policy Studies. He continues to explore and write extensively on the development and
maintenance of race relations and oppression. That interest developed out of his growing up in a
self-assured black family in a northern, rural, predominantly white community.
BARRIE THORNE is a professor in the Sociology Department and in the Program for the Study
of Women and Men in Society at the University of Southern California. An activist and
ethnographer in the draft resistance movement of the 1960s, she has been an active participant in
the women's movement since 1969. She has written extensively on many issues concerning
gender.
LOUIS A. ZURCHER is Ashbel Smith Professor of Social Work and Sociology at the
University of Texas, Austin. He has published widely in a variety of areas including social roles,
social movements, and selves. He first realized he wanted to study social roles and interaction
when, as a young recruit in naval "boot camp," a drill instructor unforgettably and graphically
informed him of the consequences of being out of step while marching.