ENGAGING PETER HALL’S WORK CONCERNING SOCIAL ORGANIZATION, POWER, POLICY, AND COMMUNICATION William K. Rawlins
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ENGAGING PETER HALL’S WORK CONCERNING SOCIAL ORGANIZATION, POWER, POLICY, AND COMMUNICATION William K. Rawlins
The essays composing this special partial issue grew out of a program featuring and honoring the work of Peter M. Hall that was presented at the 2001 Convention of the National Communication Association (NCA) in Atlanta. The session was entitled: “Social Organization, Power, and Communication: The Contributions of Peter Hall in Organizational and Interpersonal Communication Inquiries.” Since the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) became an affiliate of NCA in 1997, spotlight sessions like this one have been sponsored to recognize the work of distinguished scholars of symbolic interaction who have made important contributions to communication inquiry, as well as to promote further conversation and engagement with the featured scholar’s ideas. The participants in these panels are accomplished scholars in their own specialties who are well-credentialed to address and exemplify the value of the featured scholar’s work. Accordingly, the authors of the essays appearing here are fellow Symbolic Interactionists and include former and current colleagues and students of Peter Hall, as well as his students’ students. Mary Jo Neitz celebrates Hall’s penchant for conversation as a sociologist and as an actively involved citizen of the world. Within the discipline of sociology,
Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 3–5 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260019
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Neitz appreciates Hall’s practice of working out new ideas through embodied conversation with other people. She believes Hall’s work has broadened the questions of Symbolic Interactionism to include concerns with social policy and power, and how they are negotiated, wielded, accomplished and practiced in contingent structural and temporal contexts. She applauds that he has not merely studied the processes involved in public policy but has been actively involved in formulating, evaluating and implementing educational policy on state, regional and national levels. For Neitz, Hall’s combination of theoretical conversation and informed activism “make him a model of what an Interactionist can be.” David Altheide draws on Hall’s theoretical work on communication, meta-power and policy changes to analyze the “anti-terrorism” bill passed by Congress in the wake of the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001, which “gave the federal government unprecedented power to investigate and engage in surveillance of American citizens in order to combat terrorism.” He finds useful Hall’s notions of mesodomain analysis, and the conditioning of social possibilities and perceptions through the communicative achievement of meta-power. Using these ideas, Altheide scrutinizes several domains where mass media have shaped American citizens’ expectations of and ignorance about government actions and their impacts at home and abroad, images of and information about our “enemies,” the marketing of patriotism, and the symbolic production of fears and potential threats. Consistent with Hall’s perspective, Altheide observes “that the communication order is a critical foundation for constituting social and political changes, and that the logic of this order underlies how power is communicated.” David Maines believes Hall has persistently addressed “root images of social organization” and chronicles their emergence in his essay. For Maines, Hall’s early work on developing human potential importantly acknowledges the dialectical necessities of social life, such as stability and flux, comfort and challenge, solidarity and diversity, etc. Maines argues that once Hall realized that the same factors enabling human potential also limit it, he was drawn to the problematics and analysis of power relationships and social organization. In short, Maines believes that Hall’s implicit concerns with a healthy society found him increasingly involved with developing “a perspective on the social organization of policy processes.” For Maines, in Hall’s subsequent, detailed conceptual and empirical work concerning mesodomain analysis and educational policy, “Hall holds out the hope that positive systemic change is possible,” even as it “requires a kind of advanced citizenship for those policies to actually contribute to social health.” Maines suggests that figuring out how to foster and achieve such advanced citizenship is the next challenge for Hall’s commendable project. Hugh Mehan, Amanda Datnow and Lea Hubbard draw upon extensive studies of school reform policy to demonstrate the value of Hall’s conceptual ideas
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concerning the public policy process as a continually negotiated, “conditional matrix’ in contrast to a rational, linear, unidirectional, top-down enterprise. In discussing actual cases of how a variety of schools and districts adopted reform designs, these authors show in detail how reform designs were molded in specific circumstances to accommodate local constraints, how they changed in light of state and local political exigencies, and how such school reforms were altered in response to market forces and new government policies. Taken together, and consistent with Hall’s theorizing, these authors find school reform policy formulation to be an ongoing, dynamic and strikingly contingent process, with educators actively negotiating and “making policy in their everyday actions,” not merely and passively implementing directives from above. Spencer Cahill good-naturedly chides and congratulates Peter Hall for the inventive uses to which he has put ideas from a variety of disciplines during the course his career. Hall’s signal accomplishment for Cahill is his liberation of Symbolic Interactionism from a perceived concentration upon interpersonal and intrapersonal processes. Like other authors in this special issue, Cahill sees Hall’s work concerning the social organization of policy, metapower, and mesodomain analysis as transcending the macro/micro divide persisting in much sociological theorizing. In addition, Cahill admires Hall’s attention to communication and the symbolic constitutions of power. Using examples from the Kennedy presidency and the use of commercial airplanes to attack the World Trade Center, Cahill demonstrates and reinforces Hall’s contention that “perception, interpretation, and communication are intimately involved in acts of power.” Throughout his essay, Cahill argues and illustrates the importance of Hall’s recognition of the inseparable connections among the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, and what Cahill terms the transpersonal, “the realms of mass politics and power, of social organization and policy.” Read together, these essays compose a thoughtfully rendered, nuanced and substantive tribute to the sustained theorizing and social involvement of Peter Hall in the best tradition of Symbolic Interactionism. They also raise questions and pose possibilities for further engagement with his multi-faceted oeuvre.
CONVERSATIONS AND ENGAGEMENTS: CONTRIBUTIONS TO THEORY IN THE WORK OF PETER M. HALL Mary Jo Neitz We as sociologists practice our discipline through the development and use of particular theoretical perspectives and through the use of the methodological conventions of the discipline to have a conversation with the world. In my comments here I approach Peter Hall’s work through the metaphor of conversation.
THEORY AS A CONVERSATION WITH THE DISCIPLINE One way of thinking about “theory” in sociology is that theory is the ideas, concepts, and frames, which we get from reading the insights, interpretations, and explanations of other sociologists. Doing theory is about being in a conversation with the discipline. It is in this spirit that I approach talking about theory in the work of my colleague, Peter Hall. This idea of theory as conversation is particularly apt for talking about Peter’s work, about Symbolic Interactionism today, and Peter Hall’s contribution to it. There was a time when Symbolic Interactionism was a relatively bounded theory with a core of practitioners – albeit dispersed through several “schools” – most of whom adhered to a perhaps specifiable set of domain assumptions about the nature
Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 7–12 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260020
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of science and the nature of the world. We are now living in a time when Symbolic Interactionism is much less unified and bounded. (Arguably, this is true of other perspectives as well.) David Maines (2001) has recently argued the basic ideas of Symbolic Interactionism are so pervasive that all sociologists are now Symbolic Interactionists. One could also argue the reverse: That Symbolic Interaction has embraced a variety of issues and concerns that reach far beyond the canonical Blumer (1969). Peter Hall has been one of the key people opening up the perspective to questions of power and social policy, in moving from the micro to the meso and now the meta. Theory as conversation with the discipline is more than a metaphor for Peter Hall. It is an embodied practice. The exchange of ideas with others is a way of thinking and working. Part of the mythology about Symbolic Interactionism I was taught in graduate school was that it was an “oral tradition.” We were told stories about the students who published the notes of George Herbert Mead and founded the tradition. In my experience, fieldwork traditions were transmitted not through texts, but through discussion. We were told that Symbolic Interactionism continues to be talked as well as written. When I moved into an office next to Peter’s at the University of Missouri, I was struck by how he worked through ideas in conversations with other people. I observed this when he was writing his Presidential address for the Midwest Sociological Society. While he framed his year of activity in terms of “writing his address,” I was not seeing words on paper. Instead, I noticed that Peter seemed to be traveling a lot: To Iowa to see Carl Couch. To Ohio to see Stan Saxton. To Illinois to see Norm Denzin and Clark McPhail. These conversations and others are reflected in the work “Interaction and the Study of Social Organization,” (Hall, 1987). In this address we find him in a conversation with Everett Hughes and Howie Becker, with Anselm Strauss, Carl Couch and David Maines, Norm Denzin, Stan Saxon, Clark McPhail, and Eviatar Zerubavel. Peter Hall himself was moving away from an emphasis on the micro, and a view of society that emphasized face to face communication and consensus, and he showed others how to do that as well. “Interactionism and the Study of Social Organization” brings together a diverse array of approaches to social organization to Interactionism, and then uses them to frame an Interactionist perspective at the meso-level. This perspective is attentive to context, both structural and temporal. The concern with context in his work, however, was not entirely new. He had a long-term interest in politics and power. Peter grew up in a family in which political activism was central, and then participated in the social movements at University of California at Berkeley. Early in his writing, he began to try to figure out what a Symbolic Interactionist analysis of power might look like. Looking at American history and the experience of the social movements of the sixties, he had seen both
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the great hopes for changes and the perpetuation of the existing power structure, and that experience informed his theory. Within sociology, Peter Hall first became aware of the importance of context through conversations with the ethnomethodologists among his colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Sociologists outside Symbolic Interactionism were also critical of the neglect of issues of power and conflict. In Peter’s world, one of the persistent critical voices was that of our colleague, Ken Benson, who in his own rock-like way, insisted on the obduracy of structure, the hegemony of capitalist ideology. Peter began to think about how what we have now, particular organizations, for example, are the result of a sequence of negotiations, which have occurred over a period of time. He began to ask how he could “slice backwards” in his work. This thinking led to the article “Meta-power, Social Organization, and the Shaping of Social Action” (1997). In this article, Peter examines how we address empirically questions of how social organization occurs time and space. Although he continues to be attuned to conventional Symbolic Interactionist concerns with processes, he argues in that we cannot understand institutions without a sense of history and structure. In this work he is very directly concerned with how the systems work and how practices reproduce inequalities. He points our attention to the directing, shaping, and conditioning influences of social organization on social activity. Peter Hall’s work on metapower further extends the development of how an Interactionist analysis might examine the ways social organization influences expressions of power. In this work Peter’s conversations bridge Symbolic Interactionism and the work of others in sociology outside of the perspective. Especially important to this work are the ideas of Steward Clegg and Rosabeth Moss Kanter who helped him to see power as a form of agency. The metapower essay is an attempt to contribute to a shift of the definition of power from domination/manipulation to looking at power as horizontal and thinking about how power is used to mobilize resources. Peter is interested in how “power is manifest through the intended creation by some actors of the conditions and contexts in which other actors find themselves” (1997, p. 403). In the 1997 article, Hall (1997, p. 407) presents organization as “structurations of meta-power which are dependent upon processes of delegation to achieve intended ends.” In this concept he captures both the on-going features of social organization – division of labor, channels of communication, hierarchies of authority – and the presence of managers and subordinates who act within the organization, for the organization’s interest, but with some degree of discretion. As Hall (1997, p. 407) notes, “A central paradox of metapower is that it is both extended and threatened by delegation.” This is a conceptualization of power which operates in the mesodomain, and it suggests one way to bridge sociology’s micro/macro divide.
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This theorizing comes out of developments in sociology generally. Hall’s theoretical movement would not have been possible if he had limited his conversation to Symbolic Interactionists. In the 1990s some sociologists across the discipline became more concerned with history. The concern took particular forms that connected with some of Peter’s on-going interests. Thinking about the importance of history was incorporated into social analysis that used a process model, especially in conjunction with the problem of how to think about agency in social movements. This thinking helped to develop forms of analysis that suggested ways to avoid getting stuck on one side of the structure/agency divide. We can begin to understand how “structures” are continually constituted by the actions of individuals within social organizations. Also, among historical sociologists there was a renewed interest in thinking about contingency. Looking at changes in the policy process over time brought issues of contingency to the fore. Peter Hall became interested in how social organization is produced over time. Expecting contingencies opens up theoretical possibilities. Peter’s explorations of some of these possibilities reflect his conversations with thinkers outside of sociology altogether. His recent reading in biology influences his current theorizing. Stephen Jay Gould’s work, especially Wonderful Life (1989), with its argument that evolution is not a linear process, had an impact of Peter’s thinking about change over time. More recently, he has been reading, thinking and talking about complexity and chaos theories. In Hall and McGinty (2002) complexity has emancipatory possibilities. It leads away from a simple way of seeing how to get things done organizationally: it suggests that one might expect to have situations where one would have alternatives, even the opening up of agency. For Peter Hall, developing ways of understanding institutions and inequality is the frontier of what Interactionism is about: he questions how inequalities are reproduced and what Interactionists can have to say about it.
CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WORLD Thinking about what Interactionists can have to say about how inequalities get reproduced is more than a theoretical question for Peter Hall. In the last decade Peter has not just studied the policy process; he has sought engagement and been sought after in the public policy terrain in Missouri at the state and local levels. Stan Saxton reminded Symbolic Interactionists of the early pragmatists’ commitment to the scholar activist role, and himself endorsed the idea of the “citizen scholar,” (Saxton, 1993). In his activity in educational policy, Peter Hall brings himself as sociologist into a conversation with the world.
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Local school districts in Missouri have sought him as a consultant in their attempts to study problems from what to do about students dropping out of school to questions of restructuring schools. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and a long range planning committee in the Missouri House of Representatives has sought his help. In the Columbia Public Schools, Peter has served on committees devoted to multi-cultural issues and school reorganization. Peter was a member of the Missouri Re-Learning Work Group in the Missouri Department of Elementary And Secondary Education. He was also a member of the Advisory Committee on the Evaluation of Education Act in the Missouri Department of Education, and the Coordinator of the Dialogue on Education Issues and Policy. Since 1998 Peter’s commitment to school reform has led him to engage in an extensive involvement with the Coalition of Essential Schools, serving as a delegate to the National Congress. He was also a member of the executive committee of the Board of Directors for the Central States Coalition of Essential Schools Regional Center, and the vice chair, and then chair of the Board of Directors for the Central States Center for School Reform. At this point Peter Hall’s thinking about the mechanisms through which metapower occurs in organizations is closely tied to these sites of involvement.
CONCLUSION Peter Hall’s contributions to theory reflect his conversations within the discipline of sociology and his conversations with the world as a researcher and activist. He has helped bring about an Interactionism, which is a long way from the “social psychology box” of the past. Peter Hall proposes a kind of institutional analysis that includes the micro and the macro, and a sense of history that shows us stability and change. Periodically, Peter and I have a conversation, which is initiated by my asking him what is distinctive about Symbolic Interaction today. His answers vary. But his engagement in the conversations I have described with Theory and with the world make him a model of what an Interactionist can be.
REFERENCES Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life: The burgess shale and the nature of history. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company.
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Hall, P. M. (1987). Interactionism and the study of social organization. Sociological Quarterly, 28, 1–22. Hall, P. M. (1997). Meta-power, social organization, and the shaping of social action. Symbolic Interactionism, 20, 397–418. Hall, P. M., & McGinty, P. (2002). Social organization across time and space: The policy process, mesodomain analysis, and breadth of perspective. In: S. C. Chew & D. Knottnerus (Eds), Structure, Culture, and History: Recent Issues in Social Theory. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, Publishers. Maines, D. (2001). Faultlines of sociology: A view of interactionism in sociology. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Saxton, S. (1993). The sociologist as a citizen scholar. In: T. Vaughan, G. Sjoberg & L. Reynolds (Eds), A Critique of Contemporary American Sociology (pp. 232–251). Dix Hills, NY: General Hall.
COMMUNICATION AS POWER IN PETER HALL’S WORK David Altheide Peter Hall’s work on social organization and symbolic interaction provides an inspiration and a conceptual framework for developing social science understanding of not only complex social issues, but the changing nature of social organization. The following comments are offered as a tribute – and a challenge for all of us – to some of his insights regarding communication, social power and social policy. I wish to explore how his seminal ideas on meso-structure, meta-power, and social policy provide a framework for explaining complex changes. The policy change that I will examine is the Congressional approval of an “anti-terrorism” bill (HR 3162) that gave the federal government unprecedented power to investigate and engage in surveillance of American citizens in order to combat terrorism. Hall’s theoretical contributions permit cogent analysis of policy changes in a “real world” context. As noted by Vidich (1991), most social theorizing since the turn of the century presupposes that social theory is an autonomous intellectual domain, and that the structures it seeks to uncover are ahistorical and invariant. Virtually all major social theorists have seen the expectancies and predictions of received social theory violated by emergent patterns of social and institutional organization (Vidich, 1991, p. 521).
In particular, most theorizing has neglected the historical impact of institutional transformations such as centralized bureaucratic mass society, the context in which Peter Hall (and the rest of us) work. Informed by a symbolic interactionist perspective that appreciates human agency and contingencies, Hall’s use of meso-structure Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 13–21 Copyright © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260032
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and meta-power link social processes with individual actors. As Hugh Mehan suggests (his essay in this tribute to Peter Hall), social actors and structure reflect and can direct one another. As suggested by (Vidich, 1991, p. 523), any adequate social theory must consider the central trends and tendencies in our bureaucratic order, including: (1) The penetration of bureaucracy as a form of organization in all institutional orders. (2) The development of mass communications and mass media and their pervasive global penetration. (3) The consequences of industrial capitalism and the machine process of traditional sodalilties, communal relations, universities, economics, political totalism, religion and war. I argue that the communication order is a critical foundation for constituting social and political changes, and that the logic of this order underlies how power is communicated. Hall’s insights direct our attention to the career of a policy change and how prior events and political contexts add important meanings that help produce the change. A case in point is the Bush Administration’s use of terrorist attacks to change long-standing policy about civil rights. As we all recall, on September 11, 2001, three hijacked jets were crashed, respectively, into the World Trade towers in New York City, and the Pentagon. Courageous passengers brought down a fourth hijacked jet before it crashed into another terrorist target. The death toll exceeded 2,800 people. Related events, charges, military action, repetitive broadcast visuals of the events and aftermath, and dramatic rhetoric about “acts of war” and “defeating evil” followed these horrendous deeds. Mass mediated fear gripped the nation, airlines were grounded, stock markets plummeted, some Arab-Americans were attacked and removed from passenger jets, and a sense of “national crisis” was everywhere as investigators’ pursuit of “terrorist supporters” at home and abroad unearthed conspiracies, extensive networks, and revealed more threats. Stores sold out of flags, businesses linked advertising to patriotic slogans (e.g. General Motors’ “Keep America Rolling”), baseball fans sang “God Bless America” instead of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and children helped raise money for the Afghanistan kids who were “starving” (and being bombed). The atmosphere of alarm and fear was heightened as federal law enforcement officials warned that more attacks were likely. On October 12, 2001, the House of Representatives advanced “anti-terrorist” legislation to grant broad surveillance and detention powers to the federal government. There was little debate despite pleas from civil liberties advocates that the legislation could be a dangerous infringement on rights, along with admissions by many members of Congress that they had not read the legislation. One of the dissenters, John Conyers, Jr.
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(Mich., Dem), stated: “But we must remember that just as this horrendous act could destroy us from without, it could also destroy us from within” (NYT, Oct. 13, 2001, B6). Following some revisions to remove several of the most draconian attacks on civil liberties, a revised bill that was known as PATRIOT (Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Interdict and Obstruct Terrorism) passed by a vote of 366–357. The senate approved the bill (98–1) the following day, and President Bush signed it into law on October 26, 2001. This is a policy change that needs explaining, and Peter Hall’s work can help. I wish to explore this dark terrain with Hall’s conceptual mapping of power and communication in order to explore how bureaucratic elites in mass society may manipulate and control habits, routines, fears and anxieties, including to what extent (and by what process) “individual and mass irrationality generated precisely by formally rational bureaucratic structures” (Vidich, 1991, p. 531). My argument is that the passage of this control legislation occurred through a process that linked several contexts with authoritative narratives frozen in the visual depictions of crashing buildings and a mass media post mortem. The terrorist attacks were but one critical stage in a progression of gradually expanding windows of opportunity to contract civil liberties in the name of public safety and protection. This legislation, I argue, is the symbolic victory of a very real conflict-with-noend. The government’s actions to promote more control was carried out because it was the most direct and acceptable option they had to show that they were in control. It represents an appeal to rationality in an absurd situation when “nongovernment” forces negate established routines and formats for conducting peace, war, and engaging in a “modern approach to life.” Beyond conventional terrorism, the attacks of September 11 represent a negation of basic assumptions of civility. The rules and logic of nation-states prevail in the modern world. I suggest that we recognize the modern world through shared and taken-for-granted social relationships and expectations of order that are communicated routinely through symbolic patterns, regularities, norms, and discourses. For example, people – even terrorists – fly on planes to get to destinations to conduct business, tourism, or terrorism. The modern world requires civility, even in death. For example, during one of the U.S. bombing raids over Afghanistan in October 2001, it was acknowledged that a jet “accidentally dropped a 2,000 pound bomb on a residential area. The Pentagon is investigating what caused the mistake” (NBC radio newscast, October 13, 2001). These assumptions of civility infuse the information technology and communication formats that are widely shared throughout the world. In the comments to follow, I suggest that the policy change is part of several moments to communicate control and authority to citizens in the United States and throughout the world. The steps that the U.S. government has taken, including the passage of anti-terrorist legislation, are intended to convey
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a sense of order, civility, and rationality, but in a centralized bureaucratic mass society. Hall’s work on the meso-domain and meta-power put communication in context, while also enabling the communication logic of a culture to convey the contours of the mesa-domain that are cross-cut through acts of power. Meso-domain analysis “is designed to show how social organization is an interaction of action, structure, and history” (Hall, 1997, p. 401). For Hall, the meso-domain refers to contexts, social structures, and patterns of action that inform specific situations that may be negotiated. (Mehan refers to this general process as the “conditional matrix.”) While everyday life takes place in situations, Hall reminds us that there are contexts and previous scenarios that have been played out, reified, and taken into account as we enter the next situation. Thus, we have continuity, largely from shared memories and experiences; what happened “then” is relevant (sort of ) for what we have here and now. Social definitions that were enacted at Time 1 can have consequences for situations at Time 3, and the understandings that contributed to negotiating outcomes at Time 1 may become taken-for-granted by the time that we get to Time 2. Even terrorists rely on aircraft to travel from one “staging area” to another; their terrorism would not be as effective – or even possible – without commercial aircraft. Thus, in the past, aircraft have been used for their vulnerability, symbolic value, and passengers’ – both actual and virtual – awareness of risk, should a crash occur. But, with a few exceptions (e.g. Lockerbie), terrorists have not tried to destroy aircraft with passengers, especially with the terrorist on board! And we have never seen an example of aircraft being used as a weapon, a bomb to drive into buildings. This can only occur when terrorists negate the modern world and a sense of survival. To understand the policy process requires identifying the relevant contexts and scenarios that members take into account. The analysis of the total policy process requires attention to action at each site/phases, contextual influences and the network of site linkages that conveys the conditioning of action. Overall, this constitutes the social organization of the policy process. The networks of collective activity and consequences – conditioning relationships and linkages across time and space (Hall, 1997, p. 401).
How things move across this process – and are constituted in various moments of a policy’s career – reflect power that may be manifested in societal, organizational, and situational contexts. This is where Hall’s insights about meta-power become critical to understand policy change. Meta-power refers to the shaping of social relationships, social structures, and situations by altering the matrix of possibilities and orientations within which social action occurs. As Spencer Cahill suggests (see his essay in this tribute to Hall), meta-power is about the ability to control the
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games that others must play. What is critical for any analysis of change and action, then, is the manner in which power is communicated. This relies on audience’s assumptions of order and social reality, on the one hand, as well as experiences of similar “events” in the past, and in particular, what “memories” can be called forth as features of the context of the present challenge. In the postmodern age the foundations of experiences, memories, and scenarios for action are informed by information technology and mass media. These resources and accompanying formats for selecting, organizing, and presenting information must be relied by those who seek (e.g. politicians) to shape policy, particularly with the “consent of the governed.” The contexts, events, situations and understandings, then, are brought to bear in actual situations as political actors seek to provide interpretations and courses of action that “make sense,” and most importantly, will “make sense” to audiences. In our age, much of this turns on mass media information and entertainment formats that tap into audience’s realities based, by and large, on previous media messages and images. Several of the contexts and experiences that are relevant to the recent policy changes regarding civil liberties involve the “communication of crisis” and the organizational factors that have produced these. The bureaucratic elites – led by a President narrowly elected – operate in contested symbolic media space over which they have an edge as authoritative news sources. Following the brutal attacks of September 11, these elites provided answers to such questions as what do these attacks mean, and most relevantly, what will an audience expect, accept, and how would leadership most benefit from certain meanings as opposed to others? The original “definition” floated by the President was that this was terrorism, but that changed within two days to “acts of war,” albeit war by an unknown enemy. That changing definition emerged, was tested, and then sold to Congress and the American people, because we have historical, cultural and symbolic frameworks for dealing with “war” that we don’t with terrorism, especially with acts of the magnitude of September 11. The resulting policy changes were closely tied to this definition. An overview of key considerations in history, memory and collective media experiences may be of some use here. My general thesis is very simple: The government’s actions to promote more control was done because it was the most direct and acceptable option they had to show that they were in control. I turn to several of these dimensions that contributed to the passage of PATRIOT: (1) The role of the mass media in shaping audience expectations of leadership and presidential politics. Mass media processes and thematic emphases informed recent policy actions. Hall and others have pointed out the significance of the mass media for information control and impression management. Leaders now take into account the key rhetoric, symbols, and entertainment formats
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that are employed. This involves the use of slogans, visual icons of certain events, and evocative graphics. “Any attempt to understand contemporary social life must attend to the relationship between public, media, and officials and political actors” (Hall, 1988, p. 349). (2) The role of government in “letting this happen” has not been addressed in any systematic way. Notwithstanding years of a massive military budget, including billions of dollars (that we “know about”) being spent on “intelligence,” it was clear that the failures were massive, ineffective, and by some accounts completely misdirected. Social scientists have long recognized the tendency of organizations to view “problems” in terms of available “solutions,” sort of like putting the cart before the horse. Notwithstanding the obvious errors of our “intelligence” ways, we are told that the “solution” is that we must follow the same paradigm, including adding more layers and control in keeping with the program. We are asked to give even more authority and trust to the very agencies and, in some cases, individuals who were involved in “pre September 11 policy.” This is a clear example of the power of media sources getting to define key situations, independently of other authorities and “voices.” (3) Previous mass media reports and emphases about the “enemy.” The mass media have been the source of numerous distorted reports about the Middle East and “Muslim radicals” for more than two decades. But these views are what the public(s) have in mind. The “Iranian Hostage Crisis” in 1979 came to be known as “America Held Hostage,” and was the start of the news show, Nightline. Arabs “in turbans,” chanting anti-American slogans became the key visual. By and large, audiences saw Americans in bondage, a lot of images of chanting Arabs doing strange “religious things,” and above all, we heard about “Islamic radicals.” This would be replayed several times over the next two decades, culminating in the Gulf War in 1991, and repetitious battle scenes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. (4) Mass media reports have been in short supply about the negative impact of U.S. foreign policy on international opinion and resulting conflicts and problems. Hall suggests that powerful interests often engage in practices of “preventing us from knowing what they are doing” (Hall, 1988, p. 351). United States citizens’ awareness of the rest of the world – geographically, politically, culturally – is not impressive, and the mass media are clearly implicated in this pluralistic ignorance. Like most social phenomena, there is an organizational dimension to it, and it is such contexts that Hall’s work stresses should be taken into consideration. Network and major news organizations have reduced foreign correspondents, favoring instead to emphasize more domestic news, particularly reports dealing with crime, drugs, and fear. “Some dramatic event may also raise questions that penetrate a backstage
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region” (Hall, 1988, p. 351). Foreign events were seldom systematically linked to our foreign policy. Indeed, most Americans were not aware until the September 11 attacks that the government, implicated in harboring the suspected architect of these murders had been, essentially, put in place by the United States some twenty years ago in order to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. Shockingly, President Bush, who had barely traveled abroad before being elected to the world’s most powerful office, remarked in a news conference on October 11, that he did not understand why Americans were so disliked in the Middle East, and that we would have to do a better job of getting our message out! (5) Americans had grown accustomed to war “without war.” And doing well. Since the Vietnam War, we had won (sort of . . .) all of our military actions against Panama, Grenada, Somalia, and Iraq, and a few others. Except for occasional setbacks, often involving terrorist attacks against overseas bases and ships, we were having military success. Even the peacekeeping mission that we participated in Kosovo as part of a UN force was not too brutal. The news reports of such incursions were usually favorable, often supported by graphics, included, in the war with Iraq, “bomb site” visuals of “smart bombs” obliterating structures and roads. Another memorable visual was provided to an international audience when the Marines stormed the beach in Somalia to be met by several dozen camera crews! But a major organizational shift that had occurred involved a cozying relationship of the media-military complex that included numerous retired generals and Pentagon flacks (e.g. Pete Wilson) being hired as “consultants” and reporters by the major mass media. These changes, along with an impressive array of popular culture movies about war, terrorism, and overcoming “evil” were part of the audience’s experience and expectations. Thus, war was not a bad thing or something to be dreaded at all costs, particularly for the “younger generation.” (6) War coverage of Iraq (“The Gulf War”), with its slogans (e.g. “a line in the sand,” “Operation Just Cause,” etc.), is also part of the context of experience and policy for the treatment of journalism. Control of information and access in the Gulf War seems minor compared to the “asymmetric control” of information that Peter Hall has discussed in his work, and that we are now experiencing with the recent war against terrorism. “When information control fails, it leads to stigmatization and delegitimation” (Hall, 1988, p. 352). One consequence is that, with a few exceptions, only the government and military are offering sustainable definitions of these events, including the notion that terrorism is a military rather than a political problem. (7) Entertainment, marketing and surveillance have been joined through information technology and entertaining media formats. Fear, help, and patriotism
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have been joined through symbols of caring and compassion, but also business and commercial interests. Americans were asked to give and did so in unprecedented amounts, with donations of blood and more than a billion dollars extended to the “victims” and “survivors,” while local charities were, so to speak, “going begging.” As my colleague John Johnson pointed out, war metaphors have usually been useful for moods of consensus and “bringing us together.” (8) Marketing of patriotism included buying flags and many other things, like cars (with no interest, to “Keep American Rolling”), and consumers were exhorted to buy things, and even the mayor of New York urged Americans to visit New York, to attend a show, to spend. But patriotism was connected symbolically with caring and concern and help. Children were asked to give a dollar to help the starving children of Afghanistan, and a separate zip code was established for this. Reports about “anthrax” cases led many citizens to “prepare,” not only by buying guns (gun sales increased in Arizona) and provisions, but also by buying Cipro, an antibiotic useful in some treatments. One internet web site noted to “Fellow Americans” that Cipro is getting harder to get, and added, “We are asking you to please order 100 pills at the very low price of $4.49 per pill . . . God Bless America.” The entrepreneur behind patriotic huckstering, reported, “I’m not out there beating the bushes to make sales on this, but I’m out to make money, and if someone wants to buy it to alleviate fear and it gives them a feeling of security, that’s great” (Arizona Republic, October 13, 2001, p. A4). (9) The fear industry in the United States prepared citizens for accepting many of the “fears” associated with these events. Fear and victim have been culturally produced and reified as “facts of life.” Mass media reports about fear and potential threats were everywhere. Primarily associated with crime-reporting over the last two decades, this mass mediated fear industry has produced a discourse of fear that is now a staple of cultural expectations. A discourse of fear may be defined as the pervasive communication, symbolic awareness, and expectation that danger and risk are a central feature of everyday life (Altheide, 2002). We were told within a matter of hours by politicians and network anchors wearing flags in lapels that the “country would never be the same.” General alerts were offered, with nothing specific. Clinically, these messages are akin to promoting cultural psychoses, be afraid and cautious, but we can’t be sure of what. And like the discourse of fear associated with crime, audiences were told to look to the government for more help and updates. (10) The staging of celebrations and rituals affirms our media reality about the crisis including the leaders and their actions. God Bless America signs were
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everywhere, as were exhortations that we’re attacking “evil.” As noted above, there are many “sub-agendas” contained in these pledges. President Bush led children in a nationally televised “simultaneous” “Pledge of Allegiance” on October 12, 2001. Said a fourth-grader, “I think it’s for freedom. It means I promise to be a loyal American.”
CONCLUSION Meta-power is communicated in our media age. Memories, expectations, assumptions of audiences, and decision-making practices take into account many messages and images. When democratic decision-making is expedited to enact policies that contradict the democratic process underlying a free society, then more than “politics as usual” is at work. Rather, the appearance of the political process has changed; it no longer matters that Congress pass legislation in a hurry because the “urgency demands it.” This is not easy to accomplish, and it is more difficult to understand. Peter Hall’s work offers some insights into these exciting, yet perilous times. Hall’s conceptualization suggests that social policy is reflexive of communication, meso-structure, and meta-power. Hall certainly complies with Vidich’s directive that “The source of some of sociology’s most compelling and important contributions to the understanding of social phenomena is the capacity for the sudden insight and the interpretative analysis . . . at its best it is an interpretative, creative craft” (Vidich, 1991, p. 522). Now more than ever it is imperative to understand the relationships between action, structure and history and their grounding in information technology, impression management, asymmetrical control. As Hall suggests, “Reviving the concept of institution would focus our attention upon the meso domain where social arrangements exist in and through processes that render them operational and operative. That is where the action is” (Hall, 1988, p. 355).
REFERENCES Altheide, D. (2002). Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Hall, P. (1988). Asymmetry, information control, and information technology. In: D. Maines & C. J. Couch (Eds), Communication and Social Structure (pp. 341–356). Springfield, IL: Thomas. Hall, P. M. (1997). Meta-power, social organization, and the shaping of social action. Symbolic Interaction, 20, 397–418. Vidich, A. J. (1991). Social theory and the substantive problems of sociology. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 4, 517–534.
MESODOMAIN ANALYSIS AND CONSIDERATIONS OF A HEALTHY SOCIETY David R. Maines Since the mid-1980s, Peter Hall has given us an interactionist-based theory of social organization that is both complexly argued and complexly structured. He has taken up a variety of what I would call root images of social organization – images signified by sensitizing concepts such as negotiation, mesostructure, loose-coupling, emergence, and asymmetry – and he has incorporated those images into large scale empirical research endeavors to craft a theory, that throughout its development, has foreshadowed developments in general sociology. Hall’s scholarship is significant not only on its own terms but also because of its potential impact on social science in general. Indeed, as we witness sociology and other social sciences in the last decade focusing more on questions of agency, structure as process, the significance of situations, and the centrality of communication, we find justification in asserting that sociology may well be catching up to interactionism and its grounding in pragmatism (see Maines, 2001, pp. 28, 99 for a discussion of how Hall has anticipated some of these trends). In this essay, I wish to trace some of the ways in which Peter Hall has come to give us an advanced and very sophisticated sociology of social organization and social processes. In the course of this examination, I point out in Hall’s earlier work the recognition of the importance of considering the nature of a healthy society, and then raise questions about that moral dimension in light of Hall’s depiction of mesodomain analysis.
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I begin with a reading of an early paper Hall published (1966) on the development of human potential in which he was concerned with the conditions that limit or facilitate “some total within the individual, some things which the individual is capable of achieving . . .” (p. 156). In considering human potential, Hall rejects the conventional view that the “warm, comfortable, homogeneous and harmonious environment is best for the protection of the individual” (p. 157). Such environments, he says, . . . are self-defeating if the attempt is to structure interactive settings to maximize development, growth, creativity and progress, because complete agreement is boring; complete comfort is regressive; complete peace is stagnating and complete stability is ultimately destructive. Development and growth require open, not closed, flexible, not rigid systems. Development and growth require thinking and consciousness which depend on diversity, heterogeneity, conflict, alternatives, challenges and change.
Hall goes on to tell us, however, that On the other hand, too much diversity, conflict and ambiguity is destructive and regressive, for people need foundations, landmarks and frames of reference to hold onto, to depend upon, to structure situations, to define reality and to give meaning to their existence (p. 157).
In identifying the poles of stability and change, we see Hall grappling with Durkheim’s problem about the nature of a healthy society. Durkheim, of course, hypothesized that both too much and too little social solidarity facilitated the commission of suicide in particular and deviant behavior in general. Hall (1966, p. 157) puts it this way: It is obvious, therefore, that what is necessary for the development of human potentialities is an appropriate balance between stability-change, homogeneity-heterogeneity, definiteness-ambiguity, comfort-challenge, closedness-openness.
Attempting to find that balance, Hall notes that independence and autonomy vary from one person to another, but, more importantly, that factors such as culture and formal organization tend to limit human experience. Those same factors, though, are necessary (but not sufficient) for the degree of clarity needed for self-realization. What we see here, therefore, is a very sticky situation for persons living their lives and for social scientists trying to understand them. That situation is one in which the same general processes and factors that release human potential or, better, make it possible, are the same ones that limit it. Human potential, self-realization, and actualization, therefore, are ongoing problematics whose nature and character are very subject to interpretation. The key variable, as it were, governing those ongoing problematics in Hall’s view is power, or as he expresses it in more Weberian terms, “. . . without a question,
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the power relationship” (1966, p. 160; emphasis in original). In some cases power literally allocates identities to persons and involves little choice on the part of those holding those identities. Power itself, though, is a process of interaction. Hall writes that: . . . this power to define is an outcome of interaction, and when interaction is recurrent the power becomes stabilized. However, if the balance of power becomes upset and the outcome questionable, then the question of definition becomes problematic and will be solved in further interaction. Self-realization requires an appropriate degree of power in one’s interactive world. The individual needs resources to say, ‘This is what I am’ and to withstand pressure to change his identity. He must be self-confident, self-sufficient and from this will flow motivation for realization of his human potentialities (1966, pp. 160–161).
If a measure of power is necessary for healthy identity formation, so too is the social organization of social relationships. Hall continues: An appropriate degree of social organization, adequate definitions of goals, norms, roles and identities is necessary for participants in established situations. There must be integration and clarity in order for human potentialities to be realized. Conversely, lack of integration and clarity, that is, social disorganization, leads to situations whereby individuals have difficulty determining appropriate conduct or reasons for performing the conduct desired by others (1966, p. 162).
There are two very interesting elements in Hall’s (1966) essay on human potentialities. The first element is what might be seen as the “early Hall” on the nature of social organization. We see him explicitly making matters of power and social stratification central to sociological inquiry, which is something that only a few interactionists at the time were doing. We also see his preliminary conceptions of social organization and his incipient formulation of the dialectics of order and change. The second element is signified by his repeated use of the phrase of the “appropriate degree” of power or balance between opposing processes. This phrase is intriguing because the term “appropriate” designates the operation of normative and moral orders. That is, I think that this phrase is more than a semantic writing device in this 1966 essay. Rather, it is Hall’s recognition that social organization and the development of human potentialities – resting in the relations of what Everett C. Hughes (1937) might have called institutions and the person – entail the struggle to find optimizing conditions for social health. He doesn’t write about human potential this way, nor does he answer the question of what in fact is the appropriate balance, but considerations of a healthy society resonate throughout Hall’s analysis. My observation about Peter Hall’s concerns for a healthy society is given further credence by looking at the various topics Hall has written about since then. Here it is clear that he has manifestly devoted a great deal of attention to these matters
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as is evident in his writings about the Vietnam war, race and ethnicity, schooling, poverty, and the application of knowledge to social problems. Beyond these areas of topical relevance, moreover, is his work on policy analysis, since clearly public policies in various ways are focused on the improvement of the health of a society. Some policies are written and enacted to promote the health of the general public – to clean the air we breathe or water we drink – but most pertain to selected groups of people defined by the policy. We can think of affirmative action, designed to improve the access to resources for women and minorities; driver’s education requirements, designed to increase the safety of roadway users; tax abatements, designed to improve local economies; building code guidelines, designed to accomodate the needs of the physically handicapped; and so on for literally thousands of cases that are audience-specific. All such policies, in fact, can be seen as forms of affirmative action insofar as political, administrative, and economic resources are mobilized to privilege a particular group or aggregate constituency. Whether seen as just or unjust, wise or unwise, competently or incompetently conceived, all policies intrinsically involve the identification of a set of conditions that are defined as in need of change for purposes of improving the life conditions of people covered by the policy. What does Hall tell us about those policy processes? To answer that question, we must do as he does and consider the nature of social organization, since obviously policy processes are organizational processes. While the seeds of Hall’s work in this area are evident in his work during the 1960s, the fundamental framework that he has developed stems most directly from his Presidential Address to the Midwest Sociological Society (Hall, 1987), which has become a classic in the interactionist analysis of social organization. He identifies six core dimensions for organizational analysis. The first is collective activity – people doing things together: communicating, planning, adjusting, and so on. Second, networks: sets of linked transactions, which are the elementary forms of social organization. Third, conventions and practices: relatively standardized and taken-for-granted ways of doing things. Fourth, resources and power: anything used to achieve a goal or to get one’s way. Fifth, processuality and temporality: the emergent and necessary historicity of organizations. And sixth, grounding: that the contexts of action are themselves set in other contexts. In identifying these six dimensions, Hall takes on an extremely ambitious task, namely, to develop “an approach which is simultaneously concrete, observant, processual, conditional, contingent, dialectical, comparative, and contextual” (Hall, 1987, p. 18). In developing just such an approach, which he has termed “mesodomain analysis,” Hall emphasizes the empirical scrutiny of how structure and history dialectically constitute one another. As he puts it,
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On the one hand, history is an active process of linked orderings of conditions – actionsconsequences sequences embedded in the layered intersections of multiple contexts. Thus, conditioned action in the past has consequences for present conditions and future action. On the other hand, social actors carry ‘history,’ their sense and knowledge of past times, conditions, and events, with them from place to place – albeit interpreted, incomplete, and with muted accuracy (Hall & McGinty, 2002, p. 306).
Moreover, . . . mesodomain analysis focuses on the networks that cluster in space and the linkages necessary to convey the consequences of conditioned action across space. In the end, the mesodomain analyst looks for varying patterns of network organization that link sites which stand out as relatively bounded and clarified, as embedded and nested, loosely coupled, or multifocal. History and structure provide contexts and conditions for social action (Hall & McGinty, 2002, p. 306).
What Hall has done, in short, is to take the commonly-expressed platitude that “social organization is a process” and has worked it through in considerable detail to show us how to conceptualize that process. He has moved Strauss’s concept of “structural process” into a more workable conceptual framework that might direct researchers to focus on selected aspects of social organization and to allow them to analyze those aspects as social processes. In roughly one decade, Peter Hall has made a quantum leap forward in organizational analysis that in my judgment is so nuanced that it will take non-interactionists yet another decade to reach the level of sophistication that he displayed in 1987. So, what does all this tell us about policy processes? Hall has keyed on Estes and Edmonds’ (1981) proposal of policy as a transformation of intentions to empirically develop a perspective on the social organization of policy processes. As he and his co-authors express it, “Policy is not a concrete text to be implemented but a transformation of intentions in which content, practices, and consequences are generated in the dynamics” (Placier et al., 2000, p. 260). These transformations are clearly caught up in organizational processes. Keeping in mind Hall’s dimensions of networks, grounding, and processuality from his 1987 essay, consider the following depiction of policy processes: Policy initiators, dependent on those who follow to fulfill their intentions, set conditions that both limit and facilitate later action. Conditional effects vary due to tight or loose linkages between phases/sites and between initiators and those to whom they delegate responsibility. Policy initiators may intentionally grant delegates a level of autonomy, but, whether intended or not, delegates will have at least some discretion. If decisions set unclear conditions, if communication is poor, or if linkages are weak, they may have more. Even the strongest linkages are not automatic and must be enacted to have effects (Placier et al., 2000, p. 261).
As the above passage suggests, Hall has been busy working out a kind of “moving matrix” composed of types of conditions, communication channels,
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and sense-making processes that influence the various trajectories policies can take. Hall (1995; Hall & McGinty, 1997) has shown, for instance, how reforms intended to improve quality of teaching were transformed into a means to increase teacher salaries. It has also been shown that policy ambiguity and weak linkages among implementation sites increase the interpretive autonomy of local actors (Placier et al., 2000, pp. 262–263). The empirical evidence giving warrant to Hall’s perspective, in other words, is clearly present in the published literature. But, what does this have to say about a healthy society? One of the next big questions that Hall and his collaborators can take is exactly the one pertaining to the nature of a healthy society that is implied by the framework they have developed. Certainly the seeds of this consideration are already there in the mesodomain perspective, and Hall himself even comes close to that question in his thinking about the restructuring of schools. He has this to say: It is not enough to know what restructured schools should look like and why that transformational process provides solutions to problems. Given the complexity and uncertainty of restructuring, it would be helpful to have a sense of how to produce systemic change (Hall, 1997a, p. 213).
In the face of the complexity that mesodomain analysis seeks to discover, that is, Hall holds out the hope that positive systemic change is possible. Stated differently, he hopes that the educational health of society can be improved. But there is a dilemma here, insofar as mesodomain analysis at it exists does not deal with Becker’s (1967) question of whose side the mesodomain analyst is on. Let me illustrate. As already mentioned, Hall shows in splendid detail how policy intended to increase quality of teaching was in some circumstances used to support underpaid teachers. Obviously the goal was not achieved as intended and thus the transformation that occurred can be regarded as relatively dysfunctional. Stated another way, the health of the educational system was thwarted to the extent that reform goals were not met. On the other hand, unintended goals were met, namely better teacher pay, which presumably contributed to the health of families. How do we evaluate this kind of situation? If pushed to make a choice, which locus of social health do we advocate? And, how do we theorize the various stakeholders who produced the transformation? For instance, Hall’s depiction of the bureaucratic and legislative processes that contributed to the transformation of intentions suggest a cynical interpretation of actors responding only situationally in the context of their own interests and without an operating moral concern for the educational health of society; or, if that concern was ever expressed, its substance took the form of self-interested political rhetoric with altercasting designs. Moreover, the legitimacy of goals and intentions often do not remain stable and thus their moral grounding can be evasive. Jim Crow laws come to mind as a form
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of social policy in which land use, public utilities, and access to institutions were distributed for the benefit of white citizens and at the expense of black citizens. Whereas those policies can easily be thought of as affirming the value and promoting the well-being of identifiable groups, we now see them some decades later as unwise, unjust, and as running counter to the currents of a healthy society. All in all, Hall’s analysis of the social organization of policy processes, considering that policies imply a concern for a healthy society, requires a kind of advanced citizenship for those policies to actually contribute to social health. Or, to use Hall’s terms, advanced citizenship is necessary to produce positive “systemic change.” By advanced citizenship, I refer to the ability to remain consistent with core values – equality of opportunity, shared governance, quality education, the youth as our future, and so forth (see Hall, 1997b for a discussion of his value commitments) – both in terms of policy formulation and implementation. Advanced citizenship assumes that we have thought through whose side we are on, including even whether that question is a moral one to ask, in such a way that we can address and possibly even adjudicate issues of values and social significance. Clearly this is an area containing classical problems of justice and society, of the distribution of individual and collective rights and obligations, and of the inevitable segmentation that accompanies integrative processes of social orders. This difficult area of inquiry seems to be the natural next step for Peter Hall’s project, and he has the advantage over social philosophers and theorists of moral orders of having produced a realistic conceptualization of social organization within which to raise these questions and answer them in ways that will further the superior scholarship he has already given us.
REFERENCES Becker, H. (1967). Whose side are we on? Social Problems, 14, 239–247. Estes, C., & Edmonds, B. (1981). Symbolic interaction and social policy analysis. Symbolic Interaction, 4, 75–86. Hall, P. (1966). Social factors limiting the development of human potentialities. In: H. Otto (Ed.), Explorations in Human Potentialities (pp. 154–173). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Hall, P. (1987). Interactionism and the study of social organization. The Sociological Quarterly, 28, 1–22. Hall, P. (1995). The consequences of qualitative analysis for sociological theory: Beyond the micro level. The Sociological Quarterly, 36, 397–423. Hall, P. (1997a). The integration of restructuring and multicultural education as a policy for equity and diversity. In: P. Hall (Ed.), Race, Ethnicity, and Multiculturalism: Policy and Practice (pp. 203–217). NY: Garland Publishing. Hall, P. (1997b). Epilogue: Schooling, gender, equity, and policy. In: B. Bank & P. Hall (Eds), Gender, Equity and Schooling: Policy and Practice (pp. 405–441). NY: Garland Publishing.
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Hall, P., & McGinty, P. (2002). The policy process, mesodomain analysis, and breadth of perspective. In: S. Chew & D. Knottnerus (Eds), Structure, Culture, and History (pp. 303–322). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Hall, P., & McGinty, P. (1997). Policy as the transformation of intentions: Producing program from statute. The Sociological Quarterly, 38, 439–467. Hughes, E. C. (1937). Institutional office and the person. American Journal of Sociology, 43, 404–413. Maines, D. (2001). The faultline of consciousness: A view of interactionism in sociology. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Placier, M., Hall, P., Benson McKendall, S., & Cockrell, K. (2000). Policy as the transformation of intentions: Making multicultural educational policy. Educational Policy, 14, 259–289.
PETER HALL’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH: APPLICATIONS TO EDUCATIONAL REFORM1 Hugh Mehan, Amanda Datnow and Lea Hubbard Peter Hall has contributed significantly to a fundamental paradigm shift in our thinking about public policy. His conceptualization of the public policy process as a “conditional matrix” provides a corrective on technical-rational conceptions of public policy and helps cool the long simmering macro-micro debate in sociology.
PETER HALL’S WORK ON SOCIAL POLICY IN CONTEXT: THE TECHNICAL-RATIONAL PERSPECTIVE To understand Peter Hall’s work on social policy, it is heuristic to place it in the context of work that was done contemporaneously. Public policy studies in the late 1960s through the early 1980s concentrated in large part on the large-scale governmental policies such as the Great Society Programs of the Lyndon Johnson administration, Follow-through, Headstart, special education, bilingual education. Social policy research of that time tended to take Weberian notions of technical rationality seriously, probably too seriously. The technical-rational perspective on public policy incorporates principles from classical management theory, which places a premium on planning, Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 31–50 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260056
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organization, command, coordination, and control. The presumption was that “. . . authority and responsibility should flow in a clear unbroken line from the highest executive to the lowest operative . . .” (Masie, 1965, quoted in Smith & Keith, 1971, p. 241). The “grammar” of the technical-rational theory of public policy identifies actors, actions, and the objects of action. Two classes of actors are implicated: The program designers (also called “the design team”), and the “implementers” – the people who operate and work at the local or street level of bureaucracies. Likewise, two classes of actions are identified: “planning” and “implementing.” Significantly, the actions are segregated and the actors are stratified. What has come to be called “the design team,” situated at the top of the bureaucracy, “makes plans” while the educators – the people down the causal chain – are relegated to “carrying out the plans,” that is, completing the pre-determined goals and objectives of the design team. In this “grammar of implementation,” the causal arrow of change travels in one direction – from active, thoughtful designers to passive, pragmatic implementers. As the authors of one of the seminal works on implementation of a government policy succinctly defined it: “Implementation is the ability to forge subsequent links in the causal chain so as to obtain the desired results” (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1973, p. xv). Often policy wasn’t implemented in the way that policy makers intended. Proponents of the technical-rational perspective tended to blame the practitioners “on the ground,” the “street level bureaucrats” (Lipsky, 1982) for not following through, for not doing what the policy makers intended. Educators in schools, for example, were said to circumvent well-intended reforms, either because they acted irrationally, were protecting their own interests, or they just didn’t understand the intentions of the planners. Certainly not all those who treat reform as a technical and rational process believe that recalcitrant educators undermine reform. However, we wish to raise the point that the technical-rational perspective is more likely to see local variation in implementation as problematic, or as a dilemma rather than as inevitable – that is, as a natural, normal routine feature of everyday life in schools. Furthermore, reforms built on rational grounds often assume that reforms can be sustained on technical considerations alone, and downplay or do not account sufficiently for the social, cultural, and political factors that lead to local variation (Oakes, 1992; Oakes et al., 1999).
PUBLIC POLICY AS A CONDITIONAL MATRIX Other authors in this collection have described Peter Hall’s strong roots in symbolic interactionism. Some of the key concepts that he developed in his policy work,
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especially the “conditional matrix,” “the mesodomain,” and “metapower” (Hall, 1995, 1997; Hall & McGinty, 1997) have roots in this tradition. Behind specific references to Corbin and Strauss and Estes & Edmonds is the influence of George Herbert Mead’s conception of emergence – all of which lead Peter Hall to see the policy world in an entirely different way than proponents of the technical rational perspective. Hall sees the social world as a negotiated order rather than a static order, social policy as co-constructed rather than imposed from above. Research and theorizing from a number of perspectives, including symbolic interactionism, call our attention to the importance of context. It is important to point out, however, that Hall employs a sense of context that is different than traditionally employed. The traditional view treats contexts as embedded systems. Often a setting, such as a classroom is placed at the center, surrounded by other layers or levels of context. Cole (1996) cites Brofenbrenner’s formulation of human development as a prime example of this embedded conception of context. Brofenbrenner conceives of social life as starting with the microsystem at the core, and proceeding outward through mesosystems and exosystems to the macrosystem. In educational research, the embedded sense of context appears in Fullan’s (1991, p. 49) description of the classroom, school, district, state, and nation “levels” of the implementation system, Wilcox’s (1982) description of classroom socialization shaped by organizational and community constraints, and McLaughlin and Talbert’s (1993) analysis which places the classroom in the center of school, community, higher education institutions, professional and environmental levels of contexts. The embedded sense of context is important, to be sure, because it calls our attention to the fact that social life is generated in face-to-face interaction, and then acknowledges that face-to-face interaction occurs within wider dimensions of social life – the organizational, the institutional, the structural. It is limited, however, because it often puts one site, and only one site, in the center, and pushes other sites to the periphery. The embedded sense of context can also leave the impression that social life is uni-directional; forces emanating from higher levels of context cause or determine action at lower levels. While actions initiated at some distance away from local events may indeed constrain or shape actions, they do not totally determine them. And actions initiated in local events generate or construct conditions or structures that have consequences in settings far removed from local events. For example, constraints originating at a distance from the classroom influence teacher-student interaction. Instruction uniformly takes place in confined physical spaces and circumscribed time segments. Teachers uniformly organize instruction and call upon students to demonstrate their knowledge. Classroom interaction varies within these narrow parameters because it is not easy to escape the
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constraints imposed upon the teaching-learning setting. First and foremost, schools are a part of education in industrialized societies which means teachers develop their particular recipes for teaching within limits that are beyond their control. The length of the school day and school year, the number of students per class, and the age-graded system, the availability of certain teaching materials are all established by the state. Public expectations (e.g., that students can read by the end of the first grade, meet college entrance requirements by the end of high school, etc.) reinforce these state organized constraints. French high school teachers, for example, operate within a highly competitive examination system, which in turn, exerts pressure on teachers at the elementary level to make judgments about passing or retaining individual students at the end of the year. The same can be said of Japan, Germany, Korea and any other countries that use a competitive exam as a gate-keeping encounter. U.S. high school teachers teach with the knowledge that colleges and universities (to say nothing of well-to-do parents) expect a certain amount of literature, mathematics and science to be “covered,” which discourages instructional systems that are built on peer tutoring and group evaluation. By and large then, we see similar features appear again and again in the formal teaching-learning situations we call classrooms because of constraints created in situations that reside far away from the immediate teaching environment. While actions emanating at a distance may constrain local actions, they do not determine them totally. Indeed, local actions change and shape the structural features of the system. For example, teachers often vary considerably in how they interpret the conventions of the school and the dictates of the state. Differences in the organization of classroom interaction have been found in some cultures (Au, 1980; Au & Jordan, 1981; Erickson & Mohatt, 1982; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), illustrating once again the mystery of cross-cultural variation in the face of social, political, and economic constraints. More fundamentally, we must remember that in order for an event we call the lesson to occur, the teacher and students must engage in “lesson making” (Cazden, 1986; Mehan, 1979; Varenne & McDermott, 1998): Without forgetting for a moment that the power relations among participants are often unequal, it is no less important when using the nested-contexts approach to take into account the fact that context creation is an actively achieved, two-sided process (Cole, 1996, p. 134).
Peter Hall’s concept of the “conditional matrix” helps us avoid the traps of structural determinism and unidirectionality that potentially plague the embedded sense of context. He depicts social policy as a web of interrelated conditions and consequences, where the consequences of actions in one context may become the conditions for the next (Hall, 1995; Hall & McGinty, 1997). That is, interactions in one policy context generate “outcomes,” such as policy statements,
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new rules or procedures (which often appear in textual form), which in turn potentially condition the interactions of other actors in other contexts in the policy chain. Whereas the embedded sense of context can be interpreted to mean that events at higher levels of the context occur first and are more important analytically, the conditional matrix does not automatically assign an a priori sense of importance to any one context. Events certainly occur in the chronological past, present and future, near to or far away from us. And we can use these temporal divisions to clarify our statements about events. But we must also recognize the mutual influence of one context upon the other when accounting for social policy in general, the implementation of educational reforms in particular. Take for example the classic sociological topic of occupational advancement. A person may, at age 21, make $18,000 a year in a computer programming job. She may at 35 make $300,000 as president of a computer company. If she anticipates at 21 that in the future she will gain upward mobility by the time she is 35, then the $18,000 a year salary will hold a different meaning for her than if she expects to remain in the same job forever. As Schutz (1962, p. 69) noted, the future perfect tense of English depicts the time structure of projects of action, but no future ever turns out exactly as the future perfect depicted it because at the very least, the person has grown older, which cannot be experienced ahead of time. Similarly, after she becomes president, the former computer programming job has a different meaning for her (it was “preparation,” “learning the work ethic,” “hard knocks”) than if she had not become president. Then the computer programming job might be seen as a “treadmill,” a “dead end.” There are chronological pasts, presents and futures here, but as Mead (1954) says, their social influence upon one another transforms the purely physical metric as the course of events unfolds. What Mead (1954) called “emergence” exists here because the past influences the symbolic definition of the present, the definition of the present is influenced by inferences about the future, and the events of the future will reconstruct our definition of the past. Or, as Schutz (1966), and later the ethnomethodologists phrased it, events have a retrospective and a prospective sense of occurrence. What is not actually perceived is filled in from the standpoint of the present while unclear information is allowed to pass with the expectation that later information will clarify matters. Applying these ideas to the policy context, Hall (1995, p. 408) says: The social organization of the policy process as a network of relations across space and time can be viewed prospectively, retrospectively and in the present. Prospectively, it is a means to produce desired behavior at a future time in distant locations. Retrospectively, it emerges out of historical pasts and embeds structural contexts. In the present it has to be constituted through collective activity that dialetically relates past and future, ‘structure’ and intention.
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As we will illustrate below, we have found Hall’s formulation of the “conditional matrix” concept to be powerfully heuristic. We do have a quibble with it, however. A matrix implies, to us at least, the rectangular arrangement of elements into columns and rows. The image this conveys is too static, too angular – and not in keeping with the fluidity of the rest of his thinking. As a corrective, we have found that the expression “conditional process” represents the public policy phenomenon better.
IMITATION: A SINCERE FORM OF FLATTERY As fellow researchers of the public policy process, especially as policy plays out in educational arenas, we have relied heavily on Peter Hall’s orienting concepts. To illustrate how we have appropriated these concepts for our purposes, we call upon our studies of the “scaling up” phenomenon, which involves the transfer of school reform models that have been successful in one or a few schools to many schools (Datnow, Hubbard & Mehan, 2002). We studied how a variety of schools and school districts adopted reform designs sponsored by the Coalition of Essential Schools, Success for All, the Comer School Development Project, the Audrey Cohen College System of Education, the AVID Center, the Modern Red Schoolhouse Institute, and the Core Knowledge Foundation. All of these reform designs were originally implemented in one location and, as they became successful, were exported by design teams and adopted by educators in other locations.
Molding Reform Designs to Accommodate Local Considerations A well documented finding in studies of educational reform is that schools modify reform models as much as, if not more than, reform models change schools (Cuban, 1998, p. 455). As the examples we select from our work shows, however, these accommodations are not the result of recalcitrance, resistance, or ignorance of educators in local school sites. Conditions in local contexts caused educators to modify reform models to better suit their needs. Some adaptations were rather benign, other adaptations were enhancements to the designs, whereas still others threatened the intensity and potential success of the reform. Many of the schools we studied made adaptations to reforms to accommodate organizational constraints in their school settings. These organizational constraints were typically related to school size, level of resources, school organizational features, time, and staffing arrangements. In some cases, the constraints led teachers to simply implement program features less frequently, or not at all. For example,
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one school working with the Coalition of Essential Schools found it difficult to schedule time in the school day for teachers to meet with “critical friends,” an important design feature of this reform model. As a result, this seldom occurred. Another school implementing the Modern Red Schoolhouse found the technology features of the model, which called for fully wired computers in every classroom, to be a “pipe dream” and not practicable when teachers worked without overhead projectors or other more simple technology. Most schools were able to find the tension point between organizational constraints and reform design demands, and found rather creative solutions. For example, in the 12 schools that we studied which were implementing AVID, educators described tutoring as “probably the most critical component of the whole program . . .” and yet, “one of the most difficult ‘AVID essentials’ to implement.” The lack of qualified college tutors, the difficulty in coordinating university and high school schedules, the difficulty in obtaining funds to reimburse tutors in a timely manner are just some of the practical problems that plagued the schools that attempted to meet the expectation of this AVID essential and, in turn, the needs of their students. As one state education official explained, “we have very isolated schools. Some are six hours away from a college. Getting tutors to come to them is impossible.” Some schools responded in very innovative ways to these sorts of problems. In North Carolina, the tutoring component of an AVID program has been embellished by the use of graduate students and teachers. This program has also introduced content-based tutoring to supplement AVID’s Socratic approach. Tutors with deep knowledge of subjects such as chemistry, math, and English bring a high level of expertise to the tutoring situation. According to educators in North Carolina, these modifications have enhanced the AVID prototype. However, in some cases, local modifications became constraints to program success. One California school responded to the difficulty of attracting and retaining tutors by holding tutoring sessions after school with a teacher who volunteered her time. This arrangement excluded many AVID students who were not able to stay after school due to transportation problems. Other schools chose to subsist without tutors, or with sparse coverage. This meant that some AVID students did not have the benefit of interacting with tutors who could both assist them with their schoolwork and could share their college experiences. Similarly, large school size impacted the implementation of Success for All (SFA) in three elementary schools in one district, leading to significant adaptations that hindered the success of the reform. Success for All calls for reading classes of no more than 20 students. This design feature is facilitated through the use of classroom as well as non-classroom teachers who act as reading group leaders for 90 minutes per day. The program also requires that the reading period be offered
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at the same time for all students, to facilitate movement among the groups. These critical program features could not be implemented as designed in these schools, each of which served over 1000 students and were severely overcrowded, operating at up to 75% over their designated space utilization rates. At one elementary school, the dearth of space was so severe that some teachers had to share a cramped classroom during the reading period, making for a noisy, distracting environment. One teacher led a reading group on the stage in the school auditorium. Due to the restrictions of space and the number of teachers available, some reading groups had as many as 32 students, instead of the 20 suggested by SFA. At all three schools, two reading periods were offered at different times, in order to maximize the use of space and resources. This constrained students’ ability to move among groups (e.g. a first grader reading at the third grade level could not be grouped with third grade students). The sheer number of teachers and students to monitor in these large schools meant that the job of the SFA facilitator, already a taxing one, was even more difficult. As one facilitator described, “When I was at the convention, there were schools that had 400 students and one facilitator,” whereas her school served 1400 students. She explained: “That’s three times the materials I have to organize, three times the teachers I have to work with . . . because of that I’m limited in what I can do with the teachers.” The large number of students that needed to be tested every eight weeks, according to the SFA design, was also too much for the facilitator and the tutors to accomplish by themselves, outside of the 90-minute reading period. “We’d never get done. And it would be impossible to . . . it would take us eight weeks to do it the way they wanted to us to do it. So we cheat.” The school has made a significant adaptation by having reading teachers conduct testing during the reading period. This took time away from reading instruction. In many of the schools that we studied, multiple reforms existed in a school at a given time, leading educators to make modifications in order to accommodate the various program goals and demands. In some schools, this meant forgoing components of particular reforms, or not enacting reforms fully. In each case, it appeared that existing practices were strong enough to suppress the new reforms, and thus adjustments to the new reform needed to be made, rather than the other way around. Reform designs – such as Comer’s School Development Program model – that involve the creation of new governance structure, such as school-based management teams, were often adapted in local schools as educators fit existing structures into the new model. Sometimes these teams simply changed names when the new reform was adopted. In other cases, educators struggled to meet the team goals as established by the reform design team as well as those that the team formerly organized around. One Comer SDP elementary school provides an interesting case
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in point. The Comer SDP model requires schools to institute three teams: a School Planning and Management Team, a Student and Staff Support Team, and a Parent Team. The teams are designed to “work in tandem and synergistically to design and implement the social and academic program of the school” (Haynes, 1998, p. 5). When it came time for the school to institute their teams, the faculty decided that they wanted to change the name of the Student and Staff Support Team to the Home School Services Team (HSST). Some of the components of the team were already in place because of the school’s prior and ongoing involvement as an integrated services school. For instance, the school had three or four psychological or counseling agencies that already sent full-time counselors to the school. They had legal aid representatives on site and were connected to agencies addressing domestic violence. The HSST was therefore formed by bringing together representatives of these groups, rather than by forming new connections. This was an easy, benign, and successful integration of the reform model and the school’s existing reform: integrated services. Less simple was the adaptation of the team to the functions suggested by the Comer model. For example, in accordance with the model, the school tried having teachers and administrators as caseworkers for students referred to the HSST but found this didn’t work because of time constraints. Instead, they chose to employ after-school social work interns from neighboring universities whom they paid with stipends from a grant the school received. Some of the interns stayed for the whole school year, whereas others were there only one semester. This caused a continuity problem, as some interns were not around long enough to keep track of students’ progress over time. Although some schools were able to make effective adaptations in response to the layering of reforms, in other cases, pre-existing reforms threatened the integrity and success of the new reform. For example, one Coalition of Essential Schools site did not implement the “teacher as generalist” principle as recommended by the design team because the teachers were implementing a local university program which was explicitly aimed towards organizing teachers by subject specialization and rotating students among them. The teachers felt that the program was working well for them, and did not see it conflicting with the goals of the Coalition reform. However, clearly it did. The “teacher as generalist” principle of the Coalition calls for teachers to see themselves as general educators and scholars, rather than just experts in a particular subject. The move towards this principle is often much more difficult in secondary schools but usually requires no changes in elementary schools, as teachers usually teach multiple subjects in self-contained classrooms. Due to the local program, the teachers in this school were expressly doing the opposite. Similarly, in Freeport, Virginia, the success of the AVID program was seriously undermined when the district implemented AVID solely as a 9th and 10th grade
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program, rather than offer it for four years because of conflicts with another reform designed to help minority and low-income students that was well-entrenched in the district. The “College Partnerships” program was perceived as “the GATE program for African American kids.” Apparently the two programs could only coexist at different grade levels because of the competition for students and prior agreements that protected the College Partnership “territory.” Their turf battle resulted in minimizing the support available to AVID students. A problem arose, therefore, when students completed two years of AVID but were not accepted into College Partnerships. They were left to struggle with the more difficult classes offered in their junior and senior years without support structures. The AVID teacher complained that many students were trying to take rigorous academic classes, including International Baccalaureate classes, but were dropping out because they lacked the help they needed to do well. Ironically, early participation in AVID actually disadvantaged students who were later unable to take advantage of College Partnerships. As these vignettes illustrate, educators modified reforms to accommodate organizational constraints, thereby demonstrating that educators in local school settings are not passively implementing programs designed elsewhere. They are actively making policy through their adaptations. Actions that educators take during later stages in the implementation process modify the reform that was originally designed. In the case of AVID’s tutoring component, some schools responded in creative ways to their practical circumstances and enhanced the reform, but others did not. The educators also responded in practical ways when the SFA reform demands bumped up against the constraints of their large school size and overcrowding – both features that were unchangeable. However, their solutions tended to compromise the success of the program in providing all students with small class sizes for reading and created significant headaches for school leaders. Taken together this range of actions suggests that public policy is co-constructed in the negotiations that educators take to meet the practical demands of their everyday lives; it is not a matter of design teams making plans that are carried out passively by educators further down the implementation chain.
Reform Designs Change in Response to State and Local Politics Another segment from our research reinforces Hall’s point that the vector of educational reform efforts does not flow in just one direction. That is, educators’ actions in schools are not only influenced “top-down” by the actions of design teams; the actions of design teams are also influenced “bottom-up” by the actions of educators in schools, as well as by other forces existing in different spheres.
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An interesting case of a design team changing in response to a combination of political actions initiated by the state and pressures from local constituents occurred when AVID redefined its student population. From 1980 until 1995, AVID said it recruited low-income students with high academic potential from ethnic groups historically under-represented in colleges and universities. Materials from an AVID staff development document disseminated in the early 1990s detail the criteria for “Who Belongs in AVID?” Underachieving students with four-year college potential; Students who are currently under-represented in our University of California and California State University systems (primarily, but not limited to, AfricanAmerican, Native American, Latino and low-income students); Students who can succeed in college preparatory (A-F) courses with tutor assistance; Students who are motivated to work hard to become independent thinker and learners. In practical terms, this meant African American, Latino, and Native American students with high test scores but average grades were targeted by AVID. To be sure, not all students in AVID were from these ethnic minority groups, but this was the operational definition of the AVID student. In its current literature, AVID now says that it recruits “students in the middle.” This official statement has been echoed in public discussions about AVID. Guthrie and Guthrie (1998, p. 1), in their comprehensive review of AVID’s impact on California education, define AVID as a “college preparatory program for low-income and underachieving students – those unlikely to attend four-year colleges and universities.” In a widely-read educational magazine, Bushweller (1998, p. 16) reported AVID students were defined as “average kids,” “in the middle of the academic pack, an educational no man’s land . . . the unfortunate members of the forgotten majority of public education,” the kids that are “more and more invisible.” The American School Boards Journal article goes on to describe the “typical” AVID profile – a student with “a C average, no behavior problems, and parents who did not graduate from college. The students must show a desire to want to do better, and their parents must agree to help the school push the kids.” Note that neither race nor ethnicity nor minority status are mentioned in these statements. This shift in representation to “forgotten students” invokes images of the “silent majority” which is much different than an “equity” agenda – conceived as affirmative action, or active recruitment or active preparation of students from under represented minority backgrounds. AVID changed its way of representing students partially in response to actions taken by the state of California, and partially in response to sentiments expressed at
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new school sites. In June 1995, the Regents of the University of California passed a resolution (SP 1) forbidding the 9 campuses of the UC system from using race, gender, and ethnicity as supplemental criteria in admissions decisions. In November 1996, the voters of California passed the so-called “California Civil Rights Initiative” (Proposition 209), which reinforced this position. Although these changes in California state law did not directly affect AVID, the leadership felt AVID would be on safer ground not mentioning race or ethnicity in its program statements. An AVID design team administrator offered a profile of the students that AVID intended to help before Proposition 209 passed. She reported that in 1995 “the program was to help students who are traditionally under-represented in postsecondary, and we used the word ‘under-represented.’ ” After Proposition 209 passed AVID began talking differently about the students they would serve. She said, “Now you’re not supposed to use the word ‘under-represented.’ We wouldn’t want people to think that it’s an affirmative action program because of the antiaffirmative action thing.” Local political pressures have reinforced AVID Center’s redefinition. The change in language by AVID Center in response to California state law has influenced student selection at school sites in Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina. Educators at two Kentucky high schools confirmed that they recruited students without taking race or ethnicity into account and from their perspective this is preferable. One AVID teacher described that the AVID program at her school is for the “C” student: The greatest number of students that we have are in the middle, the “C” student, and there are no programs for the “C” student. And that just hit me in the head, and I was thinking “My God, this is finally something for the mass of society,” something that would be great for our kids . . ..
This educator welcomes the redefinition of AVID’s students, because it reduces tension among the faculty and between the program and parents concerning recruitment: Now the mission has changed, so it’s much easier now. Now you don’t have to be underrepresented. You don’t have to be on free or reduced lunches. You don’t have to be a minority, and I even like the program more, because we were losing a lot of (voice gets quieter) white kids . . . because . . . you know . . ..
Educators at another Kentucky school implementing AVID have taken similar steps. The counselor at this high school, when asked how she would define AVID responded: “I define it as a program to offer support for students who attend college or some post-secondary educational setting.” This definition is remarkable because it doesn’t mention students’ ethnicity, minority status, or socio-economic status as features considered in student selection. Indeed, this counselor explained that
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her high school was more comfortable depicting AVID in non-racialized terms because of faculty and parental concerns. A program presented in “majority/minority terms,” she said is “perceived as negative” in her community. These views expressed by educators in Kentucky were also echoed by educators in Virginia. An AVID teacher in “Freeport,” Virginia said that the way in which AVID Center describes the students eligible for AVID (“students in the middle”) works in Virginia helps to appease the strong right-wing element in the state. Apparently, Virginia schools cannot have special programs devoted exclusively to minorities. Therefore, talking about AVID as “helping minorities” gets educators in Virginia nervous. AVID may be resented in certain communities in the South if it is a program identified as specifically and especially for blacks. One North Carolina AVID educator stated that “Now that our kids are having the opportunity to take the Princeton Review, I’ve even heard some jealousy amongst the faculty about that. ‘Well, why can’t this be an opportunity for others?’ ” The AVID teacher, who is black, justified AVID’s original concentration on minority students because of the supports that black students in her district still need, long after civil rights legislation officially ended discrimination. She was critical of the shift in AVID recruiting and pointed to the often unspoken, unwritten affirmative action policies that have always benefited whites: “. . . If you ask me about affirmative action, then I will say that whites have always had affirmative action.” The observations of these AVID educators are powerful for many reasons: Their words reveal ambivalence about AVID’s change in focus. Some educators perceive it negatively – as if it is ‘discriminatory.’ Others see it as a welcome shift in practice away from the quotas associated with affirmative action and toward programs emphasizing intensified academic preparation. Local context has affected representations as well. The redefinition of the AVID student to one “in the middle” has a different meaning in California schools. Schools that had established AVID programs before the passage of anti-affirmative action legislation have not shifted their recruitment and selection practices. For one AVID teacher in California, “AVID is a program for under-represented students.” When asked how California’s Proposition 209 has affected her AVID program, she indicated that it really hadn’t. There is every indication, however, that California schools that adopt AVID after the passage of anti-affirmative action legislation may have a different ethnic profile than schools that adopted AVID before the passage of anti-affirmative action legislation, especially given the watchful diligent eye of special interest groups who monitor policies and practices that might single out benefits for minority students. The demographics of the various schools implementing AVID also have a significant impact on who is selected for AVID and directly effects the number of
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minority students served by the program. At “Palm Valley High,” for example, the population is approximately 99% Hispanic therefore, almost all students in AVID are Hispanic. Conversely, in North Carolina where there is only a 12–16% African American population in East Oakwood High and Oakwood High respectively, one AVID teacher complained that the AVID classes are getting whiter and whiter. In sum, AVID’s decision to change the definition of students targeted for admission occurred in response to forces outside of AVID, specifically the political and social climate in California, Virginia and Kentucky. This redefinition of the target population is a particularly vivid case of a design team continuing to change its organizational forms and their reform models in the process of working with schools, “building the plane while flying it,” as it were.
Reform Model Changes in Response to New Government Policies and Market Forces As we just explained, AVID made adjustments to its model to keep pace with state legislation eliminating affirmative action and to appeal to a broader base of constituents in diverse communities. So too, in response to the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) program2 funding at the federal level, several design teams are making changes, often enhancing the services they offer schools. In several cases, the design teams have further specified their reform models, or at least what is required to implement their models, in order to make them more marketable in the CSRD landscape. For example, largely in response to CSRD, the Core Knowledge Foundation now offers professional development, sample lesson plans, and assistance in preparing grant applications for e federal funds. This is a significant departure from even three years prior, when relatively no assistance to schools was provided. At most, schools received short overview presentations from Core Knowledge Foundation (Datnow, Borman & Stringfield, 2000). Now, as a response to CSRD, the Foundation has substantially increased its professional development offerings to include a series of four workshops. These workshops are required for any schools that contract with the Foundation as part of their CSRD grant applications. For CSRD schools, the Foundation requires a formal application process which includes a letter of commitment stating how buy-in of 80% of the staff was obtained. Schools must also submit a school-wide planning document that includes a year-long proposal for teaching Core and state and district standards, and sample lesson plans. They must also spend a minimum of $200 per teacher on Core Knowledge-related resource materials. None of these guidelines existed before CSRD, nor did most of the professional development offerings.
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Although not all design teams have scaled up their offerings in response to CSRD, they have all become more specified in one way or another. As a design team member from Comer SDP stated: “Obey-Porter really highlighted that we need to be more definitive in our program, what it is that we do, and what it takes to do this program . . . I think that was a good thing.” The Comer design team has also recently developed a web site, as have most of the other design teams, to answer people’s questions about the reform. The Coalition of Essential Schools national office explained that they too have made efforts to think about how CES can “do well in the design fairs” that now occur as a result of CSRD. In essence, CSRD has pushed reform designs further into competition with each other. Most of the representatives from design teams that we spoke with were intimately aware of this. One design team member spoke of Success for All as having the “market share . . . and once you have the market share, you never lose it.” Breaking into the reform market was difficult for some design teams who were not accustomed to marketing efforts, or to how they might be seen to the outside world. The lesser-known reform designs had to struggle to establish a national reputation or “increase visibility,” particularly if they were not affiliated with a well-known university. Some newer design teams worried about being “pigeon-holed” as having particular types of schools, such as suburban schools or charter schools, as their only “customers,” when they were in fact attempting to appeal to a broader market. Design teams have also responded to the rising tide of academic standards and accountability, particularly with respect to reading and math, as well as to the competition from other reform designs that already address these issues. For example, the Modern Red Schoolhouse Institute responded by engaging in “product diversification” by developing “a targeted reading program that really addresses shifting scores on state tests.” A member of the design team explained that this component of the design could be “unbundled” from the rest of the model for specific use in low performing schools, particularly those that needed to raise basic skill levels before they could begin the major work of reform through Modern Red. The Institute thought they could better market their services to low-performing schools that are often in need of quick fixes this way, and thereby deflect schools away from a model such as SFA that can be implemented more rapidly. The Modern Red Schoolhouse Institute also engages all schools in a process of aligning the school curriculum to state and local standards, as well as the standards of the reform. In order to be more responsive to schools’ needs and similar policy demands, the Coalition of Essential Schools has also formed a partnership with the Developmental Studies Center in Oakland to provide optional elementary school curricula and lesson ideas. CES has begun conversations about working with the National Writing Project in a similar fashion with respect to high school curricula. The CES web site now also includes a repository of “best practices” which teachers can
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use as resources. All the while, CES has been careful not to endorse a particular curriculum, yet as a staff member explained, there is concern that CES has not provided enough help to teachers over the years. Also in response to market demands, the Comer School Development Program has made its model more “academic” according to a member of the design team: I think we believe that schools were having dialogues about the curriculum and instruction and the more we worked with schools we realized that those conversations weren’t happening, or they weren’t happening to the degree that we thought they should be happening. And certainly as school reforms and different programs were focusing on special areas, literacy, math, social skills, etc . . .. And that if we didn’t do that, that would be a gap, and people would see that as a weakness in our program, and so we got criticized in many instances for not having a stronger academic focus.
She went on to say that they brought the “Essentials for Literacy” program, developed at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, into the School Development Program. The design team does not require schools to use this literacy program, but they might recommend it after schools have undertaken the “balanced curriculum” process. This process involves staff development activities in which school staffs work together to align the curriculum with state and district standards, use assessment results to refine and improve the curriculum, and make connections to the development pathways that are at the heart of the Comer model (Squires, 1998). This process has been refined in response to increased pressure for schools to address state standards and perform well on high-stakes tests. While schools that have been implementing Comer SDP for some time may not have participated in the curricular aspects the model as of yet, they acknowledged that the reform was heading in that direction. A principal who attended the design team’s leadership institute noticed this change, “The last conference that I attended, they were getting very much into the developmental pathways.” Like the Comer School Development Program, the Audrey Cohen College design team has adapted its model to help new schools correlate state and local standards with the “24 abilities” that are part of the reform model. Audrey Cohen College has also responded to the increased emphasis on accountability for reading and math, but to a much lesser degree, even if it meant slower growth, rather than swimming with the tide. As a representative from the college stated, “While we’re trying to be more and more sensitive to the issues of reading, and we’re trying to come up with recommendations for reading approaches that are complementary. And we certainly are working on math . . . But we’re still . . . I think we just have all these additional pieces.” She also included: Schools are sort of like in the literacy frenzy . . . and here we come along saying ‘yes, you have to develop reading skills and you have to develop math skills, you need to be oriented toward the world of work and to the future, but there’s a whole lot more that has to be done if the
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children are going to be competitive for the next century.’ And what we offer you is a whole package to get to work on all of those issues. So when a superintendent or a principal looks at that says, ‘oh that sounds wonderful, but right now I’ve got to raise those reading scores’ . . ..
They might choose a structured literacy program instead. In fact, she pointed to an example of a district that wanted schools to implement SFA as well as the Audrey Cohen model, which was already in place. The design team chose to withdraw its involvement from those schools because they did not see the compatibility between the reforms. However, there is a cost involved in these decisions, as the design team member explained: “We’re going to grow at a slower rate because we’ve got a good design, it’s just that I view it as a little ahead of its time.” In other words, the Audrey Cohen College design team has been willing to compromise their rate of growth in favor of working with schools that have goals beyond improving students’ literacy and numeracy skills. Even Success for All, which is naturally well aligned with the policy focus on improved reading achievement (and arguably helped to fuel the reform movement in this direction), has had to adjust its model in some localities to meet demands of state and local tests. In one district, for example, the Success for All design team worked to supplement some features of their curriculum around the state test, as students were not showing expected improvements in reading comprehension. According to one SFA facilitator, Slavin and Madden themselves visited the district and provided materials that would aid the school in preparation for the state assessment test. As these and the other examples make clear, design teams have been flexible in responding to changing policy and political climates in order to better compete in the reform marketplace. Our findings about the changing design team add credence to our argument that the scaling up of school reform is not just about school level change. No doubt, the school is a center of action in reform, but it is not the only locus of action. Actions (or inactions) taken by the design team are inextricably connected to actions taken within schools. Design team actions are also bound up with actions occurring on the senate floor, in staterooms, in district offices, in the public domain, and in other design teams. The relationship between the actions in these various sites can be understood as Hall’s conditional process or a “thick chain or braid” (Star & Bowker, 1997, p. 17; cf. McDermott, 1980, pp. 14–15), not a one-directional process emanating at the “top” or the “bottom” of the reform process.
CONCLUSIONS Peter Hall’s work disputes the claim that qualitative analysis cannot address “macro issues.” When the public policy process is portrayed as a linear sequence of
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implementation or a mechanical process of program testing, adoption and institutionalization, then our theories and models are susceptible to structural determinism – the fallacy that structural forces, often originating in sites away from local circumstances constrain, even determine action. Our studies of school reform policy reinforce Peter Hall’s theorizing about social action. Educators – design team members, teachers, principals – are not compliant actors, passively responding to directives mandated from higher levels of bureaucracies. Instead, they are active agents, making policy in their everyday actions. In concrete educational encounters, educators may act in a variety of ways in response to reforms – initiating alternatives, advancing or sustaining reform efforts, resisting or actively subverting reform efforts. Most importantly, the agency of educators is part of a complex dynamic, shaping and shaped by the structural and cultural features of school and society. In other words, local educators helped to “make” educational reforms, regardless of whether a reform had well-defined elements. Educators modified reform design features in various ways to fit with sociopolitical and cultural factors, their local needs, practical circumstances, and their own ideologies. In some cases, reform implementation was enhanced. In other cases, reform implementation was constricted. And, just as schools changed, design teams changed. In some cases, design teams metamorphosed into different forms, often to serve increasingly large numbers of schools effectively. Elements of reform models themselves were sometime changed to reflect market and accountability demands. But when we formulate social policy as a conditional process as Peter Hall instructs us, we see that public policy is generated in face-to-face interactions among real people, confronting real problems in concrete social contexts, such as classrooms, school board meetings, courts of law, and state legislatures. Because these contexts are inevitably connected to other contexts (Sarason, 1997), contexts throughout the public policy system must be considered. At a given point in time in research on implementation, the interaction among social actors in one context is fore grounded, and of necessity, the other contexts are back grounded. But in order to render a more complete analysis, Peter Hall’s work shows the value of describing the interconnections among contexts throughout the social system. Building upon and extending Hall’s work, we believe it is also important to pay attention to the role of power and perspective in shaping policy implementation. Put simply, educators in schools had to respond to decisions made by more powerful people who interacted in board rooms, legislatures, or design teams. Once underway, reform efforts are suffused by politics in various ways. The meaning of a policy (here, a reform) – and how it was implemented – varied according to a person’s or organization’s perspective. That is, as a result of the institutional distribution and application of power, the meaning of the implementation system
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or its aspects is not necessarily shared; there can be disagreement, or conflict over the meaning of actions, events, even the system itself. If there is consensus, it is not the automatic result of a shared culture. Consensus is achieved, not given. It is achieved through negotiation and often strife, which means it is fragile, subject to revision and change. In our studies of school reform, schools, districts, design teams, and states found ways to successfully work together – or did not work well together – to implement a reform or a policy in their particular local contexts. In sum, bringing data on school reform into conversation with a theoretical framework inspired by Hall’s work has rendered a more complex and nuanced understanding of the public policy implementation process and importantly moves away from micro-macro dualisms in sociological theory.
NOTES 1. It’s all his fault. Peter Hall was the first author’s first graduate advisor at UC Santa Barbara. Hall pointed Mehan toward Cicourel, Shibutani, Scheff, Zimmerman, and his own developing work in symbolic interaction. Mehan has done the same for Datnow and Hubbard. The rest is history. 2. The federal CSRD program, also known as the bipartisan Obey-Porter bill, allocated $150 million in 1998 (and additional funds in subsequent years) to schools willing to adopt “research-based” reform designs.
REFERENCES Au, K. (1980). Participation structures in a reading lesson with Hawaiian children. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 11(2), 91–115. Au, K., & Jordan, C. (1981). Teaching reading to Hawaiian children: Finding a culturally appropriate solution. In: H. Trueba, G. P. Guthrie & K. H. Au (Eds), Culture and the Bilingual Classroom (pp. 139–152). Rowley, MA: Newberry House. Bushweller, K. (1998). The forgotten majority. American School Board Journal (March), 16–21. Cazden, C. B. (1986). Classroom discourse. In: M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 432–463). New York: Macmillan. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge: Harvard Balknap. Cuban, L. (1998). How schools change reforms: Redefining reform success and failure. Teachers College Record, 99(3), 153–177. Datnow, A., Borman, G., & Stringfield, S. (2000). School reform through a highly specified curriculum: A study of the implementation and effects of the Core Knowledge Sequence. The Elementary School Journal, 101(2), 167–191. Datnow, A., Hubbard, L., & Mehan, H. (2002). Extending school reform: From one school to many. New York: Routledge Falmer. Erickson, F., & Mohatt, G. (1982). Participant structures in two communities. In: G. D. Spindler (Ed.), Doing the Ethnography of Schooling (pp. 132–175). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
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Fullan, M. G. (1991). The new meaning of educational change (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. Guthrie, L. F., & Guthrie, P. G. (1998). The 1997 evaluation of statewide AVID expansion, Final report. Burlingame CA: Center for Research, Evaluation And Training in Education. Hall, P. M. (1995). The consequences of qualitative analysis for sociological theory: Beyond the microlevel. The Sociological Quarterly, 36(2), 397–423. Hall, P. M. (1997). Meta-power, social organization, and the shaping of social action. Symbolic Interaction, 20(4), 397–418. Hall, P. M., & McGinty, P. J. W. (1997). Policy as the transformation of intentions: Producing program from statutes. The Sociological Quarterly, 38(3), 439–467. Lipsky, M. (1982). Street level bureaucracy. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. McLaughlin, M., & Talbert, J. E. (1993). Contexts that matter for teaching and learning. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching. Mead, G. H. (1954). The philosophy of the present. Chicago: Open Court. Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Oakes, J. (1992). Can tracking research inform practice? Technical, normative, and political considerations. Educational Researcher (May), 12–21. Oakes, J., Quartz, K. H., Ryan, S., & Lipton, M. (1999). Becoming good American schools: The struggle for civic virtue in educational reform. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Pressman, J. L., & Wildavsky, A. (1973). Implementation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sarason, S. (1997). The culture of the school and the problem of change (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Schutz, A. (1966). Collected papers. The Hague: Nijhoff. Smith, L., & Keith, P. (1971). Anatomy of an educational innovation. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Squires, D. (1998). Towards a balanced curriculum: Aligning standards, curriculum, and assessments. ERS Spectrum, 16(3), 17–24. Tharp, R., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning and schooling in social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Varenne, H., & McDermott, R. P. (1998). Successful failure: The school America builds. Boulder CO: Westview Press. Wilcox, K. (1982). Differential socialization in the classroom: Implications for educational opportunity. In: G. Spindler & L. Spindler (Eds), Doing the Ethnography of Schooling (pp. 268–309). New York: Harcourt, Brace, World.
TRANSVERSING INTRA-, INTER-, AND TRANSPERSONAL COMMUNICATION: THE LARCENOUS LEADS OF PETER M. HALL Spencer E. Cahill In the late 1960s, as Peter readily admits (Hall, 1972, p. 70), he accidentally discovered Murray Edelman’s (1964) The Symbolic Uses of Politics. He immediately pilfered Edelman’s ideas and ran with them. That was only the beginning of his larcenous career. Over the years, Erving Goffman, Anslem Strauss, and David Maines, to name but a few, fell victim to his scholarly pillage. Yet, no one seemed to mind. Perhaps it was because Peter never tried to pawn the plunder as his own. Maybe it was because he didn’t hoard the spoils but publicly plied them. Most likely, it was because of what he did with the booty. What he did was to break symbolic interactionism out of the intrapersonal and interpersonal prison in which its detractors and more than of few of its practitioners had confined it. Eluding its captors, he took it up into the fresh air of what I am calling the transpersonal – the realms of mass politics and power, of social organization and policy. He admittedly had accomplices in this daring escapade, including a couple of contributors to this symposium (Altheide, 1976; Maines, 1982), but I am sure even they would admit that Peter was a ringleader. Not everyone was pleased. An early critic thought symbolic interactionism was fine in its place, its microsociological place according to her (Kanter, 1972, p. 80), but that Peter was taking it too far. She accused him of tarnishing the noble
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sheen of collective interests with the messiness of political bargaining, impression management, information control, and symbolic mobilization (Hall, 1972; Kanter, 1972, p. 81). Perhaps she had not read his 1970 article with John Hewitt on the Nixon administration’s response to the vocal and bloody protests following the American military invasion of Cambodia. There, Peter and John demonstrated that the presumption of collective interests, or what they termed value consensus, provides a handy resource for attempts at symbolic mobilization and pacification. That presumption provides a foundation for what they called the “quasi-theory” of communication. If we share common values and interests, then our disagreements and disputes must result from “breakdowns in . . . communication” (Hall & Hewitt, 1970, p. 20). As Peter and John argued, this quasi-theoretical sleight of hand magically transforms substantive political conflicts into technical issues of repairing and enhancing communication. To presume the existence of common interests or values, as Peter (e.g. Hall, 1980, p. 58) would later implicitly argue, is to treat what should be a topic of study as a resource for study (Zimmerman & Pollner, 1970), in the ethnomethodological language of the time. In further developing their analysis of quasi-theories, John and Peter pilfered that language. They suggested that political culture includes background expectancies, like the expectancy of value consensus, on which ad hoc and post hoc explanations of social problems are built (Hewitt & Hall, 1973). These quasi-theories bring interpretative order to social disorder and, over time, become part of the common stock of knowledge on which political rhetoric draws. As such, they are powerful resources for symbolically mobilizing certain responses to social problems and precluding others. The savvy quasi-theoretician trades upon members’ own interpretive methods to shape their definitions of social problems and, thereby, their political sympathies. Such quasi-theorizing has less to do with the arts of democratic consensus building than with the craft of political manipulation. To Peter’s early critic, Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1972, p. 86), paying all this attention to “symbolic manipulation” trivialized the very real role of “guns, bombs, and large sums of money” in politics. Ironically, as Peter would later demonstrate, it is the neglect of the symbolic and communicative import of “guns, bombs, and large sums of money” that trivializes their political effects. The targets of force and violence seldom are their only audience or their principally intended one. For example, in “The Presidency and Impression Management” (Hall, 1979, pp. 292–293), Peter convincingly argues that the Kennedy administration’s strategy of limited warfare, as in Vietnam, was intended not so much to conquer territory as to foster the impression that America was strong and resolute. Although impoverished peoples like the Vietnamese were its principal victims, its principally intended audiences were more formidable foes such as the Soviet Union. Limited warfare was meant to deter them; the killing and destruction in other lands was
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merely collateral damage of the deterrent message. More recently, Americans were rudely reminded of the often deadly effects of symbolic politics. The intentional crashing of commercial airliners into the World Trade Center was arguably meant to alter the global mediascape even more than it altered the landscape of lower Manhattan, and it arguably succeeded. Guns, bombs, large sums of money, and hijacked airliners do have very real consequences, not the least of which are symbolic ones that are often more enduring than their immediately material effects. The powerlessness of what had been and still is touted as the most powerful country in history against a handful of destructive dramaturges also sadly confirmed Peter’s (e.g. Hall, 1985) symbolic interactionist conviction that power is not something one possesses but something that must be realized. Power is not a thing but an act. Resources of various sorts are certainly implicated in such acts, but they must be mobilized and artfully deployed in order effectively to control the actions of others, in order to realize their powerful potential. As Peter (1985, p. 320) argues, perception, interpretation, and communication are intimately involved in acts of power. The potential power of resources is, in part, a matter of its expression and the impressions its expression fosters. Potential targets of its use may fear its possessors or doubt their willingness to use it, to use it competently, or to use it resolutely. Possessors of potential power must anticipate the likely reactions of both targets of and audiences to its use. Will they submit, resist, or form coalitions that counter the power imbalance? Acts of power are as much interactions as any social act, and as much matters of meaning. Descriptions of the social distribution of resources, whether material or symbolic, may document the allocation of potential power, but explaining power, as Peter has so elegantly shown, requires detailed attention to the interactive processes of its realization. Perhaps if his surname were not so Anglican, his work would have attracted as much attention as that fashionable French inquisitor of power. It arguably teaches us as much about how “infinitesimal mechanisms” of power are colonized and utilized by “ever more general mechanisms” as that of Foucault (1980, p. 99). Over the years, Peter has detailed the complex processes of power, both analytically and empirically. He has shown how the consequences of collective action in one situation set the conditions for actions in others (Hall, 1995, 1997). He has documented how such “infinitesimal mechanisms” as strategic positions within flows of social action, the establishment of rules and conventions, the structuring of communication and situations, and the shaping of collective symbols and discourses coalesce into what he calls “meta-power” or the ability to determine the very nature of the social games others must play (Hall, 1997, p. 405). Yet, like Foucault, Peter recognizes that power is never absolute. Others may determine the conditions under which and the resources with which we act, but we always retain the power of interpretation, leaving a space for what Herbert Blumer (1969, p. 18)
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called “the play and fate of meanings.” And, as George Herbert Mead (1934, p. 145) taught us, responses to acts, including those of power and meta-power, make their meanings. That is why, although the potentially powerful usually get their way, it is seldom quite the way they intended. Yes, people do not make history just as they please; “they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves” (Marx, 1852, p. 436): but make it they meaningfully and fatefully do. However constrained, we are not mere marionettes in one or another historically determined melodrama but collaborative authors of our own historic farces and tragedies. Although Peter has taken symbolic interactionism in a variety of new directions, he never lost sight of the interpersonal and intrapersonal home where he found it. He empirically dissolves reified social structures of analytic making into the active structuring of social life by those who live it. He shows how transpersonal processes of power, politics, and social organization structure and bind varied social situations together while at the same time being animated by interpersonal processes within them. For example, Peter (Hall, 1995) has documented how an educational reform bill that emerged out of legislative hearings structured interactions among school board members, school administrators, and teachers, but that those situated interactions then restructured what legislators intended. Similarly, the political effects of politicians’ carefully crafted attempts at public impression management are ultimately decided by countless interpersonal and inner conversations in front of flickering screens and over morning coffee (Hall, 1985, p. 339). Peter teaches us that public policy is as much a product of its implementation as its making and that public opinion is as much a product of interpretation as manipulative messages. Peter also recognized that participants’ self-images and definitions are implicated in these and other political processes. For example, Peter (Hall, 1979) documents that the self-assured John Kennedy wielded his Presidential power assuredly while the self-doubting Nixon wielded his defensively and ultimately self-destructively. The self-images of those over whom power is wielded are no less important in deciding its effects. They may grudgingly accept or defiantly resist the disempowering self-definitions seemingly more powerful others attribute to them. And, their resistance can be empowering. That was arguably the case during the 1950s with insurgent Algerians who resisted French colonization of their country and consciousness, with those “uppity” African-Americans in the 1960s who refused to keep their lowly social place at the back of the bus and away from lunch counters (Hall, 1985, pp. 329–330), and with those defiant women who wrestled microphones away from strutting male revolutionary “wanna bees” (like a much younger me) in the early 1970s. Like symbolic interactionism, history teaches us that the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal are inseparably connected. Peter never forgot that lesson and never let the rest of us forget it.
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Peter has even taken an occasional holiday from his interrogation of power, politics and policy to explore the interpersonal. For example, along with Dee Ann Spencer, he has delved into the origins and interactional dynamics of the ritual handshake in Western societies. Although seemingly perfunctory, Peter and Dee Ann recognize that hand shaking is an enabling convention, in Goffman’s (1983, p. 5) sense, that makes possible variably meaningful variations and departures. For example, as a ritual of solidarity and equality, the pointed refusal of an outstretched hand is a particularly disarming expression of distance and contempt (Hall & Spencer Hall, 1983, p. 257). On another hand, the grab handing shakes of politicians simultaneously express that they are both of the people and sufficiently above them to bestow the blessing of their hands (Hall & Spencer Hall, 1983, p. 252). Peter and Dee Ann also consider more subtle but no less meaningful variations. The implied solidarity and equality of the handshake may be betrayed by either an unexpectedly limp or crushing hand (Hall & Spencer Hall, 1983, p. 258). A firm hand may convey self-confidence and a clammy one self-consciousness. In any case, in offering others access to ourselves by offering them our hand, we open ourselves up to their assessments (Hall & Spencer Hall, 1983, p. 256). Peter and Dee Ann’s detailed analysis of the seemingly perfunctory handshake demonstrates that there is an abundance of meaning between pressed palms, confirming Goffman’s (1956, p. 91) insight that “the gestures we sometimes call empty are perhaps the fullest things of all.” Along with the late Stan Saxton, Peter also urged us to rethink how we think about relations between the interpersonal and intrapersonal. In 1987, Stan and Peter (Saxton & Hall, 1987) called upon symbolic interactionists and their scholarly kin to scale the disciplinary barriers dividing social psychological inquiry and embrace Kenneth Gergen’s (1982) innovative historical version. Few listened. Gergen and his followers kept plugging along as did we, paying only passing attention to our mutual duplication of efforts. They examined the role of narrative in our social and inner lives as did we (e.g. Gergen, 1994, pp. 185ff; Maines, 1993). They explored how so-called post-modern social conditions affect our interpersonal and inner lives and so did we (e.g. Gergen, 1991; Shalin, 1993). They considered how the social construction of the person was possible as did I (Cahill, 1998; Shweder & Miller, 1985). Over the years, a few of them and a few more of us discovered our common cause, and, at the dawn of our young millennium, the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction hosted Kenneth and Mary Gergen as keynote speakers at its annual symposium. It was a belated coupling. Who knows how fruitful the union might have been if we had heeded Stan and Peter’s earlier matchmaking. In this and many other respects, we should have followed Peter’s larcenous example. It is criminal of us not to do so. Scholarship is a larcenous business, and the social scientific variety most of us practice is particularly so. We pilfer elegant
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ideas from whomever and wherever we find them. We lurk in the shadows of other people’s lives and textually abduct them. We lure people into conversations and then electronically steal their words. We then analytically rummage through the plunder, add a few words of our own, and offer the laundered loot to anyone willing to read it. That’s our disreputable business, but it is my conviction that it is only criminal when we do not give as much back as we take. By that standard, Peter would be acquitted of any and all charges. He has always given more back than he has taken. As these brief comments suggest, we are all intellectually richer because of his larcenous scholarly ways. I encourage him to continue them and am even willing to aid and abet them. Thanks to Peter, we better understand the discourse and practice of politics, the complexities of power, the trans-situational structuring of social life, the meaningful nuances of interpersonal rituals, and the value of scholarly ecumenicalism. And, that is quite a haul from Hall.
REFERENCES Altheide, D. (1976). Creating reality. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cahill, S. (1998). Toward a sociology of the person. Sociological Theory, 16, 131–148. Edelman, M. (1964). The symbolic uses of politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Foucault, M. (1980). Two lectures. In: C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/Knowledge (pp. 78–108). New York: Random House. Gergen, K. (1991). The saturated self. New York: Basic Books. Gergen, K. (1994). Realities and relationships. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goffman, E. ([1956] 1967). The nature of deference and demeanor. In: Interaction Ritual (pp. 47–95). Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48, 1–17. Hall, P. (1972). A symbolic interactionist analysis of politics. Sociological Inquiry, 42, 35–75. Hall, P. (1979). The presidency and impression management. In: N. Denzin (Ed.), Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Vol. 2, pp. 283–305). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Hall, P. (1980). Structuring symbolic interaction: Communication as power. In: Communication Yearbook (Vol. 4, pp. 49–59). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Hall, P. (1985). Asymmetric relationships and processes of power. In: H. Faberman & R. Perinbanayagam (Eds), Foundations of Interpretive Sociology: Original Essays in Symbolic Interaction (pp. 309–344). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Hall, P. (1995). The consequences of qualitative analysis for sociological theory: Beyond the microlevel. The Sociological Quarterly, 36, 397–415. Hall, P. (1997). Meta-power, social organization, and the shaping of social action. Symbolic Interaction, 20, 397–418. Hall, P., & Hewitt, J. (1970). The quasi-theory of communication and the management of dissent. Social Problems, 18, 18–27.
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Hall, P., & Spencer Hall, D. A. (1983). The handshake as interaction. Semiotica, 45, 249–264. Hewitt, J., & Hall, P. (1973). Social problems, problematic situations, and quasi-theories. American Sociological Review, 38, 367–374. Kanter, R. M. (1972). Symbolic interactionism and politics in systemic perspective. Sociological Inquiry, 42, 77–92. Maines, D. (1982). In search of mesostructure: Studies in the negotiated order. Urban Life, 11, 267–279. Maines, D. (1993). Narrative’s moment and sociology’s phenomena: Toward a narrative sociology. The Sociological Quarterly, 34, 17–38. Marx, K. ([1852] 1972). The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In: R. Tucker (Ed.), The MarxEngels Reader (pp. 436–525). New York: W. W. Norton. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Saxton, S., & Hall, P. (1987). Two social psychologies: New grounds for discussion. In: N. Denzin (Ed.), Studies in Symbolic Interactionism (Vol. 8, pp. 43–67). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Shalin, D. (Ed.). (1993). Special feature: Self in crisis: Identity and the postmodern condition. Symbolic Interaction, 16, 303–426. Shweder, R., & Miller, J. (1985). The social construction of the person: How is it possible? In: K. Gergen & K. Davis (Eds), The Social Construction of the Person (pp. 41–68). New York: Springer-Verlang. Zimmerman, D., & Pollner, M. (1970). The everyday worlds as phenomenon. In: J. Douglas (Ed.), Understanding Everyday Life (pp. 80–103). Chicago: Aldine.
RESTING, REFLECTING, AND RENEWING Peter M. Hall It is a sunny, windy, and cool spring day as I sit down to write my reflections on the preceding papers. It is the end of another semester and the final grades have been turned in. Forty years ago I began my academic career at the University of Iowa and two weeks ago my departmental colleagues and my family staged a symposium to mark my retirement. On my desk, just to my right, is a draft of an article requiring my next attention for a special issue of Symbolic Interaction on the past and future of the perspective. So, it feels fitting to comment on my career and scholarly corpus, and the sense-making and framing of it by my gracious, learned and most collegial fellow travelers. I am honored by their willingness to participate in this endeavor and their generous accountings and interpretations. But I can write no further without acknowledging the respectful but strong directing of Shing-Ling Chen in planning and producing the session and the publication of these papers. She gets us all organized, despite our tendencies to procrastination. Each of the preceding papers has its own topic and separate theme and reflects the style and inclination of the authors. Each also engages common and convergent ideas and issues across the papers. I will not dwell on extensive comments about the papers. That would no doubt be redundant and dismissive of the interaction between author and audience. Rather, I will call attention to what I value and take from the articles. Spencer Cahill, through his marvelous facility with language and deft, sly sense of humor captures the essence of many parts of the published record, its dependence on the contributions and cooperation of others, as well as a larger purpose, which he characterizes as the transpersonal. David Altheide,
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in his inimitable provocative way, develops a powerful analysis of a larger-thanlife recent event with enormous human and global consequences by linking his extensive knowledge of mass media with ideas about power and metapower. David Maines, taking his turn in our ongoing, several decade-long dialogue, while acutely analyzing early and late writings on social conditions, social organization, the mesodomain, and forms of inequality, prods me in his “up front” way to move forward and be explicit about expressed values and tacit assumptions about the nature of a healthy society and choosing sides. Bud Mehan, Amanda Datnow, and Lea Hubbard, a trio of superb educational scholars, show vividly the power of what can be done with a processual examination of educational reform across space and time. Mary Jo Neitz, whose voice is one I carry with me when at work and who has observed that work most closely, captures a transformation in the scholarly agenda and an ongoing dialectic in my life and my work which she artfully represents as conversations. It should also be noted that in our conversations she often asks me why I have not “conversed” with this sociologist or that concept. I want to use these papers and this occasion to discuss the trajectory and development of my scholarship. I also want to ground its formulation direction in my biography and experiences. Finally, I want to suggest some subjects and issues that could benefit from further attention by interactionists, not to mention sociologists in general. I went to the University of Minnesota for the purpose of learning symbolic interaction and studying the self-conception of juvenile delinquents. I did both and left graduate school as a social psychologist interested in self, interaction, symbols, and communication. My early work and teaching focused on these and related areas. However, while teaching political sociology, I chafed under the conventional literature and approach of that field, and as Spencer Cahill noted, stumbled upon Murray Edelman, later took up Kenneth Burke and Walter Buckley, then reread Goffman and found a way into power and politics. The thrust of that work, including the quasi-theory articles, was on communication and power. Three elements would begin a shift towards a somewhat different focus. The first was the work on organizations as negotiated orders and a developing interest in schools and education. Dialogue with Ken Benson, mentioned by Mary Jo Neitz, and collaboration with Dee Spencer culminated in using the negotiated order perspective to compare several school districts. The second is less visible and less public. In David Miller’s exegesis on G. H. Mead, there is a discussion of the role of the hand, its connection to mind, the importance of physical objects, and the hand’s role in manipulating the environment. Somehow in my education and reading, I had missed this. The immediate consequence was the handshake article but the longer run effect was a shift to the primary significance of activity, work, and the material sphere over
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communication. This was coupled with the orientation to organizations and the major contributions of the late 1970s and 1980s that I utilized in “Interactionism and the Study of Social Organization” which made collective activity a starting point and major building block. (Clearly, I was not alone here, borrowing and being influenced as I was by Strauss, Becker, Maines and Hughes.) Examination of asymmetric relations and processes of power represented the third element. Here for me was an explicit examination of inequality. It was, I hoped, the basis for a more extensive discussion of stratification, which did not occur. Nevertheless, it created a discussion around how domination was created, sustained and how, because of subversion and resistance, undermined, held at a distance or overthrown. An opportunity to study an educational policy using the mesodomain perspective led to new insights into the perspective and to formulations about the policy process. The first was a shift from the focus on elementary components of the perspective to the systemic quality of the social organization of the policy process, how it represented a whole. The second was greater attending to the grounding through processuality and temporality as well as history and context. The third was the recognition and elevation of metapower as a major process in extending control over time and space. Response to this work again by Ken Benson, together with Michelle Martindill, led to further modifications by including the addition of a policy context containing power relationships, paradigmatic perspectives, and conventional practices that sets conditions for the making of any new policy. In addition, they encouraged me to re-examine the work on policy by historical institutionalists. Meanwhile, in ways not visible to most interactionists, I was working in the area of education and inequality. Together with Bruce Biddle and Barbara Bank, we organized separate symposia on race and ethnicity, gender, and poverty and class in schools. For each of those symposia, I wrote pieces that examined the concepts, their effects in schools, and discussed policies that could mitigate negative influences. I have also been engaged in and writing about the work of restructuring schools and extending these reforms and other policies beyond local sites. For some time, my intentions have been to use interactionism to address issues of power, politics and inequality and to deal with larger forms of social organization. While deeply committed to the pragmatists assumptions of interactionism, I also never believed it was a complete perspective or that there were not other points of view and practitioners that were congruent and useful. Finally, my research into the state policy process led me to increased awareness of the insides of schools, educational bureaucracies, and capitol hallways as well as extensive involvement with others working hard to reorganize schools and eliminate inequities. I also have come to take most seriously Stan Saxton’s challenge to us to become
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citizen-scholars and of others like Harvey Farberman, David Maines, Kent Sandstrom, and Pat McGinty who have called for a critical pragmatism. In summary, the work began with a focus on self, interaction, talk and symbols – in a social psychological vein. It expanded to concerns with power, activity, and organizations. The next iteration featured asymmetry, mesodomain, and the policy process. The most recent work concerns metapower, social organization across space and time, policy contexts, historical institutionalism, and forms of inequality – sociological to the core. While I will take any and all criticism for the inadequacies of those conceptualizations and the research, I freely admit to using other people’s ideas – both inside and outside the perspective – to advance and extend the perspective. It could not have been otherwise. I attribute some familial influences and biographical experiences to the development of this body of scholarship and the way it was constructed. My parents met in New York City in the early 1930s. My father was born to Southern Baptist parents in Mississippi and raised in Alabama. He came to New York City to attend Columbia University. My mother, a Latvian Jew, came to New York with her parents in 1913. She would, in opposition to her father, attend Hunter College. My parents met in radical circles of the time and would spend the next 25 years involved in left-wing political activity in Alabama, Washington, DC, among other venues. They divorced in 1950. After leaving “the Party,” my mother went on to receive a Ph.D. in Anthropology and become an expert on murals at Teotihuacan (Mexico). My father took his journalistic expertise to upstate New York where he published several weekly newspapers, served on the commission establishing the Adirondack Park, and edited the state conservation magazine. My parents embued me with a set of family values that emphasized activism, justice, equality and democracy. They were also incredibly smart people with a broad array of knowledge, interests and skills. At the same time, they were part of a collectivity that claimed to have the truth. There was a sense that people who disagreed with us lacked intelligence. As a youth, I certainly never felt comfortable expressing doubt or raising questions about that worldview. Over time I would come to raise questions, probably a form of adolescent rebellion. Nevertheless, the revelations of the mid-1950s showed vividly the crimes and hypocrisies upon which epic myths were constructed and then crashed to the ground. I have, as a result, continued to be uncomfortable with claimants to monopoly of truth. In addition, I have always felt a sense of marginality, never quite fitting in. I think that has led to a view from the edge, a multiple consciousness that sees alternatives. While retaining the basic values and desires for a humane society that my parents favored, I have sought perspectives beyond Marx for their solution. Even as I worked to do this through interactionism, I looked outside the perspective to find useful ideas whether in systems theory, ethnomethodology, Weberian-influenced
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scholars, or neo-Marxists. But above all, it has meant maintaining an interactionism that is conditional, contextual, constructed, contingent and processual. In the effort to expand the perspective while retaining its processual character, I suggest that we give attention to the study of institutions, inequality orders, space and time, the coordination of collective action and its consequences across those dimensions, and the utilization of complexity theory as a meta-theory to synthesize processual and action-oriented sociologies. Interactionism can benefit from broader and deeper exploration of the consequences of contextualization. While the policy process analysis is improved by the addition of the policy context, it is further informed by the development and organization of the institution of American education. Institutions, relatively bounded domains that are socially organized and cultured, provide historical and structural contexts in which much collective activity takes place. But it is also critical that we not reify institutional influences, and, therefore, show its socially constructed, historically contingent nature and the processes by which it conditions, structures, and cultures collective action. Similarly, we must be attentive to avoiding monolithic objectification and point out conditions for change as well as stability and open to the contradictions, conflicts, loose coupling, and multiple perspectives. Interactionists, as a rule, have not given sufficient attention to the study of inequality. While interactionists have over the years examined race and ethnicity, they have focused on gender to a lesser degree and much less so in regard to class. It is possible to offer an interactionist perspective that demonstrated how they are socially produced formations and constructed social definitions. That is, through collective activity particular racial orders are formed, sustained, and/or altered. Similarly, actors construct, carry, and change meanings and images of genders or classes that support or change those formations. Given the character of different societies, institutions, and organizations, we would argue that race, class, and gender are also situational and situated – that is potentially differentially relevant. Moving beyond that, we would note that heuristically, they can be separated, but in the lives of people often intersect. The nature of that intersection, however, is not predetermined but played out by contextualized actors in numerous situations where the inequality orders must be brought to bear and enacted. Here is an open invitation to the interactionst perspective to explore the processual, contingent, but conditioned enactment of intersecting race, class, and gender orders in particular places and times. A major issue facing social science is how to handle processes labeled globalization, namely that action in one time and place has wide and significant consequences of many other places and times. A first project in developing understanding is take seriously the phrase, “across time and space” and examine how time and space are socially constructed, consequential and conditioning.
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Interactionists have made major contributions to demonstrating the social character and influence of temporality and spatiality separately, but not jointly. Modern physics and some social scientists, however, have noted the two are co-existent, interdependent, dynamic, and mutually elaborated through action. Thus, it is vital to make clear how spatiotemporal orders are constructed, how they time and space structuring and culturing processes, and how these timings and spacings contribute to the consequences of these processes. Following from that then should be an examination of how institutional processes are stretched to coordinate activity and interactions with those who are distant. The second project then involves understanding how collective action is constructed, coordinated, and made consequential across those divides. We know too little about how multinational corporations conduct their activities, how militaries conduct wars in foreign terrain, how social movements mobilize to create international protests, or how the Olympic games, peace efforts or disaster relief are carried out. I have recently been reading in the areas of biology, physics, and cosmology and have been led to a perspective with intriguing implications. It carries various labels – complexity theory, nonlinear dynamics, and complex adaptive systems. It is portrayed as a “living system” with complex organization, open boundaries, nonequilibria, nonlinearity, self-organizing, irreversibility, relationality, dynamics, and possibilism. It demonstrates how the local gives rise to the global, and how the latter turns back and affects the former. It conveys a view of agency that is objectively real as an emergent of biological and social life. Its reliance on relationality places emphasis on the dyad, networks, and collective activity. Its view of contingency opens up the possibilities of alternatives and emancipation. Complexity theory has strong parallels and compatibility with mesodomain analysis. It offers a metatheory for synthesizing diverse perspectives. It supports future theory integration by providing a comprehensive context for unraveling problems of collective action across space and time and for clarifying the opaqueness of troublesome unexpected consequences. It promotes a reconstruction of sociological theory by grounding pragmatist, processual, historical, conditional, relational, and reflexive analyses of social life. David Maines wrote in his response to the first of these sessions that the purpose was not personal but heuristic. That is, that it provided panelists with opportunities to analyze a corpus of work and to improve our understandings and knowledge. That was true for me when I read and commented on David’s work of that event. I hope it is the case of the panelists for this session and for those who read these pages. I have offered my comments here with that heuristic purpose in mind. Nevertheless, it is also personal and I remain grateful to my colleagues for their efforts. It was an interesting and stimulating experience with its usual amount of
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discomfort for me. I want to close by remembering colleagues who have helped me through their ideas, work, and support but who are no longer with us. Carl Couch, Stan Saxton, Anselm Strauss, Lou Zurcher, Dennis Brissett, and George Peters all contributed to clarifying social reality and in making our world a better place. Remembering them as inspirations, I trust we will sustain an interactionism that is engaged, receptive, and critical.
MENTAL HEALTH COMMUNICATION AS ACTION, SYSTEM, RELATION Wayne D. Woodward ABSTRACT Contemporary emphasis on language and communication in mental health research and practice establishes the need for a communication model that addresses the variety of contexts – institutional, social, and cultural – in which attribution of mental disorders, treatment, and recovery occur. A ‘triadic’ approach to communication considers sufferers’: (1) transactions with environmental circumstances; (2) interpretive engagement with symbolic/discursive resources; and (3) relational interactions with others. Foundations for the model derive from pragmatism, systems theory, and theories of dialogue. A brief case study of depressive illness illustrates the value of the model. Implications for the organization of professional expertise in mental health fields are discussed.
TOWARDS A COMMUNICATIVE MODEL FOR MENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH AND PRACTICE Post-Freudian perspectives on mental and emotional disorders emphasize the role of interhuman perplexities associated with language use and communication. Mechanistic implications of the “intrapsychic or one-person model of psychoanalysis championed by Freud and his early followers” (Langs, 1998, p. xi) are supplanted by interpretive values that characterize various versions of a Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 69–92 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260081
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contemporary “interactional or interpersonal, two-person model.” This approach inclines towards culturally-based understandings of mental health and disorder, and beyond that, to broader analyses that connect mental health syndromes to human suffering in its multiple manifestations. Interpretive models regard therapeutic treatment as communicative practice in which therapist and patient, or client, undertake the “creation of new experiences” (Miller & Dorpat, 1998, p. 3), involving formation of revised “schemas.” This collaborative, creative work counteracts disturbed behaviors by establishing a basis for more satisfying forms of “lived interactions” for sufferers. Attention to ‘twoperson,’ or dyadic, interactions that characterize the analytic setting can also extend to broader, environmental factors, as treatment strategies incorporate awareness of the social and cultural experiences that analysts and patients alike bring to the therapeutic interaction. A “triadic” (see Woodward, 1996) perspective is called for that combines attention to: (1) material, or physical-artifactual; (2) socio-cultural; and (3) relational, or mutual-personal, dimensions of mental-emotional health and disorders. From this perspective, therapy becomes a way of modeling dialogue and mutual-personal relations. The patient’s active ‘living through’ of improved interactions in the analytic setting can be developed as a basis for transforming his or her mutual-personal relations within the material and socio-cultural milieus of everyday life. A countervailing tendency is to view mental illnesses, or “somatopsychic disorders” (F´abrega, 1997, pp. 156 ff.), exclusively in terms of “biochemical processes within the brain and genetic influences” (Stoppard, 2000, p. 91). Biomedical explanations, conceptualized as causal accounts of mental diseases, take precedence over cultural analyses, which are viewed as addressing secondary, contextual factors derived from mental health illnesses (see Healey, 1997, p. 7). This movement towards biogenic explanations has been bolstered since the mid-1960s by “the advent of the psychiatric researcher who was conversant with the details of neurotransmitter metabolism, receptor binding, and endocrine changes – a researcher who spoke a different language from the analyst” (p. 157). This lexicon also differs from that of social and cultural theorists who consider mental health and disorders in terms of information-processing, interactions, and transactions. This paper asserts that research and treatment require an integrative mix of biogenic, psychological, and socio-cultural accounts to form technical descriptions, causal explanations, and recovery strategies related to mental disorders. The personal experience of suffering from a psychiatric disorder includes mental and physical distress, along with feelings of interpersonal and social maladjustment. Even if mental disorders could someday be definitively linked to biogenic causes, sufferers’ experiences still would retain a “social or moral dimension” (Young, 1997, p. 245). In addition, sufferers would need to signal their distress and
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communicate about progress towards recovery and maintenance. Furthermore, the significance of social and cultural responses to mental illness remains paramount, in terms of how psychiatric conditions are addressed institutionally and how sufferers experience the personal and social identities attributed to them in connection with their disorders. Accordingly, a communicative perspective on mental health is called for as a contribution to “disciplinary hybrids” (Stoppard, 2000, p. 91) that attempt to address psychological and socio-cultural factors surrounding mental health phenomena, while also acknowledging how mental disorders as “embodied experience” (p. 90) derive, certainly in part, from biogenic sources.1 A communicative approach challenges “the intellectual isolation . . . that separates studies of individual psychology from studies of the scoiocultural environment in which individuals live” (Wertsch, 1985a, p. 1). This perspective helps to integrate research and practice by extending across institutional barriers; these have tended to isolate professional roles and activities directed towards treatment of the individual psyche – i.e. therapists and general primary physicians – from roles and activities that address sufferers as they are situated in the milieu of their lived social and cultural relations – i.e. communication and public affairs professionals, other institutional administrators, colleagues, friends and relatives, community members. Communication is a constitutive practice that shapes professional as well as social relationships. Thus, it usefully links the variety of contacts and exchanges that contribute to mental health, mental disorders, and their treatment and recovery. A communicative understanding of mental-emotional disorders and their treatment can advance along several alternative, established paths. For example, communication can be conceived comprehensively as an explanatory model for the pathologies of mental disorder and/or a descriptive model for processes of treatment and recovery. This theoretical trajectory is exemplified by Ruesch’s and Bateson’s (1951, p. 5) pioneering advocacy of communication as an integrative focus for psychiatric research and practice, based on their assertion that “communication is the only scientific model which enables us to explain physical, intrapersonal, and cultural aspects of events within one system.”2 Theory and research can also highlight the significant role played by communication in the context of therapeutic exchanges between therapist and patient, or client. Dialogic approaches to therapy (see Friedman, 1985) provide historical precedents, while Robert Lang’s theories of “communicative psychotherapy” (see Smith, 1998) offer a contemporary extension of the approach, one that connects the communicative paradigm with cognitive studies and systems theory. Multiple contexts of communication are emphasized by the “interactionist approach” (see Spitzer & Denzin, 1968, p. vi) taken by “socially-oriented” (p. 1) psychiatrists and psychologists, along with sociologists, anthropologists,
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communication and language theorists, and interpretive scholars. A key concern is the “ascription process” by which sufferers are identified as disturbed, along with attention to institutional and socio-cultural forces that shape ascription practices and condition the overall experiences of sufferers.3 Transactional models (see Becker, 1964; Berne, 1961; Dewey & Bentley, 1949; Grinker et al., 1961; Spiegel, 1971; Woodward, 2001) contribute significantly to all three avenues for research and practice. The concept of “transaction” (see Bruner, 1986; Kaufer & Carley, 1993) is particularly relevant to the interactional perspective with its concern for wide-ranging forms of contact and exchange that play a part not only in administering treatments, but in addressing the social and cultural life of the sufferer. This paper describes a “transactional-participatory” (see Woodward, 1996) approach to mental health communication as a framework for research and practice. Drawing on an interdisciplinary mix of sources, the position derives significantly from modes of inquiry that are linked by a “contextualist” (see Rosnow & Georgondi, 1986) or “constructivist” (see Watzlawick, 1984) perspective. These include American pragmatism (see Grinker et al., 1961; Joas, 1993, 1996; Perry, 2001; Spiegel, 1971); contemporary cultural psychology inspired by Vygotsky’s (1978) “activity theory” (see Cole, 1996; Engestr¨om, 1999; Shweder, 1991; Wertsch, 1985a, b), current formulations of the systems-theoretic position (see Luhmann, 1995; Rasch & Wolfe, 2000), and theories of dialogue (see Buber, 1970; Maranh˜ao, 1990; Tedlock & Mannheim, 1995). The paper sketches out the principal features of the model; indicates its applicability through an illustration of depressive illness; and identifies the model’s general implications for the organization of professional practice in mental health fields. The transactionalparticipatory approach accounts for communicative aspects of therapeutic technique; information dissemination about mental health, as well as media representations of mental health phenomena; and interpersonal support networks that supplement therapy. As such, it provides an integrative communication model that supports a general theory of mental health communication, applicable to research and practice in all relevant areas of mental health professionalism. As socio-culturally ‘situated’ understandings of mental health and disorder have developed, inquiry has benefited from “new paradigms of how to do research” (Kleinman & Good, 1985, p. 11). These include better ways to “account for the interaction of nature and culture in the production and shaping of human distress.” Communication is a principal concern – thematic and practical – in allowing broadbased cross-cultural and historically-informed research on sickness and health (see F´abrega, 1997) to enhance strategies for treatment and recovery. Mental health research acquires a reciprocally augmented ability to contribute to knowledge about broader dimensions of human distress and suffering.
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Three communicative frameworks – action-based, systems-theoretic, and relational – contribute to the transactional-participatory model, which addresses: (1) the conditioning circumstances – material, technological, and socio-cultural – of sufferers’ lived experiences; (2) the active roles that communicators play within the structures and processes of communication systems; and (3) the complex dynamics of identity formation and mutual-personal relation that are at the heart of somatopsychical distress and recovery. The action-based perspective derives from pragmatism (see Dewey, 1925; Mead, 1934) and views communication as exemplifying “the creative character of human action” (Joas, 1996, p. 4). This includes the “ability to create consistent behaviour within the conflict of different expectations and irregular instinctive impulses” (p. 188). Emphasis is on the active role persons can play in constructing a common sphere of meanings, purposes, activities that provide the basis for communication. The creative action view is a socially-oriented variant of what theorists have labeled as a “self-action” (Spiegel, 1971, pp. 32 ff.) approach. The orienting value is “expression” (Earle, 1976, p. 76) through communicative action. The systems-theoretic view understands communication as an autopoietic, “completely closed system” (Luhmann, 1992, p. 254). Such systems sustain their operations without motivated intervention based in consciousness or individual agency (Luhmann, 1994, pp. 254, 373). A claim that “communication constructs itself” (p. 379) derives from premises: (1) that “[s]ystems of the mind and systems of communication exist independently of each other” (p. 138); and (2) that “only communication can control and repair communication” (Luhmann, 1992, p. 254). Communication systems and “psychic systems” (Luhmann, 1995, pp. 255–277) are both “structurally determined” (Luhmann, 1994, p. 373), meaning that they “create differentiations through the realization of their own operations, create boundaries, accumulate their own history . . . and with all this define their own environment.” A communication system can be conceptualized as a form of self-reproducing ‘memory’ – an information-processing capacity that “uses the mind as a medium” (p. 378). Thus, consciousness would not be a substantive, motivating force behind agency, but would be seen as a conventionalized description of one important, functional element ‘enlisted’ by a communication system in its self-reproduction. Clarity about systemic structure, sub-structures, and interactions of elements is key to this approach, which takes as its primary value “lucidity” (see Earle, 1976, p. 76) of, and about, communicative contacts. The relational perspective adopts norms of dialogue as these have emerged within phenomenology and philosophical anthropology (see Henrici, 1983; Schacht, 1991).4 Mutual-personal responsibility for the ‘other,’ especially the conversational partner, becomes the centerpiece for ethical communication. The motivating value is “concern” (Earle, 1976, p.76) for the relational other as the basis
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for communicative integrity. Communication is directed towards mutual responsibility as the source of human identity. None of the models is adequate on its own, but considered integratively, they address crucial questions about mutual-personal relations and agents’ communicative action within self-reproducing systems of communication. Effective mental health communication combines a relational perspective based in concern and dialogue, with a perspective that emphasizes expression and creative agency, and an approach that seeks lucidity in understanding how structured interactions of elements can constitute a self-subsistent communication system that ‘enlists’ the individual’s consciousness and action as elements. This latter possibility is especially significant for understanding the technologically-mediated, communicative environment of contemporary society. The transactional-participatory model provides for a broad view of “psychopathology” (see Levin, 1987, p. 22) as emanating from a universal “human experience of suffering (patheia).” From this standpoint, identification of mental disorders would not coincide exclusively with “institutionally validated categories . . . the narcissistic personality disorders, the schizophrenias, and the depressions” (p. 22). Rather, the definitions encompass “any comportment that only deepens or intensifies the inadequate way in which the psyche manifests its pain, its suffering, its afflictions.” Debilitating intensification of personal suffering is the distinguishing feature of mental-emotional disorders. Such intensification is observably outside the expected contours of either a common human adaptation to pain and affliction, or a culturally-specific variant of such adaptation. Drawing the boundaries between pathology and normalcy may be challenging, but possible ambiguities are compensated by an enhanced ability to compare attributable disorders with generalized forms of personal and social suffering. Culturally and historically, specific examples of mental disorders demonstrate “how the forms of human suffering can be at the same time collective and individual, how the modes of experiencing pain and trauma can be both local and global” (Kleinman, Das & Lock, 1997, p. x). Combined attention to general and particular aspects of mental health phenomena makes the transactionalparticipatory approach well-suited for generating findings from cross-cultural and historical researches into mental-emotional disorders. This allows advances in general knowledge to be shaped and refined for the needs of specific institutional settings and cultural contexts. The model derives its ‘account of pathological function’ from John Dewey’s (1925) theory of transactional5 experience as a balancing of “doing” and “undergoing.” Dewey’s framework has been refined by theorists who adopt a communicative perspective on mental disorders (see Spiegel, 1971). Ernest Becker (1964, pp. 11–17) summarizes the position. Arguing that “[w]e have here a fundamental
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way of distinguishing human worlds” (p. 25), Becker describes the relevant distinctions made by Dewey as “not simply a matter of ‘more’ or ‘less’ experience” (p. 23), but “a matter of a more or less proper ‘balance’ between doing and undergoing.” Unrestrained ‘doing,’ is when “action is too facile, too fluid,” which can undermine “the capacity to refer experiences to properly tested powers” and to manage “a self-reflective placing of [one’s] self in the world.” Constant ‘undergoing’ has an opposite impact of placing “incoming sensory impressions, perceptions, ideas, impulses, and tendencies” into “confused and disorganized relationships” (pp. 23–24). Either extreme can contribute to intensified, mental-emotional suffering. The ‘self-reflective’ positioning that Becker emphasizes is pre-eminently symbolic and communicative. A person constructs relations to others and to significant environmental objects by appropriating systems of meanings that circulate within one’s cultural and subcultural milieus. ‘Doing’ and ‘undergoing’ are meaningful actions and experiences in a person’s life story rather than simple reactions or mere behavioral events in an organism’s life cycle. The process of healing is also communicative. It entails attainment or recovery of a receptive capacity for “self-reflective registering of experience” (Becker, 1964, p. 23), along with a productive capability that “brings order into a chaotic mass of sensation by experiencing active powers.” These powers have to do with the creation of “behavioral time” (p. 27), “a notion of past-present-future, a time stream in which [one] places [one]self and . . . continually scans and appraises.” Complementary to this is the creation of a “[l]ived, action space” (p. 31). Both are dimensions of our “cognitive world,” but “we are strangers until we have traveled the road” constructed by our own, actively-produced “measured time and measured space.” This construction, or recovery, of a time/space for ‘lived action’ is modeled in the therapeutic setting and then extended into broader domains of social experience. Acquiring or restoring the capacities for this embodied experience involves processes that Becker labels “symbolic achievements,” as “[m]an [sic] creates his own world, in large part, and makes it a more comfortable home than the chaotic, raw, event-world of nature” (p. 32). Communication scholar James W. Carey (1989, p. 30) offers a comparable formulation as a generalized principle of his cultural approach to communication theory: “We first produce the world by symbolic work and then take up residence in the world we have produced.” Communication plays a constitutive role in creating worlds of experience that people come to occupy in multiple, diverse ways – before, during, and after therapeutic treatment. Drawing on D. W. Winnicott’s (1989, p. xiii) “theory of transitional phenomena,” the transactional-participatory model emphasizes the creation of a “third part of the life of a human being . . . to which inner reality and external life both contribute” (p. 2). Understanding the dynamics of this ‘third part’ requires inquiry into “object-relating and . . . symbol formation” (p. xiii)
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along with mutual-personal relations, within the framework of an integrative theory of communication as transactional-participation. The mediating element is language, conceived as an activity (see Engestr¨om, 1999; Woodward, 1996, p. 170) that produces the ‘third time-space’ that Winnicott cites.
Creative Action One strategy for developing the model is from ‘inside-out,’ from “intrapersonal thoughts, feelings, and motives” (Strauss & Quinn, 1997, p. 8) outward to “concrete forms of extrapersonal culture in learners’ worlds.” This approach supports the agent-based model of creative activity associated with pragmatism. The transactional philosophy of pragmatism has its origins in a theoretical and methodological challenge to an empiricist or “causal view” (Taylor, 1985, pp. 81–83) of reality. This causal conception begins with individual motivations, formed in “a separate domain of inner, mental space.” Motivations are seen as directed towards environmental elements on the basis of “my desire or intention – the causes of my action.” ‘Reality’ thus becomes an “external event” – an objectified state of affairs that can stand over against the inner experience that originated its production. Pathology would arise when the control or authority attributed to this perceived outer structure of reality becomes debilitating for ongoing action (see Woodward, 2000, pp. 68–72; also Becker, 1964, pp. 11–17). This picture of two domains – an ‘inner’ realm that motivates action and an ‘outer’ reality that receives the impetus of the motivation but that can turn objective consequences back against inner intentions – is inadequate. What needs to be conceptualized is a “third part of the life of a human being . . . an intermediate area of experiencing, to which inner reality and external life both contribute . . . for the individual engaged in the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet inter-related” (Winnicott, 1989, p. 2). George Herbert Mead, writing in 1903, introduced the concept of creative action as this mediating element. Mead specified the ‘psychical’ (Mead, 1964) “not . . . as a substance or sphere sui generis corresponding to the external world in a parallel way, but rather . . . [as] . . . ‘a particular phase in the development of reality’ ” (Joas, 1985, p. 65). Mead’s conception of creative action challenges a dualistic supposition “that we are dealing with two fundamentally different types of thing, mind and (mind-independent) reality” (Joas, 1985, p. 77). Rather, mind as “self-conceptualizing” plays an integral role in communicatively transacting the experience of a ‘third realm’ of meaningful performances and objects whose significance is both private and public. This third realm is inwardly experienced and outwardly symbolized and shared – or, at least, made shareable – with others.
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According to this view, “the intrapersonal and extrapersonal realms are . . . separated by a boundary, but one that is permeable” (Strauss & Quinn, 1997, p. 8). Creative, communicative transactions mediate the boundary symbolically and span it ontologically, bringing objects and interactions into concrete, meaningful existence.
Communication Systems and Psychic Systems An alternative is to consider how “the world outside of persons” (Strauss & Quinn, 1997, p. 8) produces impacts on the “inner world or psyche.” The systemstheoretic view approaches this question initially by recasting the pragmatist interest in “the inside-outside relationship between the knowing subject and the world” (Habermas, 1990, p. 369) in terms of a “system-environment relationship.” The key concern becomes how a “complex network of contemporaneous communication processes” (Luhmann, 1994, p. 376) reproduces the conditions of its own existence as the system “addresses its operations to those who are required to continue communication” (p. 371). From a systems perspective, these addresses are not agents, nor are they the ‘individual’ or ‘subject’ (Luhmann, 1992, p. 251), concepts that are “basic assumptions of the philosophical tradition” that contemporary systems theory attempts to supersede. Rather, the addresses are functional “elements” (Luhmann, 1995, p. 22) of systems – “e.g. atoms, cells, or actions” – each of which is “constituted as a unity only by the system that enlists it as an element to use it in relations.” Any system, including the complex technological networks that provide a starting point for understanding contemporary communications, will subsist only if it is able to “equip the momentary elements that compose it with the capacity for connection, that is, with meaning, and thus reproduce them” (p. 11). Communication systems do not serve directly as ‘media resources’ for self-motivated human agents, since “[s]ystems of the mind and systems of communication exist completely independently of each other” (Luhmann, 1994, p. 380). A mind can observe communication; it can be enlisted as a functional element of a communication system. But a mind cannot be directly manifested through communication as a form of self-action or as a component of social action. Distilled to a formulaic statement, the contemporary systems-theoretic position holds that “[h]umans cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate” (Luhmann, 1994, p. 371).6 Fundamental propositions of the systems-theoretic view would appear to be incompatible with those of the creative action perspective. After all, if communication systems are ‘closed’ from direction by systems of mind, or psychic systems,
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how could expression be viewed as indicative either of mental health or disorder, or be considered as a means to achieve mental or emotional outcomes? Reconciliation of the pragmatist and systems views can be sought by examining a transition that is underway “from system/environment theory to the theory of self-referential systems” (Luhmann, 1995, p. 218). Self-identification, based in differentiation from other elements in an environmental field, characterizes self-referential systems. Identity and difference emerge “when a self (whether as element, process, or system) can be identified through itself and set off as different from others” (p. 10). Ongoing communication constitutes a triadic environment. A self can set itself off as different from this environment (i.e. construct its identity as distinguishable from the triadic field); at the same time, self-identity becomes functional only through operations based on the multiple relations at play within this triadic field (i.e. the self is functionally part of the triadic field from which it differentiates itself). Constructed boundaries are conventional differentiations that allow for functional self-orientation. The boundaries that the self constructs as a basis for identity are not “tied to an ontological matrix” (Schwanitz, 1995, p. 157); they are not “objective observations, dependent on reality” (p. 156). Rather, they should be considered reflexively “as indication[s] based on distinction, accepting at the same time that no observation . . . is [fully] able to observe its own distinction” (p. 157). The observing self continuously runs up against “observation’s ‘blind spot’ . . . [that] observation is also unable to see whatever has been excluded from observation by its distinction” (p. 156). Reflexive capacity – i.e. the capacity to indicate and to be included in what is indicated (Luhmann, 1995, p. 442) – is basic to observation. This capacity is also part of the operations that observation attempts to observe (see Elmer, 2000, p. 241). Reflexivity is an attribute that may apply not only to selves, but to a variety of systems: “cells and societies, maybe physical atoms, certainly immune systems and brains” (Luhmann, 1986, p. 322). Accordingly, from the perspective of a general interest in self-reproducing systems, “[c]onscious systems” (Luhmann, 1986, p. 322) – i.e. selves, in the sense indicated by the creative action perspective of Mead – “have no exceptional status.” Contemporary systems thought rejects the notion of a “center [i.e. an autonomous self] in which the [psychic] system as a whole is made present to itself and knows itself in the form of self-consciousness” (Habermas, 1990, p. 369).7 Systems theory replaces the pragmatic figure of the reflexive self managing its environments through creative action with an alternative “figure of observation” (Elmer, 2000, p. 236) which achieves “a vantage on the operation of the communication system . . . seeing the code as code.” This shift entails
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“extrication of reflexivity from consciousness,” coupled with “rhetorical intrication of the figures of observation with the [systems theory] development of the idea of communication.” Creative action, in the pragmatist sense, assumes consciousness as the locus of self-expression. Systems thought seeks lucid comprehension of system operations and identifies its locus in reflexive observation. These constructivist principles of systems theory direct therapy towards an emphasis on “observation of observation . . . how the observed observer observes” (Elmer, 2000, p. 237, quoting Luhmann, 1990, p. 73). Particularly significant for comprehending mental-emotional disturbance – whether within the range of common experience or in pathologically intensified manifestations – is an augmented attention to conditions under which “an observed observer is unable to observe.” With the erosion of observational capabilities, the possibility of lucidity breaks down. Therapists and sufferers must acknowledge together that they operate in therapy with a “mirage of identity” (Elmer, 2000, p. 241). Rather than an authenticated self that would attain expression through creative action, a ‘constructed observer’ acquires lucidity about its own identity-constructing operations through selfobservation. Notwithstanding its conventionalized character, the “alibi of identity” that operates within systems processes can provide a focus for self-transformation. Self-reference and self-observation can be – arguably, must be – oriented towards a particular kind, or convention, of identity-seeking. The creative selfhood predicated by pragmatism is the example that interests us. This conventional notion of identity provides reflexivity with a direction for its development. As “selfobservers” (Luhmann, 1986, p. 323), those seeking and providing therapeutic help are “free to choose conscious systems as the system reference most appropriate for what we want to express” (pp. 323–324). In short, therapeutic exchange can be constructed “to create consciousness precisely where consciousness fails because of its own necessary latencies” (Luhmann, 1995, p. 336), its own “lack of explicit awareness” (p. 335). System memory, as a “latency of consciousness” (Luhmann, 1995, p. 335) which can take the form of “unawareness, ignorance,” produces states in which “disturbances are stored, combined, represented again, and amplified by the reinforcement of deviation and hypercorrection” (p. 259). The systems-theoretic position embodies a reluctance “to distinguish clearly between psychical and social pathologies.” However, the reflexive lucidity that the approach values can be deployed by therapist and client to achieve therapeutic outcomes. A particular strength of the systems-theoretic perspective is that it provides a useful framework for describing and assessing impacts of the “mediazation of culture” (Thompson, 1995, p. 46) that characterizes the contemporary era. This “systematic [and systemic] cultural transformation” accompanied the “electrical
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codification of information” when “symbolic forms were produced, reproduced, and circulated on a scale that was unprecedented.” Sophisticated media technologies increase the spatial and temporal reach of communications – “space-time distanciation” (pp. 21 ff.) – leading to “new forms of action and interaction and new kinds of social relationships” (pp. 81–82). Instances of “mediated quasi-relation” include “intimacy at a distance” (p. 219). When personal involvement and identification are based on extensive contact with mediated realities, such as television and the movies offer their viewers, profound impacts on people’s lives may result (see McCarthy, 2001). Questions emerge about “whether normal relationships can match the powers of artifice” (Gergen, 1991, p. 57). Under these circumstances, involvement in imaginary worlds could even undermine the ability of individuals “reflexively to incorporate symbolic materials (mediated and otherwise) into a relatively autonomous process of self-formation” (Thompson, 1995, p. 218). Instead, an “absorption of the self” can occur whereby these mediated symbolic materials “become ends in themselves, symbolic constructs around which the individual begins to organize his or her life and sense of self.” Imagined worlds are then “not merely a resource for the self but its central preoccupation” (p. 219). When communication systems operate as “more than technology and more than ‘cultural form’ ” (Fry, 1993, pp. 11 ff.), they can begin to constitute an “ontological domain.” Such an emergence can alter the conditions for establishing mutual-personal relations with others. Attention to this ontological character of communication systems helps to integrate the systems-theoretic view and the perspective on creative agency with a third view that emphasizes dialogic relation.
Mutual-Personal Relation Communication theorist Tony Fry indicates a direction for a synthesis. He illustrates the first two positions – creative agency and systems-theoretic – by highlighting the role of television as a pervasive, dominant media system. Fry (1993), argues that television can be viewed as “an instrument of cultural authorship” (p. 12) at the same time that the “televisual” is considered as “an organic part of the social fabric” that “has acquired its own legs and walks where it will” (p. 13). Comparing the ‘call’ of the televisual with a “call of conscience from self to self,” Fry moves towards a relational perspective when he observes that the “being of television is not a being we can know or name as Being – it is not self as our self, it is someone which is some-thing which is no-thing, ‘it’ is not reducible to an essential essence that we place behind the face and voice, it is out of reach” (p. 41). And yet, the televisual can “tell us what is present in our condition . . . as it goes ahead of us and becomes a large part of our ‘seeing-the-world’ ” (p. 29). Television
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invites, even demands, dialogic relation, while at the same time it frustrates a person’s attempts to establish such a relation. The transactional-participatory model explains how a space for ‘cultural authorship’ or creative action is conditioned by constraints imposed when communication systems operate as ‘ontological domains.’ This approach indicates how the pragmatist position of Dewey, Mead, and Becker that posits an active self based on the privileging of consciousness can be made compatible with the systems-theoretic position, exemplified by Luhmann, which emphasizes how action and consciousness are conventional ways – co-equal with other conventions – for signifying system states. Media play a significant role in determining the degree and quality of a person’s “ontological security” (Giddens, 1990, p. 92), both as a signified ideal, and a lived experience. Such security is grounded in “the confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding social and material environments of action.” Thus, security is a matter of symbolic control linked with an ordered, embodied experience of what is signified. Reliable relations – symbolic and material – to persons and things undergird “active engagement in the world” (Silverstone, 1994, p. 5). The “events and patterns and relationships” of worldly engagement are “physical . . . cognitive . . . [and] . . . affective” (pp. 5–6), involving “interactions, communication, language . . . understanding, memory, reflexivity, an awareness of position in time and space . . . [and] . . . unconscious processes . . . a kind of faith” (p. 6). The horizons extend from preoccupation with the most private, personal imaginings, to negotiation with highly public ‘artifacts’ – the icons of popular culture, for example – which develop into “an aspect of the material world that has been modified over the history of its incorporation into goal-directed human action” (Cole, 1996, p. 117). The context for building and sustaining relations is a communicative environment, and in the contemporary case, it is technologically-mediated. Modern and “hypermodern” (Borgmann, 1992, pp. 78–109) contexts tend to replace earlier dependencies on “localized trust” (Giddens, 1990, p. 102) as situations involving “trust relations vested in disembedded sytems”8 are charged with “stabilising relations across indefinite spans of space-time.” Mutual-personal relations depend on the exercise of “participant power” (Pols, 1975, pp. 331 ff.; Pols, 1982, p. 97; see also Woodward, 1996, pp. 166–167), the ability to play an active role in creating and shaping the potential, cultural space (see Winnicott, 1958, 1989) between self and environment. Participation in this ‘third space’ is achieved through the “originative act” (Pols, 1982, p. 210), “what an agent does” (Frankfurt, 1997, p. 42) rather than “what merely happens to him [sic].” Action may be full and ‘originative’ or more passive, receptive. In either case, it derives from language as activity and the role of the body as an “expressive space . . . our general medium for having a world” (Merleau-Ponty,
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1962, p. 146). Whatever is “given-in-experience” (Pols, 1982, p. 134) is, moreover, “given-to-be-experienced” according to our “power of engagement.” Philosopher Edward Pols (1975, p. 225) observes of the linkages between reality, experience, and participation that “[this] is subjectivity in the positive sense: a creative activity that does not however create objectivity but discloses it, while disclosing at the same time its own proper nature and proper role with respect to objectivity.” The creative act helps to shape a world of relations with others, within a milieu of artifacts and meanings. This milieu impresses its significance on the person, as the person reciprocally impresses significance on the milieu through creative action as a dimension of mutual-personal relations.
Transactional-Participatory Perspectives on Treatment and Recovery Experience and participation result from that “vital communication with the world which makes it present as a familiar setting of our life” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, pp. 52–53). This setting is the ‘third time-space’ of Winnicott’s description. Reality, as this third time-space, can be disclosed through “creative and responsible activity,” (Pols, 1975, p. 225); or its stultification can confront the individual consciousness with “a strange and incomprehensible landscape of its own making . . . troubled all the while by its inability to see what it wanted to see.” Mental health activities are attempts to reconstruct the latter situation into an experience of creative agency as the “result, the sign, and the reward” (Dewey, 1958, p. 22) of “that interaction of organism and environment which, when it is carried to the full, is a transformation of interaction into participation and communication.” Participatory communication is both the goal of mental health efforts and the active path the sufferer travels towards participation and communication as emergent values. As temporal and spatial experiences provide “routines and rhythms of everyday life” (Silverstone, 1994, p. 20) these become ‘templates’ for how life is “felt, lived, and secured.” Creative action is liberated and constrained by “clock times free and indentured . . . embedded in the times of biography and the life-cycle.” Mutualpersonal relations are ‘performed’ in “public and private space: the front-stages and the back-stages: the spaces of gender and generation, domesticity and community.” Institutionalized media, operating as self-reproducing systems become “very much a part of the taken-for-granted seriality and spatiality of everyday life . . . of beginnings, middles, and ends, and of characterization . . . the paramount narrativity of experience.” Distress is ‘narrated’ in multiple communicative settings and mediated forms. Media messages and other communications provide symbolic elements, or texts,
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that inform and structure transactions – socio-cultural, mutual-personal, and material – that play a part in people’s lives. Narrative claims about mental health are scientific, literary, and popular; they emanate from various sources, which often represent competing claims to institutional, social, and cultural authority. Sufferers, along with other ‘consumers’ of communications, are positioned as audiences for these messages. Some sufferers are selectively qualified as producers of messages about mental health, with varying levels of authority and credibility attributed to the narratives they provide, based on educational and professional credentials, institutional experience, social and cultural position, economic power, managerial or bureaucratic authority, personal history, and other contributing factors (see, e.g. Burns, 1989; Jamison, 1993, 1995; Kristeva, 1989; Styron, 1990). The transactional-participatory approach focuses attention on the experience of narrativity as a triadic integration of meanings (socio-cultural), order (physical-artifactual) and identity (mutual-personal). Established mental health practices predicate a ‘dyadic’ theoretical system wherein the concept of cure and its methods of obtaining that cure are subsumed under the system. The cured individual and the psychotherapeutic system are simply correlated with each other. The system defines what cure is – integration and individuation, attainment of the depressive position, the ability to carry on one’s own self-analysis, and so on – and the cure occurs because of the correct application of the method of cure generated by the system (Heaton, 1988, p. 8).
Emmanuel Levinas’ (1987, p. 67) dialogic philosophy describes, alternatively, how “disturbance” or “enigma” irrupt “as the entry into a given order of another order which does not accommodate itself with the first.” Suffering and recovery constitute “a plot with three personages” – the sufferer, the therapist, and the “infinite” horizons – of inner experience and outer, worldly involvement – that the “transcendence” entailed in recovery must embody. Thus, we exclude from disturbance the simple parallelism of two orders that would be in a relationship of sign to signified, of appearance to thing in itself, and between which . . . the relationship would re-establish the simultaneity of one single order.
The individual sufferer recovers a mutual-personal ground and the capacity for creative action by moving towards successful, ‘triadic’ communicative relations – i.e. the exercise of participant power through engagement with: (1) environmental objects and artifacts; (2) available frameworks of meaning as these circulate within the socio-cultural domain; and (3) other persons through dialogue. Distress, diagnosis, and recovery unfold as emergent states within the infinite horizons of objects, meanings, self and others in relation that define the triadic field of experience.
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A TRIADIC VIEW OF DEPRESSIVE ILLNESS Mainstream mental health research and practice accept a “trait-situation dichotomy” (Eskola, 1999, p. 108). In the study and treatment of depression, for example, “diathesis-stress models” (see Stoppard, 2000, pp. 43 ff.), predicate that personality (diathesis) is to be correlated with changes in environment (stress). This latter variable is “operationalized as ‘negative life events’” based on the assumption that “the categories of stressful events . . . apply in the same way to all research participants, regardless of gender (or social class, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so on)” (p. 55). The dualism of this “mechanistic-deterministic research paradigm” (Stoppard, 2000, p. 55) makes consideration of communicative and cultural variability secondary to establishing causal, determinative relations between factors that can be labeled as dependent and independent variables. The task of research in such a scheme is to identify “universal laws, psychological, social, or biological” (Eskola, 1999, p. 107) to support diagnostic predictions and to explain and justify their basis. Winnicott’s (1989) post-Freudian perspective provides a triadic alternative by emphasizing “an intermediate area of experiencing (p. 13) . . . [a] . . . vast area between objectivity and subjectivity” (p. 20). Here is where “the root of symbolism in time” (p. 6) is planted, where relations with the world are established, along with personal identity as part of such relations. “Essential to all this is continuity (in time) of the external emotional environment and of particular elements in the physical environment” (p. 13). A developmental perspective suggests that the infant’s early transactional experience of the world expands through contact with, and imaginative attachment to, a transactional object such as “a teddy, a doll, or soft toy, or to a hand toy” (Winnicott, 1989, p. 1). This physical, intermediate area of transactional learning persists in the self-organization of the adult, whose capacity for creative action, amidst systemic complexity, in the milieu of mutual-personal relations “is retained in the intense experiencing that belongs to the arts and to religion and to imaginative living, and to creative scientific work” (p. 14). These are exemplary activities that parallel everyday forms of creativity that are integral to well-being. (See Williams, 1961; also Woodward, 2000.) Confronting the stultification of a person’s capacity for full, transactional participation, therapeutic communication responds by having therapist and sufferer construct a dialogue where the sufferer’s “actions or the language of the body is [sic] squeezed into words” (Mitchell, 1986, p. 11). Material performances and interactions, personal meanings, and participant power ultimately come to play integral roles during recovery as the “thrust toward self-understanding . . . blocked by myriad inhibiting forces” (Lear, 1990, p. 8) begins to be liberated.
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Interpretive capabilities support a view of the individual as “a psychological achievement” (Lear, 1990, p. 156); however, the individual also “cannot be understood other than as a response to certain forces that permeate the social world into which he is born.” The analytic interpretation involved in therapy enables the sufferer to transcend a predicament wherein one’s own “ideals and norms” are not “located in him [sic] at all” but are transposed entirely from “over there, operating in his parents and cultural environment” (p. 204). Alternatively, the person, liberated for activity through analytic interpretative achievements, is able to create, or to participatively transact, a ‘here and now’ within the “tripled context of human creative action, involving the personal space in which the human agent acts” (Woodward, 2000, p. 345). Therapeutic ‘cure’ is an instance of a general communicative development in which “[w]hat is happening in humans is not the projection of value onto inert nature, but the emergence of value in nature” (Lear, 1990, p. 210). The interpretive dimensions of this process are crucial, but should not be allowed to obscure recognition that “[w]hatever else it may be, depression is an embodied experience” (Stoppard, 2000, p. 90). Dual awareness of the “body as ‘text’ ” (p. 91) and of “the ‘practical’ or ‘useful’ body” drives the search for an adequate communication model beyond traditional boundaries that would divide the study of depression between psychological approaches with a “focus on experience and behavior” (p. 90) and medical approaches which “take the physical body as their primary subject matter.”9 Communication in a transactional-participatory mode presents a “disciplinary hybrid” (p. 91) that illuminates the triadic “lived experiences” of the depressed self in the: (1) discursive; and (2) material contexts in which; (3) sufferers’ daily lives, and the creative agency and mutual-personal relations those lives require, are embedded (see Stoppard, 2000, p. 22). Consistent with the contextualist emphasis on situating analysis in relation to the lived experience of particular sufferers, psychologist Janet Stoppard (2000) directs her interests towards a feminist, “material-discursive” (p. 21) approach to depression that “begins from women’s standpoint and is informed by a social constructionist epistemological perspective.” Mediated forms of communication emerge as a central element in exploring how “people’s ideas about how to conduct their everyday lives, the options and choices available to them, are formed in the course of their social interactions with the world around them” (p. 104). Stoppard emphasizes the role of institutionalized communications such as print and visual media, media used in formal education, and advertising in “forming an implicit cultural background to information circulating within society.” The transactional-participatory model provides a communicative framework for integrating themes that address the situated predicaments of women sufferers: (1) “material themes . . . the close links between their experiences and their
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embodiment” (Stoppard, 2000, p. 208); (2) “discursive themes . . . the sociocultural backdrop to their everyday lives and . . . shared ideas about what it means to be and act as a woman” (p. 209). Additionally, the triadic model highlights mutual-personal relation in ways that clarify how identities, “the subjectivities of both knowers (researchers) . . . [or practitioners] . . . and research participants . . . [or sufferers]” (p. 208) are conditioned, and conditioning, as part of the triadic field of experience. Thus, the transactional-participatory model of communication responds directly to Stoppard’s (2000, p. 208) call for forms of inquiry into depression that are “freed from the restrictions of positivist assumptions” while “notions of objectivity are expanded” along with definitions of “subjectivities.” This revised communicative paradigm parallels a clinical view of depression as triadic, involving “psychological (e.g. self-criticism, anhedonia), biological (e.g. weight loss, insomnia), and social (e.g. avoidance, passivity) symptoms that impair an individual’s ability to function normally” (Kaiser et al., 1998, p. 177). The model accounts for how participation is transacted within a third area of experiencing that is distinctively communicative.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE IN MENTAL HEALTH FIELDS A full examination of the model’s applications to mental health professionalism is beyond the scope of this article. However, a general statement can be made about what the approach implies for the organization of professional expertise. The emphasized mixture of material and discursive influences on sufferers makes the transactional-participatory approach distinctively appropriate for understanding how meanings generated by expert institutions interrelate with meanings produced within the broader transactional environment in which individuals and groups conduct activities and make sense of their everyday lives. Professional roles and activities directed towards treatment of the individual psyche are effectively linked, through communication in a transactional-participatory mode, to roles and activities that characterize persons situated in the transactional milieu of lived social and cultural relations. Mental health communicators, such as public information specialists, address messages to sufferers whose daily lives involve the drama of discovering and identifying with a condition that they may ultimately seek treatment to relieve (see Denzin, 1987a, b). Therapists and care providers address the same sufferers at different phases of the overall ‘transactional’ “career” (see Goffman, 1961, pp. 127–169) that crystallizes a person’s pattern of distress, suffering, recovery. A broad transactional view takes into account the “breach” (see Turner, 1988, p. 91) of “ongoing social life” (p. 90) represented by the appearance of the
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symptom, along with the “crisis” (p. 91) and the “restoration of peace” (p. 92) that treatment is intended to address and to accomplish.10 The professional roles of therapist, psychiatric social worker, as well as public information specialist and even lower-level administrative support worker all share the communicative challenge to connect messages concerning interactive phases of sufferers’ experiences of mental disorder to the transactional history of the person (see Dewey & Bentley, 1949, pp. 103–118, Ch. 4, “Interaction and Transaction”) gripped in the ‘social drama’ of distress, suffering, and recovery. All professional roles related to mental health treatment involve the communicative mandate to contribute to “transactional learning” (see Bruner, 1985, p. 25) as a way of conceiving how life’s narrativity can be reformulated and re-experienced as a triadic unity. Existing divisions of labor within institutional settings are reconceived as collaborative contributions towards assisting in sufferers’ transactional learning patterns on the path to recovery and beyond.
CONCLUSION: ACTION, SYSTEM, AND RELATION ARE THE KEY COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATION THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE IN MENTAL HEALTH FIELDS Freudian theory has it origins in the discovery and exploration of an “inner world toward which we are emotionally oriented” (Lear, 1990, p. 159), a world that proves to be “a re-creation of the outer world.” Post-Freudian refinements indicate how the correspondences are complexly triadic, as the human search for “ontological security” (Silverstone, 1994, p. 5) requires persons to integrate three levels of contact and exchange – material (“physical”), symbolic (“cognitive”), and mutualpersonal (“affective”) – uniting inner and outer realms, experience and world. [B]oth trust and ontological security are the product of an active engagement in the world, of an active engagement in the events and patterns and relationships of everyday life. That active engagement is physical; it requires bodily presence, face-to-face interactions, communication, language. It is cognitive; it requires understanding, memory, reflexivity, an awareness of position in time and space. And it is affective; our relationships to material objects, to other people and to symbols are grounded in unconscious processes, but can only be sustained through a confidence, born of experience, in the certainty of the world – that is, in a kind of faith.
The transactional-participatory model of communication enables mental health professionals, and others charged with understanding and addressing human distress, to proceed in their work with a clarified framework for investigating the communicative processes at work as sufferers seek to acquire personal mastery within triadic fields of human experience.
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NOTES 1. A number of contemporary movements in psychoanalysis reflect a concern to integrate biological, physiological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors, often by conceiving an individual’s developmental history as an integration of creative and adaptive responses to environmental demands and opportunities (see Langs, 1998). 2. Communication, in this broad sense, encompasses language use and social processes of symbolic and material exchange. Thus, language-based or linguistic perspectives on psychic processes – as exemplified by Sullivan (1953) and Lacan (1977) – are viewed as a sub-category of explanatory or descriptive models. 3. Howard Becker (1973, p. 179) suggests that interactionist perspectives on mental health disorders should not be viewed narrowly as forms of ‘labelling theory’ but as ways of accounting for how “labelling places the actor in circumstances which make it harder for him to continue the normal routines of everyday life and thus provoke him to ‘abnormal’ actions.” Accordingly, interactionist analyses consider “two distinct though overlapping systems of collective action” (p. 185). The first is “the system of action in which . . . judgments occur . . . [and] . . . our unit of study [is] those who committed the act” (pp. 185–186). The second is “the drama of moral rhetoric and action in which imputations of deviance are made, accepted, rejected, and fought over” (p. 186). The interactionist approach referred to in this paper integrates study of these domains in the interest of understanding “the interplay between the deviant and the audience . . . the persona and the social context in which he is embedded” (Spitzer & Denzin, 1968, p. 2). 4. This synthesis is taking shape within American cultural studies as proponents draw on the philosophical anthropology of Martin Buber (1970) the post-phenomenological philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (1987, 1989, 1993), and Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) perspectives on interpretation and practice. 5. An overview of transactional sources is provided in Woodward (2001). 6. This formula does not attempt to deny to persons the “self-reference (or reflexiveness)” (Luhmann, 1992, p. 251) that one conventionally associates with intentional communication, but rather to extend self-referentiality and self-reproduction into a “general principle of system formation” so that it “is not a property peculiar to thought or consciousness.” Luhmann (1996, p. 216) acknowledges that “[h]uman beings are needed for uttering and understanding, and often also for creating artifacts that function in the communicative nexus as information.” However, “self-reproduction of social systems by communication’s triggering further communication will continue if nothing stops it” (p. 218). Accordingly, communication as a self-reproductive system is what communicates “the referential wealth of meaning [that] enables the formation of societal systems through which human beings can have consciousness and life.” Employing the notion of “interpenetration” to designate “the contribution of complexity to the construction of emergent systems” (p. 216), Luhmann specifies the intricate interdependencies of psychic and social systems as they relate to and depend upon communication: Interhuman interpenetration is indisputably possible only by communication, that is, only by forming social systems. Nevertheless, we must retain the distinction between interhuman and social interpenetration, not just for analytical reasons. Interhuman interpenetration exceeds the possibilities of communication. This refers not only to the boundaries of linguistic possibilities and not only to the meaning of bodily contact. Instead, intimacy includes what is incommunicable and therefore includes the experience of incommunicability (p. 228).
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Luhmann’s statements indicate the complex relationship of contemporary systems theory to action-based and relational perspectives. Communication is not deployed as a resource by persons or agents, since the interpenetrative relation between social and psychic systems means that they are “structurally coupled” (p. 220), but not causally related. They subsist within a reciprocal “intersystem relation between systems that are environments for each other” (p. 213), where “both systems enable each other by introducing their own already-constituted complexity into each other.” Relational indeterminacies, such as intimacy, emerge as part of the “reproduction of the indeterminacy that always appears in what is determinate as a horizon of possibility” (p. 220). 7. Habermas (1990) specifically addresses Luhmann’s (1995) systems theory, which takes social systems as its principal concern. Luhmann’s critique of the notion of an autonomous, or transcendental, social subject (“Which one of the five billion?” [Knodt, 1995, p. xxvi], he inquires) can also be directed at the self as a presumed locus of consciousness able to realize its autonomy not only in its own conscious life but also in its interactions with others and in its roles within social systems. ‘Which of the multiple selves that each of us inhabits?’, one might also ask. 8. Giddens (1990, p. 21) describes “disembedding” as “ ‘lifting out’ of social relations from the local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space.” 9. Similar divisions within communication studies exist between symbolic and material approaches to the field. 10. Turner (1988) describes the “social drama” (p. 90) as “an eruption from the level surface of ongoing social life, with its interactions, transactions, reciprocities, its customs for making regular, orderly sequences of behavior.” In line with earlier analysis in this paper, the transactional-participatory approach emphasizes how social dramas are experienced by individuals in ways that threaten the sense of ontological security associated with life’s predictably ‘regular, orderly sequences of behavior.’
REFERENCES Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Becker, E. (1964). Revolution in psychiatry. New York: Free Press. Becker, H. (1973). Labelling theory reconsidered. In: Outsiders (pp. 177–212, rev. ed.). New York: Free Press. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional analysis in psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press. Borgmann, E. (1992). Crossing the postmodern divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bruner, J. (1985). Vygotsky: A historical and conceptual perspective. In: J. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, Communication, and Cognition (pp. 177–212). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bruner, J. (1986). The transactional self. In: Actual minds, possible worlds (pp. 57–69). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buber, M. (1970). I and thou. Walter Kaufmann (Trans.). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Burns, D. (1989). The feeling good handbook. New York: Plume. Carey, J. W. (1989). Communication as culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Denzin, N. (1987a). The alcoholic self. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Denzin, N. (1987b). The recovering alcoholic. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
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Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and nature. Chicago: Open Court Press. Dewey, J. (1958). Art as experience. New York: Capricorn Books. Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. (1949). Knowing and the known. Boston: Beacon Press. Earle, W. (1976). The death of culture into expertise. In: Public Sorrows and Private Pleasures (pp. 74–95). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Elmer, J. (2000). Blinded Me With Science: Motifs of Observation and Temporality in Lacan and Luhmann. In: W. Rasch & C. Wolfe (Eds), Observing Complexity (pp. 215–246). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Engestr¨om, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In: Y. Engestr¨om, R. Miettinen & R.-L. Punam¨aki (Eds), Perspectives on Activity Theory (pp. 19–39). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Eskola, A. (1999). Laws, logics, and human activity. In: Y. Engestr¨om, R. Miettinen & R.-L. Punam¨aki (Eds), Perspectives on Activity Theory (pp. 107–114). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. F´abrega, H. (1997). Evolution of sickness and healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frankfurt, H. (1997). The problem of action. In: A. Mele (Ed.), The Philosophy of Action (pp. 42–52). London: Oxford University Press. Friedman, M. (1985). The healing dialogue in psychotherapy. New York: Jason Aronson. Fry, T. (1993). RUA TV? Heidegger and the televisual. Sydney: Power Publications. Gergen, K. (1991). The saturated self. New York: Basic Books. Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Grinker, R., MacGregor, H., Selan, K., Klein, A., & Kohrman, J. (1961). Psychiatric social work: A transactional case book. New York: Basic Books. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. New York: Anchor. Habermas, J. (1990). The philosophical discourse of modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Healey, D. (1997). The antidepressant era. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press. Heaton, J. (1988). The other and psychotherapy. In: R. Bernasconi & D. Wood (Eds), The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other (pp. 5–14). New York: Routledge. Henrici, P. (1983). Towards an anthropological philosophy of communication. Communication Resource, 30(1), 1–4. Jamison, K. (1993). Touched with fire. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International. Jamison, K. (1995). An unquiet mind. New York: Knopf. Joas, H. (1985). George Herbert Mead: A contemporary re-examination of his thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Joas, H. (1993). Pragmatism and social theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Joas, H. (1996). The creativity of action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kaiser, A., Katz, R., & Shaw, B. (Eds) (1998). Cultural issues in the management of depression. In: S. Kazarian & D. Evans (Eds), Cultural Clinical Psychology (pp. 177–214). New York: Oxford. Kaufer, D., & Carley, K. (1993). Communication at a distance. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kleinman, A., Das, V., & Lock, M. (Eds) (1997). Social suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kleinman, A., & Good, B. (Eds) (1985). Culture and depression. Berkeley: University of California Press. Knodt, E. (1995). Foreward. In: N. Luhmann (Ed.), Social Systems (pp. ix–xxxvi). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kristeva, J. (1989). Black sun: Depression and melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press.
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´ Lacan, J. (1977). Ecrits. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Langs, R. (Ed.) (1998). Current theories of psychoanalysis. Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Lear, J. (1990). Love and its place in nature. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Levin, D. (1987). Psychopathology in the epoch of nihilism. In: D. Levin (Ed.), Pathologies of the Modern Self (pp. 21–84). New York: New York University Press. Levinas, E. (1987). Phenomena and enigma. In: Collected Philosophical Papers (pp. 61–73). Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Levinas, E. (1989). Martin Buber and the theory of knowledge. In: Se´an Hand (Ed.), The Levinas Reader (pp. 59–74). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Levinas, E. (1993). Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and philosophy. In: Outside the Subject (pp. 20–39). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (1986). The individuality of the individual: Historical meanings and contemporary problems. In: T. Heller, M. Sosna & D. Wellberry (Eds), Reconstructing Individualism (pp. 313–328). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (1990). The cognitive program of constructivism and a reality that remains unknown. In: W. Krohn, G. K¨uppers & H. Nowotny (Eds), Selforganization: Portrait of a Scientific Revolution (pp. 64–85). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Luhmann, N. (1992). Autopoiesis: What is communication? Communication Theory, 2(3), 251–258. Luhmann, N. (1994). How can the mind participate in communication? In: H. Gumbrecht & K. Pfeiffer (Eds), Materialisms of Communication (pp. 371–388). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Maranh˜ao, T. (Ed.) (1990). The interpretation of dialogue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCarthy, A. (2001). Ambient television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mead, G. H. (1964). The definition of the psychical. In: A. Rech (Ed.), Selected Writings (pp. 25–59). New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Miller, M., & Dorpat, T. (1998). Interactional psychoanalytic theory. In: R. Langs (Ed.), Current Theories of Psychoanalysis (pp. 1–30). Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Mitchell, J. (1986). Introduction. In: J. Mitchell (Ed.), The Selected Melanie Klein (pp. 9–34). New York: Free Press. Perry, D. (Ed.) (2001). American pragmatism and communication research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pols, E. (1975). Meditations on a prisoner. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Pols, E. (1982). The acts of our being. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Rasch, W., & Wolfe, C. (Eds) (2000). Observing complexity: Systems theory and postmodernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rosnow, R., & Georgondi, M. (1986). Contextualism and understanding in behavioral sciences. New York: Praeger. Ruesch, J., & Bateson, G. (1951). Communication: The social matrix of psychiatry. New York: Norton. Schacht, R. (1991). Philosophical anthropology: What, why, and how. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1(Supplement, Fall), 155–176. Schwanitz, D. (1995). Systems theory according to Niklas Luhmann – its environment and conceptual strategies. Cultural Critique (Spring), 137–170. Shweder, R. (1991). Thinking through cultures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Silverstone, R. (1994). Television and everyday life. New York: Routledge.
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Smith, D. L. (1998). The communicative approach. In: R. Langs (Ed.), Current Theories of Psychoanalysis (pp. 297–304). Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Spiegel, J. (1971). Transactions. New York: Science House. Spitzer, S., & Denzin, N. (Eds) (1968). The mental patient. New York: McGraw-Hill. Stoppard, J. (2000). Understanding depression. New York: Routledge. Strauss, C., & Quinn, N. (1997). A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Styron, W. (1990). Darkness visible: A memoir of madness. New York: Random House. Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Taylor, C. (1985). Hegel’s philosophy of mind. In: Philosophical Papers I: Human Agency and Language (pp. 77–96). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Tedlock, D., & Mannheim, B. (Eds) (1995). The dialogic emergence of culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Thompson, J. (1995). Media and modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Turner, V. (1988). The anthropology of performance. New York: PAJ Publications. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Watzlawick, P. (1984). The invented reality. New York: W. W. Norton. Wertsch, J. (1985a). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J. (1985b). Culture, communication, and cognition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Williams, R. (1961). The creative mind. In: The Long Revolution (pp. 3–40). New York: Columbia University Press. Winnicott, D. W. (1958). Collected papers: Through pediatrics to psycho-analysis. New York: Basic Books. Winnicott, D. W. (1989). Playing and reality. New York: Routledge. Woodward, W. (1996). Triadic communication as transactional-participation. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 13(2), 155–174. Woodward, W. (2000). Design/communication as mutual-personal creative action. Cultural Studies: A Research Annual, 5, 337–362. Woodward, W. (2001). Transactional philosophy and communication studies. In: D. Perry (Ed.), American Pragmatism and Communication Research (pp. 67–88). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Young, A. (1997). Suffering and the origins of traumatic memory. In: A. Kleinman, V. Das & M. Lock (Eds), Social Suffering (pp. 245–260). Berkeley: University of California Press.
VOICES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS: A DIALOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONIST MODEL Lawrence T. Nichols This article has two primary objectives: to provide a friendly critique of the constructionist understanding of social problems, and to sketch out a conceptual and methodological variant that moves in the direction of communication studies. I critique the original consructionist formulation on the grounds that it has a strong “monological” tendency, which I account for in terms of the influence of labeling theory. I refer to the proposed alternative as “dialogical constructionism” in order to highlight the centrality of communicative interaction among speakers (i.e. claimsmakers) and listeners (i.e. audiences, including counter-claimsmakers) at every point in the process of defining collective troubles. From this perspective, social problems are not merely the claimsmaking activities of aggrieved parties who identify allegedly harmful conditions and demand remedies; rather they are joint productions of extremely complex dialogues (direct and indirect) that involve both rhetorical playfulness and political power. In accordance with the theoretical framework of George Herbert Mead, I characterize the overall interplay of voices as a “generalized social problems dialogue” that sustains and modifies collective moral orders. This formulation immediately suggests that conversation analytic methodology offers valuable clues for development of a fully dialogical approach. Within the broader literature of communication studies, the dialogical perspective has been most forcefully advocated in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, who uses the term “dialogism.”1
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The central events to be discussed began in the mid-1970s, when Malcolm Spector and John I. Kitsuse introduced a symbolic-interactionist approach to the analysis of social problems, which they called “constructionism.” This term has proven to be problematic because it is widespread among interpretive sociologists generally, some of whom would prefer other names, such as ethnomethodologists or postmodernists. Indeed, David Maines (2001, p. 228) has recently argued that “the entire field of sociology has been a constructionist one for most of the twentieth century insofar as practicing sociologists look directly at social processes to find their explanations for societal configurations and arrangements.” Given the impossibility of dealing here with all interpretive perspectives, the discussion will focus primarily on the influential variant introduced by Spector and Kitsuse. Although these authors were influenced by a number of frameworks, including phenomenology, their approach is best characterized as symbolic interactionist. Indeed, Spector and Kitsuse explicitly testify to their close links to this theoretical tradition as it developed at the University of Chicago: . . . the underlying sociological theory that guides our approach to social problems has also guided a major orientation of research on occupations, symbolic interactionism . . . The interactionist view in the sociology of occupations is evident in the writings of Hughes (1971) and his followers. This body of literature provides us with theoretical analogies for our study of social problems (2001, pp. 74–75).
The Spector/Kitsuse approach has also been characterized as symbolic interactionist in a frequently-cited article by Hilgartner and Bosk (1988, p. 53). The importance of the Spector/Kitsuse approach is evident in its enduring popularity over three decades and in the wealth of scholarship it has inspired. Indeed, according to such expert commentators as Holstein and Miller (1993, p. 5), “The social constructionist perspective has been the most controversial – if not the most influential – development in social problems theory in the past twenty-five years.” Joel Best (1993, p. 131) has likewise asserted that the constructionist approach “has become a – perhaps the – leading school of social problems theory.” Further evidence of the relevance of this model is provided by the republication, in 2001, of the original Spector/Kitsuse treatise on the constructionist treatment of social problems.2 Constructionist scholars have illumined the definitional dynamics of social problems through researches on a broad range of issues: child abuse (Nelson, 1974; Pfohl, 1977); criminal prosecutions (Hagan, 1975); hyperkinesis (Conrad, 1975); corporate homicide (Swigert & Farrell, 1980); tobacco and smoking (Troyer & Markle, 1983); medical malpractice (Morrow, 1982); menopause (McCrea, 1983); battered women (Loseke, 1992; Loseke & Cahill, 1984); coffee drinking (Troyer & Markle, 1984); urban legends (Best & Horiuchi, 1985); learning disabilities (Erchak & Rosenfeld, 1989); rock ’n roll (Gray, 1989);
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immigration (Bilderback, 1989); missing children (Best, 1990); prostitutes’ rights (Jenness, 1993); homelessness (Spencer, 1994); the Japanese economic threat (Nichols, 1995); multicultural education (Nelson-Rowe, 1995); clergy sex offenders (Jenkins, 1996); psychotherapy (Miller, 1997); crime films (Nichols, 1999); and television talk shows (Lowney, 1999), among others.
CLAIMS AS MONOLOGUE OR DIALOGUE What I refer to as a “monological” tendency is clearly seen in Spector and Kitsuse’s definition of their central term: . . . we define social problems as the actions of individuals or groups making assertions of grievances and claims with respect to some putative conditions (2001, p. 75).
There is no mention here of audiences who hear such claims and grievances. The definition suggests that social problems are spoken into existence unilaterally by those who are especially aggrieved by perceived conditions of group life. Speakers are thus of primary importance, while listeners are not. There is likewise no reference to interactions between speakers and their audiences. To be fair, the authors do proceed to mention such issues. Thus, having introduced their definition of social problems, they sketch out a program of study: The central problem for a theory of social problems is to account for the emergence, nature, and maintenance of claimsmaking and responding activities (2001, p. 76).
This statement indicates a two-sidedness in the construction of problems, and may even be read as placing claimsmaking and responding on an equal basis. Spector and Kitsuse then briefly sketch out a much more complex network of participation in definitional activities that includes: . . . protest groups or moral crusaders who make demands and complaints; the officials or agencies to whom such complaints are directed; members of the media who publicize and disseminate news about such activities . . .; commissions of inquiry; legislative bodies and executive or administrative agencies that respond to claimsmaking constituents; members of the helping professions . . .; and sometimes, social scientists (2001, p. 79).
Despite its inclusiveness, however, this formulation still characterizes the speaking activity of claimsmakers and the responding activity of audiences as quite separate, rather than mutually interpenetrating aspects of the same action. Indeed, the statement suggests a temporal, two-phase model of behavior in which claimsmaking occurs first, and is then followed at some interval by positive or negative responses. The authors write as though the content of claims is finalized; they do not consider the possibility that audiences might influence claims or
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cause them to be modified in an open-ended process of mutual give and take. To a significant extent, the Spector-Kitsuse model presents a “litigious” metaphor in which claimsmaking resembles going to court (“officials,” “commissions of inquiry,” “adminstrative agencies,” etc.) with a lawsuit and eventually coming away with a favorable or unfavorable verdict. The image of the trial jury is also significant in this connection, for it suggests a relatively passive audience. In 1993, Kitsuse and Peter Ibarra offered a reformulation of the constructionist approach that focused on “vernacular constituents of moral discourse.” According to this proposal, sociologists should concentrate on the “condition-categories” used in defining problems. Condition-categories are . . . the terms used by members to propose what the social problem is “about.” As parts of a classification system, condition-categories are first and foremost units of language . . .. We intend condition-categories, then, to highlight the symbol- and languagebound character of claimsmaking, as well as how members’ facility with certain discursive strategies . . . initiate and constitute the social problems process (1993, pp. 30–31).
From this perspective, social problems are a “language game” or “a kind of articulation contest on the part of members to establish what the social problem is ‘really about’ ” (p. 31). The authors devote most of their discussion to examining several dimensions of social problems discourse: rhetorical idioms, counterrhetorics, motifs and claims-making styles. The Ibarra-Kitsuse formulation reaffirms Spector and Kitsuse’s earlier stance but takes a strong “rhetorical turn” toward textuality and away from the politics of interest groups. Consequently, the model says little about how participants listen to one another or how they collaboratively produce emergent definitions of social troubles. If this much be granted, the question naturally arises: How to account for the monological emphasis in the most influential constructionist formulations? One explanation lies in examining the derivation of the model, that is, its intellectual origins. As the discussion below will show, the constructionist view of social problems emerged from the popular labeling model of deviance and social control (also deeply rooted in symbolic interactionism). I shall argue that much of the logical structure of labeling theory is reproduced in constructionism.
Monological Tendencies in Labeling Theory According to its most prominent advocate, Howard S. Becker, the labeling perspective begins with the premise that deviance is not an inherent characteristic of behavior, but is rather a quality conferred upon behavior by social groups. Thus, for Becker (1963, 1964) and other proponents, the central question becomes
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the manner in which the attribute of deviance is imposed upon both behavior (e.g. smoking marijuana) and individuals (e.g. marijuana smokers). This is exactly parallel to Spector and Kitsuse’s later premise that social problems are not conditions per se (e.g. air containing industrial emissions), but rather definitions that are applied to conditions (e.g. that industrial emissions should be understood as harmful “pollution”). Like Spector and Kitsuse’s treatise, theoretical statements and empirical researches within the labeling perspective emphasized public arenas, especially the criminal courts, the juvenile justice system, schools, hospitals and mental institutions. Within such sites, relatively powerful groups (e.g. judges, psychiatrists) spoke deviance into being by authoritatively pronouncing individuals under their care or jurisdiction to be “criminal” or “insane.” Those subjected to such verdicts or diagnoses were portrayed as relatively powerless. Indeed, labeling theorists emphasized the “degradation ceremonies” (Garfinkel, 1956) and formal rituals that imposed longlasting “stigmas” (Goffman, 1963) upon labeled persons. Popular treatises such as Edwin Schur’s Crimes Without Victims (1965), attacked the arbitrariness of labeling, criticizing laws and policies dealing with abortion, homosexuality and drug use.3 Within this conceptualization, recipients of labels, as victims of discriminatory enforcement that spared privileged individuals or groups (e.g. middle-class lawbreakers), could hardly be equal partners in a dialogue with labelers. Indeed, labeling theorists (e.g. Lemert, 1967), generally asserted that those labeled would tend to internalize offical categories through self-labeling, and then act out the labels through careers of “secondary deviance.” In short, within the labeling model, speakers appear as all-powerful, while audiences are relatively passive victims. These two groups, moreover, are separated by chasms of social inequality, based especially on race and class.4
From Labeling Theory to Constructionism For present purposes, two considerations are particularly important: (1) John Kitsuse was a prominent proponent of the labeling perspective; and (2) the constructionist model of Kitsuse and Spector developed from labeling theory in a very self-conscious manner. Indeed, as will be seen below, Kitsuse and Spector articulated constructionism as a response to what they regarded as the contradictions and limitations of the labeling approach. Constructionism in its original form is thus both a departure from, and a continuation of, the labeling theory project. Indeed, both were seeking to slay the same dragon, namely, the functionalist perspective on deviance and social control (e.g. Parsons, 1951),
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and the functionalist perspective on social problems (e.g. Merton & Nisbet, 1976). Kitsuse was a contributor to one of the most important collections of essays defining labeling theory, The Other Side (1964). His article, “Societal Reaction to Deviant Behavior: Problems of Theory and Method,” moreover, proved to be influential and widely cited. Indeed, this analysis should be regarded as one of the classics of the labeling canon. Kitsuse begins by calling for a reorientation away from behavior per se to the process by which behavior is interpreted by others: I propose to shift the focus of theory and research from the forms of deviant behavior to the processes by which persons come to be defined as deviant by others. Such a shift requires that the sociologist view as problematic . . . that certain forms of behavior are per se deviant (1964, pp. 87–88).
In the spirit of the famous “Thomas theorem” about defining situations, Kitsuse also immediately asserts that intepretations have practical consequences:5 . . . deviance may be conceived as a process by which the members of a group, community, or society: (1) interpret behavior as deviant; (2) define persons who so behave as a certain kind of deviant; and (3) accord them the treatment appropriate to such deviants (1964, p. 88).6
This formulation does more than emphasize the importance of social reactions to behavior; it asserts that social responses constitute deviant behavior. As an illustration of this principle, Kitsuse cites the issue of homosexuality: . . . I shall proceed on the principle that it is only when individuals are defined and identified by others as homosexuals and accorded the treatment considered “appropriate” for individuals so defined that a homosexual “population” is produced (1964, p. 90).
Again like the “Thomas Theorem,” this “principle” expresses the pragmatist epistemology that pervades many writings in symbolic interactionism. What is especially noteworthy is how Kitsuse portrays labeling as monologue. One person or group acts, another interprets the action as improper, and then this observer unilaterally confers the character of deviance upon the action by engaging in “appropriate treatment.” The point of view of those being labeled is treated as irrelevant and ineffective. There is no consideration of the possibility that targets of definitional processes might “talk back” and initiate a dialogue that modifies observers’ perceptions. Labeling appears as omnipotent and always successful – indeed as exempt from the negotiation that underlies emergent meanings, according to symbolic interactionism (e.g. Blumer, 1969; Charon, 1997). For Kitsuse as labeling theorist, stigmatized persons and groups are objects, rather than self-actualizing subjects. This recalls a statement by Tannenbaum, whose analysis of “the dramatization of evil” was an important influence on labeling scholars:
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“The person becomes the thing he is described as being” (1973, p. 214, emphasis added).7 Eventually, Kitsuse moved away from labeling theory and began a collaboration with Malcolm Spector. In 1973, four years prior to their seminal treatise, Constructing Social Problems, these authors published two articles setting out the major themes of the constructionist model. The first, “Toward A Sociology of Social Problems: Social Conditions, Value-Judgments and Social Problems,” argued that sociology lacked a genuine conceptualization of social problems: As long as social problems is just another name for social disorganization, pathology, deviant behavior, value-conflict, or dysfunction, there is little hope that any theory of social problems will ever develop (1973a, p. 408).
After reviewing specific deficiencies in functionalist and value-conflict approaches, Kitsuse and Spector proposed that social problems be conceptualized as “the activities of groups making assertions of grievances and claims with respect to some putative conditions” (1973a, p. 415). On this premise, they argued, it would be possible to develop a sociological program “to account for the emergence and maintenance of claims-making and responding activities” (1973a, p. 415).8 What is most germane about this formulation is its explicit recognition of two-sided interaction in the definition of social problems. Indeed, had this dimension remained a focal point in the model, constructionism might have become dialogical from the outset. Kitsuse and Spector might have developed a series of propositions about the interplay of claims and responses, showing how each influenced the other and how both contributed to the emergence of collective perceptions of shared problems. They might have kept the perspectives and voices of claimsmakers and respondents clearly in view at all times. In a second 1973 article, “Social Problems: A Re-Formulation,” Kitsuse and Spector postulated a naturally occurring sequence in the process of claimsmaking: In Stage One, groups assert the existence and offensiveness of some condition. In Stage Two some official agency responds to the claims; in Stage Three claims and demands re-emerge, expressing dissatisfaction with the official response. In Stage Four alternative, parallel, or counter-institutions are established (Spector & Kitsuse, 1973b, p. 145).
This formulation has obvious potential for analyzing the interplay of communicative acts in definitional processes. Indeed, Stages One and Two, taken together, constitute an explicit dialogue between aggrieved speakers and official listeners.9 In 1975, Kitsuse and Spector published a third article bridging labeling theory and their emergent model of constructionism, “Deviance and Social Problems: Some Parallel Issues.” In this essay, the authors expressed respect for two
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approaches to social problems – value conflict and labeling – but concluded that these paradigms contained fatal contradictions. Kitsuse and Spector credited labeling and value conflict theory for correctly shifting the emphasis toward interpretive processes. They concluded, however, that this was not done in a completely consistent manner, for proponents of the two perspectives continually returned to the analysis either of rule breaking or of social conditions. For example, even such leading theorists as Becker and Lemert tended to speak as though some external stimulus (“primary deviance”) was required before labeling could occur. Kitsuse and Spector call this the “balanced view” which seeks to escape the criticism that labeling theory is radical subjectivism; and they condemn it for surrendering the insight of an interpretive approach: The balanced view suggests that definitions of social problems may be understood as reactions to conditions. This reduces the definition from a construction of reality, an accomplishment of members of the society, to a mere mechanical reaction to exterior forces. The integrity of the definitional process is sacrificed (Kitsuse & Spector, 1975, p. 589).
In sum, the writings of Kitsuse and Spector in the 1970s sometimes envision the process of defining social problems in dialogical terms. There is an explicit recognition of the complex interplay of communication among aggrieved claimsmakers and various (often official) respondents. Perhaps because of their continued acceptance of certain tenets of labeling theory, however, Kitsuse and Spector do not sustain a dialogical focus. Instead, they return to an emphasis on the utterances of claimsmakers, which leads toward a monological model of problem construction. Nevertheless, it is still possible to incorporate their valuable insights into a dialogical understanding.
DIALOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM The appearance of arguably monological features in constructionist writings suggests that the perspective has somewhat drifted away from symbolic interactionism, which from its earliest days has been explicitly dialogical.10 Thus, Charles H. Cooley’s (1907) famous conception of the “looking-glass self” immediately involves the interplay of perspectives, even within the most personal realm. In this treatment, one does not simply see oneself; rather, one sees others seeing oneself (e.g. I am successful because others congratulate me). The dialogical foundations of symbolic interactionism appear most clearly in the classic work of George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society (1962 [1934]). This is evident in Mead’s definitions of his central terms. “Mind” is an “internal
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conversation,” and thought always involves choice among possible actions, which requires that individual thinkers understand what potential acts mean both to themselves and to others: . . . when we speak of significant speech we always imply that the individual that hears a word does in some sense use that word with reference to himself . . . That is true of a person who makes use of significant speech to another. He knows and understands what he is asking the other to do, and in some sense is inviting in himself the response to carry out the process. The process of addressing another person is a process of addressing himself as well . . . (1962, p. 108).11
The operation of mind thus always has a double audience of the individual thinker and others to be addressed. The self as famously described by Mead consists of two components, the “I” (i.e. the free, spontaneous aspect) and the “me” (i.e. a set of internalized social roles). Thus, the self is also dialogical, for it is an ongoing conversation between the “I” and the “me.” As Mead says: The I both calls out the me and responds to it . . .. The self is essentially a social process going on with these two distinguishable phases (1962, p. 178).
The self has a multiplicity of internal audiences corresponding to the differentiated social roles that have been learned. Interestingly, Mead also argues that the moral development of the self leads to a conversation with the larger community about its collective well-being and problems. We are not simply bound by the community. We are engaged in a conversation in which what we say is listened to by the community and its response is one which is affected by what we have to say . . .. The process of conversation is one in which the individual has not only the right but the duty of talking to the community . . . and bringing about those changes which take place through the interaction of individuals (1962, p. 168).
This statement can be read as saying, in effect, that moral development involves individuals in social problems dialogue with a larger community.12 Society, in Mead’s well known phrase, is the “generalized other,” which he understood also as a dialogical process in the broadest sense. The principle which I have suggested as basic to human social organization is that of communication involving participation in the other. This requires the appearance of the other in the self, the identification of the other with the self, the reaching of self-consciousness through the other (1962, p. 253).
Thus, Mead portrayed society as a conversation among all members of human communities. A quarter-century after the publication of Mead’s seminal treatise, Erving Goffman developed a “dramaturgical” variant of symbolic interactionism that
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placed greatest emphasis upon an interaction order and face-to-face interaction. The dialogical dimension of Goffman’s works is most evident in his treatment of audiences, and of interaction between performers and audiences. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), which introduced the model, Goffman stressed that the apparently sharp distinction between performers and audiences is illusory. Audiences are not detached and passive; they are really silent partners, whose collaboration is necessary for the occurrence and success of performances. In Mead’s terms, audiences mentally take the role of performers, even as performers simultaneously take the role of their audiences. The resulting enactments (e.g. social roles) – even though they may seem to be the accomplishments of performers only – are actually joint productions based on mutual orientation and accommodation.
TOWARD DIALOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONISM Over the past two decades, as sociologists of social problems have become engaged with the constructionist perspective introduced by Spector and Kitsuse, a number of published works have pointed in a dialogical direction. For instance, in Threatened Children (1990), Joel Best introduced a sequential model of the process of social problems claimsmaking, based on the idea of three types of claimsmakers with distinct interests and agendas. “Primary” claimsmakers initiate the process by going public with grievances and demands that are often based on personal experience (e.g. the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving had lost a child to a drunk driver). “Secondary” claimsmakers are mass media organizations, as well as the makers of popular culture (e.g. novelists, motion picture producers), who learn about primary claims and subsequently broadcast them to wider audiences. Importantly, however, secondary claimsmakers do not simply repeat claims in their original form, but modify them for their own purposes, such as maximizing the number of viewers of televised programs or movies. For instance, they may highlight features of primary claims that have the greatest emotional impact (e.g. scandalous sexual details), or are most amenable to visual portrayals (e.g., the wreck of a car caused by a tire that manufacturers knew to be unsafe). The activity of secondary claimsmakers leads to the involvement of “tertiary” claimsmakers, that is, members of the general public who learn of claims via mass media and popular culture. Again, according to Best, these claimsmakers exercise initiative in reworking the messages they receive, consistent with their own interests and pre-existing attitudes, and they produce modified claims in such forms as rumor, gossip, urban legends and public opinion. Considered in terms of monologue and dialogue, Best’s model of sequential claimsmaking might be termed “indirect dialogue” among three distinctive types of voices.
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Social historian/sociologist Philip Jenkins has applied Best’s ideas in his research, and has developed a model of claimsmaking that emphasizes rational group interests and irrational “moral panics.” Thus, in Using Murder (Jenkins, 1994), his analysis of the social construction of serial homicide, Jenkins examines the activity of a broad range of claimsmakers and assesses the outcomes of their efforts. Official claimsmakers in the federal government, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he believes, became dominant in public discourse on serial murder and thus, in a sense, the “owners” of this social problem. Meanwhile, unofficial claimsmaker groups, including feminists, proponents of racial equality, and advocates of gay rights also became involved. All of these diverse groups, according to Jenkins, listened to one another’s claims. Indeed, they borrowed portions of others’ claims when such rhetorical materials suited their purposes (e.g. feminists made use of FBI claims that pornography causes sexual violence). In addition to these “primary” claimsmakers, Jenkins devotes considerable attention to “secondary” claimsmakers in the realm of popular culture. He examines the literature of crime novels and “true crime” magazines, as well as a series of “slasher films” depicting serial killers (e.g. “Halloween,” “Friday the Thirteenth”). These forms of claimsmaking are presented as sometimes closely linked to primary claims (as when The Silence of the Lambs incorporates the FBI’s belief in offender profiling techniques), and sometimes loosely linked (as when slasher films use nude scenes of teenage victims, in order to appeal to young filmgoers). Thus, in addition to the strategic dimension of claimsmaking (i.e. pursuit of the political agendas of interest groups), Jenkins recognizes also a non-strategic dimension (i.e. artistic expression) – a point to be developed below. Sociologist Valerie Jenness also provides a dialogically oriented model of claimsmaking in Making It Work (1993), her study of the movement for prostitutes’ rights in the 1970s and 1980s. The particular dialogic feature of this work is its emphasis upon the mutual influences among social movements. Thus, the later prostitutes’ rights movement borrowed both claimsmaking terminology (e.g. “the right to control one’s own body”) and tactics (e.g. types of argument, styles of advocacy) from earlier feminist crusades. In more recent research, Jenness (1995) has applied the same approach in order to show how feminist efforts to have rape officially classified as a “hate crime” were informed by the rhetoric of earlier movements. Thus, she portrays claimsmakers not only as speakers but also as active listeners who learn from the experiences of other claimsmakers. As in Best and Jenkins, claimsmakers become audiences for one another. While applying the logic of interest groups to the analysis of claims, Jenness also shows that apparently unitary groups can split into opposed factions. Thus, self-proclaimed feminists were sharply divided on many issues, such as the social consequences of erotica and pornography. Advocacy groups likes COYOTE (“Call
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Off Your Old Tired Ethics”) and PUMA (Prostitutes’ Union of Massachusetts) identified themselves as feminists and argued that prostitution could become an accepted profession comparable to other lines of work. In response, however, “cultural feminists” such as WHISPER and the International Feminist Network Against Sexual Slavery, denounced the “myth of choice,” the “myth of normalcy” and the “myth of professionalization” (Jenness, 1993, p. 77).13 James Holstein and Gale Miller have developed a frequently cited approach that they refer to as “social problems work.” Grounded in the writings of Durkheim on collective representations and moral communities, this model is also rooted in the ethnomethodological tradition of examining local sense-making practices and understanding the mundane world as an ongoing accomplishment. Holstein and Miller are supportive of the Ibarra-Kitsuse proposal, but they argue that it is not possible to study the “vernacular constituents of moral discourse” merely as rhetoric or a set of potential gaming moves. Instead, constructionist scholars need to examine “how social problem categories, once publicly established, are attached to experience in order to enact identifiable objects of social problems discourse” (1993, p. 152). This means that analysts should focus “on interaction, conversational practice, and interpretive resources in the diverse settings where instances of social problems might be identified” (1993, p. 154). Kathleen Lowney and Joel Best (1995) have also presented a dialogically oriented model of claimsmaking in their analysis of the social construction of the problem of “stalking.” What is particularly interesting about this treatment is its portrayal of a trial-and-error or learning process. According to the authors, early claims, which focused on ordinary women as victims and characterized offenses as “psychological rape” by acquaintances, failed to impress the general public. In a later phase, however, claimsmakers gained public support when they began to portray the problem as one of random violence against celebrity victims, for which the typifying example was the murder of actress Rebecca Shaeffer, who was killed by a deranged fan. During a third phase, claimsmakers succeeded in getting remedial legislation passed against the newly named “stalking” problem, as they linked the problem more and more closely with the already recognized problem of domestic violence. As this open-ended process unfolded, a variety of voices gained or lost influence, as reflected in mass media coverage. During the earlier phases, the voices of psychologists and law enforcement experts were especially prominent, whereas in the final phase the voices of feminist advocates gained hegemony. Donileen Loseke’s recent overview of the constructionist perspective, Thinking About Social Problems (1999) also moves in a dialogical direction. The author stresses the diversity of audiences that social problems claimsmakers address:
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While often times we hear the phrase, “the” American public, this is misleading because there are many types of people hearing/seeing social problems claims . . .. Different segments of the public read different kinds of magazines . . . watch different kinds of television programs . . .. Some people seek out social problems claims by attending public lectures, others don’t . . . (1999, p. 37).
Loseke also accords respondents a central role in determining the ontological status of potential problems. Simply stated, a social problem is created when audiences evaluate claims as believable (1999, p. 37).
By insisting that aggrieved claimsmakers cannot unilaterally “speak social problems into being,” this treatment restores a balance between claimsmakers and audiences that was implied at certain points in the original Spector-Kitsuse treatise. It is not yet a fully developed dialogical conception, because it tends to treat audiences largely as “juries” that pronounce favorable or unfavorable verdicts. There is no explicit consideration of processes through which audiences “talk back” to claimsmakers and persuade them to modify their assertions. Nevertheless, Loseke’s model provides one of the strongest statements of the importance of audiences in the genesis of social problems.
DIALOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONISM: AN OUTLINE The term dialogue, in everyday usage, often refers to scripted exchanges among characters in televised programs, movies or theatrical performances. Within communication studies, conversation analysis and related fields, however, dialogue has a broader meaning. As developed in the influential writings of linguistic philosopher Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “dialogicality” . . . covers a wide range of semantic phenomena. Its basic assumption is that spoken and written utterances can be adequately interpreted only if their interrelationships with other utterances are taken into consideration (Wertsch, 1990, p. 63).
In the discussion below, the terms dialogue and conversation will be used interchangeably. The three defining features of dialogical constructionism, as conceptual model and methodology, are: approaching social-problems claimsmaking as natural conversation; applying conversation-analytic methodology to capture the interplay of communicative acts; and understanding claimsmaking contextually. Let us now consider each of these features in turn, drawing upon recent work in several fields.
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Approaching Claimsmaking as Natural Conversation Multivocality and Inclusiveness The idea of voice adds an important dimension to the idea of “claimsmakers” that has dominated constructionist analyses of social problems. In this connection, the term “polyphony” as used by Bahktin (Morris, 1994) is most appropriate. As one communications scholar has put it: In Bakhtin’s account, the notion of utterance is inherently linked with that of voice, which refers to “the speaking personality, the speaking consciousness” . . . it [applies] to written as well as spoken communication and [is] conceived with the broader issue of a speaking subject’s perspective, belief system, intention and world view in mind (Wertsch, 1990, p. 72).
Voices of victim rage, scientific expertise, political ideology, official legalism, religious piety, artistic imagination, even comic irreverence, all enter the polyphony of social problem discourse. Diversity of voice implies diversity of perspective, and so the recognition of multivocality facilitates perspectival understanding of the dynamics of social problems. Such understanding has long been fundamental within the symbolic interactionist perspective. As Herbert Blumer articulated this principle three decades ago: . . . the position of symbolic interactionism requires the student to catch the process of interpretation through which [people] construct their actions . . .. To catch the process, the student must take the role of the acting unit (1972, p. 151).
Blumer might also have quoted the earlier writings of Charles H. Cooley, who spoke eloquently of the methodological principle of “sympathetic understanding.” Having recognized the wide range of voices in social problems discourse, dialogical constructionists must also acknowledge many nuances of expression that escape detection when attention is restricted to the literal aspect of claims. Everyday experience, as well as the professional literatures of conversation analysis and communication studies, show clearly that the meaning of statements varies with pitch, inflection and tone of voice. As communication scholar Malcolm Coulthard (1992, p. 36) has noted, “There is no disagreement that speakers can vary independently tempo, loudness, pitch, and voice quality, and thereby alter aspects of the meaning of their utterances.” Like professional singers or dramatic actors, social problems claimsmakers and responding audiences utilize the full range of vocal resources. Some of these issues become clearer when we return to a fundamental question: Who are claimsmakers? The Spector-Kitsuse formulation seems ambivalent on this question. At certain points claimsmakers appear as ordinary folk dealing with the concerns of everyday life. This portrait is clearest when Spector and Kitsuse
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(and also Ibarra and Kitsuse) refer to “members” and “members’ practices.” At other points, claimsmakers are moral crusaders who devote their time and energies to fighting for social change. Spector and Kitsuse also seem to distinguish claimsmakers from ordinary persons when they argue that the sociology of work provides a useful model for social problems theory, and that claimsmakers are comparable to occupational specialists. The study of work and occupations is relevant in another way: social problems activities are the work of many people – journalists, doctors, politicians, social workers, consumer advocates, and union organizers. Many aspects of social problems may be approached through the study of the people who work in various stages of the process of creating social problems (2001, p. 75).
There is also an ambivalence on the issue of whether claimsmakers are directly aggrieved parties (e.g. those who see themselves as victims of discrimination) or may be more disinterested activists (e.g. those enjoying middle-class privileges who desire to expand opportunities for others). Which of these usages is emphasized matters greatly in terms of both theory and empirical research. In many constructionist studies, there has been a strong tendency to regard claimsmakers as moral crusaders. Illustrations include the leaders of the movements to protect battered women (Loseke & Cahill, 1984), to control rock ’n roll music (Gray, 1989), to eliminate cigarette smoking (Troyer, 1989); to rescue kidnapped children (Best, 1990), to decriminalize prostitution (Jenness, 1993); to establish fathers’ rights (Williams & Williams, 1995); to resist factory farming (Kunkel, 1995); and to accept one’s size and body weight (Sobal, 1999). Other constructionist researches have focused on powerful claimsmakers, especially in mass media, who have allegedly defined numerous contemporary problems. Thus, a sizable literature has examined how media organizations, including mass circulation newspapers and television programs, have constructed the problem of crime, including both street crime (e.g. Barak, 1995; Potter & Kappeler, 1998; Surette, 1992) and white-collar violations (e.g. Swigert & Farrell, 1980; Wright, Cullen & Blankenship, 1996), as well as crime waves (e.g. Fishman, 1978; Nichols, 1997). Other researchers have concluded that mass media have dominated discourse about such problems as environmental pollution (Schoenfeld, Meier & Griffin, 1979), or that media organizations created “moral panics” about such issues as drugs (Reinarman & Levine, 1989). In the same way, some studies have focused on the alleged ability of powerful professional groups, especially in medicine, to construct such problems as child abuse (Pfohl, 1977), menopause (McCrea, 1983) and learning disabilities (Erchak & Rosenfeld, 1989). This approach may be partly attributed to the continuing influence of the concept of “moral entrepreneurs” that became popular among labeling theorists as a result of Becker’s Outsiders. Deviance, according to this analysis, requires rules, which
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in turn require advocates: “Rules are the product of someone’s initiative and we can think of the people who exhibit such enterprise as moral entrepreneurs” (1963, p. 147). Thus, there is a logical parallel between the activity of moral entrepreneurs who create new types of deviance and the activity of claimsmakers who “discover” new categories of social problems. As portrayed by Becker, the moral entrepreneurs whose activism produces new rules (e.g. laws against alcohol and marijuana use) are not ordinary citizens. To begin with, they have a different sensibility, being “fervent and righteous, often self-righteous” (1963, p. 148). More importantly, however, they enjoy exceptional status and power based on social class divisions. As Gusfield says, “Moral reformism of this type suggests the approach of a dominant class toward those less favorably situated in the economic and social structure.” Moral crusaders typically want to help those beneath them to achieve a better status. But this fact – that moral crusades are typically dominated by those in the upper levels of the social structure – means that they add to the power they derive from the legitimacy of their moral position, the power they derive from their superior position in society (Becker, 1963, p. 149).
Thus, to the extent that social problem claimsmakers are modeled on moral entrepreneurs, they will likewise appear as exceptional in terms of power and influence. But how representative are such claimsmakers of the total universe of those who discourse about social problems? A good case can be made that they are a minority, and very likely a small minority. As was noted above in the discussion of Mead’s theory, the creation of a social self involves participation in collective moral discourse. From this perspective, virtually all members of society who are not severely impaired are social problems claimsmakers. By the same logic, claimsmaking is a part of everyday life, not a rare or short-lived event like a social movement. As Holstein and Miller observed, members of society “engage in social problems work as an aspect of their ordinary conversation” (1993, p. 154). In short, everyday claimsmaking is an activity necessary for the maintenance and modification of shared moral orders. If all competent members of society are social problems claimsmakers, we must conceptualize claimsmaking as an extremely complex, ongoing dialogue or “natural conversation.” This can also be thought of as a “generalized social problems dialogue” (Nichols, 2000b). Within this broad discourse, there are more specialized dialogues about selected issues, some of which take the form of social movements and become highly visible for relatively short periods of time. But if we limit our focus, especially in research, to individual claimsmaking campaigns (i.e. how problem A was constructed, how problem B was created, etc.), we lose sight of the larger dynamic in which they occur – the dynamic that sustains and modifies collective moral orders.
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Adversarial and Non-Adversarial Modalities Constructionist researches have often treated claimsmaking as a struggle, on the grounds that there must be winners and losers in a “social problems marketplace” (Best, 1990) or in “definitional contests” (Nichols, 1989, 1991) or in a “social problems game” (Loseke, 1999). The most fully developed statement of adversarial claimsmaking is Hilgartner and Bosk’s “public arenas model”: Our model stresses the “arenas” where social problem definitions evolve . . . we focus on competition: we assume that public attention is a scarce resource, allocated through competition in a system of public arenas (1988, p. 55).
The same competitive emphasis appears in Ibarra and Kitsuse’s “language gaming” reformulation (1993). Although an adversarial or zero-sum view of claimsmaking is often appropriate and has yielded valuable insights in research, it does not cover the full range of claimsmaking activities. A holistic dialogical model would recognize not only instrumental-strategic claimsmaking but also an expressive, non-strategic type. In this connection, communication scholar Deborah Schiffrin’s conceptual distinction between “rhetorical” and “oppositional” argument is helpful. We define rhetorical argument as discourse through which a speaker presents an intact monologue supporting a disputable position; we define oppositional argument as discourse through which one or more speakers support openly disputed positions (1994, p. 37).
The existing body of constructionist research on social problems has generally emphasized “oppositional argument” without paying comparable attention to “rhetorical argument.” The relevance of an expressive mode of claimsmaking is apparent in everday life, where people often communicate positions on controversial topics without attempting to convert others. Two friends, for example, might have a long chat that touches on such issues as crime and capital punishment but which tolerates differences of opinion. In the same way, social issues organizations may devote themselves to educating the public without trying to “defeat” any particular enemy. Makers of popular culture also address contemporary social problems in non-adversarial ways, such as in motion picture comedies about children “home alone” or inspirational films about courageous whistleblowers who expose corporate wrongdoing (e.g. “Erin Brockovich” and “The Insider”). Professional comics likewise exploit social problems for commercial purposes without seeking to control a social-problems marketplace or win a social-problems game. Members of the public routinely engage in many forms of expressive claimsmaking, from telling social-problem jokes (Lowney & Best, 1996) and repeating rumors, urban legends and stereotypes (Fine, 1980; Jenkins, 1996) to displaying social-problems
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tee-shirts, body art, buttons and bumper stickers, and playing controversial music (Gray, 1989). Indeed, it is quite likely true that most claimsmaking, especially informal claimsmaking, is expressive rather than instrumental. To be sure, this distinction is one of degree and not an absolute dichotomy, and many discourses undoubtedly contain elements of both types of claimsmaking. Nevertheless, a sensitivity to non-adversarial modes of claimsmaking would lead to findings about many patterns of communication that have been overlooked in the constructionist literature on social problems. Inequalities among Participants Viewing discourse about social problems as multivocal dialogue among a range of interest groups does not preclude recognition of significant differences in the power and prestige of the participants. Just as in everyday conversation some speakers dominate interaction as a result of their social position (e.g. parents, supervisors) or the force of their personalities, so also in social problems discourse some parties enjoy advantages. Claimsmakers in the federal government, for instance, have easy access to mass media that ensures broad coverage of their definitions. In the same way, wealthy lobbies can inundate elected officials with privately-sponsored research that frames problems in accordance with lobbyists’ own interests. Within the field of communication studies, scholars like Nancy Fraser have focused on the effects of inequality in conversation and argument. In particular, Fraser . . . contributes scepticism to dialogic rationalism, scepticism about access to argument, about the effects of context on outcome. People and groups do not start equal in an argument, particularly where cultural, political and economic considerations enter – and how could pure reason alone achieve equality? . . . How did these voices get into this arena? How did this voice get to sound so confident, that voice so defensive? Why are the audience listening to that person, not this one? (Meyerson, 1994, p. 102).
Indeed, in studying the construction of social problems in complex societies, dialogical analysts should assume that there will always be significant disparities among claimsmakers. A word of caution, however, is also necessary, for advantages in resources and social position do not guarantee success. History is replete with instances of empires and totalitarian states where the social-problems claims of ruling elites ultimately failed to gain popular assent.
Applying Conversation-Analytic Methodology Approaching social-problem claimsmaking as naturally occurring dialogue about the moral order requires a corresponding methodology, for which the best models
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may be found in the interdisciplinary fields of conversation analysis and communication studies. Indeed, in the past decade, symbolic interactionists such as Boden (1990, p. 265) have increasingly called attention to the affinities of these academic specialties: Symbolic interactionists and conversation analysts travel together . . . along a route that examines the intertwining of meaning, shared symbols, joint action, and social order.
Although this may be the most challenging aspect of developing a dialogical constructionist model, the difficulties must be accepted; for the only alternative is continued reliance on the monological methodology found in many researches. By monological methodology, I mean an emphasis on analyzing the utterances of claimsmakers apart from the interactions in which these utterances occur. For example, researchers may focus their attention on identifying the key terms, dominant motifs and rhetorical devices (e.g. Ibarra & Kitsuse, 1993) of particular advocacy groups. This may lead to such findings as chronologies of new terminologies (e.g. “second-hand smoke,” “glass ceiling,” “Y2K computer threat”), as was indeed suggested by Spector and Kitsuse in their 1977 treatise. In the same way, analysts may examine shifts in the thematic content of social-problems claims over some period of time. For example, earlier mass-media accounts framed AIDS as a “gay plague,” while later stories portrayed the disease as a threat to all members of society (Albert, 1989). From the perspective of dialogical constructionism, the trouble with these techniques is that they do not go far enough. The first requirement of a dialogical methodology is to move beyond the separate utterances of individual claimsmakers in order to capture the interplay among communicative acts in the larger discourse. Like ordinary conversations in everyday life, social-problem conversations among an array of interested parties are “joint productions.” This point has been well articulated by communication scholar Deborah Tannen: The theoretical perspective I have in mind is . . . the notion that conversation is a ‘joint production.’ The bulk of research in this vein has emphasized the active role of the listener in interpreting and shaping a speaker’s discourse . . . But the point of ‘joint production’ or ‘intertextuality’ goes further than that. Not only is the audience a co-author, but the speaker is also a co-listener. On the deepest level, Bakhtin . . . and Voloshinov . . . argue that no utterance, no word can be spoken without echoing how others understand and have used it (1989, p. 12).
Other recent scholars concur with this approach: The authors of this volume share an interactionist perspective and an epistemological view which may be referred to as dialogism . . .. The basic unit of analysis for these authors, as it was for Mead (1934), is the communicative act. The meaning of an act, for Mead, was the nature of the response it elicits from others (Farr & Rommetveit, 1995, p. 264).
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Understanding social-problems claimsmaking and the emergent images of issues that arise therefrom as joint productions would reorient scholarly work and generate a new professional literature. Such a literature would differ also from typical conversation analytic studies in important ways. Much of the existing literature in conversation analysis examines spoken interaction that is direct, continuous, face-to-face and relatively short-term. The larger social-problems conversation, by contrast, involves communications that are often indirect, intermittent, not face-to-face, and relatively long-term. For example, discourse about the issue of environmental pollution involves interaction among such groups as academics, legislators and governmental regulators, the business sector, mass media, and non-profit advocacy organizations. Some of these communicate directly with one another, while others communicate indirectly through mass media. There are, moreover, periods of intensive communication, such as those following publicized scientific findings (e.g. the hole in the earth’s ozone layer) or disasters (e.g. the emission of deadly radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant). At other times, interaction may diminish. A further distinction concerns the topic of “turn taking” that has often been a particular focus of investigation in the literature on conversation analysis. Although alternation of speaking and listening is indeed a fundamental pattern in everyday conversation, the larger social-problems dialogue is not so neatly structured. There are, to be sure, some comparable patterns, as when Congressional committees allocate time to witnesses from opposed points of view and include the testimony of these parties in the transcripts of hearings. Mass media organizations likewise follow such practices as on-air rebuttals and the provision of “op-ed” pages to opponents of a paper’s editorial stance. Sometimes these turn-takings are highly ritualized, as when a representative of the opposed political party delivers a televised response to the President’s annual “state of the union” address (which always contains social-problem claims). These considerations touch upon a frequently neglected issue, namely, the location of claimsmaking activity in particular arenas. Although there are societal and global arenas defined by mass media networks, much claimsmaking occurs in more limited and specialized settings. Such locales may be based upon territory (e.g. local, state, regional), or occupation (e.g. forums for managerial viewpoints versus forums for social science critiques of business), or group interests (e.g. conferences on aging, or children living in poverty), or ideology (e.g. churches that talk about welfare reform from liberal or conservative standpoints), as well as combinations of these (e.g. the newsletter of a national association of feminist sociologists). Some of these are relatively insulated, while others are more attentive to the messages of other claimsmaker groups.
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Dialogical constructionists must begin by tracing communication links among arenas, which involves developing indicators of reception of messages and responses to them, as well as the consequences of the responses. For example, many groups make claims about “white-collar crime,” including academics in social science and management education. One useful indicator would therefore be mutual citations in the professional literatures of these fields, as well as abstracting practices (e.g. the selection of sources for Sociological Abstracts, etc.). These may reveal mutual listening or important differences in the degree of attentiveness (Nichols, 2000a), as well as trends (e.g. sociologists now cite management literature more frequently than they did a decade ago). Another indicator of communication across arenas is adoption of terminology originally used in a different setting. For example, the term “homophobia” that was created by gay-rights advocates has been applied in numerous specialized arenas (e.g. workplaces, schools) that were not part of the gay rights movement. The term “hate crime” has spread even more widely. Such borrowings, adoptions and diffusions of terms are analogous to the “echoes of other utterances” that Bakhtin considered characteristic of dialogue. Therefore, capturing the ways in which arena-based claimsmakers speak and listen to one another, and selectively use one another’s languages will illumine how claims emerge as “joint productions.” Dialogical constructionists can also focus on sequential patterns of communication across claimsmaking arenas, such as a progression from activist groups to mass media to public opinion (Best, 1990). There are also more complex patterns in need of examination. For instance, in the early 1970s New York City detective Frank Serpico took his claims about police corruption to mass print media, which broadcast them to the general public. This action resulted in a formal inquiry and an official report that were likewise publicized as news. Meanwhile, an investigative journalist published a biography of Serpico that became the basis for a popular motion picture. At the same time, academics in criminology, criminal justice and management education incorporated the Serpico story into the social-problems claims in their professional writings. Eventually, as a result of the interplay of these claims, Serpico was transformed from an individual activist into a generalized symbol of ethical resistance to organizational corruption (Nichols, 2001).
Understanding Claimsmaking Contextually Spector and Kitsuse (2001 [1977]) and Ibarra and Kitsuse (1993) assert that constructionist studies of social problems should avoid contextual analysis. The rationale for this position is epistemological: sociologists can arrive at valid
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knowledge of social-problem claims through linguistic analysis, but they lack the broad range of competencies necessary to attain similarly valid knowledge of context. Furthermore, all investigations of contexts, in their view, lead back toward the traditional approach to the sociology of social problems, namely, the study of conditions rather than the examination of definitional activities. In order to make a clean break with tradition, Spector and Kitsuse (2001, p. 76) go so far as to assert that the existence or non-existence of alleged conditions is irrelevant in constructionist researches. Some constructionists, who have become known as “contextual constructionists,” have dissented from this dogma, on two grounds: (1) that the Spector/Kitsuse methodological program is impossible in practice; and (2) that sociologists should care about the truth or falsity of social problem claims. Thus, criticizing the proposed exclusive focus on language, Joel Best (1993, p. 141) has observed: “The language of claims does not exist independently of the social world; it is a product of – and influence on – that world.” Best likewise rejects the argument that sociologists cannot assess the validity of social problem claims, such as those about satanism and AIDS: Contextual constructionists study claims-making within its context of culture and social structure. In practice, this means that an analyst may doubt claims that satanists sacrifice sixty thousand victims annually . . . while generally accepting the Center for Disease Control’s figures for the number of AIDS victims (1993, p. 139).
In the same vein, Gubrium has advocated a “cautious naturalism” that sees socialproblems claimsmaking as always “embedded in a context of interpretation” (1993, p. 99) that must be examined if claimsmaking is to be understood. Dialogical constructionists must concur with the contextualists in this debate, for as an extensive literature in conversation analysis and communication studies shows, the utterances of interlocutors acquire meaning only within interaction contexts. As Wardhaugh (1985, p. 101) puts it: It is just impossible to say what most utterances mean, or what their intent is, without having some knowledge of the situations in which they occur. That context includes not merely the linguistic one . . . but also the surrounding physical context, previous conversations between the participants, relevant aspects of their life histories, the general rules of behaviour the parties subscribe to . . . and so on. Only by acknowledging that all these factors contribute to the meaning of a particular utterance . . . can we hope to understand what is going on when one person says something to another.
Indeed, everyday experience is replete with instances where direct quotes, taken “out of context,” lead to misunderstanding and conflict. There is a further implication here as well: the “strict constructionist” program of Spector-Kitsuse and Ibarra-Kitsuse cannot be carried out because claims
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cannot be decoded without contextual information. The clinching evidence for this argument is the presence, within claims, of contextual references, including references to persons who are not present and events that transpired earlier. Such references are often partial, shorthand or elliptical, as for example, in the headlines used in mass media coverage. Thus, a news story may claim that a current political scandal (e.g. the Enron bankruptcy) is similar to “the savings-and-loan disaster of the late 1980s,” or an expert commentator may connect a new incident of political violence with “Khomeini’s Islamic revolution.” Social problems claimsmakers, in other words, routinely take it for granted that their audiences will apply appropriate contextual knowledge in understanding the messages they transmit. Types of Context Although, as noted above, some constructionist scholars have applied a contextual approach in their researches, there has been no generally accepted typology of contexts. Here I can only sketch out some conceptual distinctions that may prove useful in empirical work. 1. Internal vs. External. Although context is usually considered external to the claimsmaking under analysis, it should be kept in mind that there is also an internal variety. By internal context, I mean other portions of claimsmaking discourse that have relevance for understanding particular utterances. For example, claims about political violence in the Middle East made by the governments of Israel or Iran become clearer when they are compared with previous official statements. Do the new declarations represent a harder line or a more conciliatory position? Do they indicate a shift in official thinking about causes and possible solutions? In short, claimsmakers’ voices often contain echoes of earlier pronouncements that reflect an internal dialogue. 2. Spatiotemporal contexts. Social problems claims often occur within specific settings that are broader than the “arenas” discussed above. These may be organized in terms of levels, from local to state and regional, national, international and global. For example, police corruption is often debated at the local level, while loss of manufacturing capacity has a regional focus (the “rust belt”), and invasion of privacy is treated as a national affair. Industrial pollution has long been seen as an international problem, while the alleged “greenhouse effect” is a global matter. In a similar way, claimsmaking is located in temporal contexts. Some of these are relatively short-term (e.g. the decade of the 1960s, the Iranian revolution of 1979), while others encompass longer historical periods (e.g. the era of slavery or the age of absolute monarchy) or intermediate units (e.g. the Jazz Age or the Cold War). These are comparable to, but more general than, the occasions of claimsmaking noted earlier.
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3. Sociocultural contexts. Social problems claims are always embedded in established social and cultural structures, and “make sense” within these settings. For example, claims about the danger of massive computer failures in the year 2000 are only comprehensible within societies where science and technology are highly developed. In the same way, claims that crops have failed because the gods are angry make sense only within very religious cultures. Claims of “creeping capitalism” or “creeping socialism” have meaning only within societies characterized by these economic systems. Complaints about medical or financial malpractice fit societies where professions and the legal rights of consumers are recognized. In some cases, the relation between larger sociocultural contexts and socialproblem claims may be relatively loose. For example, assertions that human rights have been violated may occur in democratic or autocratic political systems, in highly religious or highly secular cultures. In other cases, however, particular contexts are absolute prerequisites for the construction of certain social problems. For instance, as Fine (1997) has argued, before there could be a “problem of Hollywood” defined by events like the Fatty Arbuckle case of the 1920s, there first had to be a movie industry with production studios, a distribution network, and a star system. Perspectives of Members and Analysts A primary objective of Spector and Kitsuse was to reorient the sociology of social problems away from the perspective of detached experts and toward the perpsectives of members of society who engage in claimsmaking. Our definition of social problems cannot be applied by the sociologist without regard to the perspective of the participants who make and respond to claims. That is, the definition does not provide sociologists with a set of criteria that will enable them, “from the outside,” to differentiate claims-making from non-claims-making activities . . . our definition requires that sociologists ascertain how participants in an activity define that activity (2001, p. 79).
Ibarra and Kitsuse (1993, p. 32), in their re-articulation of the constructionist approach, intensify this focus on the perceptions of members and repudiate scientific privilege: In sum, social problems discourse is open-ended, its “aboutness” being contingent upon the courses taken by members’ practical theorizing on moral order . . .. We conceive of social problems as “idiomatic productions” to accentuate their status as members’ accomplishments as well as to emphasize the sense in which scientific standards of rationality . . . cannot be used by the analyst to coherently describe the features of claims-making activities.
At other points, these authors sharply distinguish between the “practical project” of claimsmakers and the “theoretical project” of sociologists.
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Applied to the issue of context, the Spector/Kitsuse and Ibarra/Kitsuse formulations clearly imply that sociologists must work only with definitions of context generated by members. From the perspective of dialogical constructionism, however, there is no need to accept these strictures. Indeed, as Schneider (1993, p. 111) has observed in his critique of strict constructionism, the dualism of members and analysts may be an illusion. While the constructionist text seeks to direct our attention to members as other than analysts, it simultaneously undermines this distinction by its very language: Both analysts and members are shown to be interpreters, observers, and, as such, the status of their interpretive accomplishments is inevitably and always already mixed rather than segregated.
Another way of putting the matter would be to respect the voices of both claimsmaking members and sociological analysts. Where context is concerned, claimsmakers (other than sociologists) might postulate such settings as “the Final Days” (e.g. by millennialists) or “global capitalism” (by the Socialist Workers Party). Sociologists, meanwhile, might locate social problems claims within “the decaying Sensate culture” (Sorokin), or “post-industrial society” (Bell), or “patriarchy” (feminists). Denying social scientists an absolute privilege to interpret events does not require that they be denied the use of the discipline-based concepts that are their own “vernacular resources.” These also deserve respect.
CONCLUSION Proceeding from the assumption that the constructionist model introduced by Spector and Kitsuse represented the major symbolic-interactionist approach to social problems, this paper has criticized the limitations of the Spector/Kitsuse formulation and has sketched out an alternative. The discussion has also shown that a dialogical constructionist approach has great potential for strengthening the linkages between sociology and such fields as communication studies and conversation analysis. The timeliness and relevance of the approach have also been demonstrated through a review of recent work in the sociology of social problems that has moved in this direction. Dialogical constructionism is both a departure and a return. It hearkens back to the writings of George Herbert Mead about dialogue as the basis of moral order, and the insights of Erving Goffman on the agency of audiences. It also recognizes and respects the dialogical aspects of the Spector/Kitsuse treatise on social problems as claimsmaking, as well as the contributions of Ibarra and Kitsuse on social problems as language games.
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The promise and the challenge of the approach is holistic understanding of social problems discourse. In its respect for diversity of voice, dialogical constructionism points toward greater inclusiveness that ultimately encompassses all members of society (and beyond). By recognizing both instrumental and expressive modes of claimsmaking, moreover, the perspective invites analysts to examine multiple dimensions of interaction. By acknowledging diverse definitions of context, the model calls for more nuanced interpretations of the embeddedness of emergent meanings.
NOTES 1. For an overview of Bakhtin’s ideas, see the following: Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (New York: Routledge, 1991); The Dialogic Imagination (Ed.), Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1990); The Bakhtin Reader (Ed.), Pam Morris (Arnold, 1997). 2. The constructionist approach of Spector and Kitsuse has been subjected to numerous critiques, both friendly and hostile. Thus, an influential article by Woolgar and Pawluch (1985) questioned the logic of explanation in some constructionist studies, arguing that the boundaries of reality were arbitrarily shifted through “ontological gerrymandering.” In the Holstein and Miller volume, Reconsidering Social Constructionism (1993), Peter Ibarra and John Kitsuse generously provided their theoretical paper as a focus for discussion. In response, some authors (Best, 1989; Bogen & Lynch, 1993; Gubrium; Holstein & Miller; Marlaire & Maynard, 1993; Pollner, 1993; Schneider; Troyer, 1993) generally supported the constructionist project. Other contributors, however, faulted constructionism from the perspectives of Marxism (Agger, 1993), feminism (Gordon, 1993), postmodernism (Pfohl, 1993) or rhetorical analysis (Brown, 1993; Hazelrigg, 1993; Richardson, 1993). For present purposes, it is noteworthy that none of the above commentators focused on the issue of monological versus dialogical claimsmaking. 3. Despite the pragmatist underpinnings of the labeling perspective, there is a strong resemblance here to Durkheim’s emphasis on “externality and constraint” as the features of all “social facts,” including the facts of crime, deviance and mental illness. See his Rules of Sociological Method. 4. Labeling theory flourished shortly before the feminist movement emerged in the late 1960s, and this chronology helps to explain its neglect of gender issues. 5. The “Thomas theorem” (a term coined by Robert K. Merton) refers to the proposition that if people define situations as real, then the situations have real consequences. See W. I. Thomas & Dorothy S. Thomas, The Child in America (New York: Knopf, 1928). On the neglect of Dorothy S. Thomas, see Robert S. Smith, “Contested Memory: Notes on Robert K. Merton’s ‘The Thomas Theorem and the Matthew Effect,”’ The American Sociologist, 30(2) (Summer 1999), 62–77. 6. This formulation ironically resembles the functionalist perspective that labeling theorists repudiated, insofar as it speaks as though members of groups automatically conform to shared norms – here, automatically according “appropriate” treatment for specific types of deviants.
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7. Erving Goffman’s work is a mixed case. While his book Stigma was an important contribution to the labeling canon, other writings, especially Asylums, go beyond the analysis of objectification of persons and show how even stigmatized individuals, such as those committed to mental hospitals, maintain an ability to negotiate the terms of their identity. 8. In a sense, this formulation echoes the famous distinction made by Simmel between “form” and “content,” as well as Simmel’s insistence that sociology should focus on the forms of interaction, rather than their contents. In effect, Kitsuse and Spector are saying that the sociology of social problems had mistakenly concentrated on the content of problems (e.g. facts about the prevalence of poverty), while neglecting the forms of interaction that generate or constitute problems (that is, definitions of situations). In this connection, it is important to recall that Simmel was a revered figure in sociology at the University of Chicago, whose writings influenced such Chicago scholars as Albion Small, Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, Everett C. Hughes, and Erving Goffman. Interestingly, at Harvard, Simmel’s sociological ideas were not well received, which partly accounts for certain debates between sociologists from the two universities (e.g. process versus structure). See L. T. Nichols, “Parsons and Simmel at Harvard: Scientific Paradigms and Organizational Culture,” pp. 1–28 in Talcott Parsons Today (Ed.), Javier Trevino (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). 9. The “natural history” model of social problems is another indication of the affinity of Kitsuse and Spector’s emergent approach with much work in the “Chicago School” of sociology, especially research by Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and their students. 10. For present purposes, I leave aside the issue of whether Herbert Blumer’s term “symbolic interactionism” is adequate or best characterizes the thought of George Herbert Mead and other theorists such as Charles H. Cooley. 11. Mead’s use of masculine pronouns would today be considered sexist by many, but there does not seem to be a convenient way of rephrasing this and similar citations. Therefore I quote Mead’s original words, with apologies. 12. In the same way that Mead’s famous analysis of play illumines the formation of a self in childhood, this process of moral dialogue with a larger community may illumine the emergence of an adult self. If so, then engaging in social problems dialogue may be related to the phases of intellectual and moral development postulated by Piaget, Erik Erikson & Kohlberg, etc. 13. The self-presentation claims of participants in social-problems dialogues have not received a great deal of attention in the professional literature, despite the evident importance of this issue.
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RETHINKING CONSTRUCTIONIST AGENCY: CLAIMSMAKERS AS CONDITIONS, AUDIENCES, TYPES AND SYMBOLS Lawrence T. Nichols ABSTRACT The constructionist framework for analyzing social problems rests upon the concept of “claimsmakers” who engage in definitional activities. Published researches often approach claimsmakers as agents who speak social problems into existence by naming and typifying putative conditions. This established usage fails to consider several important issues. First, claimsmakers are not merely detached interpreters but are themselves implicated in conditions. Claimsmakers, moreover, are not only speakers who deliver social-problem monologues but are also audiences that engage in dialogue with other claimsmakers. Furthermore, claimsmakers are not only the authors of social problems discourse, but are also its objects in two senses. First, they appear as positive or negative typifications in their own discourse and that of others. Second, claimsmakers sometimes emerge as special symbols that are subsequently available as resources for future social-problems discourse. These considerations indicate that the constructionist framework and empirical researches may be improved through recognition of the dialectic of claimsmakers as both speakers and audiences, both agents and objects – indeed as functioning simultaneously in all these capacities. Ultimately, claimsmakers’
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influence may result from having been transformed into generalizable symbols. Their agency, paradoxically, may succeed because of their objectification.
INTRODUCTION Within the broad interpretive tradition in sociology, constructionism has gained a place of respect. Rooted deeply in pragmatism and symbolic interactionism, and to a lesser extent in phenomenology and ethnomethodology, constructionism has become a major school of thought in the field of social problems. Its formal emergence may be traced to the seminal treatise, Constructing Social Problems (1977, 2001), by Malcolm Spector and John I. Kitsuse. During the past quarter-century, constructionist scholars have illumined the genesis of a broad range of collective troubles and controversies, from child abuse (Pfohl, 1977), corporate homicide (Swigert & Farrell, 1980), medical malpractice (Morrow, 1982) and menopause (McCrea, 1983) to serial murder (Jenkins, 1994) and the genocide (“Holocaust”) of World War II (Berger, 2002). The vigor of this intellectual movement is reflected in the emergence of several variants, including “contextual constructionism” (Best, 1990), “social problems work” (Holstein & Miller, 1993), “vernacular constituents of moral discourse” (Ibarra & Kitsuse, 1993), and “dialogical constructionism” (Nichols, 2000, 2003). Throughout the constructionist literature, there has been a fundamental distinction between subjective agency and objects of that agency. This dichotomy is analogous to earlier divisions between definers and situations (e.g. Thomas & Thomas, 1928) and between labelers and persons labeled (e.g. Becker, 1963). In each case, there is a contrast between an active party and a passive recipient. Applying this to the field of social problems, Spector and Kitsuse (1977, 2001) argued that sociologists should focus on “claimsmakers” who problematize “putative conditions.” They did not address the question of whether claimsmakers could themselves be included within the putative conditions. For instance, in expressing concern about environmental pollution, claimsmakers might confess that they themselves are drivers of noxious automobiles or consumers who fail to recycle. Everyday experience indicates that such reflexive statements are quite common, and examples can easily be gleaned from newspaper editorials, political speeches and religious sermons. If that is so, then the seemingly straightforward distinction between active claimsmakers and passive conditions needs to be reexamined. A similar distinction between claimsmakers and audiences appears in constructionist researches and conceptual discussions. For instance, Best (1995) and Loseke
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(1999) emphasize the competitive aspect of claimsmaking through such expressions as “the social problems marketplace” and “the social problems game.” Both formulations treat audiences as reviewers or jurors who are exposed to socialproblem claims and who choose to heed or disregard these messages. While this is undoubtedly true, there is also the question of whether claimsmakers can be members of audiences that hear social-problems claims. Again, everyday experience suggests that this is a common occurrence. If this is so, then the conceptual categories of “claimsmaker” and “audience” should not be considered mutually exclusive. In the same way, constructionist researches routinely distinguish between claimsmakers and their “claims,” that is, the specific statements they make alleging the existence of collective troubles and suggesting remedies. As already noted, however, claimsmakers can and do appear within their own claims (e.g. as self-confessed polluters). The discussion below will demonstrate that claimsmakers appear within claims in self-laudatory capacities, especially as resolvers of problems. This means that they should be understood not only as the authors of social-problems texts but also as symbolic objects incorporated into those texts. In short, there are reasonable grounds for re-examining basic conceptual dichotomies within the constructionist framework that involve claimsmakers. A strong case can be made that claimsmakers are not only definers of conditions but also components of those conditions, that they are not only speakers but also listeners, and that they are not only authors of texts but also symbolic objects within those texts. Indeed, they may be all of these simultaneously, which greatly complicates analysis but also greatly enriches it.
CLAIMSMAKERS AS CONDITIONS In formulating an alternative to the dominant theoretical perspectives of the day, Spector and Kitsuse (1977) proposed that social scientists focus on definitional activities, rather than on conditions. Under this program, researchers would examine how specific linguistic terms and categories emerged and were applied, without assuming that the words referred to real entities. For example, sociologists interested in the problem of poverty might begin by tracing the appearance of such expressions as “the Other America,” “the working poor,” “the culture of poverty” and “the feminization of poverty.” As expanded by other scholars, the constructionist method would also mean examining how such terms are used to generate recognizable instances of “the poverty problem” (Holstein & Miller, 1993), and how “vernacular constituents of moral discourse” are employed in
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rhetorical contests (Ibarra & Kitsuse, 1993). Constructionists, however, would avoid merely counting the number of “poor” persons and reifying these statistics as facts. The logical distinction between “conditions” and “claims” had the important implication of placing claimsmakers outside the category of conditions. Like the free and spontaneous “I” within G. H. Mead’s famous model of the self, claimsmakers would not reside in conditions but would somehow stand apart and make judgments about putative conditions. Indeed, within the “strict constructionist” or “strong reading” approach, claimsmakers would speak worlds into being without being contained by those worlds. So long as the focus is limited to language and rhetorical moves, this approach may seem plausible. But as soon as there is a recognition of context, that is, of the location of claimsmakers within historical social worlds, the usage becomes problematic. Within the constructionist literature, Loseke (1999) has touched on this issue. Thus, instead of speaking only of constructing conditions, she speaks also of constructing persons within putative conditions. In particular, she examines the tendency to cast some persons as “villains” and others as “victims” with regard to alleged problems. Social-problems claims, in other words, must be “populated” or personalized. As Loseke (1999, p. 72) argues: If we are to take ‘poverty’ or ‘homelessness’ or ‘animal rights’ or ‘rape’ seriously we must have an image in our heads of what these words mean; we must have an image of a ‘poor person,’ or a ‘homeless person,’ or a ‘three-time felony offender’ if we are to talk about what should be done with, for, or to these people.
These considerations suggest the further question of whether claimsmakers themselves can populate and personalize their claims. The answer is clear: there is abundant evidence that they do indeed enter into their own claims reflexively, and even that they must in order to engage in effective discourse about social problems. Many claimsmakers, of course, as advocates of justice and empowerment, tend to identify themselves with putative victims of harmful conditions and thus locate themselves within social realms. In this capacity of claimsmaking victim or victim advocate, they locate opposed claimsmakers within alleged conditions as perpetrators of harm. It seems axiomatic that without these moves to locate themselves and their perceived opponents within postulated conditions, genuine moral outrage and moral discourse would not be possible. Postulating harm, in other words, as well postulating amelioration, requires the presumption of a presence of claimsmakers within conditions. One interesting illustration appears in the practice of self-referrals for medical treatment, when these explicitly draw upon social-problem categories. For example, in research on Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, Conrad
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and Potter (2000, p. 569) found that individuals defined themselves as specimens of the problem: Among adults self-referrals are the norm, and many patients come to physicians apparently seeking an ADHD diagnosis. Frequently, adults who encounter a description of the disorder sense that ‘this is me’ and go on to seek professional confirmation of their new identity.
This pattern of behavior may be understood as a reflexive type of “social problems work” in Holstein and Miller’s (1993) sense, in that it applies a category to the self to produce an instance of a presumably widespread social problem.
CLAIMSMAKERS AS AUDIENCES The strong inclination in published constructionist researches to treat claimsmakers as speakers only may be understood and critiqued as a “monological tendency” (Nichols, 2000). In part, this usage may be attributable to the relative ease of obtaining data about the utterances of claimsmakers, as well as the considerable difficulties involved in gauging audience reception of claims and the subsequent effects of claims on attitudes, rhetoric and behavior. In part, the monological tendency may also reflect the origins of constructionism (of the Spector-Kitsuse variety) in the labeling theory of deviance (see Best, 1993; Nichols, 2003). According to the labeling perspective, the voices of powerful authoritative groups (e.g. the state, the courts, psychiatrists) determine outcomes, whereas the voices of relatively powerless objects of labeling are inconsequential. This relationship with labeling theory also helps to explain the tendency in many constructionist studies to attribute efficacy to the statements of claimsmakers, that is, to invest them with powers similar to those exercised by authoritative labelers of criminals and deviants. In the labeling case, the utterances of authoritative claimsmakers may indeed bring about a new state of affairs, as when a panel of medical experts declares a person to be “mentally ill” or “incompetent to stand trial,” or a religious tribunal declares a writer to be “heretical.” Among constructionist scholars, similar powers are sometimes attributed to “moral entrepreneurs” who create and apply new categories of deviance (i.e. labels). A well-known example of this tendency in constructionist analysis is Pfohl’s (1977) often-cited assertion that a self-interested professional group, namely, pediatric radiologists, “discovered” the social problem of “child abuse.” A similar formulation appears in Morrow’s (1982, p. 100) study of impaired physicians and laws dealing with them: The widespread enactment of such doctor statutes and the establishment of impaired physician programs signify the relative permanence of the new medical perspective in professional social control. This successful institutionalization of the medical models reflects the vigorous efforts
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of a small band of dedicated individuals virtually all of whom were physicians. In the language of Becker . . . these doctors acted as ‘moral entrepreneurs.’
In other researches, constructionists have spoken as though mass media have unilateral power to speak new social problems into existence, or to create “crime waves” (e.g. Fishman, 1978, 1980). Such usages gloss the fact that the emergence of social problems involves interaction between claimsmakers and audiences. As Loseke (1999, p. 37) has put it: “Simply stated, a social problem is created when audiences evaluate claims as believable.” There are two important points here: (1) outcomes of claimsmaking are contingent upon audience responses; and (2) outcomes of claimsmaking are “joint productions” that reflect the participation of both claimsmakers and audiences and the ongoing mutual influences among them. If this is so, then constructionist research requires a methodology comparable to conversation analysis, which follows not only the transmission of messages (i.e. social problem claims) but also their reception by a variety of listeners and the subsequent interplay of communicative acts between claimsmakers and audiences. Introducing an emphasis on audiences, in other words, changes not only the conceptual dimension of constructionism but also its method (Nichols, 2000). The simple fact of claimsmakers as audiences for other claimsmakers can be readily illustrated by examining controversies involving polarized activist groups. The public pronouncements, literature and web sites of such groups demonstrate a process of ongoing monitoring of perceived rivals and adversaries. In fact, many of the appeals of these groups for public support and financial contributions are based on references to the most recent statements and outrageous actions of “the other side.” In the ongoing policy debate about the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, for example, gun-control groups and gun-ownership advocates watch and listen to one another most attentively. The same is true of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” groups in the abortion controversy, as well as of anti-tobacco and pro-industry groups in the debate about cigarette smoking. Indeed, activism in a heated controversy necessitates such mutual monitoring by opposed claimsmakers, especially where competing legislative and other policy proposals are involved. A similar process of monitoring is observable even among groups that appear to be on the same side of social-problem debates. For instance, as Jenness (1993) showed in her study of the prostitutes’ rights movement, an array of groups identifying themselves as “feminist” engaged in a running debate. Similarly, within the gay/lesbian rights movement, a claimsmaker group calling itself “Spirit of Stonewall” issued the following protest: Just as unions, the civil rights and peace movements were pressured to cleanse themselves of suspected ‘communists,’ the lesbian/gay movement is now expected to rid itself of social misfits
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. . .. ILGA, the Human Rights Campaign, Stonewall 25, and others who claim to support sexual minorities and human rights have stumbled over each other as they rush to deny these rights to those deemed unacceptable (Spirit of Stonewall, 1994, p. 2).
In the same way, conservative Republicans have recently taken issue with the Bush administration over its proposals for increased powers pursuant to homeland security. These illustrations indicate a process of self-monitoring by internal audiences that “talk back” to allied claimsmakers. Mutual monitoring among claimsmakers is also a fundamental consideration in the analysis of the international diffusion of social-problems claims. For example, there is evidence that U.S. claimsmakers appealing for recognition of the problem of “road rage” drew heavily upon two studies of the issue that had been done in Britain (Best & Furedi, 2001, p. 113). Similarly, in Japan, anti-smoking activists adopted tactics previously used by claimsmakers in the United States, especially product-liability litigation (Ayukawa, 2001). In European claimsmaking about the problem of sexual offenders, “the specific solutions proposed for the problem were deeply influenced by American examples” (Jenkins, 2001, p. 162). Such international listening among claimsmaker groups will surely become commonplace in the decades ahead. The above considerations indicate the need for a holistic perspective that approaches claimsmakers as both speakers and listeners in relation to both internal and external audiences. Claimsmakers arguably alternate between the roles of speakers and listeners in accordance with norms operative in particular social contexts (e.g. informal turn taking in conversation, or formal protocols in official proceedings). Careful analysis of this continual process of role switching is important for understanding how definitions of social problems emerge.
CLAIMSMAKERS AS OBJECTS OF DISCOURSE As Routine Participant Typifications The process of discoursing about social problems involves assumptions and assertions about the identities of participants. Because social-problems discourse focuses on issues of right and wrong, justice and injustice, effective and ineffective remedies, and so forth, there are burdens of proof affecting participants. In particular, there are implicit demands to demonstrate appropriate standing to make claims, as well as correct attitudes, relevant knowledge and practical competence. In some cases, such as informal conversation among persons already well acquainted, assumptions and assertions about identities may remain tacit. At other times, when discourse involves public officials, professionals (e.g. investigative reporters) or
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non-profit organizations, there may be explicit and formal statements about identity. Such formal identifications may even be mandatory, as in testimony at official inquiries. There are also occasions when some participants desire to remain anonymous and consequently provide minimal information about themselves (e.g. a first name only for a call-in radio program, or a code word for an online chat room). For example, in research on televised talk shows, Lowney (1999, p. 46) found that: . . . talk shows permit some guests to manage their victim status through the use of disguises. Some adult victims use props such as wigs, glasses, and stage makeup to alter their appearance . . .. A variation on the disguise production technique is when some shows allow certain guests to ‘testify’ behind a screen or in shadow.
Thus, participant typifications may be considered an inherent aspect of claimsmaking about social problems. Such typifications involve two sorts of attribution of identity: to self and to others. Attributions are based upon a process of selection, made necessary by the fact that participants generally occupy a variety of social statuses that could be cited as identities. For example, an individual might take part in an electronic town meeting about the problem of street crime, and within that setting might assume or be assigned an identity based on any one of the following statuses: direct victim of crime; relative of a crime victim; parent of children exposed to crime; resident of a high-crime area; home owner and taxpayer concerned about property values; professional dealing with crime or criminals. The selectivity of attributions of identity has two important implications that are situational or contextual. First, some bases of identity will be considered more appropriate than others by relevant audiences. For example, in an investigation of the effects of hydrocarbon emissions on the earth’s climate, technical and professional bases of identity (e.g. atmospheric scientist) will have preference over personal bases (e.g. concerned parent). The second implication of selectivity is that there is a strategic and tactical dimension to attributions of identity. Asserting or assuming particular identities, in other words, can be done with an eye toward influencing the outcomes of claimsmaking. In highly competitive situations (e.g. lobbying for one of two proposed laws), claimsmakers may attribute identities to themselves and others according to their assessments of how to sway key decision makers (e.g. chairs of congressional committees sponsoring legislation). At the same time that they are strategic, attributions of identity are also vulnerable and may become foci for attacks by opposed claimsmakers. Indeed, a considerable part of the “social problems game” (Loseke, 1999) consists in asserting creditable identities while seeking to discredit the identities of adversaries. Claimsmakers routinely support desired identities through various kinds of “vouching,” such as testimonials or allegedly independent tests. Meanwhile,
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claimsmakers routinely attack the identities of opponents through a number of “unmasking” or debunking moves, such as questioning the validity of credentials, exposing contradictory statements, criticizing research findings, or revealing links to powerful vested interests (i.e. “fronting” for them). It may be useful to classify routine typifications of claimsmakers within three broad categories: first-person, second-person and third-person. First-person typifications involve self-oriented attributions of identity that answer the questions, “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” Second-person typifications are attributions of identity to those with whom claimsmakers engage in direct discourse. These answer the question, “Who are you?” Third-person typifications are attributions of identity to others not involved in direct discourse. These answer the question, “Who are they?” All three types appear in both singular and plural forms. Often, plural references involve broad stereotpyical categories, such as “progressives,” “corporate interests” or “secular humanists.” The concept of routine typifications of participants will become clearer through selected illustrations. Data for this purpose were gathered from the internet web pages of advocacy groups involved in a number of recent, high-profile controversies.
First-Person Typifications References to the selves involved in claimsmaking reveal an “autobiographical” aspect of the process of defining social problems. Many organizations, for example, feature a “who are we?” section on their web pages that describes their mission and activities, accompanied by various kinds of justification and rhetorical appeals. Thus, Amnesty International offers the following self-presentation: Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide voluntary activist movement working for human rights. It is independent of any government, political persuasion or religious creed. It does not support or oppose any government or political system, nor does it support or oppose the views of the victims . . .. It is concerned solely with the impartial protection of human rights (Amnesty International, 2001, p. 1).
This statement asserts the identity of high-minded, non-partisan defender of the oppressed. First-person typifications frequently involve laudatory accounts of the work of advocacy groups and of the character of their members. The largest U.S. tobacco corporation, Philip Morris, for example, offers this self-description: “As a responsible cigarette manufacturer, we believe in the principle of adult choice” (Philip Morris U.S.A., 2002, p. 1). Similarly, National Right to Life, in a news brief
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about its most recent convention, praised the participants as “pro-life champions” (National Right to Life, 2002, p. 2). A conservative Christian group likewise featured a short story entitled, “One Girl’s Courage,” that described the presentation of an in-class report about the facts of abortion (Jewell, 2002, p. 1). Advocacy groups also frequently assert their expertise. The Union of Concerned Scientists (2002, p. 1), for instance, publishes a listing of issues on which they have experts available. Claimsmaker groups sometimes characterize themselves as leaders on particular issues, as in the following statement by a well-known children’s advocacy group: Save the Children programmes have an excellent reputation. Over the decades many national, international and United Nations organizations have based their programmes on Save the Children models. Through a continuous monitoring and evaluation and perpetual innovation Save the Children maintains its place as a leader in the field (Save the Children, 2002, p. 1).
Such laudatory self-presentations include assertions about expertise and competency evidenced by the effectiveness of advocacy groups in struggles against adversaries. For instance, Americans for Non-smokers’ Rights offers an account of its success against Philip Morris: The NSA [National Smokers’ Alliance] Exposed uses Philip Morris internal documents to show how and why the tobacco giant created this front group. Included are case studies from communities across the nation which have gone “mano a mano” with NSA’s slick . . . operatives (Americans for Non-smokers Rights, 2002, p. 1).
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children makes an even stronger assertion that includes performance statistics: NCMEC has worked on more than 73,000 cases of missing and exploited children, helped recover more than 48,000 children, and raised its recovery rate from 60% in the 1980s to 91% today, thereby gaining national and international reputation as ‘the’ resource for missing and exploited children (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2002, p. 1).
Such statements may be understood as rhetorical appeals for support that address implicit questions about credibility and legitimacy. First-person plural typifications often refer to networks of like-minded activists. The letterhead used in mailings by claimsmaker groups, for instance, routinely displays an “advisory committee” of prominent individuals who lend their name to the effort. Another variant appears in listings of co-sponsors of social-problem conferences, such as the 2003 national conference on child abuse and neglect, whose sponsors include such organizational claimsmakers as the Child Welfare League of America, the National Association of Social Workers, and Parents Anonymous (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002). The group Town Hall offers kindred spirits a helpful listing of “over 60 conservative columnists at your fingertips” (TownHall.com, 2002).
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There are also numerous “survivor” support groups which sometimes identify their members. Thus, an advocacy group dealing with clergy sexual abuse provides this statement: The Linkup was established . . . in an effort to assist the victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse . . . the Linkup is the largest advocacy group of its kind with over 5,000 members (Linkup, 2002, p. 1).
Such identifications may be accompanied by invitations to become part of the “we.”
Second-Person Typifications References employing the second-person form of address highlight the direct dialogue involved in the process of defining social problems. Examples include such exchanges as debates, interviews, panel discussions and op-ed articles. Thus, during presidential campaigns, for example, there are usually televised debates between the leading candidates. For instance, in the fall of 2000, Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush engaged in three debates that included second-person typifications. Sometimes these statements were couched in third-person syntax and formally addressed to a moderator, but considering that the person referred to was present and listening, they can be considered tantamount to direct address. Thus, referring to Bush, Gore asserted: If you want someone who will spend a lot of words describing a whole convoluted process and then end up supporting legislation that is supported by the big drug companies, this is your man (ABC News, 2000b, p. 2).
Roughly translated, this amounts to saying, “You are a servant of corporate interests, rather than the interests of average citizens.” Bush likewise addressed Gore in the following statement about health care for senior citizens: I believe we ought to give seniors more options . . .. But I know this: I know it’s going to require a different kind of leader to go to Washington . . .. You’ve had your chance, Vice President. You’ve been there for eight years and nothing has been done (ABC News, 2000a, p. 2).
An approximate translation would be, “You are not an effective leader.” Similarly, routine second-person typifications often appear during interviews, particularly when these involve emotionally charged issues. The Hannity-Colmes television program, for instance, recently featured an on-air interview with an atheist who brought the lawsuit resulting in a ruling that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were unconstitutional. Both interviewers expressed their views about their guest, Michael Newdow who asserted that the imposition of
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religion in schools was harmful to his daughter and a threat to genuine democracy. Alan Colmes, considered the “liberal” member of the interview team, expressed solidarity with Newdow and praised him: “They’re going to say you’re intolerant. In my view, the intolerance is on the other side that says we should say this in school” (Fox News, 2002, p. 2). At the conclusion of the segment, Colmes reaffirmed his favorable typification of the guest: Michael, we thank you for being on the show. I think you’ve shown a lot of courage doing what you’ve done and coming on here and talking about it (Fox News, 2002, p. 5).
Hannity, the “conservative” interviewer, meanwhile conveyed a very different typification, as seen in the following exchange: NEWDOW. They have no God in the Constitution. HANNITY. Here’s my big question. You know something? You guys on the left constantly lecturing conservatives about . . . NEWDOW. I’m not on the left, but go ahead. HANNITY. Well, I don’t think you’re on the right either. About tolerance. We hear it all the time. ··· HANNITY. Well, listen, we have prayer in school and bible reading in school until the Supreme Court decisions in the early 1960s, sir, and there was no theocracy, there’s no staterun religion . . .. I’m just wondering where is your tolerance for an alternative point of view? You don’t have any? NEWDOW. I have complete tolerance. I am the only one with it. HANNITY. You have no tolerance (Fox News, 2002, p. 4).
In some settings, second-person typifications of claimsmakers are structured in an asymmetrical manner that precludes one party from candidly expressing views about another. A prominent example is official inquiries that involve the questioning of witnesses, such as congressional investigations. Under established rules and practices, powerful interrogators can express laudatory or highly critical opinions about persons who testify; whereas the latter must refrain from giving overt offense that could be considered “contempt.” For instance, during an investigation of the problem of failed savings and loan institutions, a former thrift regulator, Lawrence Taggart, asserted that the problem had been caused by wrongheaded regulation. This claim resulted in an attack on Taggart by congressional interrogators. MR. McDERMOTT. Then it is your testimony that this was some kind of a witch hunt . . . and that really the regulators brought down the institution? MR. TAGGART. Yes sir. ··· MR. McDERMOTT. . . .What is your training? You went to college? MR. TAGGART. Yes. MR. McDERMOTT. And majored in business perhaps?
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MR. TAGGART. No. I went to the University of California Berkeley, got my undergraduate degree there. I am an attorney . . .. MR. McDERMOTT. Tell me what your economic background, your financial training is. MR. TAGGART. . . . I have been involved with the savings and loan industry for the last 18 to 20 years, which has been on the job training. MR. McDERMOTT. Have you ever had a course in accounting? MR. TAGGART. I am not an accountant or an economist. My father was with another savings and loan for 24 years. My brother and sister are – MR. McDERMOTT. You got it by osmosis? MR. TAGGART. I think I am street smart in the industry. MR. McDERMOTT. Your conclusion is that this problem that we have been discussing here for weeks was created by zealous regulators going in and . . . using some kind of strange accounting principles . . .? MR. TAGGART. Yes sir . . .. ··· MR. KANJORSKI. . . . Mr. Taggart, . . . I find you the most interesting witness that has ever appeared before this committee. I just decided . . . I am going to offer a Taggart award from now on. MR. TAGGART. Thank you. MR. KANJORSKI. I hope you appreciate the spirit that will be offered in (U.S. House of Representatives, 1989, pp. 229–234).
In this way, committee members typified Taggart as either an incompetent or a fool.
Third-Person Typifications References that employ the third-person form of address are indicative of indirect dialogue among social-problems claimsmakers. Such statements are a staple on the web pages of social-problem advocacy groups. Frequently, third-person typifications seek to justify favored causes by discrediting competing claimsmakers. For example, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) has published the following rebuttal to an unfavorable news article: In his article, ‘Abortion: The Untold Story’ . . . David Whitman fails to grasp the essence of the problem regarding abortions . . . When a woman needs to have an abortion she will find a way to get one – that is not the issue. Rather, the question Whitman should have asked is whether women should be required to endure an ever-increasing number of obstacles in order to exercise a constitutional right that should be non-negotiable (NARAL, 1998, p. 1).
According to this rhetoric, the critic has asked the wrong question, while the NARAL has framed the issues correctly. Another common tactic in third-person typifications is to cast doubt on the independence of opponents by suggesting that they are the captives of vested
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interests. Common Cause, for instance, criticized a proposed accounting reform measure by citing regulators’ links to the industry: . . . reacting to the Enron/Andersen scandal, [Securities Exchange Commissioner Harvey] Pitt proposed a disciplinary body for accountants to ensure that investors could rely on the accuracy of corporate financial statements. The proposal was developed with the help of Pitt’s former clients, the Big Five accounting firms, with whom he met at least six times (Common Cause, 2002, p. 8).
In a variation on the same tactic, the Southern Poverty Law Center has asserted that, “the so-called ‘movement’ [within Congress] to restrict immigration is dominated by one man . . . and has growing links to hate groups” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2002, p. 2). Another recurrent rhetorical device in third-person typifications is to identify one or more “myths” supported by opponents. For example, the National Rifle Association characterizes the Center for Disease Control as an adherent of the “fable” that “gun violence is an epidemic that can be cured by public health measures.” The NRA also constructs its rival claimsmaker as lacking credibility because of an alleged failure to follow correct scientific methodology: The political bias and pro-control agenda of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other entities funding these writings are partly responsible for their low academic standards. As civil rights attorney Don B. Kates has observed, “The anti-gun health advocacy literature is a ‘stagecraft’ literature in which partisan academic ‘sages’ prostitute scholarship, systematically inventing, misrepresenting, selecting, or otherwise manipulating data to validate preordained political conclusions” (National Rifle Association, 2002, p. 21).
Such efforts to discredit opponents recall Loseke’s (1999) discussion of the “hierarchy of credibility” in claimsmaking, and the prominent role of science in supporting claims. Thus, the more that claimsmakers invoke science, the more will their opponents need to unmask them as unscientific. For instance, the advocacy group FAIR has attacked conservative champion Rush Limbaugh in a point-by-point rebuttal entitled “Limbaugh Debates Reality.” After citing various Limbaugh pronouncements, FAIR concludes: This kind of sloppiness, ignorance and/or fabrication is run of the mill . . .. From dioxin to Whitewater, from Rodney King to Reaganomics, Rush Limbaugh has a finely honed ability to twist and distort reality (FAIR, 2002, p. 3).
The environmental group Greenpeace publishes a similar critique of major oil corporations. Since the early 1990s, Exxon has taken a lead role in industry efforts to cast doubt over climate science. With the now defunct Global Climate Coalition front group and others, ExxonMobil have claimed that the scientists are getting it wrong on global warming and the role of fossil
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fuels. This effort was spawned by the revelations of the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990, which pointed to strong and growing evidence of temperature rise, sea level rise and other changes (Greenpeace, 2002, p. 2).
In some cases, claimsmakers use third-party typifications to characterize other claimsmakers as immoral or even criminal. For instance, in a recent article noting the death of a white supremacist, the Anti-Defamation League leveled serious accusations: Pierce’s legacy is one of anti-Semitism, racism, and terror that reaches beyond the membership of the National Alliance. His writings . . . inspired terrorists . . . to commit bombings, assassinations, and robberies (National Alliance, 1998).
Predictably, the National Alliance has replied in kind, seeking to discredit its adversary by means of a published “fact sheet”: The ADL spies on American dissidents on behalf of the Israeli government. Automobile license plate numbers of people attending a meeting of the Committee on the Middle East were recorded by [an] ADL agent . . . channeled through [a] San Francisco police officer . . . also an ADL operative, and furnished to the Israeli government (National Alliance, 1998, p. 2).
Such statements construct opposing claimsmakers as totally unworthy.
As Special Symbols To speak of claimsmakers as symbols means that they have become objectifications that point beyond themselves. Two broad categories can be distinguished: single-issue symbols and generalizable symbols. The first type appears when particular claimsmakers become synonymous with causes they have championed or with problems afflicting them. For example, both Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel have come to symbolize the problem of genocide, Frank as an innocent victim and Wiesel as a survivor. This means that they are not simply two persons caught up in a social problem, but are representations that immediately bring that problem (“the Holocaust”) to mind. Other examples of individuals who embody particular causes would include Cary Nation (prohibition of alcohol), Ralph Nader (consumer rights), Rachel Carson (environmentalism), Cesar Chavez (rights of agricultural workers), and Gloria Steinem (equal rights for women). These figures come to be perceived as the representative faces and voices of certain issues. In the second type, generalizable symbols, claimsmakers come to have significance for issues beyond those in which they initially participated. Dramatic examples can be found among the leaders of large-scale movements, such as Mohandas Gandhi or Senator Joseph McCarthy. Gandhi became famous for his
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efforts to free India from the British Empire, which is usually characterized as a nationalistic struggle. But Gandhi quickly became a generalizable symbol of non-violent resistance to oppression of any kind, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. invoked his example in the movement for African American civil rights. King himself likewise became a symbol that was incorporated into the discourse of the movement for civil rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland. Senator McCarthy rose to prominence as a leader of the movement against Communists and their sympathizers in the 1950s. Eventually his influence waned and he died in relative obscurity. Nevertheless, he became a symbol of political repression, and “McCarthyism” has been frequently cited by claimsmakers in controversies bearing little relation to the former Cold War. Instances include recurrent debates about free speech, obscenity and lifestyle choices, and also the recent controversy regarding terrorism, homeland security and ethnic profiling. In other cases, ordinary persons are transformed into generalizable symbols that enter into social-problems discourse. An interesting example is “whistleblowers” who reveal wrongdoing within their own organizations. Thus, prior to 1973, most Americans knew nothing about New York City detective Frank Serpico. Following his decision to reveal systematic corruption, however, and his public testimony before a special investigative commission, Serpico became a folk hero whose life was celebrated in a popular biography and a major motion picture. The following passage from the biography illumines the transformation of Serpico from local activist to heroic symbol: . . . Serpico had dared to do the unheard-of, the unpardonable in police circles. Having solemnly sworn to uphold the law, he elected to do just that . . .. He would not go along with the grafts, the bribes, the shakedowns; and he refused to look the other way. With that decision, Serpico became unique. He was the first officer in the history of the Police Department who not only reported corruption in its ranks, but voluntarily . . . stepped forward to testify about it in court . . .. This sparked a jumbled rush of related events . . . a Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption was formed; the Police Commissioner abruptly resigned; there was a mass exodus of top-echelon police command; departmental reorganization and procedure underwent a revamping drastic beyond memory . . .. As these events began to unfold and Frank Serpico’s role in them was made known, he became for many police officers a man to be feared – and destroyed (Maas, 1973, pp. 10–12).
Interestingly, Serpico’s special stature has been recently reaffirmed in connection with revelations of police corruption. According to one news account of his 1997 testimony before the City Council, Serpico’s name “became synonymous . . . with blowing the whistle on police corruption” (Haberman, 1997). In 1999, an article about police brutality stated: “Frank Serpico, more than 25 years after his whistleblowing as a young officer exposed widespread corruption in the New York Police Department, reappears at New York Civil Liberties Union offices” (Cooper, 1999).
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Other news stories convey Serpico’s unique role in phrases such as, “Frank Serpico and others crusaded against police corruption” (Herbert, 1997). Thus, whereas Serpico has become “synonymous” with anti-corruption advocacy, many “others” have become anonymous. The process by which claimsmakers become objectified symbols is not well understood, and it merits sustained investigation by constructionist scholars. Publicity obviously plays a central role, and yet publicity by itself is evidently insufficient. There are, for example, countless articles and reports about whistleblowers in both local and national media, as well as numerous academic studies. Such coverage may be understood as “commemorative narratives” that create the possibility of transformation from claimsmaker to symbol. Despite this publicity, however, most whistleblowers fade from view rather quickly. In a small percentage of cases, initial publicity is amplified by subsequent depictions in popular culture, including investigative journalism, biographical and autobiographical accounts produced for mass audiences, and treatments in motion pictures. To date, however, no one has provided an explanation of why major studios invested in films about Frank Serpico, Karen Silkwood and Marie Ragghianti (who revealed the sale of pardons in Tennessee) that featured such major stars as Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Sissy Spacek, but did not produce comparable movies about such widely reported whistleblowers as Daniel Ellsberg (“Pentagon Papers”), Ernest Fitzgerald (wasteful defense spending) or Roger Boisjoly (shuttle Challenger disaster). Even such details as film titles have symbolic significance. For instance, had the recent popular film “The Insider” instead been titled, “Wigand,” it would have been more likely that Dr. Jeffrey Wigand would have remained famous for his efforts to reveal deceptive practices in the tobacco industry. An especially intriguing case is that of David Durk, a former New York City detective who was Frank Serpico’s partner and who also gave “high-profile testimony about rampant corruption on the police force” (Fried, 2001). A recent biography by James Lardner describes the relative neglect of Durk vis-`a-vis his famous former colleague. According to one reviewer: Mr. Durk is best known among New York’s police reporters for being ignored in the various journalistic and cinematic versions of the scandal that made corruption in the New York Police Department world famous, the case associated with a fellow detective named Frank Serpico . . . Mr. Lardner . . . makes a good case that popular culture has all but obliterated the pivotal, instigating role he [Durk] played in what became the Serpico story. In Mr. Lardner’s account, it was Mr. Durk whose tireless efforts – especially bringing a detailed and documented story of police corruption to a reporter at The New York Times – that forced reluctant city officials into prosecuting the rampant police malfeasance that he and Mr. Serpico had witnessed. Hollywood . . . routinely butchers the truth when truth interferes with a good commercial plot . . .. Mr. Lardner recounts the moment when Mr. Durk himself raised the issue of historical accuracy with Sidney
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Lumet, the director of “Serpico,” who was answering questions at a screening. “Lumet declared that his field was entertainment, not literal truth,” Mr. Lardner writes (Bernstein, 1996, pp. 1–2).
Thus it is quite plausible that Durk, rather than Serpico, might have emerged as the symbolic claimsmaker. It is equally conceivable that both Durk and Serpico might have become the central figures in a “landmark narrative” (Nichols, 1997) about police corruption. Future researchers of such issues might focus on the number and types of media involved in the coverage of particular cases. In contemporary culture, films may be the most influential means of memorializing claimsmakers and elevating them to symbolic status. Unlike daily news reports, films are shown repeatedly, first in theaters and then on television, after which they are made available for consumers to rent or purchase. There is also a large and still growing export market for Americanmade movies, which guarantees that millions of people around the world will be exposed to depictions of selected claimsmakers.
CONCLUSION The discussion has examined the notion of “claimsmakers,” which has been a key component of the constructionist framework for analyzing social problems for the past quarter-century. An argument has been made that the tendency to regard claimsmakers as interpretive agents only is seriously flawed. First of all, claimsmakers cannot stand entirely apart from putative conditions, for to do so would make moral discourse and moral debate impossible. Second, claimsmakers cannot be adequately understood only as speakers, but must be considered also as audiences for claims. This role of audience is also crucial in the give-and-take of actual social problems discourse. Third, claimsmakers are routinely objectified as types, both by themselves and by opposed claimsmakers. This means that in addition to functioning as the authors of language, they function also as elements of social-problems language. Fourth, claimsmakers may be further objectified as signficant symbols that become available as resources in future social-problems discourse. The challenge of holistic analysis within the constructionist perspective is to keep all of these aspects of claimsmakers in view at all times, and to examine their complex interrelations. This requires a dialectical method that sees each major aspect as defined by its alternative (i.e. speaker and audience, subject and object), and sees claimsmaking as a process of moving among these alternative capacities. To apply such an approach is to deal in paradox, but paradox has always been at the heart of symbolic interactionism. Perhaps the most famous example is G. H.
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Mead’s model of the self that can only actualize its identity by simultaneously being its other (i.e. “taking the role of the other”). Such paradox is science at its playful best.
REFERENCES ABC News. (2000a). First presidential debate. Http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/Daily News/debate001003 trans 2.html ABC News. (2000b). Final showdown. Http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/ Debate001017.html Amnesty International. (2001). What is AI? Http://www.web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/whatisAI/ whatisAI?OpenDocument Americans for Non-smokers’ Rights. (2002). The National Smokers Alliance (NSA). Http://www.nosmoke.org/nsa intro.html Ayukawa, J. (2001). The United States and smoking problems in Japan. In: J. Best (Ed.), How Claims Spread (pp. 215–242). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Becker, H. (1963). Outsiders. New York: Free Press. Berger, R. J. (2002). Fathoming the holocaust. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Bernstein, R. (1996). Books of The Times; Mournful song of a whistle-blower. New York Times (June 10, Section C), 13. Best, J. (1990). Threatened children. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Best, J. (1993). But seriously folks: The limitations of the strict constructionist interpretation of social problems. In: J. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds), Reconsidering Social Constructionism (pp. 129–147). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Best, J. (1995). Images of issues (2nd ed.). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Best, J., & Furedi, F. (2001). The evolution of road rage in Britain and the United States. In: J. Best (Ed.), How Claims Spread (pp. 107–127). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Conrad, P., & Potter, D. (2000). From hyperactive children to ADHD adults: Observations on the expansion of medical categories. Social Problems, 47(4), 559–582. Cooper, M. (1999). Serpico joins campaign against police brutality. New York Times (January 11, Section B), 6. FAIR (2002). Http://www.fair.org/press-releases/limbaugh-debates-reality.html Fishman, M. (1980). Manufacturing the news. Austin: University of Texas Press. Fishman, M. (1978). Crime waves as ideology. Social Problems, 25, 531–543. Fox News. (2002). A controversial ruling. Http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,56381,00.html Fried, J. P. (2001). Following up. New York Times (May 27, Section 1), 31. Greenpeace USA. (2002). ExxonMobil wields its dirty power to block global warming solution. Http://www.greenpeaceusa.com/features/exxonmobiltext.htm Haberman, C. (1997). Serpico steps out of the shadows to testify. New York Times (September 24, Section B), 1. Herbert, B. (1997). In America: Remaining blind to brutality. New York Times (September 25, Section A), 31. Holstein, J. A., & Miller, G. (1993). Social constructionism and social problems work. In: J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds), Reconsidering Social Constructionism (pp. 151–172). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
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Ibarra, P., & Kitsuse, J. I. (1993). Vernacular constituents of moral discourse. In: J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds), Reconsidering Social Constructionism (pp. 25–58). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Jenkins, P. (1994). Using murder. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Jenkins, P. (2001). How Europe discovered its sex-offender crisis. In: J. Best (Ed.), How Claims Spread (pp. 147–167). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Jenness, V. (1993). Making it work. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Jewell, A. V. (2002). One girl’s courage. Http://www.family.org/fofmag/s1/a0019111.html Linkup. (2002). Http://www.thelinkup.com/links.html Linkup. (2002). Http://www.thelinkup.com/mission.html Loseke, D. (1999). Thinking About Social Problems. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Lowney, K. S. (1999). Baring our souls. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Maas, P. (1973). Serpico. New York: Bantam Books. McCrea, F. (1983). The politics of menopause: The ‘discovery’ of a deficiency disease. Social Problems, 31, 111–123. Morrow, C. K. (1982). Sick doctors: The social construction of professional deviance. Social Problems, 30(1), 92–108. National Abortion Rights Action League. (1998). •NARAL Response to the U.S. News and World Report article, ‘Abortion: The untold story,’ by David Whitman. Http://www.commondreams. org/pressreleases/Dec98/120298h.htm National Alliance. (1998). Fact Sheet on the ADL. Http://www.hoffman-info.com/essay/20.html National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. (2002). Http://www.missingkids.com/html/ history.html National Rifle Association. (2002). Fables, myths and other tall tales about gun laws, crime and constitutional rights. Http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/fables.htm Nichols, L. T. (1997). Social problems as landmark narratives: Bank of Boston, mass media and ‘money laundering’. Social Problems, 44(3), 324–341. Nichols, L. T. (2000). Dialogical constructionism: Toward holistic understanding of social problems discourse. In: J. A. Holstein & G. Miller (Eds), Perspectives on Social Problems (Vol. 12, pp. 55–65). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Nichols, L. T. (2003). Voices of social problems: A dialogical constructionist model. In: N. K. Denzin (Ed.), Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Vol. 26, pp. xx–xx). Stamford, CT: Elsevier. Pfohl, S. (1977). The ‘discovery’ of child abuse. Social Problems, 24, 310–323. Philip Morris U.S.A. (2002). Tobacco Issues. Http://www.philipmorrisusa.com/DisplayPageWith Topicdc21.asp Save The Children. (2002). Http://www.savethechildren.net/stc/publicsite/editor/readnew.asp?id=138. Southern Poverty Law Center. (2002). Anti-immigration extremists influencing congress, center study finds. Http://www.splcenter.org/whatsnew/index.html Spector, M., & Kitsuse, J. I. (1977). Constructing social problems. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings. Spector, M., & Kitsuse, J. I. (2001). Constructing social problems. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Spirit of Stonewall (1994). •NAMBLA marches with us at Stonewall 25. Http://www.qrd.org/qrd/ orgs/NAMBLA/spirit.of.stonewall Swigert, V., & Farrell, R. A. (1980). Corporate homicide: Definitional processes in the creation of deviance. Law and Society Review, 15, 161–182. Thomas, W. I., & Thomas, D. S. (1928). The child in America. New York: Knopf. TownHall.com (2002). TownHall.com columnists. Over 60 conservative columnists at your fingertips. Http://www.townhall.com/columnists.shtml
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Union of Concerned Scientists (2002). Http://www.UCSUSA.org/news/exp.html U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2002). Pathways to prevention: The fourteenth National Conference on child abuse and neglect. Http://www.calib.com/nccanch/cbconference/ index.cfm U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs (1989). Hearings, Part Three. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
STATUS DISCLOSURE: GENETIC COUNSELING AS AN ARENA FOR NEGOTIATION Aviad E. Raz ABSTRACT This paper examines a premarital genetics program focusing on congenital deafness, conducted in Israel with a Bedouin minority group characterized by consanguinity, a religious ban on abortion, and high prevalence of genetic diseases. Building on interviews with counselors and counselees as well as observations of the interactions between them, the analysis describes the professional, communal, public and private arenas of negotiation that surround the process of genetic counseling.
INTRODUCTION The subject of this study is genetic counseling, a form of medical communication about genetic risks. My aim here is to show what symbolic interactionism can tell us about genetic counseling. For this purpose I focus on a case study of genetic counseling designed for a specific at-risk Muslim population living in Israel. The analysis focuses on the different meanings of counseling and the professional, communal, public and private arenas in which negotiations take place around the genetic counseling process. Building on a symbolic interactionist perspective,
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this paper further sets out to analyze the situated meanings of genetic counseling in the context of group position, prejudice, and stigma. The paper is in four parts. First, I outline a framework for analyzing the process of genetic counseling through a symbolic interactionist perspective. Second, the research setting is presented by describing the characteristics of the Bedouin as a target population for genetic screening and counseling, the background of the genetics program, and the research methods employed. The third part comprises the ethnographic analysis, which begins with the attitudes of professionals, moves to a synopsis of an actual counseling session, and then presents the Bedouin point-of-view. The paper concludes by discussing the situated meanings of genetic counseling through the constructs of symbolic interactionism.
GENETIC COUNSELING IN A SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE What can symbolic interactionism tell us about genetic counseling? To answer this question I compare the view of symbolic interactionism with other common views of genetic counseling. This comparison will be made on three levels: (a) the basic goal and dilemma of genetic counseling as a two-person interaction; (b) genetic counseling in the community; and (c) genetic counseling and glocalization.
The Basic Goal and Dilemma of Genetic Counseling Genetic counseling was created in order to provide individuals with medical information concerning genetic diseases, i.e. – whether a fetus is affected or whether a person is a carrier. Institutional pressures to lower health-care costs remain a stimulus to the eugenic approach inherent in genetic counseling. At the same time, genetic counseling must remain non-directive for the sake of individual autonomy. The latter ideology has led, in the West, to the development of universal and standard criteria such as informed consent, non-directiveness, and autonomy.1 In the U.S., a President’s Commission (1983, p. 13) described the counseling process as “attempting to achieve non-directiveness and avoiding all value preference.” In practice, however, genetic counselors continue to play the role of both information-providers and moral advisers. The norm of non-directiveness may have been introduced against the historical misuse of eugenics, but in effect genetic counseling is inherently prescriptive (Chadwick, 1998; Resta, 1997; Wertz & Fletcher, 1989).
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The basic dilemma of genetic counseling, then, can be described in the following manner. On the one hand, the goal of reducing the prevalence of genetic diseases has been supported through a functionalist approach stressing utilitarian ethics (e.g. the moral obligation to reach the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people). On the other hand, the “standard view” (at least in the West) of genetic counseling is based on liberal ethics that gives precedence to individual variation and autonomy. A symbolic interactionist perspective can provide a middle way that cuts between these two oppositions. Symbolic interactionism can show us how to go beyond theoretical oppositions that consider ideology and practice as different facets of a pre-conceived, objective social order (see also Gerhardt, 2000; Strauss, 1978, 1993, 1997; Strauss et al., 1997; Wiener, 2000). In my view, a symbolic interactionist point of departure for the study of genetic counseling consists of two premises of negotiation. First, focusing on the ways in which ethical considerations involved in genetic counseling acquire situated meanings within institutional and political contexts. Second, realizing the different meanings of genetic counseling for the participants and the different arenas (public and private) in which these meanings are negotiated. Studies of genetic counseling, even when focused on biased communication between counselor and counselee, often ignored the negotiation process. Researching the consultation in isolation tends to neglect those aspects of communication that remain unspoken. Studies either failed to see how social worlds, which they analyzed, depended on continuous flow of (often tacit) negotiations, or else disregarded the extent to which social change occurred incessantly in the wake of unrelenting negotiative re-arrangements between actors. Symbolic interactionism can tell us more about genetic counseling by applying the “negotiation paradigm.” As Strauss (1978, pp. 98–99) had put it, The key terms of the paradigm and their use in the case analyses are as follows. First, the negotiations themselves will be described . . . Included in the descriptions will be the accompanying interactions, types of actors, their strategies and tactics, some consequences of the negotiations, and embedded negotiation subprocesses of negotiations; for example, making trade-offs, obtaining kickbacks, paying off debts, and negotiating agreements. Second, the structural context is that within which the negotiations take place, in the larger sense. For each case of negotiation, it will be necessary to bring out some of the salient structural properties that bear on the negotiation.
The counseling session should therefore be understood according to the “definitions of the situation” held by the various participants. While counselees can acquire a commonality of perspective with the counselors by learning and developing together the symbols by which aspects of the world are identified, still many would define the situation in quite different terms. In the genetics program
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discussed, for example, a common “lingua franca” or interface culture has developed in the session, since counselors felt that their message was conveyed and counselees could interpret the test results and make use of them. For an outsider, this would gradually assume the appearance of objective reality. In practice, as the ethnography shows, participants have different and often conflicting perspectives.
Genetic Counseling in the Community We need to embed analyses of genetic counseling within local communities rather than concentrating on two-person interaction. The individual level, which concerns the patient-counselor interaction, often depends on community-level norms such as patriarchy, consanguinity, or religious banning of abortion. The need for such “community genetics” was raised about 15 years ago, as with the World Health Organization (WHO, 1985) program on thalassemia. However, for many people and organizations the linkage between genetics and community is still a new concept, yet to be defined (Brisson, 2000). “Genetic communities” are a global phenomenon that juxtaposes a common genetic condition with ethnic bonds and geographical and political circumstances, e.g. African Americans, Native Americans, Asian immigrant communities, the Amish, Ashkenazi Jews, Scottish clans, island communities, the Bedouin, and so on. Genetic communities can also be formed through voluntary association and around support foundations, as in the case of the U.S.-based “Genetic Alliance.” While genetic research takes special importance in small, inbred communities where consanguinity increases the prevalence of genetic diseases, such communities often have traditional norms and values that are incongruent with the “standard view” of genetic counseling (Chadwick et al., 1999; Christakis, 1992). Research that associates race or ethnicity with a genetic disposition to disease (e.g. sickle-cell anemia and African-Americans, or Tay-Sachs and Ashkenazi Jews) presents risks of group discrimination and stigmatization. A symbolic interactionist analysis of labeling, group position and prejudice is very relevant in this respect. Some have proposed supplemental community-based reviews of research on genetic differences between populations (Sharp & Foster, 2000). In contrast to this position, critics have focused almost entirely on group consent – the idea that communities should have the authority to approve or veto research involving their members. Symbolic interactionism is capable of advancing this debate by exploring the process of genetic counseling in the community as an arena for negotiation. Such a focus can go beyond dichotomies of “group consent/veto” and explore the diverse strategies employed by community members and professionals.
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Genetic Counseling and Glocalization Genetic counseling to non-western traditional communities is also a case of “glocalization” (see Raz, 1999) – the interplay between global and local. The “global” is represented by the professional and bioethical code of genetic counseling, while the “local” consists of the norms and values of the target population. The global-local interplay – a key scenario in contemporary cultural studies – has been traditionally studied either through modernization or world-systems theories. The former stems from an evolutionist and positivist stance, the latter from a critical, neo-Marxist view of dependency. The expansion of biomedical culture, for example, has been studied from both approaches. Seen through the mirror of modernization, third-world “developing” countries are considered to be passively and unreflectively (and often also ‘inconsistently’) “modernized,” or acculturated, into Western biomedicine through identical cultural trajectories (Webster, 1984). On the other hand, world-systems theory argues that Western capitalism hinges on the reproduction of the economic dependency of the third world (Wallerstein, 1974). Despite their opposition, both of these perspectives presume a unilateral structure of Western hegemony whose (biomedical) culture is imposed on some silent recipient(s). Once again, my use of symbolic interactionism in this context is intended to make way for a plurality of ‘negotiated meanings’ that undermine monolithic narratives of globalization, either in the form of functionalist ‘modernization’ or Neo-Marxist ‘dependency.’
THE RESEARCH SETTING The Negev Bedouin are a Moslem minority (estimated population around 130,000) residing in the southern part of Israel. In 1998 about 50% of the population lived in seven towns which were planned for them by the Israeli government, while the rest lived in scattered encampments and shantytowns (Annual statistics for 1998). These formally “unrecognized” villages were created as a result of the refusal of the Bedouin to leave the land where they have been living for many years. Since the Israeli government does not officially recognize them as villages, they are denied basic services such as water, electricity, and sewage, and only few have schools and clinics. The genetics program under study targeted a tribe2 comprised of about 3,000 individuals living in a shantytown. The tribe is characterized by low socioeconomic and educational levels, high fertility rates, poor utilization of prenatal services due to a variety of access problems, and religious restrictions on pregnancy termination (Weitzman et al., 1997). Consanguineous marriages of an agnatic type3 are highly
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prevalent (estimated 45%) and polygyny is common (estimated 17% of the married women are second wives). Marriage is prearranged (mainly by fathers), usually from young age. Congenital deafness is one of the most prevalent inherited diseases in the tribe. Genetic estimates suggest that about 20–25% of the tribe are carriers of the mutation, for which a test is now offered (Carmi et al., 1995; Carmi et al., 1998).
The Background of the Genetics Program The impetus for the program came from a medical geneticist working in the local hospital, who told me (personal interview) that she saw the program as “bringing back to community members the results of genetic research in which they were originally the subjects.” About ten years before this program was launched, the same geneticist had initiated an educational campaign against inter-marriage in an extended Bedouin family congenitally afflicted with Maple Urine disease, a metabolic disease causing death at around four weeks of age. This “well intended but naive intervention” (Carmi et al., 1998, p. 393) resulted in family disputes between young men who out-married and their parents. In addition, young and healthy unmarried women from that family were stigmatized and were consequently inter-married as second and third wives within the tribe.4 The current rationale for the program should be understood against the backdrop of this early and unsuccessful attempt. The program reflected, in the eyes of professionals, a cultural adaptation to Bedouin norms. Because abortion was not an accepted option, the program focused on pre-marital (rather than prenatal) counseling. In order to reduce the risk of stigmatization (especially for women), carrier status was not individually disclosed. Rather, counselors employed a disclosure style known as “carrier matching,” in which potential partners are told if they are genetically “compatible” or not (“incompatibility” meaning the two partners being carriers, thus having a 25% risk at each pregnancy of having an affected child). If neither or just one of the two partners is a carrier, they are told that they are genetically “compatible.” At the same time, an alternative option is provided where personal tests can be taken (for the standard cost of about US$100),5 and results are disclosed through regular procedures of genetic counseling. The program currently tests only for congenital deafness, or NSRD (NonSyndromic Recessive Deafness) in the professional jargon.6 An on-going genetic research attempts to discover specific tests for other, more severe inherited diseases prevalent in the Bedouin community, which will then be added to the existing program. Genetic tests for NSRD were offered since in public meetings many Bedouin stated that hearing impairments were a disadvantage. In interviews
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I conducted, the picture was more complex. The first reply of many Bedouin was that “deafness is from Allah (God).” When asked what they thought about the life of the hearing-impaired, some Bedouin respondents said that “deaf people are likely to have difficulties finding a job,” and that “deaf women are likely to be married as second, rather than first wives.” These respondents considered hearing impairment to be a handicap and a disadvantage. Still other Bedouin respondents claimed that “deafness is not a burden,” and that “deaf children grow up capable of doing everything, just like hearing people.” One respondent (the father of two hearing-impaired boys) even claimed that “deaf children are better since they are more quiet and easier to take care of at home.” Another Bedouin respondent (the mother of two hearing-impaired children, a boy and a girl) said: “deaf children are better off since they receive good education. They go to an Israeli school for the deaf in the city, and they are usually more well-educated.” The program’s rationale followed another program, called Dor Yeshorim (literally “upright generation” in Hebrew), developed about a decade ago by the global orthodox Ashkenazi-Jewish community (for accounts of this program, see Abeliovich et al., 1996; Broide et al., 1993; Merz, 1987). The professionals behind the Bedouin program were quite familiar with Dor Yeshorim and referred to it as their model. According to their explanation, the two communities shared – despite considerable differences – two normative similarities: (a) Marriages are often pre-arranged, and consanguinity is the main reason for a high prevalence of genetic diseases, and (b) there is a religious ban on abortion.7 The “upright generation” program also includes premarital carrier testing and confidential storage of the results in a computerized system, which enables future matching of the carrier status of potential mates. The success of Dor Yeshorim owes to the relatively large number of severe diseases being tested, the strong support of the religious leaders of the Jewish community, and the familiarity of community members with biomedical technology. In the Bedouin community, the program started with one test for a relatively non-severe disease. Unlike the Orthodox Jewish community, the Bedouin do not have a strong central leadership, religious or otherwise. Finally, the Bedouin’s uptake of medical services is low due to problems of accessibility as well as cultural differences. The Bedouin program unfolded along four major stages: community involvement, community instruction, blood drawing, and genetic counseling. The program’s rationale was discussed with community members (mainly men) in public meetings held in 1997. Discussions revealed, according to professionals, that many Bedouin increasingly perceive hearing impairments as a disadvantage. Many of the men present at the meetings said that while “marrying out of the tribe was difficult, it would be a good idea to use carrier matching in order to prevent the birth of deaf children.” Those who came to the meetings, however, were a
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priori more in favor of the idea of genetic counseling. The voices of those against it were under-represented in these meetings. Following the meetings and discussions, at-home instructions in Arabic were offered to the Bedouin. Instructions typically lasted around three hours, were given in the guest room of the house (shig) and included basic genetic information and explanations regarding carrier matching. The instructors also explained the informed consent forms and coordinated a date for blood drawing. Test results were anonymously stored in a coded computerized database. So far, about 60% of all tribe members had received instruction and about 250 blood samples have been drawn, representing approximately 8% of the population.8 The remaining 40% who did not agree to be instructed are characterized by lower socio-economic status and level of education. This group also contains a family branch where congenital deafness is particularly prevalent. Nine counseling sessions have so far taken place as part of the program. The actual number of this category is not just 18 (the couples) but more likely around 36, comprising older family members who were involved in the process, escorting the young women and guiding the young men. The small number of people seeking counseling might reflect the program’s early stage of implementation. The professional staff did not see this as a failure. Rather, counselors expected that the number of people seeking counseling will gradually increase as children whose blood was drawn would come of age and consider marriage in the future.
Methodology The analysis is based on various sources of information and pluralistic methods of inquiry. Several rounds of interviews were conducted since 1999 with: (a) the six genetic counselors and five professionals involved in the program; (b) the 18 Bedouin who came for genetic counseling; and (c) adult members of seven families who represent different attitudes towards the program. I observed several of the counseling sessions with the consent of the counselees. The counselees were then interviewed separately a few days after the session and asked about their motivations and expectations. The counselor who conducted the session was interviewed the next day, and counselees were interviewed for a second time a few weeks later to follow up on their decision-making process. All these interviews were semi-structured, and lasted from one to three hours. They were held in various places, from the home to the hospital, according to the respondents’ convenience. Interviews were conducted mostly in Hebrew, a language in which most Bedouin men are quite fluent. Where needed, Arabic was used and translated. At-home instruction sessions provided another source of ethnographic material. A total
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of about 40 instruction sessions were conducted since 1999, of which 10 were analyzed in detail. In addition, observations were conducted in training sessions for instructors and in program’s staff meetings, as well as in public meetings with the community. Additional textual analysis included educational materials used in the instruction sessions (English, Hebrew and Arabic versions), forms and reports, and short summaries of counseling sessions with community members, which were prepared by the genetic counselors. All this information was brought together using several categories. Bedouin attitudes were thematized according to three basic categories that emanated from the interviews: compliance, utilization, and rejection. These categories were further analyzed so as to compare between formal attitudes expressed in public settings and informal attitudes expressed in everyday life. The attitudes of professionals were also thematized, for example according to their position towards the ethical dilemmas that characterized the program. Access to information was gained through my role in the program, which was initially one of evaluation. In this capacity I participated in a positivistic research, in which the interviews conducted with the Bedouin were analyzed according to the Health Belief Model (Kirscht, 1988). This research tested hypotheses on the influence of such parameters as level of genetic risk, social status, religiosity, and perceived marriage prospects on program utilization. Later I also became Chair of the program’s ethics committee. While the evaluative part of my research had a positivistic emphasis on quantitative results and hypothesis-testing within pre-conceived models, this paper represents a post-positivistic, interpretive emphasis, which in my mind is no less important for purposes of analysis as well as evaluation. While symbolic interactionism was not a declared part of the evaluative research from its outset, it nevertheless guided my data collection and analysis. An important reason for entering the program and studying genetic counseling was my realization, from the outset, that it was a case of glocalization (Raz, 1999) where symbolic interactionism could make a theoretical and analytical difference.
“STATUS DISCLOSURE”: GENETIC COUNSELING AS AN ARENA FOR NEGOTIATION The six genetic counselors involved in the program consisted of both certified and non-certified counselors. The two certified counselors were Jewish. The four non-certified personnel were Arabic-speaking people with or studying toward academic degrees in public health, biology or medicine (MPH, MA, MD). Some of them were trained specifically for the program and served as
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community-outreach assistants. The five professionals directly involved in the program were a medical geneticist, a pediatrician, and three epidemiologists, two of them graduate students who were completing their degrees while working on the administration of the program. In order to secure the anonymity of these respondents, I refrained from adding personal details that could identify them. The attitudes of professionals will be described through interview extracts that deal with ethical aspects of the program. This theme appeared in almost all interviews with professionals and represented, for them, a key issue. First of all, the issue of carrier matching was considered by counselors as the only viable way because prenatal diagnosis was largely irrelevant (due to the religious ban on abortion), and since the norm of consanguineous matchmaking was an essential part of life in the community. When asked whether carrier matching was also the preferred choice of the Bedouin, most counselors would begin their reply in a positive manner, but then added some reservations: Before the program was started, we discussed the rationale in a public meeting with the community. Not all the people were there, of course. And no women. But what can you do – traditionally, men are those in charge of accepting decisions in public and the woman’s place is at home (interview No. 2 with genetic counselor).
Another counselor added, The problem was that there was no real leadership – religious or otherwise – in the Bedouin population, and it was very difficult to know what the community wanted (interview No. 4 with genetic counselor).
Another counselor summed it up in the following manner: We have sufficient experience of working with the Bedouin. There are many problems there. Of course carrier matching is not something I’m used to doing when working with the general population. But for the Bedouin, matchmaking is already part of traditional life. Carrier matching is best suited for the situation and this is the most important thing. You have to remember that it is our only way of reducing the stigmatization involved in carrier status disclosure, for women in particular (interview No. 5 with genetic counselor).
Finally, the program tested for deafness, a condition that for most people would not entail abortion and therefore may not require carrier matching. While they could not solve this dilemma, counselors framed it as temporary: There are prevalent diseases in the Bedouin population that are much more severe, but we haven’t come up with the gene mutation yet. Arthrogryposis,9 for example. I know they are working on it in the genetic lab (interview No. 3 with genetic counselor).
Another counselor acknowledged that
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Deafness is not the disease I would choose as a basis for such a project to begin with. It’s too eugenic. It’s a fact, but this fact is rarely brought up when discussing the project. I can understand that deafness was chosen because of the availability of the mutation and the fact there are so many carriers out there. These are practical reasons (interview No. 8 with genetic counselor).
These interview excerpts show the mixed feelings of counselors in regard to basic characteristics of the program (especially carrier matching and deafness as the tested trait). Counselors admitted (often more tacitly than openly) that these characteristics compromised their standard code of ethics. To explain this compromise, counselors stressed the ‘special circumstances’ of the Bedouin community. In this way, compromising the “official rules” of counseling was negotiated as a form of cultural adaptation. Such symbolic negotiation catered to the counselors’ utilitarian goals that appeared interactionally realizable. Moreover, the rhetoric of ‘cultural adaptation’ was sometimes accompanied by a subtext of professional paternalism. The interview extracts present references to the general disorganization of the community (i.e. “lacking leadership”) and its unchanging – indeed, unchangeable – traditional norms considered as backward in Western eyes – such as religious bans, matchmaking and polygamy. As one counselor put it, We keep up with the Bedouin norm of consanguinity, which we all know is responsible for the high prevalence of diseases. We could have told them not to marry their cousins, but we don’t, because we know that would be too directive as well as impractical. In the same manner we also keep up with their custom of polygamy, which is quite unacceptable in Jewish or even Western eyes. We also understand that their religion does not allow for abortion. All we are left with, then, is the option of premarital testing – and that’s what we are doing! Unfortunately it is interpreted as directive, but we have no other option. The alternative is not to do anything. We’re damned if we do it, and we’re damned if we don’t (interview No. 2 with genetic counselor).
In the same vein, another counselor commented that there was not much point in being non-directive when counseling to a population whose own local culture is so directive: Yes, we say in this program ‘you don’t match in terms of deafness.’ It’s justified because marriages in the Bedouin sector are mostly prearranged, and because this tribe does not want to have deaf children. Marriage is not about love but about matchmaking. It’s not about romance. What they need to do, in the worst case, is to arrange another match. This justifies, for me, the ethical diversion involved in the program (interview No. 4 with genetic counselor).
The Counseling Encounter What follows is a synopsis of a typical counseling encounter. Each encounter is a demonstration of the program’s rationale in action, but there is always more than meets the eye in this interaction. The certified counselors speak in Hebrew and
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know little Arabic. All Bedouin men can speak “practical” Hebrew, but it is not certain whether they understand the more complicated lingo of the counselors. Bedouin women often do not understand Hebrew. The presence of an interpreter (a non-certified counselor) is therefore mandatory in such sessions. The public and official character of the encounter, as perceived by the Bedouin, makes it difficult for them (especially for women accompanied by men) to speak out their minds, discussing misunderstandings or asking for explanations. Breaches in communication, pauses and silences, are therefore an inseparable part of the counseling encounter with the Bedouin. The counseling encounter I describe was conducted with a young Bedouin man (age 21) who came with another young Bedouin (his cousin, as I later found out), but entered the office of the counselors alone. He was 45 minutes late, but the counselor told me such a delay was quite common and expected with Bedouin counselees. The senior counselor first introduced me to the counselee and asked for his consent to my presence during the session. He agreed and she asked him for his full name. The session has formally begun. It was conducted by the senior counselor, in Hebrew, except for some Arabic translation. Counselor: Counselee: Counselor: Counselee:
“Is there any deaf person in your family?” “No. I have six healthy brothers and sisters.” “Did your father marry a relative, a cousin perhaps?” “No, my mother is not from the family.”
At this point the counselor inquired the counselee for about five minutes regarding his, and his partner’s, first- and second-degree relatives and whether any of them was deaf. There were hearing-impaired relatives in the family of the counselee’s mother. Having found that the partners’ parents were related (the fathers were cousins) the counselor told the counselee: “you are practically almost brother and sister!” The counselee was then asked if he brought with him the informed consent of his mate, granting him the right to be counseled in her absence. He took out a letter that was written by one of the community-outreach genetic counselors, where the mate and her mother added their signatures. The counselors looked up the mate’s ID. This caused a little havoc since the mate, being younger than 18, was filed under her mother’s ID number. The counselor then asked: “Do you know about the risk involved in consanguinity?” The counselee did not answer and the Arabic-speaking counselor who was sitting in the office provided a translation in Arabic, using the local word for consanguinity and asking the counselee whether he understood that children born in marriages that are “made in the family” have a greater risk to be affected by genetic diseases. The counselee said he understood this and the senior counselor took the lead again.
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Counselor: “Are there any other inherited diseases in your family besides deafness?” Counselee: “Yes, many have a heart disease.” Counselor: “Is it a disease you can die from in young age?” Counselee: “No. It appears only when they’re old.” Counselor: “One more question and then we’ll tell you the results. Concerning deafness – do you worry about having deaf children?” Counselee: “I wouldn’t want to have deaf children.” Counselor: “And that’s why it’s important for you to know the results. But, you must understand that the results I am about to give you are only about deafness. We checked your compatibility only for deafness. Nothing else. When two cousins marry, their children might be affected by lots of diseases. We didn’t check these other things, just deafness. According to the test we did, there is almost 100% certainty that you will not have deaf children. Do you understand? You and your mate fit in terms of deafness.” Counselee: “I understand.” Counselor: “But, as cousins you have a lot of common genetic material. If something is wrong with this genetic material, there’s a big chance it would be wrong in both of you.” At this point the counselor stopped and asked the counselee if he had any questions. The counselee nodded his head for “No.” The session has ended. The counseling session is interesting for what is missing from the encounter. The public format of the counseling session leaves little elbow room for negotiation. The result is a separation between the public discourse of counseling and the private realms of attitudes and decision-making. Bedouin counselees generally do not bring their agendas to counseling and do not share them with the counselors. This is not a unique phenomenon, of course. It brings to mind other works on the mismatch between patients’ and doctors’ agendas. Previous studies on interactions with general medical practitioners showed that only a minority of patients voiced all their agendas in consultation (Barry et al., 2000; Mishler, 1984; Stimson & Webb, 1975). Agenda items most commonly voiced were symptoms and requests for diagnoses and prescriptions. The most common unvoiced agenda items were: worries about possible diagnosis and what the future holds; patients’ ideas about what is wrong; side effects; not wanting a prescription; and information relating to social context. Agenda items that were not raised in the consultation often led to specific problem outcomes (for example, major misunderstandings), unwanted prescriptions, non-use of prescriptions, and non-adherence to treatment.
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The Customers’ Agenda In an in-depth interview I conducted with A’ref (pseudonym), the young Bedouin whose counseling encounter was described above, he said that about five months ago he had begun to think of marrying a cousin of his. A’ref said that during this time his family received at-home instruction followed by blood drawing. A’ref described his motivation in the following manner: Only now, my involvement [with the girl] became serious and I figured, since I’m probably a carrier and so is she, we will probably test as incompatible. If it were like this I would have used the result in order to cancel everything.
It transpired that A’ref experienced pressure from his family, especially from his mother, to make the girl his fianc´ee. He did not think this was “the right girl” for him and wanted to pull out. According to A’ref, This is not a prearranged match, but after I mentioned the girl’s name everyone in my family became excited. During the whole year they had already been nudging me why I don’t marry. Everyone in my family was already married when they were my age. I got cold feet. In the last month I was thinking about canceling the whole thing. I want to marry once and to have the marriage last for my entire life. I don’t want to take a second wife. I will be satisfied with having three or four children. That’s enough, as long as they’re healthy. I am still young and can bring my wife from outside the tribe. I am still young and with plenty of options, despite what my family says.
A’ref’s story10 demonstrates an agenda that is different from the program’s. While the program intended to encourage marriages between “compatible” mates, the fact that A’ref and his mate tested as “compatible” was for him disappointing. A’ref wanted to use the counseling for his own purposes. Note that a level of agreement exists between the health aspects of the program and A’ref’s considerations of susceptibility (“I’m probably a carrier and so is she”; “I will be satisfied with having three or four children [—] as long as they’re healthy”). However, these considerations were secondary in A’ref’s case. The primary consideration, in his agenda, was his wish to extricate himself from an arranged marriage. Even when he and the girl were found to be compatible, he refused to continue with the match, and the marriage did not take place. A’ref’s agenda was not unique. This finding is based on interviews with other Bedouin counselees. In another case, a young Bedouin man called Achmed (pseudonym) called up the counselor to schedule a meeting. The communityoutreach assistant, who knew about the case, arranged for me an interview with Achmed’s older brother, Yaaser (pseudonym) who became head of the family following the death of their father a few years ago. According to my contact person, I would be able to understand this case from Yaaser, because he was
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“the brain” behind Achmed’s call. Yaaser told me that he was not satisfied with Achmed’s interest in a certain Bedouin girl. He said that according to his calculations, both of them had to be carriers. His idea was that if they take the test, the result would be incompatibility. Like A’ref, he planned to use the counseling as a reason for canceling the match. In another case where the option of counseling was used, a young Bedouin man by the (fictive) name of Abdallah came with his prospective father-in-law (Sa’id) for individual counseling. Abdallah was informed that he was not a carrier, and his marriage (with Sa’id’s daughter) took place about a month later. In an interview conducted with Sa’id, he explained to me that he asked Abdallah to take the test. The agreement between them was that if Abdallah were not a carrier, than the marriage with Sa’id’s daughter would take place. If Abdallah were a carrier, then “they would see what to do.” The implication was probably that Sa’id’s daughter would take the test. However this was not said out loud and I was left wondering whether Sa’id would actually let his daughter take the test if it would come to that. When asked why he wouldn’t start by testing his daughter, he said that she was “too young for that” (she was about 16 years old at the time). Another counseling session I witnessed, in contrast, conformed to the rationale of the program. It was conducted with a young Bedouin man (24), his intended fianc´ee (20) and her father. The young man had a sister with a hearing impairment. The father of the intended fianc´ee was his second cousin. The counselor told the couple that they were genetically compatible. In interviews I later conducted separately with both sides, their understanding of the counseling was quite in line with the professional message. When I asked the young man, for example, how he understood the meaning of “compatibility,” he answered: “It means that we are not going to have affected babies.” He also mentioned that it was a pity that the program did not test for other diseases except deafness, and that he would have taken these tests had they been available.
CONCLUSION: GENETIC COUNSELING AS SYMBOLIC INTERACTION The findings show that the meanings of counseling differed for participants. The counselors and other professionals involved in the program negotiated the compromising of ethical standards through the rhetoric of cultural adaptation. The adaptation to the norms of the community was seen as a pragmatic trade-off whose success should be evaluated. This professional arena of negotiation was not communicated to counselees. Furthermore, professionals did not have identical views on this matter. Bedouin counselees, on their part, also had a private agenda
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that was not communicated to counselors. These arenas of negotiation – the professional, public, and private – were quite separate of each other. The different languages (Hebrew and Arabic) used by the two sides further deepened the gap. In addition, the relations between counselors and Bedouin were arguably also pre-determined to a large extent by prejudice and group position. In Blumer’s (1955, 1958) classic view, a central claim is that prejudice involves – more than negative stereotypes and negative feelings – a commitment to a relative status positioning of groups in a racialized social order. This status positioning was reflected, for example, in the rank order of the professional staff: While the two certified counselors were Jewish, the four non-certified personnel were Arab-Israeli or Bedouin. We also have to consider the program as an interface between the dominant Jewish medical establishment and a marginal minority – the Bedouin. There is ample literature on ethnicity and health care that focuses on the ‘special needs’ of members of ethnic minorities (e.g. Hahn, 1999) and the measures required to bridge the gap. This framing could also be relevant to the under-utilization of the program. Rapp (1998) similarly found that class-associated differences loomed large in explaining the variance in prenatal testing utilization. For example, middle-class patients (disproportionately White) in New York City usually accepted amniocentesis, while poorer women (disproportionately from ethnic-racial minorities) were more likely to refuse it. The question of under-utilization, however, remains open in the context of the program discussed here, since many of those tested at childhood could still return for counseling in the future. Even if it is true that the program took place within a pre-existing framework of a racialized social order, can we safely say that counselors were prejudiced against their customers? Counselors shared a sense of proprietary claim over their professional status. They considered themselves, in a parallel manner to physicians, not as “service providers” but as “professionals” whose higher status endows them with authority. In addition, the Jewish counselors looked at consanguinity and polygyny as traditional norms characteristic of ethnic groups that had an intrinsically different culture than theirs. Nevertheless, in order to retain what was left of their non-directiveness, counselors refrained from speaking against these norms and offered the program for premarital decisions that promoted, in their words, “healthy consanguinity.” Prejudice, in the counselors’ case, was arguably mixed with their acceptance of what they saw as an ethical diversion for the sake of local adaptation (see also Bobo, 1999; Esposito & Murphy, 1999). To the outsider, such an attitude might be seen as paternalistic. For the counselors, this attitude was the pragmatic outcome of many years of working with the Bedouin. Some Bedouin were also prejudiced against the program, which they saw as an extension of the dominant Israeli establishment. The program was interpreted, for example, as an attempt to reduce the birth rate. Under-utilization of health
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care services among the Bedouin in general is sometimes related to their marginal position as an ethnic, religious and political minority (Jakubovska, 1990; Lavie, 1990). This self-positioning against the “Israeli other” presumably caused some Bedouin to refrain from using the program. The central feature of the Bedouin agenda, however, was the mismatch between public and private negotiations. This mismatch is not surprising since traditional forms of public participation that characterize the Bedouin are not conducive to Western-style ‘community engagement.’ Public meetings, focus groups and advisory committees impose social dynamics that are quite foreign to the Bedouin. These forums do not comprise the actual social channels of communication and decision-making. The findings show that men who participated in public meetings generally supported the program. Such a statement may reflect the socially appropriate sentiment in public contexts, in which members emphasize the interests of the community as a whole (cf. Andrews, 1994; Foster et al., 1998). In individual interviews, such support was not a matter of consensus. Instead, individuals used or rejected the program according to personal interests. The mismatch between private and public arenas of negotiation is very blatant in the context of Bedouin women. Women live in a sub-society, which is both separate from and parallel to the men’s (Abu-Lughod, 1985). Their agenda(s) were not expressed in public meetings since they were not present there. In almost all the cases, it was a Bedouin man who came for counseling. The counselors, who expected to see both partners in counseling, were initially surprised to see just the man appearing before them. The utilization of the program by men demonstrated a patriarchal status system. Further use of pluralistic methods is required in order to understand the multifarious agendas of the counselees according to their communal units of social organization as well as conventional indices such as gender, age, religiosity, and family status. The examples presented here do not mean that the program could not fulfill its mission for some counselees. What they do show us, in general, is that counseling does not occur in a vacuum. When used, it always becomes entangled in people’s life, and their interests and constraints shape its outcomes. To date, policy frameworks for genetic counseling have focused on perceived benefits and risks of the individual. Yet the individual level, which concerns the patient-counselor interaction, often also depends on community-level norms. While the program studied here takes place in a part of the world that is relatively distant and unfamiliar to most readers, its implications are not so remote. Screening programs are becoming a normative part of western life. Symbolic interactionism has a significant role in helping us understand the consequences of genetic screening for individuals and communities. There can
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be no user’s guide or standard manual for such programs, the cultural sensitivity they require, and their practical ethics. This makes the role of counselors and other professionals involved in such programs ever more complex and difficult. All those involved in genetic counseling should be alert to these questions and to the delicate balance of advocacy and control they invoke.
NOTES 1. See, e.g. the general guidelines for genetic testing that have been issued by the NIH (1997); or the NAS (1975) early report, where ethical aspects are presented from the view of a “perfect” screener. However, many leaders of American genetics also made contradictory eugenic statements (Resta, 1997). 2. “Tribe,” despite the negative connotations the concept has acquired, is the most accurate translation for the socio-demographic description of the Bedouin kinship group discussed here. I use the term “Bedouin community” in the context of attitudes and agendas so as to avoid the homogenous labeling implied by the concept of “tribe.” 3. Agnatic consanguinity is part of the marriage pattern known as patrilateral parallel cousin marriage, which has been recognized as a common Middle Eastern practice (e.g. Kressel, 1986). While other marriage patterns are also in use, this is the preferred pattern in the Bedouin community. 4. Being a second or third wife usually means an inferior status in relation to the first wife. 5. The Israeli national health insurance law defines various services, which are provided for free. The above-mentioned genetic test is currently not part of these state-subsidized services and therefore has to be paid for by those using it. 6. I am well aware that many hearing-impaired people would take issue with the use of words like “deaf” and “deafness.” Where the text is mine, I have used “hearing impairment” instead of “deafness.” However, where I am using accepted medical acronyms (e.g. NSRD) or quoting, I have remained loyal to the original use of words. 7. For discussion on Moslem attitudes toward abortion, see Rispler-Chaim (1999) and Rogers (1999). 8. Blood was drawn from unmarried community members, usually around 14–18 years old. Their father signed for their informed consent. The instructions, in contrast, were delivered to extended families and all those attending were counted as having been instructed. 9. Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita (AMC) is a congenital condition characterized by multiple joint contractures. In the “classic” case of Arthrogryposis, hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, feet, and knees are affected. In the most severe cases, nearly every body joint may be involved, including the jaw and back. Frequently, the joint contractures are accompanied by muscle weakness, which further limits movement. 10. In this article I focus on interviews with Bedouin men. This obviously does not mean that Bedouin women did not have their own attitudes. However, the emerging pattern of utilization reflected men’s attitudes more than women’s. This assertion was confirmed in interviews conducted by a female research assistant with Bedouin women. I deal with women’s attitudes and the subject of gender relations elsewhere.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was funded by grants from the Israel Foundation Trustees (project PS14/3) and the Israel Science Foundation. I am grateful to Marcela Atar for her important contribution to the data collection. This study could not have taken place without the collaboration of Rivka Carmi and Ilana Shoham-Vardi, who contributed to my understanding of the issues discussed here through their wisdom and experience. I am indebted to Norman Denzin for encouraging me to study genetic counseling from a symbolic interactionist perspective. I thank the anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful comments and close reading of the manuscript.
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EMOTION AND FILM THEORY Norbert Wiley ABSTRACT This is a comparison of the emotions we have in watching a movie with those we have in everyday life. Everyday emotion is loose in frame or context but rather controlled and regulated in content. Movie emotion, in contrast, is tightly framed and boundaried but permissive and uncontrolled in content. Movie emotion is therefore quite safe and inconsequential but can still be unusually satisfying and pleasurable. I think of the movie emotions as modeling clay that can symbolize all sorts of human troubles. A major function of movies then is catharsis, a term I use more inclusively than usual. Throughout I use a pragmatist approach to film theory. This position gives the optimal distance to the study of ordinary, middle-level emotion. In contrast psychoanalysis is too close and cognitive theory too distant. This middle position is similar to Arlie Hochschild’s symbolic interactionist approach to the sociology of emotions, which also mediates between psychoanalysis and cognitive theories.
EMOTION AND FILM THEORY This will be an exploration of how emotion works in watching an ordinary Hollywood movie or others like it. I will be talking only about easy-to-follow movies, not the more artistic or thoughtful kind. The working of emotion in these “easy listening” movies is a controversial issue in film theory. But less so in sociology, Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 169–187 Copyright © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260123
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which is the perspective from which I will be writing. In a sense I will be translating film theory into the sociology of emotions and vice versa. First I will position myself among the theoretical options. Drawing on Arlie Hochschild’s mid-seventies analysis of emotion in sociology, I will describe three images of human emotions. Emphasis will be placed on the relation between emotions and cognition (Hochschild, 1975, pp. 281–285). Then I will show that approximately the same three positions she described in 1975 are present in film theory today. Her position is called symbolic interaction or constructionism (see also Denzin, 1984). The corresponding position in film theory, broadening the scope a bit, might be called pragmatism. I will be writing from this pragmatist point of view. Second I will characterize at some length the emotions we have in watching a film and contrast these with the emotions we have in everyday life. The former, I will argue, are a highly transformed and protected version of the latter. And finally I will ask why movie emotions differ from those of ordinary life. My answer will have to do with the work or functions of emotion in the two situations. Everyday emotions are structured, more or less, for what they do, and movie emotions are, in turn, structured for what they do. The former help us to cope with life, and the latter help us to cope with the coping process. In other words movie emotions are in a second order or “meta” relation to those of everyday life. Since there are many of these second order functions I will select only one for close attention. This will be “catharsis,” which I will define more inclusively than usual.
IMAGES OF THE EMOTIONAL ACTOR Hochschild’s three images of the emotional actor were: (1) the conscious, cognitive actor; (2) the unconscious emotional actor; and (3) the sentient actor, who is both conscious and feeling. As Hochschild saw these images the cognitive actor subordinated emotion to cognition and goal-attainment. Similarly the sociologists she discussed theorized social life with little or no attention to emotion. Her key examples were Erving Goffman and Max Weber, though her ideas also applied to Talcott Parsons’ “affective neutrality” and rational choice’s calculation. In this first image cognition trumped emotion, and, given the latter’s implied domestication, emotion was virtually ignored. Hochschild’s second image was of the Freudian human being whose subconscious emotions tacitly and unconsciously ruled conscious life. These emotions, for example one’s oedipal (or pre-oedipal) complex, were the dominant if
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unsensed affects. And one’s conscious emotions were veils and masks of these underlying forces. In this case cognition was in the service of (unconscious) emotion, and emotion trumped cognition. Hochschild’s key theorists, along with Sigmund Freud, were Philip Slater and Herbert Marcuse, both Freudian leftists and revisionists of the sixties counterculture. She also referred to several psychologists and anthropologists. Since the time of Hochschild’s article there are a variety of new Freudian theorists and those of other psychoanalytic approaches who would be relevant to her analysis. Hochschild’s third position, which she was creating in this classic paper, was that of the person who had ordinary emotions and was conscious of these emotions. Cognition did not rule emotion nor did emotion rule cognition. Each had its sphere and, while the two capacities might sometimes work together cooperatively, they might also diverge and work competitively, creating unruly emotions. Interestingly the situation in film theory today is remarkably similar to the three positions Hochschild described in 1975, although the language is somewhat different. In film theory Hochschild’s first image, that of the cognitive actor, is present in the cognitive approach. The two spokespersons for this position, David Bordwell (1985) and Noel Carroll (1997) draw heavily on cognitive theory as it appears in the discipline of psychology. This position was formed partly to contrast with and criticize the psychoanalytic approach. Accordingly it subordinates emotion to cognition and to the pursuit of goals (Jaffe, 2000). The psychoanalytic approach to film theory, which is based primarily on Lacan rather than Freud, tends to subordinate cognition to emotion (Baudry, 1975; Dayan, 1974; Metz, 1977). This position was the over-riding one in film theory for some twenty years, but in the late 1980s it began to be heavily criticized, particularly by cognitive theorists, and it may have lost some of its luster. Lacan had been combined with Althusser in a conceptually dense set of ideas known as apparatus theory. This approach, which is still powerful in film studies, is much more influential and carefully worked out than Hochschild’s psychoanalytic image was in sociology. But nevertheless it occupies the same conceptual niche, that of a theory in which emotion tends to drive cognition. It should also be pointed out that feminist film theorists have favored a modified form of psychoanalysis, while feminist sociologists, influenced by Hochschild, have been drawn to her approach and not to the sociological version of psychoanalysis. I think this is because psychoanalysis, despite some difficulties, works better in the analysis of movies than in that of daily life. Hochschild’s third position, which she herself created, was grounded in symbolic interactionism, constructionism and pragmatism. The corresponding position in film theory is in approximately the same theoretical space as Hochschild. It is
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also, like her position in 1975, just now in the process of being formed. Among the major current pragmatists are Stanley Cavell (1979, 1996) and Ray Carney (1994). Others are Vincent Colapietro (2000), Martin Lefebvre (1999), Jennifer Hammett (1992, 1997) and Wiley (2000). In addition some film scholars make selective use of pragmatist concepts, e.g. Wollen (1972), de Lauretis (1984), Silverman (1983) and Deleuze (1989, 1986). My analysis of movie spectator emotion will lean in the pragmatist direction. Given the similarities between pragmatist film theory and Hochschild’s constructivism, these two can easily work together and borrow each other’s tools. The underlying similarity between the two is one of distance. By this I mean, not aesthetic distance, but distance from ordinary middle-level emotions. The psychoanalytic position, both in sociology and film theory, is so close to the big, pre-oedipal and oedipal emotions that it has trouble focusing on everyday, middle-level feelings. The cognitive position, again in both disciplines, is so distant from emotion that it too has trouble dealing with ordinary emotion as such. It is the middle-distance position of symbolic interaction and pragmatism that is best located for dealing with emotions as we know them. In this section I argued that the three images of the person in the sociology of emotions are substantially similar to three current positions in film theory. Presumably this is true, not because of any direct borrowing, but because of the principle of limited possibilities and what’s “in the air.” The result though is a convergence between two academic winds or breezes. In this paper I will be applying sociology to film theory and trying to catch some of that breeze.
REAL VERSUS MOVIE EMOTIONS1 To theorize movie spectator emotions it helps to begin with a description of these emotions. Artistic emotions are difficulty to concretize (Feagin, 1997) so my list of descriptive traits will be somewhat abstract. Since I will be making what is in part a functional or need-based analysis, it is important to ask if any clues to function can be found in structure. If function follows structure, even a little bit, the latter is a good place to look for clues to function. In making this structural description I will be comparing movie emotions to those of everyday life. In other words I will be listing the ways – seventeen in number as I see it – in which movie emotion differs from ordinary emotion. This list is not completely self-explanatory, so I will follow it with a brief explanation of each item (Table 1). These seventeen items all designate some trait or dimension in which the emotion of movie watching seems to differ from that of everyday life. As I comment on them it will become clear that the first thirteen are relatively formal and abstract.
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Table 1. Comparison of Movie Spectator Emotion with that of Everyday Life.
(1) Risk (2) Distance (3) Attention (4) Effects (5) Subject (6) World (7) Epoche (8) Feeling Rules (9) Emotion Work (10) Responsibility (11) Clarity (12) Discussable (13) Context (14) Identification (15) Frequency (16) Intensity (17) Range
Real World
Movie Spectator World
Unlimited Risk Natural Distance Close attention Indefinite You are the subject Everyday World Natural Attitude Normative Routinely Required Considerable May Need Labelling Often Kept Quiet One’s Whole Life Cautious Sporadic Ordinary Intensity Normal
Limited Risk Medium Distance Split Attention Often Terminate with End of Movie Pseudo-subject (Vicarious Emotions) Movie World Movie Reality Easily Broken without Sanction Rarely Needed None (Emotional Freedom) Movie Cues, e.g. Music, do Labelling More Easily Talked about Context Bound by Frame of Movie Hedonistic Continuous and Sped Up Extraordinary Intensity Extreme, e.g. Terror, Wild Sex, Bliss
They tend to refer to the boundaries or protective shell that exists around our movie emotions. The last four items shift to the content or substance of emotion. Among these four, I will pay special attention to identification, since the nature of this process is quite controversial in film theory. The conclusion I will be building toward, is that the formal qualities domesticate and tame movie emotions, while the substantive qualities allow them, within that protective shell or perimeter, to run wild. (1) Risk refers to possible harm the emotion might cause. Intense negative emotion in the main world can be traumatic or at least highly unpleasant. In the movie world, this is almost never so (though Psycho and the Exorcist were major exceptions). Similarly happy emotions in movies are pretty invulnerable to betrayal and heartbreak. Once you have them, you pretty much have them. (2) Distance, as Aristotle originated the idea (1983/384–322 B. C., p. 2320), is the psychological proximity one might have to an artistic narrative and its depiction. One can be too close and therefore traumatized; too far, and therefore untouched and bored; or optimally distant and thus effectively moved and, as Aristotle saw it, catharthasized. Appropriate distance differs among cultures, e.g. our narratives are usually less distant than the Greek tragedies.
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Ordinary emotions are at their own distance, whatever that might be. Families may differ in emotional styles, but we cannot just dial emotions up or down. Movie emotions are more amenable to distance control, both by the people who make them and those who watch them. If we want more distance and nothing else works, we can always walk out of a movie. It is harder, in contrast, to walk out on life. (3) The movie viewer splits attention between the movie, on the one hand, and the physical theater, the other patrons, etc. on the other. This also helps regulate distance and creates an aura of safety. After all it’s “just a movie.” In real life you can decrease your attention all right, but you cannot peer outside the frame and peek at another reality as you can with a movie. If you do much of this you will be living in the wrong world. The patient in a psychotherapist’s office, seeking a catharsis similar to the one movie viewers are often looking for, also splits attention (Scheff, 1979, p. 60). But this split is not between the movie and its setting; it is between the remembered or half remembered trauma, on the one hand, and the therapeutic setting on the other. Still it is a similar attempt to keep the experience under control and optimize its consequences. (4) The effects of real emotion are indefinite and open-ended. An emotional experience can change your whole life. In contrast the effects of movie emotions are usually minor and tend to end with the movie. They can sometimes have major effects, e.g. of well being or fear, long after the movie, but this is the exceptional case. Usually they start tapering off fast when the movie is over. (5) You are the subject of your real life emotions. They are happening to you. The emotions in a movie are, in the first instance, happening to some character in the story. They are only happening to you to the extent that you identify, empathize, sympathize, etc. with that character. Strong as they may be, these emotions are vicarious or “witness emotions” (Tan, 1996, p. 82) and you are only the pseudo-subject. The sense in which the viewer is the quasior pseudo-subject is controversial in film theory. The issue quickly gets to the (closely-guarded) premises that separate one theory from other. But I can side-step this issue, at least for now. Your movie emotions then are, in a sense, not yours; whereas your life emotions are only too inescapably your own. There are also, however, many emotions we experience vicariously in everyday life, when we are identifying with and “reading” the feelings of our family members, friends and acquaintances. As with movie emotions, we are not the subject of these everyday emotions. I will return to this question in item fourteen and look at the difference between these two ways of identifying with another’s emotions.
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(6) Multiple realities or worlds is an idea introduced by William James (1890) and developed by Alfred Schutz (1973). There is the main everyday world and a variety of special or secondary worlds, including those of the arts and movies. We enter each reality or world with an act of faith or willing suspension of disbelief. Schutz discussed a variety of ways in which the worlds differ from each other, as in the experience of the social, the self, wide-awakeness, the entering epoche and the passage of time. He did not single out emotion, but it is clear that emotion too differs from world to world. I have shown that movie emotion is considerably different from main world or everyday life emotion. Students of dreams describe still another pattern of emotion, differing from both everyday life and the film spectator’s pattern (Domhoff, 1999). The reality location, then, of our two sets of emotions differs by world, the everyday life set being in the main world and the movie set being in the movie world. (7) Epoche was Edmund Husserl’s term for a kind of suspension of belief he used to ground the phenomenological method and the analysis it allowed. Albert Schutz, combining Husserl and James, said there was a unique epoche entailed in the entering of any world (1979). If consciousness is like a TV set, the epoche is like the remote, which moves us from channel to channel or world to world. To do this one must drop the old set of categories and adopt new ones, since each world contains a somewhat different set. We do this very quickly when we enter a movie, and the corresponding emotional transformation draws on the movie spectator’s epoche. (8) Feeling rules is one of the concepts Hochschild introduced into the sociology of emotions. Established sociology had been treating emotions as constants and therefore ignorable. The notion of emotional rules, which regulate time, place, intensity, style, etc. suggests that emotions are not a constant. When people break these rules there can be drastic consequences. And it may take considerable effort to follow these rules. The film experience loosens the feeling rules. Men can (secretly) cry, and women can get angry. You can act way out of character. Kids can act like adults, and adults like kids. Deviant emotions, normally disallowed, are easily available. There are still rules, e.g. regarding how loudly or when you can laugh, but these rules are considerably more permissive than those of real life. (9) Emotion work is another of Hochschld’s concepts, referring to the effort it might take to follow rules and make the right emotional impressions. Suppressing inappropriate emotions, such as laughing during someone’s pompous speech, can be hard work. And summoning up the right emotion, e.g. feigning interest in that speech, can also be tough. The day is full of emotion work (and in the typical American family women do more of it than men).
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Emoting at the movies, particular the Hollywood kind, entails very little emotion work. To begin with you are emoting vicariously, so you do not have to construct and steer the feelings as you do in everyday life. In addition the emotional content of these films is usually pre-arranged to cause the least effort and give the most payoff. These movies go down like milk shakes, our suspension of disbelief more or less gulping the experience. (10) One has little responsibility for movie emotion. In the first place some character in a film is experiencing it, while you are riding piggy back on them. You will not take the blame or even be inconvenienced for any emotional harm that might befall the characters. It is possible that there could be some carry-over into real life that could cause you trouble, but this would be unusual and you can guard against it. You can have the emotions of anger, hatred, aggression and so on without anyone getting hurt. And you can have all modalities of love, sex and friendship with no post-movie commitment or entanglement. This experience is as irresponsible as a dream or an act of play. Unlike real emotions, which can affect our relations with others, movie emotions are “freebees.” (11) The clarity of movie emotions is much more distinct and unambiguous than that of real life. Real emotions often come all balled up or fused, e.g. guilt and shame, anger and fear, love and jealousy. They can also appear in a vague state of arousal which might need social labelling to get its name or specific character. People confiding their problems to their friends are often asking for emotional clarification. In contrast Hollywood-type movies are usually pre-chewed, dumbed down and oversimplified to the point where there is very little lack of clarity. Narratives are written with precise emotional scripts, often in formulaic fashion. Emotions come with clear labels. This is suspense, this is grief, this is love, this is fear or anger or joy. The naming process is done with body language, dialogue, clearly structured situations, transparent tendencies and musical cues. One of the burdens of real life emotion work is sorting out one’s (or another’s) emotions in a mixed-up situation. Movies can give you this ambiguity too, but the kind I am talking about usually do not. Instead they provide a welcome and neatly-labelled alternate to the emotional confusion of everyday life. (12) Discussability is another trait that singles out movie emotions. Many people, particularly of the male gender, are guarded and quiet about their real emotions. It is possible that they are somewhat numbed and do not experience emotions very distinctly or consciously. Or it might be that they do not want to show or talk about these feelings. There are plenty of
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rules about emotions, and sometimes these rules are in conflict. Showing or admitting to emotions might bring down some unnoticed or forgotten or new rule on one’s neck. Emotions imply responsibility. Movie emotions seem a good bit easier to admit and talk about. After all they are just fantasy, so to speak, and one cannot be blamed for having them. I think, for example, a husband can say he was attracted to the leading lady with considerably more impunity from his wife than admitting he is attracted to the neighbor lady. And wives can also fly this flag. Another feature of discussability is simply the shared or intersubjective quality of a movie that many have seen. We can all talk about James Bond, or Lolita or Woody Allen’s neurosis or Tom Hanks’ moral reliability. These are part of the social currency and they can quickly move from mind to mind. Psychiatric trainees, for example, can discuss the emotional qualities of shared media narratives much more easily than those of real life, their own or someone else’s. Movie emotion then is relatively public and that of everyday life, much more private. (13) The context of a movie emotion is largely limited to the boundaries and duration of the movie. The theater, the neighborhood of the theater, and the rest of one’s life on the day one went to the movie tend to be out of play and removed from the context. In contrast the context of real life emotions is the entirety of one’s life along with its various environments. Accordingly the meaning and effects of the emotion are largely determined by the context. Real life emotions are modified by and radiate into one’s entire life. Movie emotions tend to be confined to the movie. It is true that some movies have long-term effects. The emotional pitches of the extremely positive or more especially the extremely negative feelings can stay with us and have consequences. People feeling uneasy in the shower because of the shower scene in Psycho is a favorite example. But these consequential movie emotions are remembered as exceptions. In actual life all substantial emotion can have effects and interact with one’s context. In movies this are rare. (14) Turning now to the substantive items on this list, I will begin with the identification process as mentioned earlier. There is little agreement on exactly what is meant by identification in film studies, or for that matter in psychoanalysis. Yet in ordinary conversation people use this term quiter effortlessly. In item 5 above I distinguished two kinds of identificational or vicarious emotions, those we have in watching movies and those we have in everyday life. Recently Gregory Currie (1995) argued that both of these vicarious emotions are like computer simulations and that they are fundamentally the same. Currie uses the term simulation in place of identification, a term he rejects.
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But the term identification is actually quite flexible and useful. Gaut (1999), for example, points out that there are various nuances and degrees that can be put on this word (and similar terms). And, in contrast to the term simulation, which equates people with computers, the term identification is consistent with common sense and ordinary experience. In addition this term avoids the awkward fact that computers do not actually have emotions. It also seems as though both kinds of everyday emotions, direct and vicarious, differ substantially from movie watching emotions. I just concluded thirteen comparisons of (direct) everyday with movie emotions. If we substitute vicarious everyday emotions, as Currie does, the comparison, though now modified, still holds. Let us say we are trying to sense or imagine the emotions of someone in our immediate world, a friend or family member. We cannot just proceed heedlessly and carelessly as we do in a movie. What we want in sensing a movie character’s emotion is pleasure. This is a hedonistically-driven experience, as we normally go to the movies for diversion and immediate gratification. In contrast if we are attending to the emotions of someone whom we care about, we will follow the rules of prudent responsibility and try to get a reasonably accurate reading of the person’s feelings. And we will want to know the other’s emotions but not necessarily have them. In watching a movie we usually want to actually have the movie emotion. In addition we interact with real people and relate to them in the second person, as “I” to “you.” In movies we never interact with the characters, and as a result we relate to them only in the third person, as “I” to “he” or “she.” There are many other differences in what Currie calls the two simulations, but there is no need to mention them all here. The two kinds of identification then, with actual people and with characters in movies, have differing configurations. Movie identifications are quite powerful, almost to the point of merging, with very little constraint or regulation. Everyday life identifications are much more cautious and measured, they are carefully kept at an appropriate distance and there are numerous constraints and regulations. It is the very no-holds-barred quality of movie identifications that makes them such a powerful experience and leads to my last three items.2 (15) A case in point is frequency or density of emotion in movie watching. When you attend a movie the emotion starts right away, and if you first sit through the coming attractions your nerves may already be in a jangle. You probably have some idea of the story, so you are poised to react to your mental model.
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Movie narratives tend to follow the usual “stability-instability-restability” form, so you are perhaps already anticipating or leaning into that destabilizing turn of the plot and the ensuing emotion. The music is geared to move you along and place you in the appropriate emotional channels. In other words you have interest right from the start. The word “interest,” however is controversial in film theory. David Bordwell (1985) and Noel Carroll (1997), who like to subsume emotion under cognition, interpret interest in the story as a cognitive force, not an emotional one. We want to know what will happen, we anticipate future events, and the resolution of the story has a satisfying quenching effect on our curiosity. In contrast, Ed Tan, the Danish film theorist, interprets that same interest as an emotional force (1996, p. 83). Indeed he fuses cognition and emotion, but there is no doubt that he sees our close following of the plot and our foreshadowing of various possible developments as an event of passion. Just as we may identify with given characters, we identify with the story as a whole (or with the “camera”). This narrative identification creates, for Tan, the emotion of interest. In any event we start right off exuding affect, and, in a well-wrought Hollywood movie, we can ride this affect, wherever it takes us, right to the end. In the approximately two hours the movie may last, there is usually a great deal more emotion than in a comparable two hours of our typical day. This is partly because time is usually sped up in a movie, i.e. instead of there being only the two hours of real time, the movie may depict two days, two weeks or even several years. As Schutz pointed out the flow of time differs from world to world (Flaherty, 1999) and films can stretch real time to great lengths. But in addition to the temporally dense feature of movies they usually entail a lot more excitement and passion than we find in a typical day. Things happen to these people: lives twist, people merge, evil pervades, bliss comes and goes, sadness overtakes, happiness finally arrives, horror paralyzes, and in general people tend to live packed and nerve-jangling lives in those paltry two hours. It counts that emotions tend toward clarity because this allows more emotion. We don’t stop and try to figure out what just happened. The story moves us along. Despite the carefully fenced in boundaries of a movie, the emotions within that fence are thick and wild. They are frequent, dense and almost wall-to-wall. (16) In addition to being densely packed, movie emotions tend to be quite intense. People watching movies laugh and cry more spontaneously and forcefully than in ordinary life. This is partly because of the various formal qualities, such as clarity and irresponsibility, that heighten the affective volume. There
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is also a social effect, particularly in humor, as the whole audience laughs at once. It may even be that people are more open to emotion in movies than in life, thereby making a moderate amount of affect go a long way. There seems to be little doubt that men, who tend to be emotionally illiterate and numb, thaw out a bit and experience movie emotion more intensely than those of their actual lives. The theater is dark, nobody is watching, the emotional loadings are powerful, and people may even regress to childhood (or their unconscious), as many a film theory claims. The protective shell, as suggested by my formal analysis, also invites releasing inhibitions. If this were real life and one had to, somehow, respond to grief, suspense, heartbreak, explosive love or ecstasy, one might be a bit cautious and hesitant. But this is not real life. It’s a completely free and encapsulated romp, and you can pretty much do (read “feel”) as you want. This is not to mention whatever compensatory or escapist needs you may also be satisfying. (17) In addition to frequency and intensity, one might experience new or rarely encountered emotions at the show. One’s range might expand. This is especially true for emotions that belong to other demographic groups, such as the opposite gender or age grouping. For young people the vicarious participation in adult emotions might sometimes have the educational value of “anticipatory socialization,” assuming it is not too much too soon. In any event many a young person figured it out at the movies: how to kiss, how to talk on a date, how to confront parents, how to order in a restaurant, and how to endure heartbreak. And the reverse works too. Adults can find out about kids (today), and in their hearts act like kids. Men can taste the feelings of women and women can feel like men. Presumably one may also have these opportunities in the ordinary cross-gender situations of everyday life. But the movies are louder and larger than life, so you get a better glimpse into the other gender. This is not to say women don’t gripe about “boy movies,” and men don’t bridle at three-hanky flicks. A little goes a long way, but my point is merely that the range of movie emotions is wider than that of everyday life, not that anyone finds all corners of this range endlessly fascinating. But all emotions, not just those of one’s binary opposites, can come at the extremes of the range. Take suspense for example, which is a staple of the best-seller movie. Done well, the vicarious experience of suspense is strangely relaxing. One feels better afterwards. There are many guesses as to the psychology of this, and I will soon explore the catharsis hypothesis, but the simple frequency of suspense in movies is far greater than the suspense
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in a typical life. So too for horror, bliss, sadness and grief, triumph and ecstasies of various kinds. This range, particularly at the extremes, is far greater than in life. To summarize part two, the emotions we experience in movies are quite different from those of ordinary life. In life the environment or boundary of emotion is unlimited and open, while the emotions themselves are usually controlled and measured. In movies the context or environment is limited, while the substance is intense and wild. Life emotions are open in form and relatively closed in substance. Movie emotions are closed in form and relatively open in substance. In other words movie emotions reverse those of life. The next question is what is going on here, why does it work this way, how to explain the relation between movies and life?
WHY MOVIE EMOTIONS ARE DIFFERENT? The effects of movies on the viewer are quite complex, and I will not try to enumerate or discuss them all. For example I will suspend the important issue of ideological influences. There is little doubt that movies usually reinforce the economic or class ideology, along with other dominant values, of the country that produces them. The emotions of the viewer, manipulated as they are by the movie makers, are nudged toward political conservatism, i.e. toward accepting the basic socio-economic system as it stands. On the other hand, not going to the movies (and doing something else instead), also probably has ideological effects. We live in a sea of ideology, and, while some situations are more ideological than others, the built-in biases of any society tend to be all-enveloping and constant. I will look at the ordinary psychological effects of movie emotions. When people are asked why they attend movies they give common sense answers, such as to be entertained, to escape boredom, to get respite from their problems, to get new experience or information and, sometimes, to get an artistic thrill (Tan, 1996, pp. 17–18). Many of these motives and outcomes can be captured with terms such as relief, comfort or escape. We enter the movie troubled in some way, we watch it, and this watching temporarily lifts our burdens. This lifting process has often been referred to, from Aristotle’s time to today, as a kind of catharsis or purgation. The notion of catharsis is imprecise, unstandardized and limited for explaining the effects of artistic narratives. For Aristotle, it referred to the release of tension that had been induced by the narratives themselves – in his case the Greek tragedies. The plays both caused and catharsized or released the tension. Others think artistic catharsis relieves tension induced by psychological
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traumas, residing and festering in the unconscious (Scheff, 1979). Still others think it is the unconscious urges of sex and violence that get catharthasized, this occuring through some kind of artistic sublimation (Kreitler & Kreitler, 1972, p. 293). And there are yet other candidates for explaining this process. To impose some clarification on the concept of catharsis, at least in my version, I will list the several modes of psychological relief that may be involved: (1) Story-induced troubles. From the movie narrative itself – tension builds up and then gets released by the resolution of the story. This was Aristotle’s point. (2) Unconscious traumas. The blows of life, especially early life, that were too painful to be experienced and were therefore numbed and buried in the unconscious. (3) Unconscious urges. The id-based desires for sex and aggression which are tamed by the superego but nevertheless chafe for expression. (4) Conscious troubles. These include any painful experiences that still hurt and need relief. Some of these are more physical and some are more psychological. (a) Physical. This includes problems of the body: illness, incapacity and physical suffering of any kind. This can be stretched to include the deaths of loved ones, along with the loss and grief this might bring about. (b) Psychological. This includes psychological problems and non-physical losses, such as family troubles, lost friends and departed lovers. Also loneliness and alienation from society. (5) The Universal Evils. These are the problems that religion is all about. They are relatively constant and widely shared in human life. (a) Existential evils, including human suffering and death in general, and also a certain “meaninglessness and senselessness” (Max Weber) that characterizes human life as such. (b) Historical evils. These are the inequalities, miseries and oppressions that can come from dominating classes and oppressive political regimes. These evils are not completely universal since there must be a certain amount of economic development to make them possible in the first place. The preceding list of five kinds of troubles is an attempt to include them all. These are the pains that humans have, and such institutions as religion, psychotherapy and art seem to be pointed at alleviating these troubles. The idea of catharsis can apply to any and all of these problems. And the relief can be partial or, much less likely, complete. In large part we go to the movies, the psychotherapist and the religionist for relief from these burdens. In the first instance these problems go through the emotions of our daily life, those I have been calling for the sake of convenience the “real” emotions. In this passage they leave a residue of pain and trouble, which can remain with us
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indefinitely. Then as a kind of second-order or meta process they might again be confronted by the catharsis-seeking institutions I mentioned above: religion, psychotherapy and the arts. Since everyone has more or less the same sorts of problems, though not to the same degree, movies can speak to almost everyone by touching the right themes. But why are real and movie emotion so different if they are both confronting the same mix of life problems? I think the answer is in how these two sets of emotion deal with problems. The real life emotions are associated with an attempt to actually solve, or at least directly face, these problems. The movie (and other artistic) emotions are associated with an attempt to “symbolically” solve these problems. An actual, non-symbolic solution would resolve the problem in the real world. A symbolic solution would be a model or image of a solution, possibly quite comforting to visualize, but with no real world effects (except for the comforting). For example, in the movie Blink (1994) Madeline Stowe, who had been blinded in childhood by her mother in a fit of rage, confronted her blindness in two ways. When the movie began she was only using symbolic solutions, namely playing the violin and drinking (too much) wine. But as the movie proceeded she got an operation and gradually had her sight restored (while being stalked by a serial killer). Art and religion give symbolic solutions to problems, and these may provide partial relief or catharsis. The movie pattern of strict form and loose content is a powerful means for building symbolic solutions. In other words the movie in some way solves the problem, or even stacks of problems. The actual movie emotions with all their frequency (density), intensity and range provide a kind of modeling clay that can be shaped to resemble anything we, or rather the movie makers, want. The strict formal limits have the effect of confining the models to an imaginary world while still providing satisfaction. Like the “symbolic immortalities” of various religions (Lifton, 1970) the movie solutions provide imaginary or rather artistic solutions to life’s problems. The fact that Lifton’s immortalities are symbolic gives them free reign to promise a lot, much as the tightened form or frame of movie emotions, along with their relatively unleashed substance, also promises a lot. The emotions of dreams, as previously mentioned, are differerent from those of movies, but Freud’s idea of “wish fulfillment” as a key to understanding dreams, is perhaps even more true of movies. As I mentioned, catharsis is not the only function or effect of movies. There are many others, which I have chosen to set aside in this paper. But catharsis is useful for understanding the interesting pattern of movie emotions. For, the tightframe, loose-content feature of these emotions is a highly suitable material for manufacturing cathartic solutions to almost any human problem.
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CONCLUSION I began by showing that the theoretical landscape in film theory today, particularly as it concerns the emotions of the spectator, is much like the set of options Arlie Hochschild described concerning the discipline of sociology in 1975. It seems there are certain positions on the emotion-cognition relation that are likely to turn up in any discipline. Theories that especially emphasize cognition or deep emotion and thereby tend to ignore ordinary, middle-level emotion, may be inevitable. But Hochschild was one of the first in sociology to take ordinary emotions in all their autonomous force on their own terms. She created a language and a perspective for examining this field, and she showed how the management of these emotions is an increasingly important aspect of the capitalist economy. I then applied the pragmatist perspective, using Hochschild’s approach and concepts, to the special problem of movie spectator emotions. I showed that most aspects of these emotions are tamer, more disciplined and more narrowly framed than the emotions of everyday life. On the other hand the actual substance or content of these emotions, which I described as frequency, intensity and range, is far more open and wild than the emotions of everyday life. The movie emotional pattern virtually reverses that of ordinary life. In asking why this might be, I used the analogy of modelling clay. Real life has loads of problems, some solvable and most not. In contrast the movies have the perfect materials for providing symbolic or imaginary solutions, thus giving us the temporary and escapist satisfaction of living in a better world. I referred to this symbolic relief as catharsis and tried to list all the orders of human problems that need this relief. Of course it is not news to say the movies give catharsis. But I think my analysis of movie emotions in their form and substance gives a new and useful picture of how the cathartic process comes about. I simply side-stepped the problem of ideology, which is intensely controversial in film theory, because I wanted to do something else. But the tight-frame, permissivecontent configuration of movie emotions also looks nicely suited for distributing “bread and circuses” to a population, however inequitable the overall institutions may be. I might also suggest that Durkheim’s theory of religious ritual (Durkheim, 1912) as the producer of social solidarity and meaning could be plugged into the movie pattern. Just as Durkheim’s rituals themselves are symbolic, have a tight social frame and unlimited emotional content, movies are a neat conduit for a similar product. In fact many movies have a strongly solidaristic effect on ethnic groups, genders and national populations. I am aware that Hochschild’s is not the only approach to the sociology of emotions. Since her breakthrough article of 1975 there have been several new positions,
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often competitive with hers (Barbalet, 1998, pp. 21–26). But for my purposes in this paper, making sense of film theory and the problem of spectator emotions, her approach is highly useful. Finally let me mention what seems to be the next step for the ideas of this paper. If I have successfully characterized movie-watching emotions, then it should be possible to analyze the emotional content and cathartic functions of particular movies with these ideas. It should also be possible to do this to types or genres of movies: suspense, love, “action,” comedy, etc.
NOTES 1. When I say “real” I do not mean movie emotions or the movie world are not real. As James (1890) and Schutz (1973) argued, there are many worlds or realities. Instead I am speaking loosely, and merely mean the main, everyday reality. 2. One’s identification with a movie and with particular characters in a movie is heightened, as I explained in another place (Wiley, 2000), by the fact that the movie runs on an “inner screen.” This screen is the internal dialogical system, the I-you-me circuitry of pragmatism’s dialogical self. The self is, in a way, a language, i.e. an inner language, especially the inner pronouns. These pronouns, like the “outer” pronouns of ordinary language, can be occupied by someone, usually our selves, or they can be generic and empty. When occupied, as we engage in thoughts or daydreams, these pronouns are, to relocate Saussure’s terminology, “parole.” When unoccupied they are Saussure’s “langue.” If we allow some external dialogue, e.g. that of a movie or other artistic narrative, to enter these inner niches we experience this dialogue as though it were going on inside our self. The movie, via the parole-langue swinging door, becomes, so to speak, our very selves. Thus, the intensity of the identification and the closeness of the emotions. If we do not like the movie we keep it at a distance, do not allow it into our inner speech chambers and it does not really become “ourselves.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper was initially a guest lecture in Julianne Burton-Carvajel’s class in film studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I am grateful for her comments and for those of her students. Thanks are also due to Michael Flaherty, Ira Jaffe, David Westby and G. William Domhoff.
REFERENCES Aristotle (1984) (384–322 B.C.). Poetics. In: The Complete Works of Aristotle (Vol. 2, pp. 2316–2340). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Barbalet, J. M. (1998). Emotion, social theory, and social structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baudry, J.-L. (1986 [1975]). Ideological effects of the basic cinematographic apparatus. In: P. Rosen (Ed.), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology (pp. 286–298). New York: Columbia University Press. Bordwell, D. (1985). Narration in the fiction film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Carney, R. (1994). The films of Joihn Cassavetes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carroll, N. (1997). Art, narrative and emotion. In: M. Hjort & S. Laver (Eds), Emotion and the Arts (pp. 190–211). New York: Oxford University Press. Cavell, S. (1979). The world viewed (2nd ed.). New York: Viking Press. Cavell, S. (1996). Contesting tears: The Hollywood melodrama of the unknown women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Colapietro, V. (2000). Let’s all go to the movies: Two thumbs up for Hugo Munsterberg’s The Photoplay (1916). Working Draft. Currie, G. (1995). Image and mind: Film, philosophy and cognitive science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dayan, D. (1992 [1974]). The tutor-code of classical cinema. In: G. Mast, M. Cohen & L. Braudy (Eds), Film Theory and Criticism (pp. 179–191). New York: Oxford University Press. de Lauretis, T. (1984). Alice doesn’t: Feminism, semiotics, cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Deleuze, G. (1986 [1983]). Cinema 1 The Movement-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G. (1989 [1985]). Cinema 2 The Time-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Denzin, N. K. (1984). On understanding emotion. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Domhoff, G. W. (1999). Drawing theoretical implications from descriptive empirical findings on dream content. Dreaming, 9, 201–210. Durkheim, E. (1995 [1912]). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: The Free Press. Feagin, S. L. (1997). Imagining emotions and appreciating fiction. In: M. Hjort & S. Laver (Eds), Emotion and the Arts (pp. 50–62). New York: Oxford University Press. Flaherty, M. G. (1999). The watched pot: How we experience time. New York: New York University Press. Hammett, J. (1992). Essentializing movies: Perceiving cognitive film theory. Wide Angle, 14, 86–94. Hammett, J. (1997). The ideological impediment: Epistemology, feminism and film theory. In: R. Allen & M. Smith (Eds), Film Theory and Philosophy (pp. 244–259). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hochschild, A. (1975). The sociology of feeling and emotion: Selected possibilities. In: M. Millman & R. Moss Kanter (Eds), Another Voice: Feminist Perspectives on Life and Social Science (pp. 280–307). Garden City: Doubleday. Jaffe, I. (2000). Review of passionate views. Film, cognition and emotion. Journal of Film and Video, 52, 60–63. James, W. (1950 [1890]). The perception of reality. In: The Principles of Psychology (Vol. 2, Chap. 21, pp. 283–324). New York: Dover Publications Inc. Kreitler, H., & Kreitler, S. (1972). Psychology of the arts. Durham: Duke University Press. Lefebvre, M. (1999). On memory and imagination in the cinema. New Literary History, 30, 479–498. Lifton, R. J. (1970). Boundaries. New York: Random House. Metz, C. [1982] (1977). The imaginary signifier. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Scheff, T. J. (1979). Catharsis in healing, ritual and drama. Berkeley, University of California Press. Schutz, A. (1973). On multiple realilties. In: Collected Papers (Vol. 1, pp. 209–259). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
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Silverman, K. (1983). The subject of semiotics. New York: Oxford University Press. Tan, E. S. (1996). Emotion and the structure of narrative film. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Wiley, N. (2000). Movies and the mind: A pragmatist approach. Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis, 5, 93–126. Wollen, P. (1972). Signs and meaning in the cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
FROM FLANERIE TO PSEUDO-FLANERIE: THE POSTMODERN TOURIST IN LAS VEGAS Kurt Borchard ABSTRACT Baudelaire (1863) and Benjamin (1983) used the term flaneur to denote a modern man who could evocatively describe social life in urban areas. A flaneur was poetically to describe the ephemeral nature of modern urban life, but without acting as a consumer. Here I approach Las Vegas from the perspective of a flaneur, and discuss the possibilities in that city for flanerie today. I introduce the concept pseudo-flanerie, and apply it to postmodern tourism. In Las Vegas, pseudo-flaneurs wander from one impersonation of a city/culture/era to another, stroll from one game to another, and move from one presentation of self to another. However, surveillance, social control, and the organizing principles of capitalism structure each. I also discuss pseudo-flanerie in Las Vegas in terms of temporality, morality, and consumption practices. I find that the flaneur’s traditionally anti-consumer stance has been endangered in tourist cities like Las Vegas, where mock cities have commodified city-like experiences to tourists who ultimately pay to engage in practices traditionally associated with flaneurs. A postmodern tourist environment like Las Vegas, therefore, creates the conditions for the pseudo-flaneur to emerge.
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INTRODUCTION The term flaneur is most frequently associated with Charles Baudelaire (1863) and Walter Benjamin (1983). A flaneur is often defined as a modern, urban male who can evocatively describe the dynamic character of urban life from a distance, usually without directly engaging others or participating in a city’s economy as a consumer (Mazlish, 1994).1 The flaneur seeks a crowd, but tries to experience it as a dispassionate observer in order to distill its essence for others. For Baudelaire, the flaneur is a poet who idles about on the streets of Paris in the middle 1800s. In Paris, Baudelaire noted the flaneur found examples of the changes brought about by modernity. Paris, at that time, was indeed undergoing a profound social transformation. In a fifty-year period during the 1800s, the city doubled in size from five hundred thousand to one million persons (Ferguson, 1994, p. 30). The flaneur, then, is a detached eyewitness to an historical transformation evident in a city like Paris, a man who captures the transition of an abstract and general history through concrete and individual descriptions of everyday urban life. It has been argued that the figure of the flaneur is historically and culturally bound to middle nineteenth century Paris, and contemporary debates have questioned whether individuals can truly engage in flanerie today (Featherstone, 1998; Tester, 1994). Here I investigate the possibility of both acting as a flaneur in contemporary Las Vegas, and whether the city allows for flanerie in general. Ultimately, I believe that Las Vegas represents a paradox, promoting many of the activities that define a flaneur while subtly inhibiting individuals from engaging in a detached, anticonsumer stance. The once anti-consumer stance of the flaneur has been co-opted and, particularly in Las Vegas, many of the activities once defining the flaneur are now commodified, either gravely endangering the flaneur or altering his form. Here I want to discuss my experience as a flaneur in Las Vegas during the summer of 2000, and how the city itself seems to be the new capital for what I call pseudoflanerie (which occurs when flanerie-like practices are commodified). Paralleling the rapid growth of Paris in the mid-nineteenth century, Las Vegas is currently one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., adding about seventy thousand people a year to its current population of 1.4 million (Egan, 2001). It is also currently one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world with 36.7 million visitors in 2000 (Kaplan, 2001, p. 141), and with a local economy largely based on gambling and entertainment. As Baudelaire thought Paris to be a concrete example of the changes wrought by modernity, contemporary Las Vegas has been described as the symbolic capital of the U.S. (Postman, 1985, pp. 3–4) and has been studied as a pivotal example of postmodern life and culture (Andersen, 1994; Baudrillard, 1988; Borchard, 1998; Denzin, 1993; Fontana & Preston, 1990; Gottdiener, Collins & Dickens, 1999; Gottschalk, 1995; Venturi, Brown & Izenour, 1972). The transition
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of flaneur to pseudo-flaneur promoted in Las Vegas is important because it signals the increasing commodification of experience and the demise of individual freedom in postmodern culture. As the flaneur emerged out of a period of historical transition, a postmodern interpretive sociologist like myself might attempt to appropriate the flaneur’s methods to show concrete examples in Las Vegas of a more recent historical transition into the postmodern era. As McLaren (1997) notes, the flaneur is the “prototype of the urban ethnographer” (p. 145). Differing somewhat from a traditional sociologist using a scientific model to evaluate empirical truths, the flaneur blends empirical observations with theoretical insights and speculation, discussing elements of and notions about the social that cannot be subject to empirical testing. McLaren has further argued that the contemporary flaneur as urban ethnographer must be a self-reflexive agent engaged in ethical soulsearching regarding his own culpability in reproducing global capitalism and the marginalization of Others (1998, pp. 150–162).2 While the traditional sociologist searches for truth rooted in objectivity and science, the sociologist as flaneur remembers that the truth of sociology also involves values and subjectivity, and that sociology itself can be an art. Thus, while not all interpretive sociologists are flaneurs, the flaneur is, by definition, an interpretive sociologist. In one example of the sociologist as flaneur, Buck-Morss describes Benjamin’s appropriation of flanerie in order to show how “[t]he phenomena – buildings, human gestures, spatial arrangements – [can be] “read” as a language in which a historically transient truth (and the truth of historical transiency) is expressed concretely, and the city’s social formation [can become] legible within perceived experience” (1991, p. 27). Additionally, Frisby (1994) notes that flanerie as a method involves latent content analysis or deciphering of both the city and texts about the city. Frisby indicates that Benjamin’s flanerie was not simply about observing the signifiers of modern urban life, but also “involved the reading of texts on metropolitan modernity and the production of texts on that modernity” (1994, p. 96, italics in original). As a postmodern flaneur, then, I blend insights from both individual observation of the city and written work to gain insights on metropolitan postmodernity and postmodern tourism through examples in Las Vegas.
LAS VEGAS: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FLANEUR’S PARADISE Ten A.M. – Took a city bus with limited air conditioning to the Strip. It stank of sweat, and every seat was taken. Inside the MGM Grand, tourists walk from machine to machine, many wearing tennis shoes, shorts, T-shirts with logos, fanny packs. Several carry the ubiquitous white bucket
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of change. Walking from the bus stop here meant shifting from intense light to darkness, from intense outdoor heat to unnatural air-conditioned coolness. Why do people come here for this?
Las Vegas has not always been conducive to the urban strolling and reflective practices of flanerie. The city developed in the middle of one of the world’s most forbidding deserts (Gottdiener et al., 1999, p. 1).3 The building of the spectacular Hoover Dam in the 1930s combined with the legalization of gambling in the state in 1931 helped promote tourism in the Las Vegas area. The city was accessible by rail or car from Los Angeles, a fact that became important when Los Angeles banned gambling in 1938. The El Rancho Vegas, the city’s first resort hotel, was built in 1941 just beyond the Las Vegas city limits, on what is now known as the Las Vegas Strip, and introduced Las Vegas to the concept of the “lounge act” by promoting singers and comedians on the premises. During this period the Last Frontier resort was also developed, with elaborate d´ecor and a mock frontier village that made it the first “themed resort” in the city (Gottdiener et al., 1999, pp. 1–18). In 1946 Mob-connected Bugsy Siegel developed an even more lavish complex, the Flamingo, which moved the city’s resorts away from monolithic western themes (Reid & Demaris, 1963). As Rothman (1998) argues, the promotion of gambling and the development of themed resorts both seemed to occur in Las Vegas because the city could not be promoted as other western tourist destinations had been. Compared to western tourist towns such as Santa Fe and Aspen, Las Vegas in the mid-twentieth century couldn’t offer many heritage-, cultural- or outdoor recreation-based tourist opportunities. While “Santa Fe, Aspen and similar places engaged in a range of delusionary pretensions” (Rothman, 1998, p. 321) which nevertheless helped those cities draw tourists, the up-front marketing of vice and adult entertainment became Las Vegas’ strong suit for attracting visitors, and a host of disreputable characters soon became key players in transforming the desert town through gambling and themed resort development (Reid & Demaris, 1963). Mob dominance in Las Vegas, however, began to end in the 1960s, as Howard Hughes began purchasing property through corporate funding. This, along with the Nevada state legislature’s passage of the revised Corporate Gaming Act in 1969, allowed public corporations to own casinos for the first time, forever altering resort and casino development in Las Vegas (Gottdiener et al., 1999, p. 29; Rothman, 1998, p. 287).4 As the Las Vegas Strip began filling in with resort casinos, Las Vegas became known not simply as a place for gambling, but as a unique tourist destination and “experience” unto itself. The phrase “city of lights,” used to describe Paris in both Baudelaire’s and Benjamin’s times, eventually has become equally applicable to the omnipresent neon of Las Vegas (Fontana & Preston, 1990; Venturi et al., 1972). Tens of millions of tourists annually began experiencing Las Vegas, and by
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1977, profits from gambling in Clark County (which surrounds the city) exceeded $1 billion (Gottdiener et al., 1999). As Las Vegas honed its service economy, new forms of gambling started becoming legal across the U.S. in the 1980s. In response, corporations in Las Vegas began to develop several 2- to 5,000-room megaresorts in rapid succession, including the 1989 opening of the tropical-themed Mirage, the 1990 opening of the medieval-themed Excalibur, and the 1993 openings of the Egyptian-themed Luxor, tropical-themed Treasure Island, and movie-fantasy-themed MGM Grand (Gottdiener et al., 1999, p. 36; Rothman, 1998). In addition, during the mid-to-late 1990s several older resorts, including the Dunes, Landmark, Hacienda, Sands and Aladdin Hotels, were imploded, often to make room for larger, more spectacular structures (Borchard, 2001). The latest megaresorts in Las Vegas are designed to attract a diversity of tourists beyond avid gamblers, perhaps best epitomizing what Rothman refers to as a new form of tourism developed after World War II, “entertainment tourism” (1998, p. 24). Through what the architecture critic Kamin has called “architainment” centers (quoted in Borchard, 1998, p. 249), each themed megaresort in the city embodies a slightly different organizing principle and offers various types of attractions, shopping and entertainment. The new importance of diverse offerings for tourists are also reflected in a recent visitors’ survey which indicated that 72% of visitors now come to the city for a vacation while only 4% claimed that gambling was the principal reason for their visit (Gottdiener et al., 1999, p. 119). The city now boasts over 120,000 hotel rooms, and its sights are now globally recognizable cultural icons that can be regularly found on U.S. television shows and movies.5 Las Vegas, now one of the most popular tourist locations in the world, also makes for an interesting place to observe flanerie because its economy is rooted, above all, in the commodification of experience. Part of this commodification, I argue, is the production of cities within the city, of Las Vegas as a playful place to be endlessly explored.
THE CITY, AS AN ABSTRACTION AND IN MINIATURE The flaneur was born in Paris as an observer of the modern city. In contemporary Las Vegas, though, tourists engage in flanerie-like practices primarily within the mock cities of resort hotels. Michel De Certeau (1993) and his influential essay “Walking in the City” can be used to better describe the difference. In his essay, De Certeau (1993) presents a vision of New York City from a privileged position on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. He describes his perspective from this site as being like that of a God, the view of someone who can
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momentarily escape from participating in the city itself. This vantage point allows him to view the city as though he were an urban planner. De Certeau, like Benjamin before him, notes that the idea behind city planning was the rationalization and reorganization of urban areas, taking away their privatized uses and historic traditions. Where houses once had names, street numbers would be used to indicate their location, and phone numbers would be used to contact their occupants. Maps could be developed to indicate the relationships between different parts of a city, making it whole. Thus, the concept of a city could emerge out of all the divergent elements brought together by culture, history and the practices of everyday life (De Certeau, 1993). It is perhaps the development of skyscraper-style architecture, allowing individuals to climb high above a city, which best represents the turning point in a city’s identity as a blending of the actual and conceptual, of reality and abstraction. In Las Vegas, the Stratosphere Tower was opened to visitors in 1996. The structure is the tallest freestanding tower in the United States and provides a superb view of the city, its ever-expansive growth, its rows of houses and casinos, its traffic, its subdivisions, and its parking grids. However, the Stratosphere Tower only provides a “bird’s eye” view of the city: it cannot give a visitor a “mole’s eye” view (Featherstone, 1998, p. 912), or an everyday understanding of the inner workings of the grids and patterns inside the resort casinos. The mole’s eye view of Las Vegas reveals, ironically, that many of its recently developed resort casinos also make use of “cities,” but as microcosms, as themes of interior design. Megaresorts such as New York-New York, the Venetian, and Paris, for example, all promote geographic themes of cities. These miniature imitations of cities also parallel the written description that Benjamin found so appropriate for the Arcades of Paris, a favorite spot for flaneurs. In the Arcades Project, Benjamin cites a section from the Illustrated Guide to Paris from 1852, which reads: In speaking of the inner boulevards, we have made mention again and again of the arcades which open up onto them. These arcades, a recent invention of industrial luxury, are glassroofed, marble-paneled corridors extending through whole blocks of buildings, whose owners have joined together for such enterprises. Lining both sides of these corridors, which get their light from above, are the most elegant shops, so that the arcade is a city, a world in miniature (quoted in Benjamin, 1999, p. 31, emphasis mine).
The mock cities inside so many hotel casinos on the Las Vegas Strip are also designed to appear as cities and self-enclosed worlds similar to those first attracting (and helping create) the flaneur. The mock cities within Las Vegas resorts are both based on real cities and abstractions, blending structures and themes, “indoors” and “outdoors,” and drawing from various points in history. As Gottschalk (1995, pp. 213–214) notes, the
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Forum Shops within Caesars Palace Resort/Casino is a themed indoor shopping area designed to simulate an outdoor Roman marketplace through marblepaneled corridors and reproductions of classic Roman sculptures and fountains. The simulated “outdoorness” of the Forum Shops is also “achieved through a play of lighting on the ceiling, which is painted as a sky and decorated with stars and clouds” (Gottschalk, 1995, p. 213). The effect of outdoorness found in the Forum Shops is also evident in several other recently built resorts and tourist areas in Las Vegas. One such design (which also strongly parallels the corridor-like structure of the Paris arcades) is the Fremont Street Experience, an outdoor pedestrian mall consisting of a four-block long canopy that straddles several of the most popular of the downtown hotel casinos. First developed in 1991, the $70-million canopy includes two million lamps and a 208-speaker sound system that provides spectacular shows at night, while its misting systems help promote climate control in this otherwise outdoor area during the day (Gottdiener et al., 1999, p. 55). Other examples blurring “indoor” and “outdoor” space include the indoor pedestrian shopping and dining areas of the Venetian (opened in 1999), Paris (1999), and the Aladdin (2000), each of which replicate the painted “blue skies” indoor design of the Forum Shops. Like the arcades of Paris that so fascinated Benjamin, their postmodern equivalents in Las Vegas are designed to be a flaneur’s dream, or to be inviting places for pedestrians to wander and observe, with shops, restaurants, gambling activities, nooks, and crannies. In New York-New York’s fake version of Greenwich Village, for example, tourists are able to wander through streets and see a reproduction of everyday “New York” life – mailboxes, parking meters, manholes, street signs, imitation rows of houses and storefronts, and graffiti. However, for tourists there is no privileged “bird’s eye” position from which to view the mock village within New York-New York. The space of Greenwich Village is not to be seen as an abstraction from above, but to be used in the everyday manner that de Certeau notes people use and experience the city. It is an area to be explored as a flaneur would, in a personal way, to experience, to investigate, and to be surprised by. The environment in the New York-New York resort is, therefore, designed to feel like a real city. Such a confusion of the virtual and the real, the symbol and the referent, is also key to understanding contemporary tourism in Las Vegas. Through its elaborately themed environments and architecture and through reproductions of places like Greenwich Village, the city overall seems to promote simulacra, or the development of near perfect copies of an original (Baudrillard, 1994). However, unlike the real New York City, tourists are only able to feel like they are in a well-developed copy of Greenwich Village within the New York-New York resort if they experience it in an everyday fashion, as a flaneur wandering the streets.
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A “bird’s eye” view of New York-New York’s Greenwich Village from the ceiling above would shatter the illusion. There is, though, one privileged position in New York-New York and in similar Las Vegas resorts where select individuals can view the entire space – the surveillance control center. Each hotel casino has one, and inside it dozens of television screens make use of dozens of ceiling cameras to observe every inch of each hotel casino and every activity of its patrons and workers. Hundreds of videotapes are collected and cataloged each day in order to record every action of both patrons and staff. Such panoptic practices are often discussed in critiques of postmodern cityscapes, especially the degree to which those practices inhibit democratic activity and reduce the presence of racial minorities and economic outsiders, groups that are prominent in real cities (Davis, 1990; Featherstone, 1998; Lofland, 1998). As Gottschalk (1995) notes in his discussion of the Forum Shops, “by comparison to real forums and marketplaces, the beggars and the homeless are strategically and conspicuously absent from within its gates” (p. 215, emphasis in original). The absence of those individuals unable to participate in consumption in Las Vegas is also the result of highly visible as well as nondescript members of private security forces, controlling who can and cannot enter and stay in resort casinos. Although the city of Las Vegas may be a tourist Mecca that promotes leisurely strolling and sightseeing for 36.7 million visitors annually, the monitoring, cataloging and ultimate control of all such movements leads well into Benjamin’s (1983) discussion of why he thought the flaneur became extinct.
LAS VEGAS, CAPITAL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Noon – Just finished lunch at a buffet. The sign inside said ‘Please limit your dining experience to two hours.’ Everything in Las Vegas is called an ‘experience.’ Riding the monorail that runs from the MGM Grand to Ballys, a prerecorded announcement thanked me for ‘experiencing the MGM/Ballys monorail.’ Inside Paris Hotel and Casino, an eight-dollar ride to the top of the half-scale Eiffel Tower was advertised as the ‘Eiffel Tower Experience.’ Then, of course, there’s downtown’s single largest attraction, the Fremont Street Experience. Hard to fit it all in . . .
Benjamin’s (1983) reading of Baudelaire indicates that the flaneur’s existence in a capitalist economic environment was doomed. Benjamin’s argument is that the rationality of capitalism and, especially, the circulation of commodities, itself defined the meaning of existence in the city so that there remained no
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spaces of mystery for the flaneur to observe. Capital imposed its own order on the metropolis as if from outside, like a natural force. Benjamin proposes that the hollowness of the commodity form and, indeed, the hollowness of the egoistic individuals of capitalism is reflected in the flaneur. Flanerie is a desperate attempt to fill the emptiness even though it is actually a final resignation to it (Tester, 1994, p. 13).
Tester observes that Benjamin focuses on the chokehold that capitalism has placed on all experience in the city, and that Benjamin believed that the circulation of primarily material commodities then defined the meaning of existence in cities. However, Benjamin could not foresee the degree to which capitalism would involve the commodification of experience in the postmodern era. In The Condition of Postmodernity, Harvey (1990) notes that the postmodern era is defined in part by “a shift away from the consumption of goods and into the consumption of services – [including] entertainments, spectacles, happenings, and distractions” (p. 285). Harvey notes the increasing dominance of service sector economies in the West, particularly since the 1970s (Harvey, 1990, p. 156). Las Vegas, a city that has more hotel and motel rooms than any other in the nation (not to mention an excess of entertainments and distractions) is a particularly good example of the importance of a service-sector based economy dominating one metropolitan area. Las Vegas could be considered more postmodern than many other cities, then, because the purchase of services as opposed to goods drives the city’s employment and economy. As Rothman phrased it, an economy like that of Las Vegas is unique because “[l]ittle that can be touched and handled changes hands in the tourist transaction . . .. The exchange is more complicated and ambiguous than a typical material sales transaction. A feeling is transmitted and perhaps shared; a way of living is expressed” (1998, p. 20). Las Vegas is organized to appeal to the pseudoflaneur, an unreflective consumer of ephemeral city life, one who will spend money on services, such as dining at a ritzy restaurant, taking in any of a multitude of shows, and gambling, and who will walk away with feelings, experiences, and images. Beyond a move to service sector economies as increasingly important for cities like Las Vegas, Benjamin also could not foresee how such economic trends would inform postmodern city structures such as those found in Las Vegas. There, the order promoted by capitalism reaches its fruition in the construction of environments designed to look like cities, but which are really simulacrums of cities – private commercial centers sanitized through surveillance and private security forces (Hannigan, 1998; Lofland, 1998). In a footnote, Tester (1994, footnote 6, pp. 19–20) says that Benjamin’s thoughts on the rational organization of Paris could now be compared with a Foucauldian analysis of disciplinary practices (Foucault, 1977). Indeed, Las Vegas, arguably the world’s most panoptic city, might be the new capital of such practices, as every tourist seems free to wander on the Strip,
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but is also under constant scrutiny from surveillance cameras, or the “eye in the sky” (Taylor, 1999). Ironically, such surveillance practices parallel those that also define the flaneur: “[t]o be in control, Foucault told us, is to see without being seen. This is precisely what the flaneur does” (Bauman, 1994, p. 141). Perhaps, then, it could be argued that those behind the surveillance cameras are today the only true flaneurs. Benjamin also noted that true flanerie was impossible in the era of high capitalism because being a dispassionate poet a` la Baudelaire had become impossible. No one could escape the desire to possess things encouraged in shopping outlets, and indeed the arcades were for Benjamin the necessary precursors to the shopping mall, an entity that would completely transform urban life and gravely endanger the flaneur (Benjamin, 1983, 1999). Today, megaresorts in Las Vegas such as the Bellagio, the Venetian, Paris, New York-New York, and Caesars Palace each come complete with shopping malls, as well as dining establishments and entertainment designed to fulfill all a visitor’s needs (Borchard, 2001). True flaneurs, however, are not supposed to purchase things, and are not even supposed to pay attention to time: They are opening their eyes and ears to the scene around them. They are not treating the street as an obstacle course to be negotiated; they are opening themselves up to it. They are wondering about the lives of those they pass, constructing narratives for them, they are eavesdropping on conversations, they are studying how people dress and what new shops and products there are (not in order to buy anything – just in order to reflect on them as important pieces of evidence of what human beings are about) (Botton, 1999, p. 30).
While in Las Vegas it is still possible for individual tourists to engage in flanerie in Baudelaire’s sense of the term, the vast majority of those who visit Las Vegas do not. The city is, by definition, one driven by Benjamin’s individualism through access to consumption, to excess, to vice, and to indulgences. True flanerie in Las Vegas has also been inhibited through surveillance and security forces designed to streamline the flow of capital. Part of this streamlining, ironically, also involves the resort corridor seemingly promoting activities that mimic those of the flaneur so as to encourage the consumption of experience.
THE FLANEUR: APART FROM TIME AND PLACE Three P. M. – Outside the Sahara Resort on the Strip, I see bright, two-foot tall letters on a sign promoting the new ‘Speedworld’ auto-racing theme of the resort. Nearby a slogan promotes a clever double entendre; ‘THE BEST TIMES WIN.’ Across the street, a billboard for the resort casino advertises its latest game, ‘Speed Keno,’ with the catchphrase ‘Play 100 games in 15 minutes.’
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Flaneurs in Paris during the middle nineteenth century also defined themselves by observing and at times critiquing the new sense of time and space promoted in the modern era. In discussing the rise of modernism as a cultural force, Harvey notes that the development and dissemination of capitalism promoted a faster pace in modern life. New technologies such as railroads, photography, and printing also caused people to experience what Harvey refers to as “time-space compression” (1990, p. 260). Harvey notes that these effects in turn changed how artists and writers in middle nineteenth century Paris experienced and represented the city. After 1848, Manet began radically redefining European painting’s representation of place. Flaubert’s novels presented peculiar narrative structures that questioned the meaning of space and place as money and capitalism homogenized culture. Baudelaire also used modernist poetry and language to find the eternal in ephemeral city life while engaged in flanerie (Harvey, 1990, pp. 260–263). To understand and critique modern tempos, flaneurs began trying to experience cities through a seeming aimlessness by wandering and strolling about, an embodiment of the view that time is irrelevant (Tester, 1994, p. 15). Benjamin (1983, p. 54) notes that the flaneur’s activity in the 1800s of walking a leashed turtle represented his refusal to participate in discourses of productivity, despite the fact that the discourse of progress carried the day. Like modern Paris, postmodern Las Vegas seems to promote even more intensified versions of time-space compression. Time, for example, is frequently made irrelevant for tourists in Las Vegas. Casinos in the city are famous for lacking clocks, and are often designed so that daylight is not visible from gaming areas (Fontana & Preston, 1990; Reid & Demaris, 1963, p. 2). The city also undermines the relevance of time by many businesses being open twenty-four hours a day (Gottdiener et al., 1999, pp. 121, 198). Ironically, though, time is made irrelevant to tourists in Las Vegas not so that tourists can critique discourses encouraging increased productivity and progress (as flaneurs did in the modern era), but in order to promote consumption. The city’s gambling and entertainment providers do not themselves hold time irrelevant so as to encourage ongoing consumption: by running continuously, property owners’ space on the Strip is made profitable twenty-four hours a day. Therefore, although Las Vegas promotes consumption, which for Benjamin is inimical to the practice of true flanerie, it also allows tourists to ignore time, a practice that defined flaneurs. Such paradoxes help create the conditions for pseudo-flanerie to emerge. Six P.M. – At the Paris Resort, I wander through the mock Parisian streets. Tourists buy French bread, wine, miniature Eiffel Towers, prints of famous French art, and play at machines labeled ‘Le Jacques Pot.’ Is this really what people come here for? Why not go to the real Paris? I remember that during the 1999 opening of Paris Resort, one rather confused man said that he had never been to Paris, but that now he could say he had been to Paris. People ask me to take
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photos of them in front of ‘French’ shops and cafes. Maybe they think that this is better than the real thing. Wayne Newton once said that the New York-New York Resort was like the real New York, but without the muggings . . .
Traditionally indifferent to time, flaneurs have also traditionally maintained fluid relationships to place. As Shields (1994, pp. 68–72) notes, Benjamin’s flaneur being apart from time and place also makes him similar to Simmel’s stranger – they are both outsiders in the world, and in Benjamin’s case the flaneur had become an outsider in both a consumer-oriented and increasingly racially and culturally diverse city. Shields notes that Benjamin’s flaneur in Paris was able to experience elements of traditional societies the world over through dispassionate observation of that metropolitan area’s multiculturalism. In Shield’s reading of Benjamin, the flaneur embodies the dispassionate superiority of the Western European imperialist/colonialist. Similarly, the resort corridor of Las Vegas also provides its own experience of multiculturalism, but in a simulated form, again designed for tourists within the sanitized, themed environments of resort casinos. Perhaps the most innocuous and yet successful version of this simulated multiculturalism in megaresorts is promoted through buffets, which frequently offer culinary delights from around the world as a selling point to tourists. Additionally, a diverse offering of smaller “ethnic” restaurants can be found throughout many resort casinos in Las Vegas. In his discussion of Disneyworld and Epcot, it is worth noting how well the words of David Harvey (1990) can also be applied to capturing the contemporary structuring of Las Vegas. As he phrased it, in such postmodern tourist centers, “[t]he general implication is that through the experience of everything from food, to culinary habits . . . [to] entertainment . . . it is now possible to experience the world’s geography vicariously, as a simulacrum” (Harvey, 1990, p. 300). Harvey’s thoughts can be further extended to understanding Las Vegas, which seems an attempt by resort/casino owners at bringing together imitations of several of the world’s greatest attractions – enormous replications of world-famous icons such as the New York-New York skyline, the pyramids and Sphinx of Egypt, and Paris’ Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe – into one urban area. Through reproducing several globally recognizable tourist icons in one place, resort/casino owners seem to be developing Las Vegas as the final tourist destination. During an evening exploring the resort corridor in Las Vegas a tourist can wander from mock Egypt at the Luxor, to fake New York, to an imitation Paris, to reproductions of Italy at the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and the Venetian, and back to a counterfeit Middle Eastern bazaar at the Aladdin. The city seems to embody the flaneur’s fantasy that “[a]ll the world, it seemed, could be experienced in the single city” (Shusterman, 1996, p. 171). In this manner, as Shields has noted, “[f]lanerie becomes the psychotic appropriation of space and time” (1994, p. 73).
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As Gottschalk phrased it, wandering between such disparate environments in Las Vegas “feels a little like ‘live’ channel surfing” (1995, p. 208), or that the rapid movement between cultural reproductions and appropriations of different eras is both whimsical and abrupt. Las Vegas, then, seems to have been designed as a flaneur’s paradise, a place where the entire world is accessible, but a place where simple strolling can also mimic the abrupt changes in images and sounds associated with either psychosis or contemporary television viewing practices. Such dramatic movements across time and place, which seem to occur in both Las Vegas and among remote-control-holding television viewers, have raised other important questions as to what counts as flanerie today. Featherstone (1998) has argued that we are moving from the urban to the electronic flaneur, or one who uses CD-ROMS, videos and the Internet as sites to investigate as the flaneur once explored the city. Featherstone also notes that while the contemporary Internet promotes the reading of largely textual pages, this form will evolve into something approximating spatial movement and promoting activities more akin to flanerie. However, the use of such three-dimensional programs on the Internet is currently a futuristic ideal for the majority of its users. Instead it seems that, for now, Las Vegas is important as a city space that seemingly mimics the arbitrariness of video channel surfing and whimsical movement through virtual fantasy spaces and virtual travel, but paradoxically in a concrete form. Unlike three-dimensional virtual space, visiting Las Vegas does not require an investment in either technology or technical knowledge on the part of an individual in order to participate. These attributes arguably make Las Vegas appear more accessible and “free” to the average U.S. citizen, and freedom is a primary characteristic of the flaneur. The freedom of movement as might be found in the future three-dimensional Internet is like the freedom Bauman also says makes city environments similar to deserts, further explaining the appeal of flaneur-like practices in Las Vegas, a city within a desert. Free movement in cities and deserts mean that individuals in those environments repeatedly experience “a beginning that does not threaten to solidify into a consequence, a beginning which can only be followed by other beginnings . . . There is no more to the routes than the imprint of steps, and the imprints will not last” (1994, p. 140). Such thoughts also parallel the “live-in-the-moment” tourist experiences frequently promoted in Las Vegas. All of these nods toward explaining the appeal of flanerie in Las Vegas, however, do not mean that the city on the whole promotes true flanerie. The city could be argued to promote the badaud, a figure that in 1858 Victor Fournel speculated was replacing the flaneur with practices of simple gaping and a temporary forgetting of the self (Featherstone, 1998, p. 914). Las Vegas could also be seen as promoting
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Balzac’s idea of a lesser type of flaneur, the ordinary flaneur, who can only make random speculations about the city but is otherwise just a dazzled, passive reader of the urban text (Ferguson, 1994, p. 29). Balzac’s truer type, the artist-flaneur, would indeed seem less possible today. As Benjamin noted, in his lifetime a flaneur had simply become someone abandoned in the crowd. In this he shares the situation of the commodity . . .. The intoxication to which the flaneur surrenders is the intoxication of the commodity around which surges the stream of customers (Benjamin quoted in Tester, 1994, pp. 13–14).
However, Fournel, Balzac and Benjamin were critiquing the practices of those who impersonated and/or imitated the flaneur in the modern period and within the modern city. I extend the critiques of Fournel, Balzac and Benjamin by developing the term pseudo-flaneur to critique the practices of those impersonating and/or imitating the flaneur in the postmodern era and in a postmodern city. This term addresses not only the inability of individuals to avoid consumerism and gaping in the contemporary city (the concern of Fournel, Balzac and Benjamin), but also indicates that a city like Las Vegas is designed as a simulacrum of cities as experiences which have been commodified, sanitized, and controlled. The pseudo-flaneur, then, is the product of promoting flanerie-like practices in postmodern tourist environments such as Las Vegas. There are, however, many pleasures to be found in pseudo-flanerie, which help explain its popularity. To further understand why so many tourists come to the city annually to wander, to stroll, to indulge, to gamble and to shop in whimsical and dispassionate ways, I turn to Zygmunt Bauman.
BAUMAN AND THE PLEASURE OF ESTRANGEMENT: STARS IN THE CROWD In his description of the stranger’s role in city life, Bauman (1995) discusses the pleasures associated with strolling in a city. “Pleasure is drawn precisely from mutual estrangement, that is from the absence of responsibility and the assurance that, whatever may happen between the strangers, it will not burden them with lasting obligations” (1995, p. 132). Expanding on Eric Fromm’s discussion of snapshots as a way of turning the act of seeing into an object, Bauman notes that contemporary flanerie allows an individual to partake of disconnected fragments of urban life as momentary, episodic events. The city promotes a superficial way of looking and a limited sense of engagement with others, which Bauman argues allows the flaneur to avoid moral engagement with those around him. Bauman believes that such disengaged ways of seeing lead to “adiaphorization – the stripping
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of human relationships of their moral significance, exempting them from moral evaluation, rendering them ‘morally irrelevant”’ (Bauman, 1995, p. 133). Such adiaphorization is not only promoted by cities but, I will add, is particularly promoted through the social distance involved in touring imitation cities and their simulated cultures. Bauman also notes that the distancing of oneself from others then allows, according to Bech, a “liberation from oneself,” (quoted in Bauman, 1995, p. 134), encouraging relations with others that are non-committal, anonymous, and free of the need for moral assessment. Such freedoms allow a flaneur to fully engage in the pleasure of the tactile, to pick up and discard relationships with ease, and to present himself as a surface to be gazed at, to be alluring but without the promise of commitment (1995). Bauman captures the paradox contained in the flaneur’s identity – to be “in” the crowd but not “of” the crowd, to be distant and distinct from the crowd but also to blend in. In reading Bauman’s ideas, I was struck by how deeply they convey the structuring of tourist experience in Las Vegas. The city is defined as one of surfaces, of shimmering neon lights and water fountains, of the promise of jackpots, “MegaBucks,” of days and nights full of experiences, of sensations, of images. Much of Las Vegas works on the principle of offering tourists “the world’s most daring,” “biggest,” “tallest,” “newest,” and “most exciting” (Gottdiener et al., 1999, p. 200; Gottschalk, 1995, p. 196). Las Vegas also offers hyperstimulation or sensory overload, of “shocking” in a manner that is pleasurable, “anaesthetizing the organism, not through numbing, but through flooding the senses” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 22). Without having Las Vegas in mind, Buck-Morss (1992) still observed that, “in street crowds and erotic encounters, in amusement parks and gambling casinos, shock is the very essence of modern experience” (p. 16). Perhaps, then, the best way for a flaneur to simultaneously blend in and be noticed in Las Vegas is through both individual observation of and personal participation in practices promoting shock and allure. As Bauman says, seeing in such an environment is then made into an object, creating the conditions for enjoying spectacles, for enjoying others as spectacle and for presenting oneself as a spectacle. Despite the fact that a lone tourist is highly unlikely to run into others he or she might know in random wanderings on the Las Vegas Strip, some who visit Las Vegas place a premium on looking good, or on dressing up for a night on the town. This involves presenting oneself for what Goffman calls “fancy milling,” or by obtaining a taste for social mobility by consuming valued products, and enjoying costly and modish entertainment, by spending time in luxurious settings, and by mingling with prestigeful persons – all the more if these occur at the same time and in the presence of many witnesses (1967, p. 197).
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Las Vegas offers tourists not only a chance at wealth, but images of wealth and a chance perhaps to encounter famous individuals, all of which can be enjoyed through practices emulating flanerie. In a 1997 article entitled “Fear and Clothing in Las Vegas,” Rick Reilly describes the “fancy milling” surrounding the Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield title match at the MGM Grand. Although he doesn’t use Goffman’s phrase, Reilly discusses the same emphasis on conspicuous consumption and proximity to celebrities, a description worth quoting at length: From all over – from the Learjets . . . at the private airfield near the Strip; from the limos with the hot tubs in the back; from the Suburbans with dark-tinted windows and the Lexi with the gold trim – the incredible collection of people and finery known as a heavyweight title fight crowd starts to pour into town: rap stars and wannabe rappers; Crips and Bloods; pickpockets and deep pockets; Louis Farrakhan’s Muslims and Evander Holyfield’s Holy Rollers; CEOs and CFOs; pimps and whores and others who just want to dress like them (men in bright orange zoot suits with bright green fedoras and matching Italian boots; women in 12-inch stainless-steel heels with Cleopatra thigh straps and with dresses made up of $3.99 worth of materials from Ace Hardware); squadrons of men in sunglasses and black Armani suits with Nokias protecting one man in sagging blue jeans and a $19 plaid flannel shirt. It’s outrageous and scary and splendid all at once (Reilly, 1997, p. 42).
Reilly’s description parallels the experience of many visitors to Las Vegas – scary and splendid movements from one extreme of image to another, from one fashion to another, from one status symbol, celebrity, or status seeker to another. Like traditional flaneurs, the individuals in Reilly’s description seem to want to be part of the crowd while also attaining a certain distance and separateness from those around them. While Baudelaire and Benjamin saw the flaneur as accomplishing this separateness through anonymity, for some tourists the point of participating in the spectacle of Las Vegas seems also to become a spectacle, to see and be seen. As Goffman notes, Las Vegas has long been associated with big spenders, famous visitors, and glamorous entertainers (1967, p. 198). What might also be “scary and splendid” about Las Vegas, though, is how difficult it can be to differentiate the famous from the not famous, the “stars” from the “wannabes,” or the high rollers from the low rollers, from appearance alone. As an environment where symbols and referents are so easily confused, the city also becomes an ideal environment for individuals to live out their fantasies of fame, of being, for an instant, Bauman’s shimmering surface, the center of attention. In the MGM Grand Resort Casino, I notice one site in particular that evokes participation in fame and glamour. There I see the new Studio 54, a replica of the famous New York dance club of the 1970s. Promotional material states that the new Studio 54 contains “authentic black-and-white photographs” taken from the original, and regularly imports DJs from New York City. Nearby posters for
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the club typically show a crowd of people in black and white, always with one evocative and glamorous figure in the foreground in full color. These ads use captions such as, “It’s your life. Star in it. Studio 54,” and “Fifteen minutes of fame. All night long. Studio 54.” While the possibility of instant wealth is what attracts some visitors to Las Vegas (Gottschalk, 1995, pp. 196, 206), sites such as the new Studio 54 that promise individuals association with fame and connection to the famous may lure others to the city. Las Vegas seems to offer its visitors either a chance to disappear into the anonymous crowd or to be noticed as shimmering surfaces, to personally partake in fifteen minutes of fame and to star in their lives. After a short walk from the MGM Grand to the GameWorks arcade on same block of the Las Vegas Strip, I see a small crowd of people surrounding a particularly public activity, a small boy climbing the GameWork’s artificial rock climbing wall. This publicity stunt serves to promote the GameWorks arcade underneath the climbing area. In this instance, however, the person publicizing the activity is paying to perform. A sign near the rock climbing activity reads, “At GameWorks you are the attraction.” Perhaps such a desire for attention is the same motivation felt by those playing the highly visible oversized slot machines located in most resort casinos in the city. Shyer individuals who still love celebrities, though, can also engage in Goffman’s fancy milling in Las Vegas – virtually. Elvis Presley, one of the city’s most famous performers (and now arguably the city’s most impersonated deceased performer), seems to have recently been brought back to life, this time through the Elvis and, more recently, Elvis Hits slot machines. In text that makes no apparent distinction between machine and person, an advertisement in a Las Vegas weekly entertainment guide from May of 2000 states that “Elvis is playing to sold out crowds at casinos everywhere. Now, new Elvis Hits gives you more Elvis, more bonuses and even more ways to win! Drop in your quarter or dollar and listen as the real voice of Elvis actually cheers you on as you play.” Here, man is no longer an appendage to a machine, as in Marx’s vision, but the man and the machine have become one in name and identity. The video screens on the Elvis slot machines I encounter at the Luxor megaresort, ironically, are simpler yet more confusing: “See Elvis, Play Elvis, Win Elvis.” In this phrase, the celebrity has become the game, the game is the celebrity, and you can win the game and (the?) celebrity, simultaneously. The confusion of the virtual and the real, the symbol and the referent, again seem key to understanding contemporary tourism in Las Vegas. Reproductions of places like Studio 54 and people like Elvis are further examples of simulacra. In Las Vegas, there seem to be endless Elvises encountered at shows, casinos, street corners, and restaurants. Similarly, while it seems highly unlikely to find a flaneur in contemporary Las Vegas, the pseudo-flaneur has become the flaneur’s simulacrum.
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GAMBLERS IN THE CROWD Three A.M. – At Caesars Palace, people-watching again. I stop at the roulette wheel. A blonde woman in a black satin dress appears and begins to play, buying $500 worth of chips at a time. She acts like a flaneur; appearing alone, dispassionately placing bet after bet, losing without a hint of emotion. Provocative cocktail waitresses in toga-styled dresses offer her drinks, which she refuses. It must be hard to be a female flaneur in Las Vegas, a city known for overt sexism. Although this city is increasingly popular with women, I see half-naked images of women all over Las Vegas – pictured in erotic brochures that litter the Strip, and appearing on billboard signs advertising everything from buffets to escort services. The woman in front of me plays for thirty minutes. Losing. Expressionless. In thirty minutes, she loses three thousand dollars. As the number on her last spin is called out, she palms her small black purse and turns to leave. I look away momentarily. She has disappeared into the crowd.
Another application of the concept of the flaneur can be made to the practice of gambling. As Goffman (1967, p. 217) observed, individuals who place themselves in fateful situations, such as in the case of those who gamble, must exhibit certain traits so as to be thought to have a strong character. Goffman discusses several traits required by those trying to manage the outcome of fateful events: courage, gameness, integrity, and composure (1967, p. 229). In other words, a real gambler, like a flaneur, should ideally remain controlled and dispassionate. Calm and calculation are required, and even those faced with devastating losses are supposed to “keep their chins up,” or avoid any show of expression. All of Goffman’s above-mentioned traits are typically masculine, which perhaps also helps explain the popularity of pseudo-flanerie in Las Vegas today. As the original character of the flaneur was a detached male stroller uninvolved in material consumption, the demise of the flaneur has often been attributed to the character’s feminization, particularly through the development of the shopping mall and patterned consumption practices linked with women (Featherstone, 1998). Traditionally, the flaneur is understood to be a male figure, one epitomizing the gendered gaze and the exclusion of women from public life in the modern era. However, feminist scholars disagree over the extent to which women were allowed to engage in flanerie in the nineteenth century. Wolff (1985) argues that, as men in the 1800s occupied the public sphere and women the domestic sphere, a woman during that period could not “stroll alone in the city,” or be a “flaneuse” (p. 45). However, Wilson (1992) argues that women of the middle and lower classes could indeed engage in flanerie in tea rooms, department stores, and ladies-only areas. Today, resort casinos in Las Vegas arguably facilitate flaneur-like practices among women as well, in part by blurring distinctions between traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine activities. In contemporary Las Vegas, resorts are typically designed to appeal to both sexes, providing areas where games of chance appear alongside inviting, colorful and socially controlled places to wander, shop,
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and dine. Additionally, many resort casinos have “feminized” certain forms of gambling, capitalizing on the popularity of slot machines among women players. Unlike the requirements of control, courage, integrity and composure noted by Goffman as necessary elements of a gambler’s character, slot machines provide their players a game of chance but without the necessity of knowing the rules of the game or having to play directly against others. The appeal of gambling to both sexes today also help ensure that gambling is still the economic cornerstone of Las Vegas, and the city as a whole has benefited from a more positive image of gambling promoted in the U.S. over the last decade. Gambling has gone from something that was once largely labeled immoral and evil to being considered a relatively innocuous form of “entertainment.” In Las Vegas, this transformation has also been accomplished through the city’s resorts and casinos’ adoption of a new phrase to promote games of chance. Today, the activities once called “gambling” are now more often promoted as “gaming,” a re-framing that diminishes the risk element of the activities while highlighting the entertainment element of the activities (Gottdiener et al., 1999, p. 92). “Gaming” becomes a form of play, and play is what Bauman associates with the flaneur. “Gaming” also seems to suggest Bauman’s notion of “a beginning that does not threaten to solidify into a consequence, a beginning which can only be followed by other beginnings” (1994, p. 140) or an endless play. Thus, gaming also mimics the characteristics of flanerie, as the wanderer/player knows not what he will find around the next corner, with the next upturned card, or the next spin of the wheel, but knows that each of these activities can be repeated, endlessly. Gaming allows an individual an entertaining and always-repeatable amble through the passageways of chance. Although gaming in Las Vegas is generally seen as a public activity, with the advent of the slot machine and video poker console, it has also taken on uniquely individualistic and private forms. Although there are still table games at most casinos, “[s]lot and video poker machines . . . provide the bulk of gaming revenues in Nevada” (Gottdiener et al., 1999, p. 89). The pseudo-flaneur on the Las Vegas Strip can stroll from one machine to another, dropping in money hoping to find one that consistently pays off. Such individuals are supposed to be dispassionate and engaged in “play,” but as Gottschalk noted, sometimes in front of slot machines they become trapped in what seems like “a diabolic Skinnerian experiment” (1995, p. 206). Although these individuals might initially appear disengaged like a traditional flaneur, their relationship to the money they are likely throwing away at times seems far from dispassionate: They come to Las Vegas to rebel against the oppression of money and to escape how they’ve surrendered their spirits so completely to money’s laws and demands. The solid citizens have
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come to Las Vegas to defile the very thing that, in their own eyes, makes them solid: money . . . They do it furtively, rarely looking at each other, each alone in front of their machine, pretending to attempt to win when they are almost certain to lose: the money that defines them and confines them, the money that they slave for and that gives them the small freedoms that excuse their slavery (Ventura, 1995, pp. 56–57).
Here is perhaps the best articulation of the poverty of contemporary pseudoflanerie. The above passage reveals that, much like the hopeless protestations of individual gamblers against money’s control over their lives, the control the pseudo-flaneur believes he has today is also imaginary. The practices of contemporary flanerie today occur largely within spaces like those in Las Vegas, spaces created to gently separate individuals from their money under the guise of play, exploration, and autonomy. Bauman uses the examples of Disneyland, theme parks, shopping malls and holiday packages to reveal how the contemporary flaneur’s urge to wander has been commodified and repackaged through contemporary markets, noting that today “Disneylands are the mineshafts” (1994, p. 150). The urge to be free, to escape from drudgery and to evade the confines of everyday time and space now compose the primary allure of Las Vegas. The impossibility of this environment to deliver on its promise, though, parallels Tester’s assessment that “[f]lanerie is a desperate attempt to fill the emptiness even though it is actually a final resignation to it” (Tester, 1994, p. 13).
CONCLUSION A flaneur is traditionally thought to be a modern, urban male who can evocatively describe the dynamic character of urban life from a distance without directly engaging others or participating in a city’s economy. The flaneur’s traditionally anti-consumer stance, however, seems nearly impossible for tourists visiting Las Vegas, where simulacra of cities and cultures have been commodified as tourist experiences. Tourists in Las Vegas then ultimately pay to engage in practices traditionally associated with flaneurs. However, such tourists are better described as pseudo-flaneurs, or those engaged in flaneur-like practices who are actually consumers in and of highly structured environments emulating cities. In Las Vegas, the resort corridor of the city promotes a form of pseudo-flanerie as postmodern tourism. Pseudo-flaneurs wander from one impersonation of a city/culture/era to another, walk from Paris to New York or to the Luxor or the Bellagio, stroll from one game to another, and move from one presentation of self to another. However, surveillance, social control, and the organizing principles of capitalism structure each. The logic of the stranger relationship promoted by cities and tourism allows each individual the autonomy to observe
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others gambling without moral consequence, reproducing the legitimacy of this exchange. Newer video technology also allows individuals to participate in the crowd while gambling alone. Tourists’ attempt to escape from their everyday lives through conspicuous consumption promotes narcissistic pleasures, which Las Vegas also promotes through advertising campaigns such as those for Studio 54, GameWorks, and Elvis slot machines. Individuals also attempt to escape from drudgery through gaming presented as entertainment. The irony of observing pseudo-flanerie in Las Vegas lies in noting that individuals freely wander and stroll in a timeless vacuum of global icons, but in fact are deeply immersed in patterned environments designed to make them feel and spend.
NOTES 1. The flaneur was presented as a male figure in the original work of Baudelaire and Benjamin. I will also typically refer to the figure as a male throughout this paper. Several scholars, though, have questioned whether women can engage and/or have engaged in flanerie. See Wolff’s article “The Invisible Flaneuse” (1985), Wilson (1992), and McLaren (1997). 2. McLaren (1997) develops the concept of the “postmodern flaneur,” however, which differs substantially from my notion of the pseudo-flaneur. McLaren wants to update the modern figure of a flaneur by indicating that a postmodern flaneur can be male or female, and should engage in critical reflexivity and posthybridity through written narratives. My discussion of the flaneur draws from Benjamin’s assertion that by the late 1800s the flaneur’s traditionally anti-consumer stance had become inauthentic if not impossible because capitalism had become all pervading. I believe that the flaneur’s traditionally anti-consumer stance has been further endangered in tourist cities like Las Vegas, where mock cities have commodified city-like experiences to tourists who ultimately pay to engage in practices traditionally associated with flaneurs. I extend Benjamin’s critique by indicating that, in a postmodern tourist environment like Las Vegas, pseudo-flaneurs are even less authentic versions of their predecessors. 3. This brief overview I have written of the history of Las Vegas cannot do justice to many of the important details regarding the city’s development. For far more thorough accounts, see Reid and Demaris (1963), Venturi, Brown and Izenour (1972), Moehring (1989), and Gottdiener, Collins and Dickens (1999). 4. Around this time Hunter S. Thompson (1971) also used the practices of strolling, observing and evocation that defined the flaneur to produce Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. While Thompson explores the city through driving, his experiences and observations while walking, especially from one encounter/image/resort/casino to another within the vibrantly described city, are also prominent in the book. 5. Television shows include the CBS network’s CSI, and movies include Go, Play It to The Bone, Con Air, Mars Attacks, Showgirls, Honeymoon in Vegas, Leaving Las Vegas, Vegas Vacation, Casino, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and a remake of Ocean’s Eleven, to name only a recent few.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the Midwest Sociological Association in St. Louis, Missouri, 2001. I owe a great debt of thanks to Norman Denzin, Susan H. Wood, and two anonymous reviewers for reading drafts of this paper, for editing my prose and for offering important suggestions.
REFERENCES Andersen, K. (1994). Las Vegas, USA. Time, 143(2), 42–51. Baudelaire, C. (1964 [1863]). The painter of modern life. New York: Da Capo Press. Baudrillard, J. (1988). America. London: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Translated by S. F. Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bauman, Z. (1994). Desert spectacular. In: K. Tester (Ed.), The flˆaneur (pp. 138–157). New York: Routledge. Bauman, Z. (1995). Life in fragments: Essays in postmodern morality. Oxford: Blackwell. Benjamin, W. (1983). Charles Baudelaire: A lyric poet in the era of high capitalism. H. Zohn (Trans.). London: Verso. Benjamin, W. (1999). The arcades project. H. Eiland & K. McLaughlin (Trans.). Prepared on the basis of the German volume edited by R. Tiedemann. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Borchard, K. (1998). Between a hard rock and postmodernism: Opening the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 27, 242–269. Borchard, K. (2001). Intersubjective Implosions. Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, 1(1), 70–85. Buck-Morss, S. (1991). The dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the arcades project. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Buck-Morss, S. (1992). Aesthetics and anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s artwork essay reconsidered. October, 62, 3–41. Davis, M. (1990). City of Quartz. London: Verso. De Botton, A. (1999). A good idea from . . . Baudelaire. Independent (9 May), 30. De Certeau, M. (1993). Walking in the city. In: S. During (Ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader (pp. 151–160). New York: Routledge. Denzin, N. K. (1993). Rain man in Las Vegas: Where is the action for the postmodern self? Symbolic Interaction, 16(1), 65–77. Egan, T. (2001). Las Vegas bet on growth but doesn’t love payoff. New York Times (Late edition-Final), 26 January, A1. Featherstone, M. (1998). The Flaneur, the city and virtual public life. Urban Studies, 35(5–6), 909–925. Ferguson, P. P. (1994). The Flaneur on and off the streets of Paris. In: K. Tester (Ed.), The Flˆaneur (pp. 22–42). New York: Routledge. Fontana, A., & Preston, F. (1990). Postmodern neon architecture: From signs to icons. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 11, 3–24. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage.
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Frisby, D. (1994). The flaneur in social theory. In: K. Tester (Ed.), The Flˆaneur (pp. 81–110). New York: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Gottschalk, S. (1995). Ethnographic fragments in postmodern spaces. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 24, 195–228. Gottdiener, M., Collins, C., & Dickens, D. (1999). Las Vegas: The social production of an All-American City. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Hannigan, J. (1998). Fantasy city: Pleasure and profit in the postmodern metropolis. London: Routledge. Harvey, D. (1990). The condition of postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Kaplan, M. (2001). Midnight at the oasis. Details, 19(4), 136–147. Lofland, L. (1998). The public realm: Exploring the city’s quintessential social territory. New York: Aldine De Gruyter. McLaren, P. (1997). The ethnographer as postmodern flaneur: Critical reflexivity and posthybridity as narrative engagement. In: W. Tierney & Y. Lincoln (Eds), Representation and the Text: Re-framing the Narrative Voice (pp. 143–178). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Mazlish, B. (1994). The flaneur: From spectator to representation. In: K. Tester (Ed.), The Flaneur (pp. 43–60). New York: Routledge. Moehring, E. (1989). Resort city in the sun belt: Las Vegas 1930–1970. Reno/Las Vegas, NV: University of Nevada Press. Reid, E., & Demaris, O. (1963). The green felt jungle. New York: Trident Press. Reilly, R. (1997). Fear and clothing in Las Vegas. Sports Illustrated, 87(1), 41–56. Rothman, H. (1998). Devil’s bargains: Tourism in the twentieth-century American West. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Shields, R. (1994). Fancy footwork: Walter Benjamin’s notes on flanerie. In: K. Tester (Ed.), The Flaneur (pp. 61–80). New York: Routledge. Shusterman, R. (1996). Urban scenes and unseens. Filozofski Vestnick, 17(2), 171–179. Taylor, C. J. (1999). Visual surveillance: Contemporary sociological issues. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada. Thompson, H. S. (1971). Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Random House. Tester, K. (1994). Introduction. In: K. Tester (Ed.), The Flˆaneur (pp. 1–21). New York: Routledge. Ventura, M. (1995). The psychology of money. Psychology Today, 28(2), 50–57. Venturi, R., Brown, D. S., & Izenour, S. (1972). Learning from Las Vegas: The forgotten symbolism of architectural form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilson, E. (1992). The invisible Flaneur. New Left Review, 191, 90–110. Wolff, J. (1985). The invisible Flaneuse: Women and the literature of modernity. Theory, Culture and Society, 2(3), 37–48.
ETHNOGRAPHY SINCE POSTMODERNISM Andrea Fontana and Troy A. McGinnis ABSTRACT Ethnography has changed since the influence of postmodernism reached the social sciences – it has turned a reflexive eye upon itself and has been critical of traditional ethnographic work. This essay examines the concerns of postmodern informed ethnography. Then, it turns to other modes of ethnographic work, which are important intellectual precursors of postmodern ethnography-phenomenology, existential sociology, ethnomethodology. Next, new postmodern concerns, such as women and ethnography, electronic ethnography, and new narrative modes, are presented. This article points out both concerns and flaws in these approaches. Finally, the article concludes by analyzing the current and future situation of various ethnographic strands in sociology.
INTRODUCTION Kafka once said: A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us (Behar, 1996, p. 86) [And, we’d like to add: So must be an ethnography].
In 1986, the publication of Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences by George Marcus and Michael Fischer marked a watershed in ethnography, both in anthropology and sociology. The two authors formulated concerns that had been felt for some time by ethnographers but had
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not been presented in a systematic way. Some of these concerns dealt with the role and influence of the ethnographer, with the nature of what “the field” means, with ethnographic representations, and with the paternalistic nature of the discipline. Two years later, two seminal monographs were published, one in sociology (Van Maanen, 1988) and one in anthropology (Geertz, 1988), both concerned with modes of representation of ethnographies and with the authorial influence of the ethnographer qua reporter. These works were not the first nor the last ones to discuss that complex and elusive approach called postmodernism (see Dickens & Fontana, 1994), yet they provided an impetus for change and controversy in the field by directly relating postmodernist concerns to ethnographic work (for recent meditations on the relation of postmodernism and ethnography see Lather, 2001). Postmodern-informed ethnographers have tended to ignore or dismiss important intellectual precursors, at times giving the impression that they were first to raise concerns about power, representation and authority. Yet, they have also expanded the field of ethnographic concerns and sensibilities through textual and narrative innovations, by an added concern for ethnographies about (and by) women and other minority groups, and by experimenting with new, innovative mediums, such as the Internet. We shall examine postmodern ethnographies, we shall outline the intellectual antecedents that have been often neglected but to which postmodern interactionism is indebted, we will present new concerns in postmodern ethnography, and finally present any future trends.
POSTMODERN ETHNOGRAPHY Postmodernism spread across numerous fields, from architecture to literary criticism (Arac, Godzich & Marlin, 1983; Jenks, 1977), taking aim at the overarching metatheories of the modernist era, at universalistic claims of “truth” and at the controlling discourses of power groups, including the paternalistic discourse in the social sciences. Postmodern advocates proposed to fragment their studies and claims (Lyotard, 1984), and pay closer attention to the minute, diverse events of everyday life. Rather than continuing to sanction the narrative of traditional social science, postmodern ethnographers proposed to listen more closely to the less conspicuous but far more numerous voices of the members of society – a polyphony of voices (Marcus & Fischer, 1986) – and especially to voices which have been largely ignored, controlled and silenced by dominant discourses. Indeed, some claim ethnographers should focus their studies on oppressed groups, rather than remain aloof and just “squeeze” respondents for data to be used for the researcher’s own purposes. Investigators should join forces with subjects in attempts to ameliorate their condition (Collins, 1991; Denzin, 1997, 1999c).
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Thus, postmodernism has moved ethnographers closer than ever before to the practical concerns of everyday people, a move reflected in postmodern accounts and representations of everyday life. In the social sciences and literature, postmodern studies have often taken the approach of “deconstructing” existing works, that is, taking apart the implicit assumptions of academic writing and pointing to its fallacies, in a way reminiscent of the old critique launched by ethnomethodology (Clough, 1998; Derrida, 1972). Ethnomethodologists criticized the methods used by sociologists to study the world (Garfinkel, 1967); postmodern-informed sociologists criticize the theories used by sociologists to study the world (Clough, 1998). Both share an almost ‘cultish’ relation to their practices against the rest of the sociological world, we versus them, as well as a rather esoteric jargon that often baffles and frustrates the uninitiated. Just as ethnomethodologists raised the ire of the sociological establishment some years ago (Attewell, 1975; Coser, 1975), so have postmodern ethnographers done so in their time. Many of the critiques aimed at postmodernists are somewhat facile (Best, 1995; Prus, 1996; Sanders, 1995). Critics tend to focus on the over-relativistic and allegedly solipsistic nature of the enterprise. Often, rather than concentrate on the work of postmodern ethnographers, the critics have turned on postmodern theorists lambasting the allegedly ‘light-weight’ French scholarship (often taking aim at Baudrillard while altogether ignoring the German and American trends of postmodernism) and overemphasizing structural elements in interactionist theorists such as George H. Mead, hoping to somehow salvage some “scientism” in the face of a postmodern onslaught of deconstructive relativism (see Dickens & Fontana, 1996). Some of the criticisms are quite strident (Prus, 1996, p. 218): For those inclined to take viewpoints that might be deemed highly cynical, completely relativist, pervasively despairing, intensely antiscientific or anti-establishmentarian, or pointedly individualistic, postmodernism offers elements that are radical, fatalistic, absurd, and nihilistic in the extreme.
Postmodernists have either scoffed at or dismissed these vehement and usually uninformed attacks (for specific references to some of the criticisms see Dickens, 2000). Yet, not all criticisms have been unwarranted; there are more germane criticisms that have also been largely ignored by postmodern ethnographers (Dickens & Fontana, 1996). Consider the first of these: the notion of polyphony. While some researchers (cf. Krieger, 1983) are painstakingly careful to represent multiple voices, others represent the “negotiated” voice commonly agreed upon by the researcher and the subjects, thus remaining basically monologic: “This is because . . . (researcher and subject) . . . collaborate in the reconstruction of a
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common and unitary construction of the self” (Atkinson & Silverman, 1997, p. 314). Thus, while we purport to let the natives “speak for themselves,” we are still speaking for them. We are creating the text, narrating the story and regulating the forum in which their concerns are aired. The second problem is with the often unspoken, but underlying assumption, that the narrative, especially a reconstructed life story told by the members themselves, is more authentic than representation. Atkinson and Silverman suggest that in the pervasive ethos of the interview society, “contemporary research methods and analytic perspectives reflect more of a general Zeitgeist in which the production of selves and lives is accorded special significance” (1997, p. 313). Thirdly, the postmodern commitment to attend to the concerns and voices of the members of everyday life also comes under scrutiny (Collins, 1991; Denzin, 1997, 1999c; Hertz, 1997). As much as we agree that it is paramount for the researcher to help and not exploit respondents, that very commitment raises methodological questions. In a way, it is another way to go “native,” as one may become so involved (and so situationally biased) that one could miss the larger picture (cf. Atkinson & Silverman, 1997).
PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERN ETHNOGRAPHY The criticism of postmodern ethnography presented in the preceding section underscores the difficulty of the postmodern enterprise. Postmodern concerns have changed the role of ethnographers and the relationship between researcher and subjects. Ethnography itself has become different in its increased reflexive concerns. Yet, the heightened reflexivity has brought forth problems of power, authority and representation that are not easily answered. Some of these concerns and problems were central to those ethnographers who followed the theoretical guidance of phenomenology, existential sociology and ethnomethodology. We shall examine them here.
Postmodernism and Phenomenology Postmodernists have, at times, been accused of re-inventing the wheel. For example, Stanford Lyman (1997) and Stanford Lyman and Marvin Scott (1989) claim that their sociology of the absurd (largely following a phenomenological approach), with its claims of problematic and negotiated social interaction and its focus on accounts as members’ created realities (Scott & Lyman, 1968), predates many of the concerns currently assumed to be postmodernist in nature. There is,
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indeed, a commonality between these approaches. Phenomenological sociology first appeared in the 1960s, grounded in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl (Poggi, 1973) as primarily presented by the writings of the phenomenological social-philosopher Alfred Schutz (1962, 1964, 1966). The phenomenologists focused on attempting to understand reality as it is socially constructed by the members of society. Therefore, they claimed, ethnographers need to be attuned to the views and presentations of the members of the group they are studying rather than superimposing a perspective a priori. It is in the work of Aaron Cicourel (1964) that we primarily see the tie between phenomenology and ethnography, (also, see Garfinkel, 1967 for the influence of phenomenology on ethnomethodology). Drawing heavily on Schutz, Cicourel assumed that members of society share their world. In Cicourel’s view, the researcher needed to probe the world of the everyday members and present their constructed view of reality, relying on Schutz’s reciprocity of perspective (1962) and the I–Thou relationship (1964). Robert Dingwall (1997) and Irving Seidman (1991), in separate works, have recently credited Cicourel’s work as an antecedent for claims about the phenomenological understanding of society, such as Denzin’s “collaboration” model (1997). Crediting Cicourel amends the work of postmodern ethnographers, who tend to ignore Cicourel and his discussion of Schutz. Furthermore, in their zeal to apprehend “reality as it is” with the use of ethnography, phenomenologicallyinformed interactionists have neglected to discuss the nature of reporting, as seen by Schutz (1962), and how reporting itself is layers removed from the actual experience. Schutz discusses different orders of constructs. (Schutz speaks of constructs of the second degree). What follows is our adaptation to ethnography of Schutz’s constructs. In the first construct, ethnographers and subjects create a social reality together, by interacting and creating accounts of events. The outcome is a negotiated text, but nevertheless a unified common text. In the second construct, researchers jot down notes on the reality of the first construct by including or excluding events, based on their understanding and their own systems of relevance. In the third construct, researchers, qua narrators, selectively write reports on what they see as relevant for the task at hand, again, based on their system of relevance. In the fourth construct, the readers reach a personal understanding of the narrative, based on their stock of knowledge (what is known from the past) and system of relevance (based on culture, gender, age, race, socio-economic status, political inclinations, education, and more). Thus, phenomenological ethnography is hardly “things as they are,” but a fourth-level construct at best. The phenomenological focus on the sharedness of the world by its members and its attempts to apprehend the members’ social construction of reality was followed,
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albeit with a greater emphasis on feelings and emotions, by existential sociologists, and it is to them that we turn now.
Existential Sociology Joseph Kotarba and John Johnson (2002) assert that existential sociology outlined the very same concerns presented, years later, by postmodernist ethnographers. Thus, researcher self-reflexivity, attention to the members’ own voices, and the discounting of metatheories, are derived from the phenomenology of Schutz by the existential sociologists. Where they differ from other Schutz-inspired sociologies, (phenomenology and ethnomethodology), is that they reject the rational model of the actor for a more emotive notion of self. Jack Douglas and some of his students (Douglas & Johnson, 1977; Kotarba & Fontana, 1984) modified Schutz’s rational model by adding a touch of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) and other existential thinkers. Thus, the self and interaction became less of a planned give-and-take and more of a spontaneous happening, often to be reconstructed later in rational terms (Douglas, 1977, p. 3): “The revolt of brute being, of the man-of-flesh-and-bone-in-the-world, is the dominant thrust of existential thought.” Douglas also wrote about creative interviewing (1985), emphasizing that the researcher needs to come close to and share disclosures with the subject, in an attempt to bond and gain trust. Douglas doubted what all other phenomenological and postmodern ethnographers seem to have taken for granted – the veracity of the respondents. Douglas saw that trust is a complex phenomenon not to be taken at face value since it is something that is ephemeral and ever-changing. Trust must be reciprocal and negotiated between researcher and subject. According to Douglas, it is only by a long process of baring one’s soul to the subjects and sharing lives with them that one can gain some trust, hopefully eliciting more “truthful” responses. Gubrium and Holstein have recently (1997) referred to Douglas’s work as “romantic,” since they feel that his work is no different than that of traditional researchers in its naive belief that better research techniques will get us closer to the “truth.” Dingwall also uses the term “romantic” to refer to the phenomenological/existential approach to ethnography. This group is allegedly guilty of equating experience with “authenticity,” and the belief “that it is possible to locate a real self” (1997, p. 63). Also, Dingwall accuses some of the Romantics of swinging to the other extreme and being guilty of “plasticity,” the belief that there is no real self at all. Finally, Dingwall moves to his own position, that of “integrity” – “the real world of scientific practice may fall short; this does not negate the importance of the ideals as standards of judgment” (1977, p. 64). Dingwall goes on to say:
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“The intersubjective construction of reality through accounting is a social fact. It is there; it is observable; it is reportable.” (1997, p. 64). We wonder who is being more romantic here – those who believe (with Douglas) that as they get closer to and more intimate with the subject they are approaching “reality,” or those (with Dingwall) who acknowledge that there is no absolute reality, that what is a fact is “its social construction,” but who claim that we should nevertheless maintain rigorous standards of research. It seems reminiscent of Merton’s “ritualism.” Ethnomethodology shares with phenomenology and existential sociology the importance of focusing on the everyday members of society, their perspectives and accounts of their lives. However, as we shall see, ethnomethodology drastically altered the study of society and its members.
Ethnomethodological Ethnography For many years ethnomethodologists would have scoffed at ethnomethodology being combined with ethnography. As Pollner and Emerson point out (2001), however, over the years the differences between the two have become blurred and ethnography can gain from the insight, if not the entire agenda, of ethnomethodology. Harold Garfinkel (1967), Aaron Cicourel (1964, 1970), and others used and modified Schutz’s phenomenological notion of how members of society construct social reality, by referring to them as ‘accounts’ (Zimmerman, 1971, p. 4): We generally hold the view that the social world exists in-and-through the practices members employ to make it observable and reportable. In as plain and bold language as I can summon the social world as an object of ethnomethodological investigation consists, is identical with, is nothing more than, the practices members employ to make it observable and accountable.
As ethnographers, we interact with the subjects to reconstruct and create a story, a cooperative account that we, qua ethnographers, take as the members’ version of reality (dismissing the fact that we helped create that story in the interaction with the subjects). Ethnomethodology was interested in understanding members’ accounts; that is, illuminating the methods people used to ‘pass,’ to be accepted in society. Ethnomethodology shunned factual concerns; rather than focusing on the content of the interaction, they focused on the ways in which the interaction was possible at all. In a famous study, Garfinkel (1967) analyzed how a transsexual, Agnes, was able to pass as a woman. Garfinkel asked what the presentational features were that made Agnes accepted by others as a woman.
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Another ethnomethodological concern was that a researcher ought not to confuse the resources used to do a study with the topic of the study. Thus, for instance, Durkheim studied suicide (topic) but he used his own definition of suicide (resource) to study it, thus confounding topic and resource (Prior, 1997). Recently, Gubrium and Holstein (1997) have ‘resurrected’ ethnomethodology by distinguishing between the whats and the hows of interaction. The whats are basically the same as the topics of inquiry – they are the substantive grist of the research, that is, the traditional data of ethnography. The hows represent the reflexive reporting of the procedures employed by the researcher in getting the whats, relating the problematics of doing the research and contextualizing the researcher personally and historically. The differentiation between topics and resources has proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for sociologists, since sociologists remain a part of society (topic) and unavoidably rely to some degree on their common sense understanding of society (resources). Ethnomethodologists have fallen victims of their own critique. It is impossible not to mix to some degree topics and resources, since we cannot step outside our epistemological understanding of the world. As Merleau-Ponty (1962) puts it, we are inescapably in and of this world and cannot evade it and embrace its meaning from the outside. Another critique is presented by David Silverman (1993, p. 90), who refers to the work of Carolyn Baker (1997) to express his concerns: She is telling us, interviewer and interviewee actively construct some version of the world appropriate to what we take to be self-evident about the person to whom we are speaking and the context of the question.
Silverman traces this constructionist approach back to Cicourel. Yet, Cicourel’s concerns seem to focus entirely on the basic properties that construct and uphold social encounters (the hows) while throwing aside factual concerns about society (the whats). According to Silverman, Cicourel “would seem to deny the value of treating . . . data as saying anything about any other reality than the interview itself” (1993, p. 98). Thus, Silverman sees Cicourel as slipping into an irremediable form of relativism. Gubrium and Holstein are careful to avoid this critique of relativism, by carefully mentioning that emphasis, not exclusivity, must be placed on the ‘hows’ of the interview. They would “bracket” (1998, p. 165) the substantive concerns (whats) temporarily, while analyzing how the story is being told, but, having done so, would then return to the substance of the study. Another criticism concerns the taken-for-granted assumption (derived from Schutz) that researcher and respondent are actively and actually collaborating. However, what if they do not share reciprocity of perspective about the interview?
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Isobel Bowler in her study of delivery of health care (1997), found that South Asian women did not share with her the importance of the research and often refused to talk to her. When they did occasionally answer, they found laughable Bowler’s questions on whether there were any problems with the hospital where they worked or its delivery of health care. To wit (1997, p. 72): In order to ensure that they understood that the findings of the research would be public I had told them that I was writing a book on my findings. Yasmin, who spoke the better English, translated this with a look of disbelief on her face, and then they both dissolved into laughter. There weren’t any problems. All was well (emphasis added).
NEW ETHNOGRAPHIC CONCERNS Postmodern ethnographers have incorporated many of the concerns of the three schools of thought discussed in the previous section, at times perhaps unwittingly. Yet the postmodern agenda has expanded and tackled other issues: the role(s) of oppressed members, especially (but not exclusively) women, in ethnography; the new challenges presented by the Internet vis-`a-vis ethnography; and a variety of new modes of representing ethnography. It is to these concerns that we turn next.
Women and Ethnography Issues of membership are not new in ethnography; we have always raised the question of whether an outsider can really gain the trust and understand a group, especially a group of people who have been oppressed for a long time. Women are clearly such a group (for a review of feminist ethnography see Skeggs, 2001). On one hand, female researchers have long been placed in a position subordinate to their male colleagues. We are not too far from the days when researchers such as Margaret Mead had to be granted ‘temporary male status’ to allow them to witness men’s ceremonies (Warren, 1988). On the other hand, women as subjects have often been intimidated, bullied or taken lightly. Just recently, W. A. Marianne Boelen (1992) questioned how in W. F. Whyte’s classic Street Corner Society, the researcher/ethnographer neglected to study the women – the study is all about the men on the corner. To answer, as Whyte did (1993), that he could not study everything, is begging the question. Also, for a long time, the language of ethnography has been controlled by male prose – beyond the obvious examples, such as: he, mankind, layman, businessman, mailman, manager, freshman, gentleman, man made and so on, Geertz has pointed out that to speak of the researcher penetrating a group is to use very phallic language
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(1987). Patricia Clough (1998) considers the whole ethnographic enterprise in its present form – white old male dominated – to be finished. Clough deconstructs works of famous male sociologists and finds them to be subliminally inspired by sexual repression. Whether one agrees with her Lacanian interpretation or not, the broader point clearly is that women can no longer be silenced, dismissed and exploited as researchers or subjects. Patricia Hill Collins (1991) adds the element of being a minority to that of being a woman and uses multiple forms of investigative data (songs, images, fiction, and autobiographies) to unearth the voices of her subjects, specifically black women. Ruth Behar (1996) speaks passionately of being not only an ethnographer but also a Latina ethnographer. Kath Weston (1998) discusses sexuality and the oppression faced by non-heterosexual women in academia. Finally, more and more female researchers, (cf. Rosanna Hertz, 1997), are looking at the women they study not as mere subjects – which establishes a hierarchical and possibly exploitive relation – but as partners in constructing a narrative through ethnography which can be used to ameliorate the plight of the women studied. Women’s ethnographies have some similarities to the existential, creative research put forth by Douglas several years earlier. In both traditions, researchers wish to share their sense of self with the respondents in order to establish a reciprocal sense of trust, albeit Douglas still wishes to use the results for his own purpose. Because of this dramatic difference in purpose – helping versus exploiting – there is a common assumption among feminist researchers that sharing the same gender will create a sense of reciprocity of perspective. Yet, there is evidence that this is not always the case. Rahel Wasserfall (1993) convincingly argues that when researcher and subject do not share a common political orientation there exists a gap of understanding which is very hard to bridge, despite both individuals being women. Also, to seek partnership and political involvement with respondents flies in face of traditional, ‘neutral’ interviewing, leading to criticism of bias and slanted findings. Finally, the emphasis on women studying women, raises once more the question of membership in field research. We are back to the old debate – do you have to be a member of a particular group to understand that group? The women-studying-women model of reciprocity of perspective would invalidate much sociological research and just about all cultural anthropological research. It needs to be made very clear that it is not necessarily the gender of the ethnographers, but their attitude and agenda that make the difference, and this is not always spelled out. In addition, it should not be taken for granted that reaching common ground between researcher and subjects totally eliminates the element of power in the relationship. It is still the researcher who tells the ultimate (published) story. And, can we assume that now that we are “friends” we will hear the ‘truth’ and nothing but the truth from our subjects?
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A concern that women researchers share with postmodern ones is the desire to let the members themselves be heard. This position makes women’s ethnography vulnerable to the criticism that ultimately it is the researcher who decides whose voices and what statements we hear, once again placing the researcher firmly in control of the narrative and the knowledge gained from it (cf. Wasserfall, 1993). Despite this and other criticisms, it is undeniable that women researchers have taken the lead in rejecting years of patriarchal control and tradition in ethnographic studies, leading to a richer bank of ethnographic data. As women’s concerns were emerging and being tackled, another issue appeared on the horizon of ethnography: the sudden rise of electronic media.
Electronic Ethnography The exponential proliferation of access to personal computers with their idiosyncratic modes of communication has greatly expanded the horizons of sociological research, including ethnography. Over the last several years, mild curiosity has been transformed into intense interest among social researchers about the theoretical, methodological and empirical possibilities embedded in web-mediated interaction via the Internet. Enthusiasm runs so high, the Internet has been predicted to “become the primary environment where sociologists perform research” (Bainbridge, 1999, p. 664). Behind the hyperactive discourse on the electronic future, however, there remain human stories to be told. Enter the electronic ethnographer, who – in addition to an alternative forum for publication and staging area for experimentation with multimedia representations and interactive online experiences – has access to an expansive, dynamic and largely unexplored field of social interaction that not only begs to be studied but dares to be theorized (see Slack, 1998 and Van Meter, 1998). The possibilities are indeed exciting, but caution is warranted. Researchers can readily benefit from this immediate access to worldwide respondents, albeit there remain a number of problems to be solved (Fontana, 2001). Annette Markham (1998) talks about the dislocation of self that occurs as one ‘logs on’ and interacts, feeling a ‘presence’ where there are only electronic pulses. It is, indeed, a new sense of reality, or, hyperreality, to borrow from Baudrillard (1983). It is a whole different ballgame and an increasing number of sociologists are playing it. Some are interviewing respondents through the anonymity and temporal freedom of chat rooms and e-mail. Others are studying support groups on the Internet. Some are actually doing ethnographic studies of groups on the Internet. Sharon Norman (2000), for instance, is studying an internet medical support group; Andrea Fontana and Troy McGinnis are beginning to study the Internet’s
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“dead pool,” a group that gives instructions and information, for betting purposes, on which celebrity will die next and gives odds on when. Apart from the lack of face-to-face contacts and its ramifications, there are other, more general, potential problems, with electronic research. Heightened dependence upon computers has faced criticism for some time (Dreyfus, 1979; Searle, 1984). Some critics contend that computers are not a mere aid to facilitate our lives but that they drastically change the way in which we communicate and live. Neil Postman sees humans as being viewed increasingly as thinking machines (1993) which may lead to an overly scientized view of all aspects of life, even the humanities. John Murphy (1999) sees ethnographers increasingly using PCs and software programs such as ETHNO, Ethnograph and the like. This, according to Murphy, will quantify findings and push them into a constrictive artificial structure created by the program, thus distorting our qualitative data into reified abstractions. Markham reassures us that electronic communication is just another text, especially valuable for individuals who feel very vulnerable in face-to-face interaction (1998, p. 222). Postman (1993) feels differently. For Postman, communication through electronic means can be considered a form of social autism. We agree with Markham that we should study the meaning of life online as a new textual construction of life. Yet, in the electronic field there exist the same possible pitfalls of everyday life, that is, we can study online interaction as a cooperative, constructed story or we can try to categorize and quantify the findings in a pseudoscientific manner. Only the future will tell which of these two trends will prevail. We hope that electronic ethnography will not become autistic positivism. Postmodern ethnographers are experimenting with the electronic media but are also being quite innovative in other modes of reporting their findings, by incorporating in sociology modes or narratives traditionally used in other disciplines, such as literature and the theatre.
New Ethnographic Narratives and Performances It is in modes of reporting and presentation that postmodernist ethnographies really differ from other interactionist ethnographies. Postmodern ethnographers grew unhappy with using the laconic language of science or the constrictive format of traditional ethnography (see, for example Denzin’s (1992) and Richardson’s (1992) critiques of William F. Whyte’s Street Corner Society). Today, ethnographers are experimenting with alternative modes of narrative, some dramatically different from traditional modes to which we are accustomed. The reasoning is that “doing” the ethnography – collecting data, organizing notes, writing the narrative – is only half the job; an ethnography is incomplete unless we are able to make audiences
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understand what we have done in the field in a way that goes beyond reading about the subject to experiencing the subject. Geertz (1988) claims that, in ethnographic anthropology, the understanding comes from the writing skills and different techniques of the authors but also from the authority the authors derive by their reputation in their discipline. So, not every written account is the same, but some wield more authority because of who wrote them (Geertz, 1988, p. 5): One can go back to Azande again, but if the complex theory of passion, knowledge, and causation that Evans-Pritchard said he discovered there isn’t found, we are more likely to doubt our own powers than we are to doubt his – or perhaps simply to conclude that the Zande are no longer themselves.
In sociology, Van Maanen (1988), in a vein similar to Geertz, relates to the authority of the researcher qua reporter by focussing his discussion on different styles of writing and their effects on the readers. The three styles discussed are realist (I was there), confessional (my disclosures about what I did in the field), and impressionistic (a ‘short story’ approach to the writing). A number of researchers have actually experimented with new styles of reporting. Some have used autoethnography, a retelling of one’s past experiences but focusing on the researcher as the subject: stories usually written in impressionistic style, highly charged with emotions, autobiographies emphasizing autoethnographic descriptions. So, for instance, Carolyn Ellis narrates about her brother dying in a plane crash (1993), but the focus is on Carolyn, how does this sudden sense of loss affect her? In the following edited excerpt McGinnis (1999, pp. 5–6) makes a startling discovery: . . . I stood outside the guest bedroom in my underwear, listening to what sounded a little like the bathtub draining, only more urgent, more desperate . . .. Moonlight from the window shone on the bed, and I could see my friend [a houseguest] with a woman, her knees locked in his elbows as he grunted and strained over her, driving his hips downward relentlessly. I was . . . excited by the sight . . .. They were getting close; he was panting and moving faster and harder, and she was urging him on, dragging her nails down his back . . .. The woman began to moan and . . . my breath caught in surprise as I watched the woman climax . . .. I feared it from the moment I heard her moan, but . . . It wasn’t until I heard that beautiful laugh that I knew with terrible certainty that it was my wife who had just been so well-fucked . . . that I had witnessed her betrayal and unwittingly taken pleasure in it.
As exemplified above, some, like McGinnis, have tried performances (in his case intertwined with autoethnography). At times, the characters mimic (or portray) the polyphony of the voices in the field. Sometimes the narratives are monologues (see McGinnis, 1999; Richardson, 1997a). Other times two, three or more sociologists perform the ethnography (Richardson, 1997a). At times,
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scores or scripts are passed out and the whole audience becomes a part of the story (see, for instance, Perea, 2001). This approach has been called performance ethnography or ethnodrama (Mienczakowski, 2001). Ethnodrama attempts to recreate and share meanings with the audience, in a culture increasingly seen as a performance that can be recaptured by textual presentations (Denzin, 1997). A few have experimented with poetry (see Clough, 1999; Fontana, 2001; Richardson, 1997a), distilling their data into highly charged, emotive poems about settings, subjects and/or themselves. The following excerpt describes arriving at Bonneville Salt Flats (Fontana, 2001, p. 163): You came to it, from north, south, east, west, to find speed. You’ve found past, present and future. You’re humbled by the shimmering white, cutting into the blue of the sky, Not a race track but the earth beyond time and space. Hurry now, the cool waves of light will soon turn into blinding rays of heat. We must race now.
A small group is writing short stories (Denzin, 1999a, b; Fontana, 2002; Richardson & Lockridge, 2001), often painting with words pictures of everyday folks, doing what they do in their daily lives. The results of these reporting experimentations have often been very moving. If presented by a skilled performer or written by a good writer they more often than not tug at the corner of the audiences’ heart, often eliciting a tear or two. Witness the following comments by Ruth Behar, who was placed in a full body cast, after a car accident, at age nine (1996, p. 197): The cast began just below my unformed breasts, took in my waist and hips, and enclosed each legs down to my toes, the tips of which stuck out like little fish coming up for air. A pole lined my legs at the ankles. With that pole, the doctor explained, my mother would be able to turn me on my stomach at night to sleep. My head and shoulders could be propped up with pillows when I ate, or if I wanted to read a book The rest of the time I was to lie flat on my back. Just below my belly an opening had been carved out for my private parts. suddenly, the parts of your body you were supposed to hide, and that as a girl you were supposed to keep tightly locked between your legs, were wide open to view.
Traditional ethnographers (and others) will raise questions of validity and reliability, and postmodernists will argue that they are comparing apples and oranges, that is, those words are just not part of what postmodern ethnographers do (Bochner, 2000). Paul Rock (2001, p. 37) goes as far as to suggest that the test of adequacy for ethnography should be one of aesthetics: “Knowing that aesthetic, that sense of the musicality of the social world, and being able to convey something of it to others is the end of research for many.” However, there are some critiques besides those of ‘scientism’ that the postmodernists have not answered. Silverman (1997, p. 240) tersely points out:
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I am reminded of the illusion that some of us nourish that, just because we are able to turn out some usable social science texts, we must have the makings of the great novel lurking within our breasts. Risking the scorn of modern-day deconstructionists, let me suggest that the craft of writing fiction or verse is quite different from the craft of social science. In any event, if I want to read a good poem, why on earth should I turn to a social science journal?
Once we invade arenas of presentational modes traditionally used by other disciplines, (very postmodern by the way, a breaking down of barriers), to what scrutinies are we subject? What standards do we apply? – Is it sociology? Richardson, in her play, “Educational Birds” (1997b, p. 204), tries to answer the question with an apparition of Lundberg, back from the dead, telling the audience: “Sociology is what sociologists do.” Such a response may be amusing, but it just won’t satisfy the critics.
PRESENT AND FUTURE TRENDS Where do we go from here? Postmodernism has influenced ethnography and rendered problematic many of the traditional approaches to interactionist sociology. It has been successful to the degree that it has shattered the field and left it in many different fragments to be considered each in its own right. Interactionists have responded differently to the challenge posed by postmodernism to ethnography, thus dividing the field further. Some interactionists provide a cumulative response, by seeing the diversity of ethnography as positive since, despite their differences, there are many groups studying interaction qualitatively by using unlike approaches (cf. Adler & Adler, 1999). This cumulative theme is emphasized by the “Editorial Introduction” of the recent Handbook of Ethnography (Atkinson et al., 2001) which supports the variety and diversity of approaches to ethnographic research. Similarly, Paul Willis, Mats Trondman and Loic Wacquant (2000), the editors of the journal Ethnography, take a broad approach to ethnography, in fact rather than calling it a method they refer to it as “a family of methods” (Willis, Trondman & Wacquant, 2000, p. 5). Others provide an oppositional response, after they become aware of postmodern ethnography. They resist this new approach as they feel themselves and interactionism at large as being placed in jeopardy by the postmodern critique and the unorthodox methods and reporting procedures of postmodern-informed interactionists (Best, 1995; Dawson & Prus, 1993; Prus, 1996; Sanders, 1995; Shalin, 1993). A third group provides a conciliatory response, attempting to reconcile the differences and take ‘a middle of the road’ approach, incorporating innovative postmodern ideas with more traditional interactionist concepts (Gubrium, 1998; Gubrium & Holstein, 1997). A final group of ethnographers provides a dismissive response.
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They ignore altogether or summarily reject postmodern concerns. Dismissivers continue to ‘scientize’ ethnography through the use of traditional modes of research and reliance on ‘scientific’ language and methods. They also seek the comfort of technological quantification by using software program to analyze qualitative data (cf. Adler & Adler, 1999; Murphy, 1999). There are problems with all of these responses. Postmodern-informed ethnographers are often guilty of neglecting the historic trends that run through Meadian interactionism, existentialism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology and, at times, are rehashing old concerns as new. Much more seriously, they have not established any standards by which their new approaches should be judged (cf. Dickens & Fontana, 1996), and are unlikely to do so since that would create a single, unified way to look at the field, thus returning to modernism and its paradigms (cf. Bochner, 2000). Interactionists who reject postmodern trends outright are moving toward a rather positivistic reading of Mead and Blumer (1969) as an overreaction to the relativism of postmodernism (cf. Prus, 1996). The conciliatory, middle-ground group, while perhaps the most pragmatic in its attempt not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, fails to see that they too are trying to unify the field. However, unification runs counter to postmodern trends, and their attempts are, in the eyes of postmodernists, doomed by a modernistic bias. As for the groups in search of “scientific rigor,” they continue to proceed unreflexively, continuing to follow a paternalistic, oppressive approach to ethnography. Ethnography is alive and well. Whether acknowledged or not, whether accepted or rejected, changes in ethnographic practices are taking place in light of the postmodern trends discussed in this article. Things are not as bad as they may seem. Many of the assumptions and tenets of traditional ethnography have come under scrutiny. Ethnography is now imbued with a sense of reflexivity, but that is not all, as Jonathan Spencer tells (2001, p. 450); “Linked with the sense of reflexivity is a sense of responsibility for the consequences of a particular way of representing the words and practices of other people.” Ethnography is no longer seen as an isolated narrative, it is now considered to be inextricably bound to the cooperative interaction of researchers and subjects. Together, they negotiate and accomplish a story, and the narrative is embedded and shaped by the biographies of both. To understand the story being told, readers must explore the dialectic relation between researcher and subjects and try to understand how, coming from two different (sub)cultures, they come to share a common perspective about the slice of life being reconstructed in the text, on stage, or on line. What do we, as ethnographers at the beginning of a new millenium, hope to achieve? Ruth Behar (1996, p. 3) puts it best:
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A sense of the utter uselessness of writing anything and yet the burning desire to write something . . . (and) . . . at the end of the voyage, if you are lucky, you catch a glimpse of a lighthouse, and you are grateful.
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TRAVERSING THE GREAT DIVIDE: WRITING THE SELF INTO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AND NARRATIVE Robert A. Rhoads ABSTRACT In this paper I seek to contribute to a growing understanding of the role of the self in qualitative forms of research and narrative. In calling upon the work of symbolic interactionists, postmodernists, and feminists, I explore how selfnarrative might inform our scholarly work, both in terms of creating more advanced self-understandings and in promoting open and honest discussions about how our personal and professional lives intersect. After reviewing the philosophical rationale as well as various uses of self-narrative in social science and educational research, I examine my own deployment of selfreflexive writing as part of an effort to bridge the chasm between my personal life and my life in the academy.
INTRODUCTION This article originates from an interest to contribute to a growing literary movement within the realm of social and educational research and inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Eisner, 1981; Krieger, 1991; Richardson, 1988). The movement Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 235–259 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260159
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I speak of reflects a narrative turn linked to greater consciousness of the self and its role in social and educational inquiry (Allender, 1986; Collins, 1986, 1991). The deployment of self-narrative is, as some have argued, part of ethnography’s answer to crises linked to representation, legitimization, and social transformation (Denzin, 1997; Lincoln, 1995; Lincoln & Denzin, 1994). I have participated in this movement from time to time, but rarely have I examined it in a deeply reflexive manner (Rhoads, 1994, 1997). The movement to which I refer promotes an open subjectivity and offers a challenge to traditional forms of scholarship (“scholarship” here may be understood as a variety of forms of knowledge construction), both in terms of methodological approach and narrative structure (Foucault, 1972, 1973; Geertz, 1983; Harding, 1991; Lincoln & Denzin, 1994; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Minnich, 1990; Richardson, 1988; Rorty, 1989; Rosaldo, 1989). At the heart of this movement is a recognition of two key assumptions. First, researchers as inquirers, and as writers, operate from a particular location; that is, they are subjective beings and bring a sense of self to their work (Hartsock, 1987; Krieger, 1991; Rosaldo, 1989). Related to this first assumption is the fact that researchers bring personal lives and personal histories to the professional realm, and that the two – the personal and the professional (or the private and public) – are not so easily separated, nor should they be (Tompkins, 1989). And second, writing is not simply a mode of representation, but it is also a way of knowing, including a way of knowing the self (Richardson, 1997b). The expansion of the varieties of social and educational research may be understood as an early wave of postmodernism challenging universal claims to truth and authoritative knowledge inscribed by a particular method or theory. At the heart of this movement is a challenge to dominant forms of social and educational inquiry situating the researcher as a neutral, objective observer claiming omnipotence in writing through the voice of the third person. As Tierney writes, “In our desire to ape the natural sciences and appear rigorous, we sought to eschew any form of personal relationship to our research subjects. If we could not produce objectivity in a sterile laboratory such as our confreres in the natural sciences, we could at least maintain objectivity in our writing” (1995, p. 381). And Bochner, in answering his own question – “Why is it that one rarely hears scholars talk about their personal lives in the papers they give at conferences or in mainstream journals?” – asserts, “Because it helps us maintain the illusion that the academic self hasn’t been prejudiced by the interests of the ordinary, personal self” (1997, p. 433). Postmodernism helps us understand how particular discourses assert their truth claims through the use of power (i.e. scholarly gate keeping, tenure and promotion processes, hiring practices, dissertation procedures, and so forth).
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Truth and power are inseparable, as Richardson asserts in drawing upon the work of Foucault, “Wherever truth is claimed, so is power; the claim to truth is a claim to power. So, micro or macro, positivist or naturalist, functionalist or conflict theorist, scientist and humanist – we all stand at last as distrusted co-equals in the postmodern universe, all of us suspected of lusting in our theorizing hearts to shape the ongoing course of history” (1991, p. 173). Restoring the personal to the realm of scholarly research and writing thus may be understood as a challenge to modernist discourses stressing objectivity over subjectivity, neutrality over engagement, and distance (third person voice) over connectedness (first person voice). Whether it be through the use of life history, biography, autobiography, memoir, autoethnography, personal narrative or a whole host of other methods focused on the lived experience of authors and their subjects, the goal of such work, argues Tierney, “is to break the stranglehold of metanarratives that establishes rules of truth, legitimacy, and identity” (Tierney, 1999, p. 546). A key aspect of this movement is recognition of the role the researcher plays in the construction of knowledge. While more often than not this notion is discussed as the researcher’s subjectivity, I prefer to situate the issue in terms of the self and focus on the sense of self that we bring to our work. Metaphorically, postmodernism has unlocked the closet door and allowed the self to come out and claim its role in the social construction of knowledge within the context of both social science and educational inquiry. And it has done so literally, literally speaking, stressing the multiplicity of selves brought to inquiry, including the researcher as artist engaged in creating narrative portraits of socially constructed realities and lived experience mediated by oppressive forms of culture (Clough, 1992, 1994). As English writes, in critiquing Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffman Davis’ presumption of an independent reality presented in The Art and Science of Portraiture, “A portrait is first and foremost the product of the artist–researcher. It is an artifact of a constructed reality in the mind of the artist–researcher who embeds the story within a context and centers around selected and specific speakers who sing the designated songs” (2000, p. 25). Exciting possibilities emerge as scholars operating in diverse and interdisciplinary arenas continue to suggest new and innovative ways of knowing and representing social life, including lives intersecting with schools, colleges, and universities; and few have contributed to this movement in more compelling ways than Richardson (1997a), whose book, Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life, creatively explores the realities of academic life and the ways in which we come to construct and represent knowledge. As Richardson argues in another work, “We can lay claim to some of the ‘higher values’ that were historically given to literature. We can lay claim to a science that is aesthetic, moral, ethical, moving, rich, and metaphorical as well as avante garde, transgressing, and multi-vocal.
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We can lay to rest our Faustian bargain, giving up our humanity for the illusion of objective knowledge” (1988, p. 202). My concern for the more literary side of inquiry rests primarily with the genre of self-narrative. Simply put, I can think of no other literary form better suited for exploring the selves we bring to our research and writing than self-narrative. In speaking of self-narrative, I include a range of literary styles and methodological approaches as part of a broad genre involving reflection and writing about one’s own life. Ellis and Bochner (1999) list over 50 different names describing various forms of this genre, including autobiography, memoir, autoethnography, self ethnography, self-stories, socioautobiography, reflexive ethnography, confessional tales, radical empiricism, lived experience, auto-observation, autoanthropology, self-conscious anthropology, rhetorical autoethnography, and so on. Hence, it is my goal to explore the potential self-narrative offers as a tool for advancing self-understanding. I examine a variety of social science and educational selfnarratives, focusing mainly on autobiographical works by Richard Rodriguez and Jane Tompkins. Specifically, I turn my attention to how these two authors wrestle with the institutionally enforced separation between their personal and professional lives (also discussed as the private/public divide). I then direct similar attention to my own self-narrative – in the form of a memoir I recently completed – and seek to make sense of the chasm between my personal life and my life in the academy. Throughout this article I maintain that “traversing the great divide” – coming to terms with the personal/professional divide – is a vital exercise because researchers as selves are engaged in the social construction of knowledge. Logically, the more advanced our self-knowledge, especially knowledge linked to how we structure our personal and professional relationships, then the better-equipped we are for understanding the social complexities of knowledge and its creation. I want to be clear about what this article has to offer the general body of literature focused on the self in qualitative inquiry. I am not simply reiterating the case that integrating the self into writing is important, because readers are better able to understand the theoretical and experiential locations of the author, and hence, better assess how one’s positionality may influence the research. Nor am I simply reasserting that self-narrative is a legitimate form of inquiry, and therefore, ought to be supported throughout the social sciences. Certainly, I support both such positions, but my argument lies elsewhere. Self-narrative is important because it inevitably challenges unquestioned notions of the self, and consequently, refashions a self better positioned for the exploration of otherness. And, of course, the exploration of otherness is at the heart of qualitative inquiry. Given the work of qualitative researchers and their involvement in the social construction of knowledge, self-understanding arguably is as important as knowledge
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gleaned about others’ lives. Simply put, if knowledge is constructed between the self and the other, then why is so little attention spent knowing the self? This article is a call to self-exploration, specifically to reflection on how scholars deal with the socially- and institutionally-enforced separation between private and public lives. I choose to focus on the tension between private and public selves for the simple reason that this very tension is what keeps so many researchers from integrating self-narrative into their research in the first place. The hope is that understanding acquired through others’ explorations of this tension will offer insights into how scholars might approach this challenging private/public endeavor.
THE SELF AND SELF-NARRATIVE I essentially come from a symbolic interactionist perspective when approaching the self, although my understandings are also informed by relatively recent postmodern and feminist work on identity. In essence, I see the self evolving from the interactions an individual has with others, mostly through a process that involves taking the role of the other and imagining how one is perceived by the other. At the heart of this view is the work of Mead (1934), who argued that one’s sense of self derives trom the interactions between the “I” and the “me.” In Mead’s thinking, which is fairly consistent with the early work of James (1890) and Cooley (1902), the “I” represents the individual acting out a particular behavior, be that talking, walking, thinking, listening, eating and so on. The “me” depicts the individual reflecting on her or his actions through the eyes of the “other.” Put another way, the “me” is the “I” when the “I” becomes the object of one’s thoughts (this process is key to what ethnographers and qualitative researchers speak of as “self-reflexivity”). How individuals interpret events and interactions with others as part of the process of creating meaning and constructing the self is central to the work of symbolic interactionists (Blumer, 1962, 1969). As Denzin notes, “Any theory of society must ultimately answer the question, ‘How do selves develop out of the interaction process?’ ” (1977, p. 114). The process of interaction is key. Furthermore, the self is “not a thing, but a process, the self is consciousness conscious of itself” (Denzin, 1987, p. 289). An action taken by another or an indication made in the context of conversation in many respects is not as important as is how a particular individual gives meaning to the action or indication. The importance the self-reflective individual plays in the process of sense making (including the construction of knowledge in research contexts) calls attention to the classic proposition framing much of symbolic interactionism and known as the Thomas Theorem: Situations defined as real are real in their consequences, or as Thomas and Thomas originally noted, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (1928, p. 572).
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For Mead, the self can only exist in relation to other selves. Without social interaction, an individual cannot develop a sense of self. This view is supported by other scholars of the self coming from varying perspectives. For example, Sullivan explicitly saw the self developing within the complex matrices of social interaction, noting, “A personality can never be isolated from the complex of interpersonal relationships in which the person lives and has his being” (1953, p. 10). Most recently, Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule (1986), Chodorow (1978), Gilligan (1982), Jordan (1991), Miller (1976) and Noddings (1984) among others have supported the notion of the “relational self,” or “self-in-relation,” emphasizing the contextual and relational qualities involved in the development of the self. All of these theories are relatively consistent with the fundamental assumptions of Mead, Blumer, Denzin and others, maintaining that social interaction forms the basis for how one comes to understand oneself and that this process is ongoing. The self forming and reforming through ongoing social and relational processes rejects the notion of identity as fixed and unitary. This is, as Bloom (1996) notes, a more complex interpretation of identity than sometimes is found in the literature, where assumptions of a unitary subjectivity are prevalent. Bloom goes on to point out, “Rejecting the notion of the unified self, some postmodern feminists argue that an understanding of subjectivity as nonunitary and fragmented is a move toward a more positive acceptance of the complexities of human identity” (p. 178). Mead (1934) further delineated a “particular other” and a “generalized other.” The particular other represents a specific person with whom one is engaged in real or imagined conversation. In terms of “imagined” conversation, Mead argued that once a person develops a sense of self, he or she is capable of engaging in thought-conversation and adjusting thoughts and actions accordingly. The generalized other refers to a projected other in the mind’s eye representing cultural understandings of the society or the norms of a particular social group. Colleagues in my field are a generalized other I often think of when I write a paper or prepare a speech. I think about what their reactions might be to something I intend to say or write. I then adjust the writing or speech act all the while thinking about the message I want to convey and to whom the message is to be conveyed. It is an underestimated social skill, a type of intelligence, to be able to move in and out of conversations with generalized others and adjust one’s thinking and acting accordingly. We can think of self-narrative then as a series of conversations with particular and generalized others within one’s own consciousness. Through these conversations, an individual decides what and how to write, debating various events, actions, emotions, and so on with imagined others, be they particular or general. On occasion, the writer might even engage particular others in “actual” discussions about the project, either verbally or through written form, as part of an effort to
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better understand possible reactions. Consequently, because the self-narrative is an intimate and intense series of imagined and/or actual conversations it produces a new self. I believe it is impossible for one to begin a major self-narrative and wind up with the very same sense of self with which one started. Too many meaningful interactions take place for one not to alter one’s self-understanding, even if it’s ever so slight, as might by the case with an inconsequential self-narrative. Related to the power of self-narrative is the fundamental view that writing is a way of knowing. Anyone who has ever written and re-written draft after draft of a journal article or book chapter knows from experience that this statement is true. The way we write about our data and our research participants shapes to a large degree the forms of knowledge we are able to construct, including the kinds of theories and understandings we have the potential to develop. Along these lines, Richardson argues that “writing is a theoretical and practical process through which we can: (a) reveal epistemological assumptions; (b) discover grounds for questioning received scripts and hegemonic ideals – both those within the academy and those incorporated within ourselves; (c) find ways to change those scripts; (d) connect with others to form community; and (e) nurture our emergent selves” (1997b, p. 295). The problem, as she points out, is that social scientists in seeking legitimacy have erred on the side of natural science traditions and in the process disregarded the sense of human connectedness so prevalent in art and literature. Richardson calls to our attention the fact that writing traditions have limited our ability to know more about our subjects and ourselves. This is because our construction of knowledge within social inquiry has been tainted by a limited use of narrative forms. In this regard, writing may be seen not only as a way of knowing, but it is also, as Maines writes, “a way of not knowing” (1988, p. 388). Thus, the general movement to which I refer in this article makes possible humanist interventions into social science conventions and offers expanded ways of constructing knowledge and identities. The following point flows from the preceding argument: If writing is a form of knowing, then quite obviously, writing about the self becomes a way of better knowing the self. I do not intend to get into the debates among postmodernists as to whether the self is in fact knowable, because I think it is a rather silly debate. Of course, we cannot know the self in all its wondrous and horrific complexity. This would be akin to knowing the universe. However, it does seem rather reasonable to think that we can understand meaningful aspects of the self, recognizing, of course, that the self, as a social self, is dynamic and ever-changing. Hence, our knowledge of the self is always a series of snapshots and glimpses of a dynamic self, being refashioned in subtle and minute ways through nearly every meaningful interaction. Because of the dynamic nature of the self, we must be careful then in how we read self-narrative. As Eakin points out, “Autobiographical discourse
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tends to promote an illusion of disarming simplicity when it comes to self and self-experience” (1999, p. ix). Lives are never as clear as even the most sophisticated rendition of one’s life, “for there are many stories to tell,” notes Eakin, “and more than one self to tell” (p. xi). Hence, we must always read self-narrative as we might a portrait, recognizing that much more is likely to lie behind the artist’s eyes, and that the self revealed by the author/artist is largely “invented” (Atkinson & Silverman, 1997), through a “limited medium of words” (Conway, 1998, p. 3). Self-narrative accounts written by Jane Tompkins (1996), A Life In School, and Richard Rodriguez (1982), Hunger of Memory, are of particular interest to this article.1 Both of these books offer insight into how social institutions construct barriers between private and public lives. The authors also explore how many of their own ideals and actions reinforce or challenge such divisions. What is most intriguing in examining the self-narratives of Rodriguez and Tompkins is how the division between the personal and the professional (the “private” and “public” in Rodriguez’s terms) creates tension in their lives. Even more interesting is that while Rodriguez sees his separation from his family as a natural consequence of establishing a public self, Tompkins seeks to reconcile this separation by challenging the norms of the academy. In other words, instead of accepting as natural the division between a private and public self, Tompkins recognizes structures within the academy that reinforce such norms. Rodriguez, on the other hand, deeply entrenched in his belief that the separation is the natural order of things, opposes nearly every educational effort to ameliorate the vast differences between marginalized families and schools by opposing such structural changes as bilingual education, affirmative action, and multiculturalism. At the heart of Rodriguez’s narrative is the struggle he faced throughout the course of his childhood and early adult life to reconcile a divided self. His sense of fragmentation is linked to self-understanding associated with schooling and public life, versus self-understanding related to family life. He is in every sense “the scholarship boy” trying to overcome working-class roots, embarrassed by, and eventually distanced from, his parents’ lack of education: “I was not proud of my mother and father. I was embarrassed by their lack of education” (p. 52). At the heart of this tension is a bilingual/bicultural identity linked to Rodriguez’s ability to voice the important and the personal in both Spanish and English. The division Rodriguez casts between a private and public identity – between family and school – is revealed early in his narrative. For example, early in the book Rodriguez notes, “Because I wrongly imagined that English was intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intrinsically private one, I easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language of home” (p. 20).
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In Tompkins’ self-narrative, a central concern revolves around reconciling the emptiness that came to define her work as a professor at Duke University. Intimate reflections shared about her past are part of an effort to give meaning to a powerful tension that has come to dominate her life. It is a tension whose drum beat has grown agonizingly intense. After years of study and academic work, she has found herself a stranger to the academy, disheartened because higher education offers neither contact with ourselves nor the outside world. “This has come about,” she argues, “because the university has relinquished responsibility for envisioning life as a whole. Instead, it has become an umbrella organization under which a variety of activities go on, but one that has no center and no soul. Correspondingly, the university doesn’t see the student as a whole person but only as a kind of cutout part of a person, the intellect – a segment that it serves diligently” (p. 222). How Tompkins and Rodriguez make sense of private/public tensions in their lives is quite evident in the topics they pursue as scholars, with Tompkins often addressing the problematic divide between scholarly and personal lives (in addition to her memoir see the essay “Me and My Shadow”), and Rodriguez taking the bully pulpit against school reforms that likely would connect education more closely to the lives of many students of color. Clearly, their scholarship is firmly connected to their sense of self and the struggles they have faced during the course of their lives. Also interesting is the sense one gets of the diverse audiences with whom the authors interact at different points in their self-narratives. One can imagine Tompkins or Rodriguez conversing as the “I” of the self, then taking the role as the imagined other to reflect back on the “me.” For example, Rodriguez alludes to the general other with whom he speaks: “I write today for a reader who exists in my mind only phantasmagorically. Someone with a face erased; someone of no particular race or sex or age or weather. A gray presence. Unknown, unfamiliar. All that I know about him is that he has had a long education and that his society, like mine, is often public (un gringo)” (p. 182). In other places, Rodriguez directs his comments seemingly to a particular other, often his parents. For example, in the following passage Rodriguez, somewhat apologetically, defends to his parents revelations about his family and the fact that he has softened his view of the separation between public and private lives: Many mornings at my desk I have been paralyzed by the thought of their faces, their eyes. I imagine their eyes moving slowly across these pages. That image has weakened my resolve. Finally, however, it has not stopped me. Despite the fact that my parents remain even now in my mind a critical, silent chorus, standing together, I continue to write. I do not make my parents’ sharp distinction between public and private life. With my mother and father I scorn those who attempt to create an experience of intimacy in public. But unlike my parents, I have come to think that there is a place for the deeply personal in public life. This is what I have learned by
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trying to write this book: There are things so deeply personal that they can be revealed only to strangers (pp. 184–185).
Here, Rodriguez reveals the potential of self-narrative, revising his once strong convictions about the private and public divide and in the process introducing to his audience a reconceived self. Tompkins appears to hold her mother in her mind’s eye as she writes apologetically about her childhood and feelings of loneliness as an only child, especially during her mother’s bouts with insomnia: The emptiness and loneliness became for me a touchstone; they betokened (I thought) a truth about myself: that I was not loveable, that I was both too much and wanting in some mysterious unnamed thing. The feelings had no basis in reality. My mother was devoted to me; she wanted only the best for me in every way and did everything in her power to make sure I had all I could possibly need for my happiness and security. But as for me, I didn’t know that her naps didn’t mean she didn’t love me; I extrapolated my own truth for them (p. 36).
And near the end of her book, Tompkins clearly situates the education community in the role of general other, as she castigates the lack of self-reflection in schools and universities: “The curriculum of American education, kindergarten through graduate school, is externally oriented. Even psychology and religion are externalized bodies of knowledge, with terminologies and methodologies and histories to be mastered like anything else. Every freshman can tell you that Socrates said, ‘Know thyself,’ but is she or he then given anyway to carry out the charge” (p. 221)? With their self-narrative journeys nearly complete, both Tompkins and Rodriguez express a feeling of homelessness at the end of their stories, but in different ways. Tompkins speaks of leaving Duke, because it lacks the kind of community she desires: “Having pretty much made up my mind to retire – the difference between the bent of my life and the ethos of the university having become, I thought, too great to tolerate” (p. 226). And Rodriguez, having been soiled by the pain of white peers being rejected for faculty positions, while he received multiple offers, recoils against the academy. As a response to a white friend’s complaint about the effects of affirmative action, a pained Rodriguez throws caution to the wind: “At the edge of hearing, I listened to every word he spoke. But behind my eyes my mind reared – spooked and turning – then broke toward a reckless idea: Leave the university. Leave . . . I wanted to teach; I wanted to read; I wanted this life. But I had to protest. How? Disqualify myself from the profession as long as affirmative action continued” (p. 171). The point of this article is not to offer extensive analyses of the complex selves Rodriguez and Tompkins have shared through their autobiographical accounts. Instead, for the purpose of understanding the potential contribution self-narrative might offer to scholarly lives, I see in both narratives the powerful tensions between private and public lives. In the end, the authors remain somewhat adrift in terms
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of their search for clear answers, and yet, they have uncovered so much about the connections that contribute to their dynamic selves. This indeed is one of the major contributions self-narrative offers to qualitative understandings of lives lived in and out of schools.
TURNING THE MICROSCOPE ON MY SELF With the preceding discussion in mind, I now turn to an autobiographical account of my life in and out of schools (Rhoads, 2003). The central theme of the work from which I draw is focused on the intersection between social class and schooling. Social class emerged as a key concern of my self-narrative, because for me schooling was experienced first and foremost as a class phenomenon. Through a variety of complex and powerful rituals, I was taught that the lives my family and I led were unacceptable by the standards of my community and school. This classbased socialization was powerful and persists to this day; as an associate professor at an elite research university, I continue to wrestle with the feeling of being out of place, that institutions such as UCLA are not for people like me. As a consequence of my struggle, I have learned to enact a variety of strategies for concealing my private self while at work and for keeping my colleagues and peers out of my home life. Thus, the chasm between the private and the public, for me, has been experienced most powerfully as a consequence of the daily enactment of a classist culture. There is much irony to my life as an academic. Unlike Tompkins, I have in many ways found a place in the academy, despite my class-based alienation. For example, while Tompkins describes her doctoral work as mostly pain and drudgery, mine was marked by the hunger and thirst of a starving child finally getting his dinner. I was insatiable for knowledge – still am. I truly believed that I had finally found my home, and no academic challenge presented to me was too large or too severe. But, of course, the paths Tompkins and I took to graduate school varied considerably. I feel most comfortable in the academy with the things that Tompkins mostly decries. I absolutely love all the one-on-one time I can get with my computer. And while she longs for greater connection with her department colleagues, more times than not, I long for the opposite (what jumps out at me here is the possibility that the masculine bias of the academy toward competitiveness and individualism so resented by Tompkins suits me quite nicely). Yes, we most certainly have come down very different paths. And yet, we both long for something off in the distance. Despite the positive feelings I have for academic work, there is a degree of alienation that tempers my enthusiasm. The source of this alienation is rooted, I
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believe, in the middle- and upper-class bias of the academy, which rubs against my roots in the lower class. In many ways, my self-narrative is an effort to make sense of this tension. It is a tension that at times leaves me longing for the simpler days of my youth, growing up in western Pennsylvania, in the shadows of the Allegheny Mountains and amidst the valleys carved out by the Allegheny River; hence, the title of my self-narrative – Allegheny Longing: A Poor White Boy’s Cultural Journey to the Academy. It is interesting that Tompkins longs for a sense of connection, friendship with her academic colleagues, when I often turn away from most, primarily because of the different cultures from which I perceive us deriving. And not surprisingly, like Rodriguez, I find myself more and more distanced from those I hold most dear, as my intellectual work takes me further and further from my rural, impoverished roots. Like Rodriguez, I feel as if I have left something behind in taking the professional directions I have chosen. Something very important seemingly has been lost. But what is that something? I reflect on these feelings in the first chapter of my book: Feeling lost in the academy has come to be a common state of mind for me. As a professor, I feel I exist as a stranger to the university life I love so dearly: an interloper, a phony, yet to be found out by my colleagues. My childhood was so removed from academics and the life of the mind that to be in such a lofty location as an adult seems out of place. It’s all so very highbrow compared to what I’ve known over the years. My mother went through a series of tough marriages and it seemed like we were always on the run. Perhaps that’s one source of my anguish and restlessness. We were modern-day nomads, constantly in search of a better life. We moved over 20 times from the day I was born until the day I graduated from high school, and going to college never seemed within the realm of possibility. Many of those years were spent on the edge of poverty. During my high school years, we were on welfare and sometimes wondered where our next meal would come from, especially near the end of the month when our food coupons dwindled down to nothing. Spam was a rich meal for us, and if it wasn’t for the powdered milk and blocks of brick-like, American cheese given out as Army surplus, we might have had to beg. I keep the majority of my colleagues at a distance, because most of them seem so different from me. They are good and decent people, but people who for the most part have come from professional families and privileged backgrounds. I doubt if they could ever understand the person I am. And I rarely give them the chance. They are of a different culture than my own. They are not my kin. College was never a part of my youth. Even taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test wasn’t anything I considered. There was a $4 fee to sit for the exam, and that was $4 we didn’t have. I sneaked into the Grove City College gym and worked on my
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shooting and dribbling, while my friends studied in preparation for their college boards. Their futures were fairly certain. Mine was a book of dreams. Thirty years later and it’s nearly impossible for me to fathom my life in the ivory tower. Success I’ve come to know, but I still long for something faintly distant in the cavernous spaces of a memory carved out as a child among the Alleghenies. As I discuss in my book, a significant portion of my youth was spent as a child of a welfare family, struggling to make ends meet. Poverty took its toll on me and contributes to a damaged sense of self I bring to the academy today. Feelings of inadequacy dominate my professional life. Such feelings, I believe, drive me to the extremes of a workaholic personality, as I seek to prove that I belong. Interestingly, as a child I brought such passion to athletics, dreaming of becoming a professional baseball player. In my early adult years, when the dream of playing centerfield for the Pittsburgh Pirates faded, my life drifted. Consequently, the passion to prove myself to the world and most importantly to myself met nothing but frustration during my early 20s. My endless desire to accomplish something meaningful persisted. I desperately sought out other arenas in which to prove to others and finally to myself that I held some value in this world. Desperate decisions along the way took me down bitter paths, including a short sojourn to the U.S. Army, where amidst the stultifying depths of conformity, I finally discovered that education held clues to the creative energy I sought to explore. But it was not until my early 30s, during doctoral work at Penn State University, that a new dream began to unfold. Actually, my dream of becoming a writer, an intellectual, was an old friend. But this old friend seemed even further from my grasp than playing centerfield for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Such is the case of the poorest of the poor. We know the route to the big leagues, but we have little to no knowledge of the process of becoming a teacher, writer, or professor. No, these are foreign worlds to us. In many ways, my youth was marked by what Sennett and Cobb (1972) so aptly describe as the “hidden injuries” of social class. In retrospect, my entire childhood seems like one long battle against society’s efforts to define me as “something less than a full person,” and my own stubbornness to prove myself worthy of dignity and respect. For the most part, I would say that social custom and the culture of poverty got the best of me. Consequently, deep down inside I still harbor thoughts that I am somehow beneath most of my peers. In my most rational state, when I reflect on my innermost self, I usually have the power to defy the years of socialization – I can push back the notion of myself as something less than a full person. The problem is that rationality is but a small part of one’s mind, of one’s life. Emotional scars formed long ago hide within the mind’s deepest caverns.
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When I think about the pain of childhood poverty, more often than not I return to particular experiences in schools and middle-class communities, places where my family and I never seemed to fit. Many of these experiences, told as short stories and vignettes, comprise the thrust of Allegheny Longing. Although I do not think it was ever a conscious goal, it is entirely possible that in constructing my self-narrative I have sought to exercise my darkest demons by making them public, rendering them visible. Perhaps in sharing our most painful thoughts we lessen their strangling grasp of us. What follows is one example of rendering visible a deeply seeded pain. Throughout high school, I faced the same humiliation and degradation every day: having to pick up a free meal ticket at the principal’s office on my may to lunch in the school cafeteria. That little red ticket of shame was reason enough to hide my face throughout high school. I could never tell if the gnawing in my stomach was from hunger or the anticipation of having to humiliate myself in front of all my friends and peers. I developed masterful strategies for sneaking into the principal’s office as I walked by on my way to the cafeteria. Like pretending to have to stop to tie my shoe, all the while hoping and praying that my classmates would go on walking and not see me disappear into that dreaded office. Or, I might stop for a long, a very long, drink of water at the fountain, peaking all the while at my friends, praying that they would not wait for me. Once I made it to the office, and back out with ticket in hand, the next big step was keeping it from everyone’s sight. I’d place it in the palm of my hand, close to my fingers so that I could clench them over the ticket. An angry fist then concealed my shame. When I grabbed my lunch tray, I placed my shamed left hand under the edge of the tray so that the ticket was out of sight. From this point, the remaining concern was passing it to the lunch lady without being seen. This worked on most occasions. But there were times when friends noticed. They either looked away to save me from embarrassment, or curiously asked why I had paid with a ticket. I always made up one lie or another. But I regret lying to them. I wish I could have looked them straight in the eye and with all the dignity I could muster told them that I get free lunches because my family cannot afford to pay for them. One of the worst lunch line incidents was the time I forgot to stop at the office and pick up my ticket. God bless the lunch lady who remembered me and just brushed me along the way. But worst of all was the time the prettiest girl in school got in line behind me, way back at the end of the line. Her name was Robin Parks and she was a senior. I was a lowly sophomore. To my utter amazement, she knew who I was and started talking to me, as if I mattered. She told me that her boyfriend, who was an outstanding wrestler, thought I was the best athlete in my grade. My face must
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have turned as red as the little ticket of shame in my left hand. I was speechless “Robin Parks, the Homecoming Queen, knows who I am, and her boyfriend thinks I’m the best athlete in my class!” Ecstasy flowed through my veins. I interacted with Robin Parks about as well as a shy sophomore can when talking to the prettiest girl in school. I must have been doing pretty darn good too, because she talked with me all the way up to the serving area, where the lunch ladies filled our trays with food. But absolute horror awaited me. Around the corner, as we exited the serving area, was the cashier. Soon, we would have to pay for our lunches. In anticipation, I brushed Robin Parks off, turning my back on her entirely. Fear ran up and down my body as if a million tiny needles had been stuck into my spine. She said something to me again, but I looked away and failed to acknowledge her. I was only two or three students away from the cashier. It was too risky to continue talking. I could only hope that she would look off in another direction or start chatting with someone else. At this point, my face and body were on fire, as fear and panic took control of my body’s functions. The shirt I wore was now damp from perspiration; and heavy droplets rolled down the sides of my face. The little red ticket of shame was thoroughly soaked. Nervously, I had rolled it up into a tiny wad. “When is this all going to end,” I asked myself, wondering why MY life had to be like this. A few seconds ago I was flirting with the cutest girl in school, who knew more about me than I knew about her. And now, in another second, she will know the truth. That I am nothing but a poor kid on welfare. In a second that will last a lifetime, I quickly handed my shame to the cashier and raced off to a lunch table, never speaking to Robin Parks again. As a number of ethnographic accounts have pointed out, schools do an excellent job of reproducing the social inequalities found in the broader society (Foley, 1994; MacLeod, 1987; Willis, 1977). Students from middle- and upper-class families are rewarded through a variety of school practices that reinforce the existing social order. The method by which my high school administered the federally funded school lunch program added to the humiliation and degradation that low-income families are expected to experience within a capitalist social structure. Those who work hard and do well are supposed to feel good about themselves. Likewise, those who sit on their “fat, lazy asses and soak the working stiffs,” as my peers used to say, ought to feel bad about who they are. Thus, a dose of humiliation with lunch was simply my school’s contribution to maintaining the social order. A classist culture demands nothing less. Unfortunately, degradation did not end once the school day was over. After all, schools are embedded in communities; the practices of the schools simply reflect the values of the dominant groups and individuals who direct them. And so it was that the values that guided the school lunch
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program were evident elsewhere, including the checkout line at the local grocery store, where my younger sister Kim and I felt the pain of social stigma most pointedly. Nothing was worse for Kim and me than going shopping with Mom and having to stand around the checkout counter when she paid for our groceries with food coupons. Although we loved to be with her and influence her choice of cookies, pop, and cereals (“Captain Crunch” was my favorite, while Kim preferred “Lucky Charms”), we dreaded the final stop at the checkout counter. Sometimes we would hide from Mom whenever she paid for the groceries, because we didn’t want anyone to see that we were with the woman using food coupons. I saw the dirty looks other people gave her. The white women in our community looked at her as if she was colored. “What is that woman doing buying Pepsi with food coupons – our tax dollars! And wasn’t that a bag of candy bars I saw? Nothing but white trash.” They might as well have said it out loud, because I could hear their little minds at work. I guess poor kids aren’t allowed to have a pop or a Snickers bar from time to time. Those women should have gone through what Mom went through. Then I wonder how snotty and self-righteous they would be. The biggest fear I lived with as a child was that others in our community would recognize my family for what I feared we had become – white trash. Nothing convinced me of this fact more than the time we moved into the most run-down house in the Grove City area. Although three of my siblings were unfazed by this turn of events, my sister Kim and I, the prideful ones in the family, were devastated. Kim and I refused to be seen outside of our new house, which we came to call “The House,” mainly because of its notoriety. The school year had just ended (I had completed sixth grade and Kim third), and we proceeded to spend nearly the entire summer playing inside. Again, I borrow a passage from Allegheny Longing. Every small town has one or two of those houses where the poorest families tend to dwell. People recall the names of the families and all the nasty tales that go with them as easily as they recite their own family histories. “Yep, that’s the old shack that the Wilsons lived in before the father got so drunk that he stabbed his wife to death. They say he drunk a whole ‘nuther case of Iron City beer before he even bothered to pull the knife out.” Dreadfully, it had happened to us! We had become one of them – we were now the Wilsons. No matter how good I had gotten at hiding our poverty, it was going to be impossible now. The irony of ironies was that we had ridiculed time and time again the people who had previously lived in The House. When my siblings and cousins drove by on our way with Mom or Aunt Shirley to Slippery Rock from Grove City, we used
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to crack jokes about the families who lived in the “cruddiest house around,” as we used to call it. “Look at the windows covered with cardboard,” one of us would say. “Yeah, they have bedroom sheets hanging up as curtains,” another added. Kim and I were so embarrassed once we moved in that when we played outside and a car came by, we quickly ran inside so no one would see us standing next to “that God-awful place.” It became a joke to her and me, and we sometimes tried to push the other outside so as to be seen by a passing motorist. One time I beat her inside and locked the door so she couldn’t get in. She had to duck down behind a garbage can just as the car zoomed by. We laughed the rest of the evening about her close shave. Even though Kim and I each had a sinful sense of pride about our state in life, we still found ways to make the best of things, and sometimes making a joke about The House was the best we could do to face the reality of it all. Mom even played along with us one time, running in from our car carrying a bag full of groceries, as a car came down the road. We laughed so hard at her that we nearly split a gut. When we moved into our new house, we fixed it up as much as possible; Mom cleaned and scrubbed the walls of every room that we didn’t paint (the landlord had given her paint and each of us kids got to help paint a room!). Mom, Grandma, and Aunt Shirley washed the multi-layered linoleum floors over and over, amazed each time by how black their buckets of water were when they finished. Mom was close to fanatical about cleanliness, and by the time we settled into any house we rented, it was likely to be one of the cleanest homes in the neighborhood, even if it did look rundown on the outside. The problem for me was that people driving by couldn’t see the great improvements we made to the inside, which could have proven to them that we weren’t white trash after all. The House had brown, fake-brick siding that felt like sand paper when you ran your fingers across it. Almost half of the siding had been blown off by the wind thus revealing the underlying black tar paper, which also was torn off in places. The front porch looked like it was about to cave in on one side, while the main frame of the house dipped in the opposite direction; together, they served as counterweights balancing the house like two kids on a teeter-totter, keeping it from sliding off the little fulcrum of a hill upon which it was perched. A few of the windows were covered over with cardboard and masking tape, while several others were cracked but still in place. What yard there was had become overgrown with weeds and thistles so thick and tall that it was pointless to try to whack out a grassy spot to play. The well house had been used for dumping garbage by previous tenants, and after Mom and Aunt Shirley fished out the trash, they had to get the water tested at Slippery Rock University before we could think of using it. “What kind of fools dump garbage in a well?” Mom and Aunt Shirley asked each other as they fished out trash with a long fishing net. “What kind of fools live in a house where the
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previous fools dumped garbage in the well?” I condescendingly answered them, under my breath, half hoping to be heard. Everyone knew I could be a smart ass at times, but I’m not sure they ever knew the level to which I could sink. And The House brought me to a level lower-than-low. Throughout the remaining days of the summer, I occasionally rode my bike to North Liberty to hang out at Beckers’ or the community center. But it was a long ride and took almost an hour, so my visits gradually decreased in frequency. By this time, Carol Becker and I were no longer sort-of dating, and my motivation to visit North Liberty had declined significantly. Eventually, I made it there only on an occasional Saturday afternoon for a game of football or baseball. During the entire summer, I never let anyone from North Liberty know exactly where we had moved. Their knowing might have meant a redefinition of my self. For if their views of me changed, then the way I saw me through their eyes would have changed as well. I see now that I gave them little credit for being able to look past our poverty. Experience had taught me to be weary – that wealth mattered. And so when a friend asked where we lived, I simply said, “Oh, down the road a ways.” Or, “Over near so and so’s.” Vagueness became my companion as I struggled to save face. One time I think I saw Mrs. Becker and her girls drive by and beep their horn. My heart leapt into my throat as fear struck a near mortal blow. I knew I could never look Carol Becker in the face again. As I looked back years later, I was embarrassed by the lengths I went to keep friends from seeing inside my life. Most of my friends, male and female, probably could not have cared less, and few of their families were as wealthy as they likely appeared to me at the age of 11 or 12. In the end, I have little doubt that the only person in North Liberty who associated our family with white trash was likely me. From having to use free lunch tickets at school, to using food stamps at grocery stores, to wearing hand-me-downs, to passing on activities with friends because of lack of money, to living in run-down houses, the poor are sure to learn that society marks them differently. I tried to deny to myself that everybody was better than me. But despite such pleas, the lessons of poverty found a home in my inner life, passing through my own extreme efforts to prove them untrue. Almost 30 years have passed. Paying for lunch with my faculty ID card in the elegant Faculty Center at UCLA is a far cry from my high school days and those little red tickets of shame. And yet, despite the passage of more than a quarter century, I occasionally can be found in my very own university office wondering when some white-haired, black-suited administrator will walk in and reveal the truth – that I really don’t belong in the academy. “I can’t be good enough to be a professor here.”
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I wear a chip on my shoulder some of the time, especially when I enter settings defined mostly by upper- and middle-class values. Consequently, I often distance myself from colleagues, for fear they will spot my roots, or for fear that my chip will drop off and land on someone’s foot in the middle of a dinner party or wine and cheese social. Interestingly, while I seek a separation of my professional and personal lives in terms of relationships with colleagues – searching out my closest friends from beyond the academy –, my writing seeks to bridge the divide, bringing my private and professional lives together through a variety of forms of self-narrative, including this article. Writing, in this sense, has truly become a vehicle for sharing a piece of my life, but also for coming to know complex aspects of my self. Yes, my life is somewhat of a paradox. I exist amid a world of people who live for ideas, for thoughts, because I am of the Mind myself. And yet, I am not one of them. In official meetings and proceedings where intellectual points are debated and shared, I’m as slick as a weasel in water. But step out of the “official” academic context and into the social world of academics and I become Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty, looking for the nearest road to anywhere moaning all the while, “Oh, man! man! man!” My self screams for release, for freedom! When I started thinking about writing an autobiographical account of my life growing up in western Pennsylvania, I hadn’t given serious thought to how class issues had shaped so much of my present-day existence. I recognized some of my discomfort with the academy, but I hadn’t really zeroed in on the role of class. I certainly sensed, though, that an exploration of my life might help me to better understand the uneasiness framing so many of my formal academic interactions. I wanted to make sense of the powerful need I had to keep my colleagues at a distance, to keep my personal and professional lives so separate. Of course, and ironically, just like Richard Rodriguez, the telling of my story has helped me to see more clearly the connection between the two. As a result, today I am a little more willing to develop relationships with peers. Allowing my self to be known by them has produced new forms of self-reflexivity and yielded more diverse understandings of the social world. Perhaps most importantly, I have learned that my colleagues are not all that different from me. They too have complicated histories and identities. They too deal with their own insecurities. They too construct barriers between the public and the private. But serious reflection about my life and my work in the academy also has brought to light a stark reality that so often I have sought to escape. For many years, I avoided thinking about the fondness I have for my Allegheny roots, the roots that connect me to western Pennsylvania and to the loved ones I miss so dearly. Increased self-reflexivity has not brought blissful happiness. No, the deep
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thought that went into writing Allegheny Longing brought forth the pain of lost years – the time with my family that I gave away in order to become something different from them. Self-reflexivity has helped me come to terms with my rural, impoverished roots; I understand a great deal about why I am what I am. Yes indeed . . . but it doesn’t ease the pain of being unable to hold my sisters, talk with my brother face-to-face, or give Mom a big hug on Sunday evenings.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS When I finished Allegheny Longing, I remember talking with one of my graduate students about the fictional quality of it. By “fictional,” I don’t mean to suggest that anything I wrote was fabricated. And yet, it was entirely fabricated, by an imperfect memory never capable of fully grasping any of the infinite realities that had confronted me. All our portraits, be they constructed on the basis of the literary, the poetic, the artistic, yes, even the scientific, are poor attempts at capturing all that abounds, in both our inner and outer worlds. My student looked entirely confused when I told her that I might write four or five more memoirs, covering the same period of my life, and that each one would be dramatically different. “Such is the nature of the self and of reality,” I explained. I was offering my graduate student a word of caution – if we are to give value to the analysis of self-narratives, we should not waste too much time weighing such things as facts, accuracy, legitimacy – “A story is not a neutral attempt to mirror the facts of one’s life; it does not seek to recover already constituted meanings” (Ellis & Bochner, 1999, p. 745). Instead, we ought to focus on the sort of meanings authors derive from their own meaning-making efforts. What is the author trying to learn about her- or himself? How is the author using the self-narrative process to bring meaning to a life? How is the author engaging his or her audience as a vehicle for exploring a new self, or new selves? I suggest that the answers to such questions offer a good deal of understanding about the nature of the self even if it is an ever-changing, dynamic self. How do we make sense of all this in a way that might have meaning for other scholars wrestling with research and writing in the postmodern age? Most obvious is the importance of self-knowledge. Why do we choose the topics we select? What matters to us? What social connections do we seek to build? As Maines writes in discussing Richardson’s Fields of Play: “How does context influence an act? . . . How do configurations of group loyalties and alienation influence the construction and reproduction of lines of social participation?” (1998, p. 388). In my words, who are we and why do we make the choices we make, especially with regard to
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the topics we choose, the methods we employ, the narrative structures we follow, and even the colleagues with whom we associate? What I am suggesting in this article is that scholarship and scholarly lives would benefit from greater self-reflection. The kind of self-reflection I speak of poses fundamental questions about who we are as people and what we want from our lives, the very questions that in different sorts of ways Rodriguez, Tompkins, and myself have wrestled with in trying to make sense of our lives. Thus, a central goal of this article is to call for greater reflection and increased integration in scholarly lives. I argue that narrative inquiry aimed at exploring the private/public divide in our own lives is a useful strategy for advancing self-understanding and selfintegration. Additionally, the academy has the potential to be a more compassionate space when that which we value so dearly, that which shapes so many of the choices we make – our pasts, our hopes, our selves – become central to the endeavors we undertake. The goal here is to move toward fuller, more vital definitions of scholarly activity and identity as we seek to create meaning in an age when meaning is so fleeting. We are not separate from the subjects we study and our passions are not left at home as we enter the hallowed halls of the academy. Perhaps our work will become more honest and open as we seek to reconnect with the complex selves that have long shadowed our professional lives. In this light, constructing self-narrative and integrating such work into our research and inquiry is but one step toward more vital and holistic ways of knowing and living.
NOTES 1. There are other excellent books related to education in which the authors seek to integrate research and theory with lived experience. In The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African-American Children, Ladson-Billings (1994) recalls her own life in school as she employs critical race theory and feminism to explore the efforts of teachers working with African American children. She describes her book this way: “At its center is the story of the pedagogical practice of eight exemplary teachers. However, my own experiences as an African American student who successfully negotiated public schooling provide a backdrop for my understanding of that practice . . .. I retain vivid memories of ways in which schooling affected me both positively and negatively and those memories help me see and understand current classroom practices” (p. xi). And in Lives on the Boundary, Rose (1989) weaves self-narrative into the text as he examines his years of work with educationally underprepared students. In bringing to the forefront his own story, Rose does not suggest that his life is an emblem for the educationally disadvantaged. Instead, he uses his life as a lamp, shedding light on the stories of his students. As he points out, “There are some things about my early life . . . that are reflected in other working-class lives I’ve encountered: the isolation of neighborhoods, information poverty, the limited means of protecting children from family
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disaster, the predominance of such disaster, the resilience of imagination, the intellectual curiosity and literate enticements that remain hidden from the schools, the feelings of scholastic inadequacy, the dislocations that come from crossing educational boundaries” (p. 9). Tierney’s Academic Outlaws (1997) examines queer theory and cultural studies while revealing a bit of the author’s own life as a gay man. In Palmer’s The Courage to Teach (1998), the self is at the heart of his discussion of teaching. As Palmer notes, “[T]he most practical thing we can achieve in any kind of work is insight into what is happening inside us as we do it. The more familiar we are with our inner terrain, the more surefooted our teaching – and living – become” (p. 5). Similarly, hooks, in Teaching to Transgress (1994), talks about teaching in a deeply personal fashion while sharing intimate challenges she has faced as a teacher. And in I Answer With My Life, Casey (1993) introduces the theory and method behind her study of teachers working for social change by first presenting a brief life history, arguing that her “own modes of interpretation have been influenced by my personal relationships and lived experiences” (p. 8). There are other works worth reading as one seeks to explore this growing movement, including Jackson and Jordan’s edited volume of professors’ stories of identity and struggle called I’ve Got a Story to Tell (1999), Neumann and Peterson’s edited volume titled Learning from Our Lives: Women, Research, and Autobiography (1997), Steedman’s self-exploration in Landscape for a Good Woman (1987), and an essay by Tompkins (1989) titled “Me and My Shadow.” Additionally, broader anthropological, sociological, and feminist works have challenged the separation between lived experience and scholarly activity, as well as the division between the personal and the professional. Behar’s The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart (1997) and Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story (1993) and Bateson’s Composing A Life (1990) are three worth noting. These works and many others shed light on the fragmentation modernist notions of identity and work have pushed on our scholarly lives as well as how various authors/researchers have come to address these tensions.
REFERENCES Allender, J. S. (1986). Educational research: A personal and social process. Review of Educational Research, 56(2), 173–193. Atkinson, P., & Silverman, D. (1997). Kundera’s immortality: The interview society and the invention of the self. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 304–325. Bateson, M. (1990). Composing a life. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Behar, R. (1993). Translated woman: Crossing the border with Esperanza’s story. Boston: Beacon Press. Behar, R. (1997). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston: Beacon Press. Belenky, M., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule, J. M. (1986). Women’s way of knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. New York: Basic Books. Bloom, L. R. (1996). Stories of one’s own: Nonunitary subjectivity in narrative representation. Qualitative Inquiry, 2(2), 176–197. Blumer, H. (1962). Society as symbolic interaction. In: A. M. Rose (Ed.), Human Behavior and Social Processes (pp. 179–192). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Bochner, A. P. (1997). It’s about time: Narrative and the divided self. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(4), 418–438. Casey, K. (1993). I answer with my life: Life histories of women teachers working for social change. New York: Routledge. Chodorow, N. (1978). The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clough, P. T. (1992). The end(s) of ethnography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Clough, P. T. (1994). Feminist thought: Desire, power and academic discourse. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33, 14–32. Collins, P. H. (1991). Black feminist thought. New York: Routledge. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. Conway, J. K. (1998). When memory speaks: Reflections on autobiography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Denzin, N. (1977). Childhood socialization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Denzin, N. (1987). A phenomenology of the emotionally divided self. In: K. Yardley & T. Honess (Eds), Self and Identity: Psychosocial Perspectives (pp. 287–196). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Denzin, N. K. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Eakin, P. J. (1999). How our lives become stories: Making selves. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Eisner, E. W. (1981). On the differences between scientific and artistic approaches to qualitative research. Educational Researcher, 10(4), 5–9. Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (1999). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity. In: N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 733–768). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. English, F. W. (2000). A critical appraisal of Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s portraiture as a method of educational research. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 21–26. Foley, D. (1994). Learning capitalist culture: Deep in the heart of Tejas. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. A. M. Sheridan Smith (Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1973). The origin of things: An archeology of the human sciences. New York: Random House. Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harding, S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge?: Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hartsock, N. C. M. (1987). The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In: S. Harding (Ed.), Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues (pp. 157–180). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
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Jackson, S., & Jordan, J. S. (Eds) (1999). I’ve got a story to tell: Identity and place in the academy. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology (Vol. 1). New York: Holt. Jordan, J. V. (1991). The relational self: A new perspective for understanding women’s development. In: J. Strauss & G. R. Goethals (Eds), The Self: Interdisciplinary Approaches (pp. 136–149). New York: Springer-Verlag. Krieger, S. (1991). Social science and the self: Personal essays on an art form. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lincoln, Y. (1995). The sixth moment: Emerging problems in qualitative research. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 19, 37–55. Lincoln, Y. S., & Denzin, N. K. (1994). The fifth moment. In: N. K Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds), The Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 575–586). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage. MacLeod, J. (1987). Ain’t no makin’ it: Leveled aspirations in a low-income neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Maines, D. R. (1998). Review of Fields of play: Constructing and academic life. Social Forces, 77(1), 388–390. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. C. W. Morris (Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, J. B. (1976). Toward a new psychology of women. Boston: Beacon Press. Minnich, E. K. (1990). Transforming knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Neumann, A., & Peterson, P. L. (Eds) (1997). Learning from our lives: Women, research, and autobiography. New York: Teachers College Press. Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press. Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Rhoads, R. A. (1994). Coming out in college: The struggle for a queer identity. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Rhoads, R. A. (1997). Community service and higher learning: Explorations of the caring self. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Rhoads, R. A. (2003). Allegheny longing: A poor white boy’s cultural journey to the academy (unpublished manuscript). Richardson, L. (1988). The collective story: Postmodernism and the writing of sociology. Sociological Focus, 21(3), 199–208. Richardson, L. (1991). Postmodern social theory: Representational practices. Sociological Theory, 9(2), 173–179. Richardson, L. (1997a). Fields of play: Constructing an academic life. Rutgers University Press. Richardson, L. (1997b). Skirting a pleated text: De-disciplining an academic life. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 295–303. Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: The education of Richard Rodriguez. Boston: David R. Godine. Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary: A moving account of the struggles and achievements of America’s educationally underprepared. New York: Penguin Books.
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Sennett, R., & Cobb, J. (1972). The hidden injuries of social class. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Steedman, C. K. (1987). Landscape for a good woman: A story of two lives. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: W. W. Norton. Thomas, W. I., & Thomas, D. S. (1928). The child in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Tierney, W. G. (1995). (Re)Presentation and voice. Qualitative Inquiry, 1(4), 379–390. Tierney, W. G. (1997). Academic outlaws: Queer theory and cultural studies in the academy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tierney, W. G. (1999). Undaunted courage: Life history and the postmodern challenge. In: N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 537–553). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tompkins, J. (1996). A life in school: What the teacher learned. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Tompkins, J. (1989). Me and my shadow. In: L. Kauffman (Ed.), Gender and Theory: Dialogues on Feminist Criticism (pp. 121–139). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.
“CHICKEN WINGS” Ruoyun Bai Four months after I got to America, I was invited to a Christmas party. I brought some chicken wings stir-fried with wine, soybean sauce, sugar and ginger, partly to show appreciation to my new friend, partly out of my smug thought that I was here on a mission to bring authentic Chinese food to American people. Yet the chicken wings were removed from the table not long after the party began, even when there were still plenty of them. Those that were already in people’s plates were at most lightly touched. I moved among people pretending to have a good time yet feeling bashful, defeated and dismayed. How come the other Chinese lady knew better? She brought in a pretty fruit pie, the kind that has cream, peach, strawberry and nuts in it. *
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What we found great about CM grocery store was that they have some rare kinds of ethnic foods. It happened that day that my husband, Li, and I wanted some pig’s feet. In China, this part of pigs is a special delicacy. It is our belief that slowly cooked pig’s feet are desirable for preventing skin aging and for women who just give birth to babies. As we checked out, the cashier, a tall, young man, picked them up, examined for a second and made a light remark, “Dog food!” It was so soft that Li did not hear. The boy had such light blue eyes and light freckles on his face. I found myself scouring my brain for words to say but could not come up with anything. *
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No more showing off of my food! Shawn and Jill1 just had three new-born babies. To help them out, some of us in the department took turns to contribute food.
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They are a very easy-going couple and they said they liked ethnic foods. Still I got restless when it was my turn. After some careful rumination, I ordered a vegetable pizza from Papa John’s. Yet I was torn. I knew that I was not ready to desert my native food. One remark by a friend of mine still stings me: “I do whatever I can to make people forget that I am Chinese.” This friend just graduated from the law school of my university, and is now working for Skadden, the biggest law firm in the States. Her emphatic tone convinced me that she would be more than happy to give up a year’s salary plus bonus in exchange for losing her “Chineseness” in the American “mainstream.” But wait a minute; am I being an essentialist? Are there only two options available for me to choose to live with – Chinese or American? Closer to reality, I find myself picking up whatever suits my taste from all ethnic foods. Ben, my colleague in the office, brought in a German cake made by his fianc´ee and told us regretfully that one German ingredient is missing from it. Yet it actually did not matter to me where this delicious piece of cake came from or whether it is authentic. It agrees with me and that is it. *
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Whenever I went to Chinatown Buffet, I was always struck by the hilarious absurdity of its food presentation. There were broccoli, baby corns and sticky sauce in every stir-fry; vegetable sushi and a salad bar; and even steaks, pizza, potato skins – things I would never connect with the Chinese cuisine that I know of. My amazement was the same when I visited Sunshine – the Chinese food grocery store quietly standing in the residential area south-east to campus. In that store I find vegetables, seafood, rice, seasoning, dried goods and snacks that are supposedly Chinese but which apparently just came off assembly lines in California or from farm fields here in Illinois. The moment was important to me when I realized that these stores, and also the CM grocery store that has a niche market for pig’s feet, are hoping to create a certain degree of authenticity in order to sell. I am not pressured to do that. I prefer to preserve this “liminal space”2 I newly found. In this space, I am not bound to any categories like Chinese, Mexican, Italian or American food. I move in and out with ease. I have always enjoyed preparing food even when my work keeps me busy. Cutting up potatoes into thin, thin slices, listening to the sizzle from the oven, watching eggplant turn golden in the frying pan and smelling the tasty warmth that steals out of the slow cooker are the most fun part of cooking. Once I almost forgot how to enjoy these moments; but now that I am shedding off the shackles of categories, I have a closer, nourishing relationship with food. I feel liberated.
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NOTES 1. Shawn and I are in the same Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois. His wife also studies in the university. 2. Meerwald, Agnes May Lin. (2001). Chineseness at the crossroads. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 4(4), pp. 387–404. Meerwald describes the liminal space as a state of “not arriving,” in which “I can be sometimes this and sometimes that, sometimes accepted, other times rejected, and despite all the contradictions experienced, I know that in this liminal space, I do not ever have to choose between one or the other, or fear being found out, for I can choose not to conform. I can be at home in a state of incommensurability. I don’t have to reconcile my differences within and without” (p. 401).
REMEMBERING ME Jabali Kamau Troy LaRaviere My first memory is of my mother’s first memory of me She’s told me this story so many times that I feel like I’m telling the story from my own memory. As if I remember being in the delivery room . . . “Boy I remember that labor I had with you! Lord Jesus! You was the worst of all of ’em.” “You came out weighing ten pounds and five ounces.” “And once you came out, the doctors and all the nurses just looked at you like they was in shock. Then they kept calling other doctors in to come and look at you.” “But they wouldn’t let me see you. My legs was still propped up with that sheet in the way. So I couldn’t see nothin’.” “And they just kept calling more doctors in, and all the doctors kept saying the same thing:” Doctors: We’ve never seen anything like this! “But they still wouldn’t let me see you. Finally I just started yelling, ‘let me see my child. What’s wrong with my baby?!’ ” “The doctor finally looked at me and said ‘Ma’am, this is the cleanest baby I’ve ever seen.’ They gave you to me and you didn’t have any fluid or blood on you. Not one drop.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 267–273 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260172
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perhaps all the blood was used up from hundreds of years of doing nothing but bleeding When the doctor cut the umbilical cord, how different was that cut from the cut his great, great, great, great, great-grandfathers made when they cut us off from our African mother culture and all that was life-giving to me? and my life . . . a testimonial to the blade
My earliest memory is of being two or barely three years old, walking into the kitchen and watching my mother change my little brother’s diaper. I asked her a question about the diapers. I can’t remember what I said, but her response was “I’m going to put YOU in one of these diapers, if you pee on yourself again.” I don’t know why she was so upset, seeing that when they brought us here on enslavement ships, they packed us like animals, forcing us to piss right where we were – on ourselves and on anyone next to, or below us. And it seems like I’ve been pissing on myself and everyone around me – ever since. And it seems I’ve been getting pissed on, ever since. So, what’s the big deal mama?
I remember the first time I was with a girl. I was three or four. Her name was Chasa Palamore – and she was three. Her brothers pushed me and her into doing it once in the alley and another time in their oldest brother’s basement bedroom. I don’t think we ever really did anything; just naked and grinding. And it seems like I’ve been making love in alleys and dark hidden-away basements, ever since with far-away people still watching and cheering me on. yeah, over and over I attempt to make love but after the applause dies down everyone – including me – just ends up getting fucked
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and I can trace this one too, back to the white slaveowning sucker he wanted Lucile to have high priced babies so he forced me to fuck her And that can’t be washed away with constitutional suds when you create human breeding Farms, you produce studs and we still walk the streets, reproducing the culture whitey produced in us.
I remember being four or five years old, living on 68th & Justine. Until I left home at 17, every place I ever lived was all black. The only white person on the block was my mother. But we still think she was a black woman trapped in a white woman’s body. I remember when me and my brothers would get into fights on the block. All the kids would gather around and sing: It’s a fight! It’s a fight! It’s a Nigga and a White. Gimme skin Gimme skin The Nigga gonna win Being 100% certain that I was black, the song never bothered me much. I’d just stand there amazed thinking, “These kids have got to be pretty stupid if they think I’m white.” These were the same folks I played with everyday. I remember having this thought that I didn’t have the vocabulary to express. The thought was like “Hey, I’m one of y’all, you idiots, Don’t you get it? How y’all gone let this shit split us up like that. Later I was to learn about the house Negro and the field Negro, and how our enslavers used “divide and conquer” to cause division and disunity amongst their captives. For hundreds of years, they’ve used our differences to cultivate division and hostility among us.
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They used everything from age to skin color to divide us. So when I stood in the middle of Justine about to fight, I was experiencing the lingering effects of the latter.
I remember the Columbus song in fourth grade: In 14 hundred, ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue He sailed, and sailed, and sailed, and sailed! and found this land for me and you it was cold blooded murder I was a helpless nine year old child and they created that vicious lie and thousands more just like it and fired them into my defenseless mind it was cold blooded murder murdering my sense of self murdering my identity preventing the possibility that I could connect to a source of pride severing the connection between me and all that could give life to my spirit yeah I know of other truths now but can a fact learned at 30 overcome a lesson internalized at seven? I remember the winters on 43rd Street – a block east of King Drive. I remember my mother sending me and my brother out in the snow with a bucket. We’d fill the bucket up with snow, and stop to have a snowball fight and play in the snow. Then we’d take our bucket full of snow up to our apartment on the third floor, and set the bucket by the stove so the snow could melt. Once the snow melted, we opened the back of the toilet, and poured the water in, so we could flush the day’s waste. I remember eating oatmeal for every meal. Oatmealf or breakfast Oatmeal for lunch Oatmeal for dinner
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and for dessert? Oatmeal cookies and I didn’t think about it then, the way I think about it now. I didn’t know I had a right to live better than that
I remember reading my first book. I was 19 years old and in the Navy. It was Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary.” Shortly afterwards, I’d read my first non-fiction work. It was the Autobiography of Malcolm X. In Malcolm I found the answers to all the questions the white world could not answer. Like the question of why in the fuck was I 19 years old and just starting to read! Much of what we accomplish is motivated by the belief that others have in our ability. I went through an educational system that couldn’t even identify my abilities let alone believe in them. Low tracked and labled I get sad when I think of the potential that was wasted in those years that I languished in a system that destroyed my belief in my own worth. Though tragic, that’s nothing compared to the potential destroyed by capitalism and slavery. What would our future African civilizations have looked like if Europeans hadn’t murdered us and our continent? Would we have performed cold fusion by now? Perhaps we would have produced a renewable energy source that didn’t harm the ozone layer, or pollute the air we breathe. If sons of slaves could produce a revolution in blood storage and perform the world’s first successful heart transplant, what could we have done by now if capitalism, slavery, and racism hadn’t gotten in our way?
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as a result, the most beautiful thing we’ve been able to produce under this oppressive system, is our struggle against it
I remember last week Just this past thanksgiving I was at my brother Mike’s house. Mike is the oldest, then Carole, then Tony, then me, then Sean. Everyone but Sean was there and Mama had made her ridiculously delicious Sweet Potato pies. When I was little, whenever mama made those pies, people we know would come from all around the city to get a couple slices. I remember one year, lot’s of folks were in and out of the house, and a lot of pies came up missing, and soon they were all gone. We always thought someone was stealing them. But that night, this past Thursday, Mike finally told us it was him. Mike didn’t grow up with us. He and Carole lived with their aunt, and they were even poorer than we were. He was visiting with us that year in the late 70s. He told us he ate seven pies and hid two of them. We all had a very good laugh about that. But someone asked a question that night that never got answered “Why in the world did you eat SEVEN pies?” It’s not like Mike was overweight. He was slim, like me. Here’s what I believe America makes life very uncertain for Black people so many times we get all we can while it’s there, cause you don’t know if it will be there tomorrow Mike grew up not knowing where his next meal was coming from. you figure out the rest Hey, maybe that’s why I was born so clean maybe I knew that life on the outside of the womb wasn’t so certain so I consumed all I could while I was in there
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I remember tomorrow I saw it a few times in my dreams My great, great, great, great-grand daughter was reminiscing with her younger brother about how they’d wrestled in the grass when they were children. Then they discussed the meeting they have tomorrow with other teachers in the New Afrikan School System, in the United Republic of New Africa, in the southern and eastern regions of what used to be called the United States. They met and poured a libation calling out the names of all the ancestors who struggled to liberate our people
I remember the work I must do to ensure my name is called
CROSSING THE BORDER AND CROSSING MYSELF1 Hugo Campuzano My earliest recollection as a Mexican living in the United States occurred when I was seven years old. My mother took my sister and I out of school to go see our grandmother in Mexico who was gravely ill. I don’t recall much of my stay in Mexico, other than my grandmother, but the memory of my families’ journey back to Chicago is crystal clear. You see, on our way to Mexico we flew on an airplane but on the way back to the U.S. we had to sneak across the border on foot. As we prepared to come back home, my mother explained to me that we couldn’t fly back because we weren’t real Americans. Throughout the whole journey that statement played back in my head a million times. She said that “el coyote” was going to take us back to Chicago. That night “el coyote” came to our small hotel room near the border and our journey began. I remember my feet ached from the hours of walking up and down those endless rocky hills filled with cactus and small shrubs. As I fearfully look ahead into the darkness we come to a river where “el coyote” pulled out a small inflatable raft, and vigorously filled it with air. When he finished inflating it, he took us across the river one at a time. After walking a few more hours we came to a road where we hid along side it and waited until an old car picked us up and drove us the rest of the way. This journey was painful both physically and emotionally. I had always thought of myself as an American. Yet, I knew Americans didn’t enter their country in the middle of night, dressed in black, with “el coyote”. I felt like a criminal not like an American. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t belong in America. My entire life, I had been proud to be an American but now I was angry and confused. If I wasn’t
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an American then who was? One thing I did learn was that since then, I have been constantly reminded that I am not an American.
NOTE 1. This performance text is a mystory (see Denzin, 1997, pp. 91–92) created out of an epiphanic moment from a lived experience that takes a moral and political stance by evoking reflective critical action on the part of the audience (pp. 94–95). This text is also autoethnographical (199) where I gaze inward, on the self, and outward, on society, where self experiences occur. This performance text challenges the notion of what it means to be an American and the American dream. This experience made me question my self and the identity that had been superficially imposed on me through the education I received. In that sense, I crossed what I believed to be, an American, and entered a more politically conscious state that allowed me the space to name my own reality, which is a Mexican in America trying to reach the American dream. Only there is nothing American about my dream. I dream of radical social change, I yearn for utopia (see hooks, 1990, pp. 12–13).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Professor Norman K. Denzin for his support on this project. I also thank Veronica Gonzalez, Alejandro Padilla and Guadalupe Martinez for their constructive criticism.
REFERENCES Denzin, N. K. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. hooks, B. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston, MA: South End Press.
TOUCHED . . . TO HERE KNOWS WHEN C. Michael Elavsky The following seeks to represent the changes that occurred in my understanding of my sense of my culture, history, and identity as an American in light of living in the Czech Republic for 2.5 years (from 1996 to 1998). It is a collection of fragments culled from sporadic moments and memories that resonated with particular revelatory meaning for me during that time – these songs, statements, book excerpts, portions of letters, homework assignments, random experiences, recollections and reflections swirled in front of and challenged my American eyes, tongue, and sensibility as they absorbed something of a contemporary Central European ‘postcommunist’ perspective – and they remain a patchwork of instances that yet articulate powerful messages when examined again in new times, spaces, and contexts.1 Recollection and comprehension are intriguing phenomena; we draw randomly upon disparate instances and experiences in our lives in a never-ending process of ordering and making sense of our history and ourselves in the present – a present and history that is distinct, yet nonetheless, always fleeting. We are forever subtly reconceptualizing ourselves: recollecting, reordering, and re-examining the experiential and discursive fragments that make up who we are, and rebuilding the chronological trajectory we call our life. Momentarily ever static, ever dynamic. A fragmentary history always seeking order from its contradictions. Such is this particular tale of M(ichael) E(lavsky) crossing out of his Culture, History, and Language. It was originally conceptualized so that my American family, friends, and colleagues could make sense of the changes that had occurred in ME and my American attitudes during the time I lived in ‘the former Eastern Bloc,’ whatever these mean (for you and for them). For ME, it remains a
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meaningful evolutionary tale that ceaselessly reinvents itself as it resists and subverts its linguistic structuring and conceptual logic. Music (songs whose titles appear underlined at the beginning of each section and are footnoted) originally accompanied the presentation of this piece when it was delivered at the Couch Stone Symposium at the University of Miami in February of 2001; it may have added or detracted to that particular delivery and reception of the piece at that time.
I. CROSSING OVER ‘THE WALL’ Touched . . . To Here Knows When2 Lived inside belief for so long, Till experience begins to prove that it’s all wrong You don’t have time to stop and wonder The truth you speak today will change tomorrow anyway.3 Posad’ se k n´am, nech´ame tˇe vymluvit A vzpomenout si na ty naˇse u´ koly Tu ruku n´am dej a odpoˇc´ıvej v pokoji Tam na tom m´ıstˇe4 January 1996 My thoughts on arrival: I can’t remember feeling more alone. Staring out the tenth floor window on this, the first day in my new home; the sun setting behind the sooty apartment blocks like a fire on the horizon, these most vibrant colors washing the haze of this day into blackness. Just like it was in 85 at SUNY Buffalo, where the chemical plants of Niagara Falls always guaranteed the most beautiful sunsets; I watched them nightly from the 3rd floor window of my freshmen dorm room in Goodyear Hall. Watching false beauty manifest itself, and fade away. The crisp pungent air and those wintry days in Buffalo scraped my senses raw, and raw sensibilities uneasily. Senses alive, spiritually dead. No, it wasn’t a good year. But that was 11 years and 7,000 miles ago, not counting all the running I had done in the meantime between that moment and this, in pursuit of . . . of what? Success? Respect? Myself? erasing 11 years that had defined M(ichael) E(lavsky) ; Escaping:
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From failing out of the Engineering program at the University of Buffalo before I could fully comprehend that a differential equation existed between my father’s understanding of the world and my own; From my “recovery,” my hometown, and the mind-forged methods for my salvation that I chained myself to; From the painful erasure of myself from my music, my identity as a drummer, and my band after three years of touring; Escaping . . . From the apparition of authority that I was as a ‘substitute’ teacher; From the shame and embarrassment of learning that my best friend had been fucking my live-in girlfriend in my bed for over a year while I confided in him about her and our relationship; From having so many degrees and diplomas in educational essentialism and at 29, no job; Escaping . . . From running so many times, keeping the myths of ME in circulation as a mask for my insecurities and instabilities; From running to be Someone since I got my high school diploma. Well, Fuck all a’ that Here, nobody knows ME. And finally I am here, a quarter of the way around the world in Ostrava, Czech Republic; I remember how the first impression of this city came to me on the day the letter offering me this position arrived. I had run up those stairs to my room in my sister’s house in Minnesota – the latest refuge I had crawled into – as if I had finally found the fire exit in a raging conflagration. I flipped quickly through the pages of that Lonely Planet guidebook, seeking a description of this city, the site of my affirmation, my rebirth: With its public buildings and public health already eaten away by decades of unchecked pollution, its self-esteem now seems to be in danger as the old state subsidies disappear. While the centre shows signs of a renaissance and there is a respectable cultural life, some outer areas . . . are as derelict as if there had just been a war. For tourists, there’s little reason to stop except this is a transport junction on a major route to and from . . .. ”5
Where? Here.
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Here, I am Somebody. Here, I am a Lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies. yeah. God, it felt so good to casually drop that news by everyone I could manage to see and tell in my hometown over the last month at home: “Well, I am only here in Endwell for two more weeks, then I am off to work as a lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Boy, their eyes lit up more with every syllable. And I wanted that crowning moment at the airport so badly – “We’re so proud of you Michael, and we are so excited for you and envious of you and . . .” instead I got Okay, look, the taxi’s waiting, so good luck and call when you get there, okay? . . . hey, June we have to go before we get a ticket . . . yep, we love you, yep, good-bye, good-bye, c’mon June, we have to GO . . .
And so this blackening cityscape is my crowning moment. And no one is here, because they all live over there. Everyone that knows ME. And I can’t tell anyone anything . . . because I don’t speak Czech. How the hell will I do anything out there tomorrow? I can’t understand anything here. How should I act? Can I do this? Everything so strange. A lecturer and I can’t say a word. I can’t understand a thing. And nobody knows me here. Jesus, what am I gonna do tomorrow . . . when I have to go outside. For once in my life, I’ve lost my tongue I find I run for many reasons I will just listen, so now I stare I don’t know who I am anymore or who I’m trying to be Keep coming back for so much more saying it doesn’t mean that much to me6
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II. RECONNAISSANCE THROUGH REAGAN’S RIMS My Alaska Day7 Lived inside belief for so long, Aˇz mi zkuˇsenost uk´azala that it’s all wrong You don’t have time to stop and wonder The truth you speak today will change tomorrow anyway Seat yourself near us, nech´ame tˇe talk away A vzpomenout si on this naˇse mission Tu ruku n´am dej a odpoˇc´ıvej v pokoji Tam na tom m´ıstˇe February 1996 A snowcicle . . . speaking for their world: Greetings, Having been in Ostrava for roughly two weeks, I thought I’d drop a quick line to establish communication; I am alive, well, and adjusting quite nicely. I am, of course, experiencing a bit of sensory overload . . . This is my situation: . . . parts of the city look like a war-zone . . . Ostrava rarely frees itself from its foggy polluted haze as the air is permeated with the heavy odor of burning brown coal . . . civil servants shoveling piles of coal daily into the cellars of the city buildings in the early hours as I walk to the University . . . the raw slabs of halfcows swaying on hooks in the back of delivery trucks until heaped on carts, and wheeled inside the butcher shops . . . drab gray houses and nondescript highrises, stained by pollution and extending as far as the eye can see . . . Grocery shopping . . . an adventure; not only do I have to figure out what I am buying, but no one can enter the store without a basket; . . . no basket, you must wait at the entrance until someone comes out of the store . . . Only 50% of the population has a telephone in their home . . . takes many years to get one installed . . . I don’t have a phone . . . I don’t have a washing machine, microwave, coffee maker, or ironing board . . . Doing my laundry by hand in the tub for the first time was definitely an interesting experience, and ironing on a table with a towel underneath presented many problems . . . at least I finally have a “proper” shower in my flat . . . The food . . . potatoes, rice, meat, dumplings, cabbage and beer . . . big kettles of brothy soup, and piles of starch and meat covered with gravy . . . Coffee is served Turkish style; stir the fresh coffee in with boiling water, let the sludge settle, drink up and watch for the grounds . . .. In fact, the majority of the movies and TV shows here are American and dubbed . . . Radio is a pastiche of remixes and Europop.
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Miniskirts and buccaneer boots are the rage for women, while the men wear mostly jeans and dress shirts. Many people sew their own clothes . . . It is not uncommon to see elderly women with striking tints of blue, purple, orange, pink, or red in their hair . . .. The language sounds like a collage of bristling electricity mixed with percolating water . . . So far, I know only a few words and phrases; mainly the most important ones, like how to say beer and to ask for food items . . . but I have encountered people who either can speak English, are trying to learn it, or are very patient with me as I try to speak with them, so I think I will be fine . . . In difficult situations, I can easily get someone from the University to go and translate for me . . . I am still trying to figure out the University system . . . Grading is also different here . . . The students work for signatures rather than grades . . . school is free here . . . students either pass or fail . . . strange adjustment for me, coming from a system so obsessed with attaining and providing evidence of superiority . . . In the Czech Republic, it is best not to ask too many questions of authorities because you will get a different answer every time over time . . . people don’t seem to care about the inconveniences in their life either; they just accept them . . . I have also met a number of Czech people at restaurants, clubs, and stores who are quite excited to meet an American; it’s weird and unnerving at times when you are asked so many questions about the USA, in broken English or through a friendinterpreter . . . I have rambled on enough. If you can please send postcards, I would be grateful as my students are interested in seeing them, and it makes my office and flat look a bit more like home. Thinking of you, Michael From day to day; like night into day, the vision of ME slowly altered as I moved over the months into their world of daily life, language, experience, and understanding. Disorientation and trepidation dissolved into titillating exhilaration as I moved in-between, living like a newborn, as I’d never done before. Every day was an immediate exciting challenge. The (hi)stories of the ‘father,’ ‘girlfriend,’ ‘best friend,’ and ‘relatives’ in my life altered in their meaning for ME as I moved deeper into a new world. The very conceptions of these terms and the actors who previously gave them life were replaced like syntagms in a linguistic equation, for in this new context, the latter terms and actors simply lost their ability to resonate meaning. They didn’t and couldn’t hurt ME anymore. New actors inhabited these roles, with new histories and new meanings. My sense of self, history, and life had moved on in profound
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ways as the challenges and excitement of living day to day pushed me beyond my ‘history’ and outside of my quest to be Someone. The alterations were subtle, realized in discreet moments. And, in fact, it wasn’t until my family came to visit me nine months on that I truly apprehended how far from my culture I had moved. I began to wonder who it was that wrote my journal entries and letters . . .
III. SOCIALISM WITH A HUMAN FACE Leave8 Lived inside belief for so long, Aˇz mi zkuˇsenost uk´azala that it’s all wrong You don’t have time to stop and wonder Pravda, kterou dnes rˇ´ıkaˇs will change tomorrow anyway. Seat yourself near us, we will let you talk away A vzpomenout si na this naˇse mission Give us this hand a odpoˇc´ıvej v pokoji Tam na tom m´ıstˇe October 1996 The wake-up bomb: So fast, so numb, so alive; I lost myself, I found myself, I became myself; my self became: when she emerged out of the everyday one night; we missed the tram, we caught each other and she walked me through and extinguished the backdrafts of past experience (with love); She became my sun and I, her satellite; her heat challenged and soothed me, and in her light, my landscape never looked the same again. my self became: when Ostrava’s musical underground opened itself up to me, and I was invited to walk among and between its borders and people; I spoke with my hands (as a drummer and musician, at last and once again; but in a new framework of language, meaning, and comprehension) and found the most significant communication took place when I listened closely to their music, stories, ideas, histories and dreams. And I found that their understanding of the world and their place in it did not match what I had read in my history books whatsoever, nor what I had heard trumpeted from my media, my government, and my teachers throughout my life.
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my self became: when my Czech students revealed and sought themselves through their stories, answers, and questions which engaged the ‘truths’ of my lectures. “I was born in America and have lived there all my life . . . and that means what for you? And what for us” “I will be lecturing to you today on American History, Life, and Institutions . . . and what do you really know about them?” “Well, we know it’s true that . . . according to who?”9 “And what needs to be remembered . . . you mean what’s on your test for us.” “And what is most important . . . according to your values.” “In the United States, we believe . . . And ? . . . So What?” “So one can assume that . . . we will always be the ‘Former Eastern Bloc’?” “And what it all means is . . . we are not you, but your meanings matter” Long, frequent, and vibrant discussions in pursuit of understanding; outside the ‘classroom’ in the classroom outside; late into the evening; on into the morning, across the hours; crossing culture, crossing boundaries, inter-stitching lives; over teas, dotting I’s. My students. My Students? Who was teaching who? my self became: when the letters and calls stopped, and the lines of definition and the shadows from my America faded and blurred; when the tourists mockingly spoke down to us in English, and I replied in Czech; when my sister critiqued the quality of their lives through the lenses of efficiency, materiality, and exterior representation, when my friends critiqued the value of Czech culture through the standards of the almighty American dollar
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my self became: when my parent’s began to wonder when and if I was coming back; when I realized that cracks had appeared between ‘our’ understanding; when I began to see the cracks within and links between the constructions of Our worlds. Leave here? And go back. I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to. There are lots of colors in the streets; blue houses, red clothes, green shoes, . . . I knew only grey and black seven years ago (Gabriela, 1st year student, Ostrava University).
IV. MY 1989 Do Tramt´aryje (To Neverland)10 Lived inside belief for so long, Aˇz mi zkuˇsenost uk´azala that it’s all wrong A nen´ı cˇ as zastavit se a pˇrem´ysˇlet Pravda, kterou dnes rˇ´ıkaˇs se stejnˇe z´ıtra zmˇen´ı Seat yourself near us, we will let you talk away And remember this naˇse mission Give us this hand and be at peace Tam na that place November 1997 Neverland: [Early evening at a booth in a pub – my friends and I are interrupted by a bar patron, a Czech man overhearing a simple conversation between us in Czech] Patron: Ne, jeˇziˇs maria to nen´ı pravda, zˇe jo? Hele, odkud jste(No! jesus christ it isn’t true is it? Look, where are you from?) ME: Ze Spojen´ych St´at˚u (from the United States) Patron: Ameriˇcan? Opravdu? (An American (To my colleagues) really?) ME: Opravdu (Really). Patron: Proˇc se snaˇz´ısˇ mluvit cˇ esky? (Why are you are trying to speak Czech?)
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ME: Snaˇz´ım se, m´asˇ pravdu – mluv´ım jako d´ıtˇe. Mluv´ım cˇ esky protoˇze mus´ım. Bydl´ım tady, v´ısˇ?(Trying, that’s right – I speak like a child. I speak Czech because I have to. I live here, you see?) Patron: Proˇc jsi pˇrijel sem bydlet (Why the hell would you come here to live?) ME: Proˇc ne. Proˇc to rˇ´ık´asˇ? (Why not. Why do you say that.) Patron: Protoˇze zˇivot v Americe je lepˇs´ı, ne? Mus´ı b´yt. (because your life in America is better, isn’t it. It must be). ME: Ne, tam to nen´ı lepˇs´ı . . . (No, it isn’t better there . . .) [my colleagues interrupt and speak with him. Collectively, they speak about their impressions of America and Americans, and how they got these impressions of life in the US; after listening to them speak so highly of ‘my’ life in America, I am compelled to interject] . . . Hele, to nen´ı lepˇs´ı . . . urˇcitˇe ne . . . (. . . look, it isn’t better . . . definitely not . . .) (and I stun myself into silence by my response; I have lost my tongue; many seconds pass before I can interject feebly) . . . je to jenom nˇeco jin´eho (. . . it’s just something different.) [The conversation continues but I am struck by my reaction. In trying to speak for myself, I am at a loss to find the words to explain it; many minutes pass; I am lost in my thought, my powers to identify eclipsed, Finally, the Czech man turns to me and asks:] Patron: Tak, jak´e to tam je (Well, So how is it there?) ME: Co m´asˇ na mysli (What do you mean?) Patron: Jak tam tv˚uj zˇivot vypad´a? (What is your life like there?) [A bit dazed and lightheaded] Do prdele, nev´ım . . . je mi l´ıto, nev´ım co rˇ´ıct . . . opravdu . . . nev´ım . . . m˚uzˇu jenom rˇ´ıct, jak jsem to zn´aval (Fuck, I don’t know, . . . I’m sorry, I just don’t know what to say . . . really . . . I don’t know . . . I can only tell you what I used to know . . .) the events of that evening haunted me all the way home . . .
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V. AFTER THE FALL: SIFTING THROUGH THE ASHES OF THE WALL July 1998 Coming Home? And so it ends . . . 5 a.m., my bags are packed, and I am waiting for my ride to the airport. The sun is coming, but it shines differently today. Two and a half years. I have a one-way ticket. I am going forward. And I am heading home . . . Home? The place of security, stability, safety, understanding, unity, etc., etc. . . . all those good words which help us to judge our homes as to whether they are good or not. I am not going back to my home . . . no. I am going somewhere else. Another stop on the road. Home . . . I surprise myself. My experiences here have taught me much, and on one hand, I don’t want to go back to the US, and yet, nothing could also be more certain in my heart. I don’t fit like I did there, I don’t fit completely right here either. And yet, I fit-in in both places now. I will always be an “In-between” from now on, I guess. For better or worse. I now know this. I can never get myself back within “my culture” – the former configuration of ideological safety that I once knew, and yet, was I safe? I am forced to accept that in gaining knowledge for oneself, one must accept an existence of destabilization. Beliefs are washed away, and yet they become more firm in their new form than ever before. That form which changes form in its action. Knowing my conceptions will be perpetually destabilized becomes my stability. Over time, change occurs, and satellites can deviate from their trajectories. Today my revolutions continue around another sun from the same galaxy. But my universe continues to open up with stronger telescopes and bigger lenses: galaxies which open as one explores them, and as one explores themselves in doing so and as one writes those galaxies into being and as one reads them as you are reading this, a snapshot from my galaxy
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And ME? Well, Ostrava was a transport junction on a major route to and from the cultural constructions of ME, and I have ‘escaped’ by reprogramming the engineering of ME and my relationships to my cultural ties. My ‘recovery’ came by erasing that very word; Writing and speaking from the same vantage point but working with a new definition. I faced my biggest fear – of becoming myself; By facing that most-formidable cultural antagonist, I am stronger. I work now to be one in some instead of Someone. My life is a ‘becoming’: there are no certainties in its destination; no certain destinations anymore. My identity ‘becomes’ in its daily constructions and representations, in the way I choose the roles and assume them, and in the way they are read. From that, the Meaning of ME is enacted and lived. But beliefs and perspectives are constructions themselves: always-already potentially transient in their representation and readings; By enacting our representational narratives; we resolve our pasts, make our presence, and define our futures; through them, we ‘live,’ and in turn, are defined. And therefore, I am somewhat powerless to control your reception of this particular constructed narrative of ME: Did it matter? Did it make you think? Did it say something to you? Could you care more? Could you care less? Did it lose you? Did you lose yourself . . . or your perspective . . . even for a moment? What if I made it all up?
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Didn’t I? Ostrava and the Czech Republic are not as I described them in Section II. But in that regard, fallacious conclusions are – sadly – to be expected from the ideologicallypredisposed assumptions and decontextualized perceptions of today’s western ‘tourist’ (Ethnographer?) of the ‘former Eastern Bloc’ who is all too often insensitive to the culture and history of the locals and unable to communicate in their language.11 One should be wary of the efficacy of translation. These pages can hardly convey the power and character of my 30 months of experience there, and yet, there would never be enough time nor space to effectively convey that which even I myself am not certain of. These are but random snapshots from that changing ‘experience.’ And I have changed from this experience. My thinking has shifted. My time over there was multi-voiced, cacophonous, and unsettling, and it showed me how complex the act of interpretation is. Like punching holes in one’s walls, while sealing up those rooms you leave behind – the infusion of experience, reflection, culture, and language dialogically mutates our being and understanding; we are left with only representations of what we once were; I am not back even though I am physically back here, and I couldn’t go back if I wanted to. There is no way back to where I was. There is no ‘back’ to get to. Where I am ‘becomes’ as I write myself in this text, and the meaning ‘becomes’ as you read it and position it within your narrative of experience. Of the Inside and of the Outside. The meaning ‘becomes’ in the interaction of this narrative with your understanding of your own narrative and self. Its meaning, identity and power depend on you. This is how I chose to represent my experiences in the Czech Republic yesterday. Yesterday, it was ‘finished’; Today, it has been ‘finished’ again.
Nad St´adem Kon´ı /Above a Herd of Horses12 Tak dlouho jsem zˇil ve v´ırˇe, Aˇz mi zkuˇsenost uk´azala, zˇe vˇsechno je jinak A nen´ı cˇ as zastavit se a pˇrem´ysˇlet Pravda, kterou dnes rˇ´ık´asˇ, se stejnˇe z´ıtra zmˇen´ı
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Lived inside belief for so long, Till experience begins to prove that it’s all wrong You don’t have time to stop and wonder The truth you speak today will change tomorrow anyway. Seat yourself near us, we will let you talk away And remember this our mission Give us this hand and be at peace There, in that place Posad’ se k n´am, nech´ame tˇe vymluvit A vzpomenout si na ty naˇse u´ koly Tu ruku n´am dej a odpoˇc´ıvej v pokoji Tam na tom m´ıstˇe
NOTES 1. I use quotations with the word postcommunist because it is an adjective that has been singularly overused and overemphasized by western scholars and journalists alike when referring to the regions of Eastern and Central Europe post-1989. 2. My Bloody Valentine. (1989). Touched . . . To Here Knows When. On: Loveless (CD) New York: DGC Records. 3. The Good Cows. (1991). Anymore. On: Munising (Cassette). New York: Exit 69 off Rt. 17 Records Ltd. 4. Buty (1994). M´am Jednu Ruku Dlouhou (I Have One Long Arm). On: Ppoommaalluu (Sslloowwllyy). 5. King, John and Richard Nebesk´y. Czech and Slovak Republics: A Lonely Planet Travel Survival Guide. Hawthorn, Victoria: Lonely Planet Publications, 1995, pp. 327. 6. The Good Cows. (1991). Anymore. On: Munising. New York: Exit 69 off Rt. 17 Records Ltd. 7. Poole (1995). Snowcicle. On: Alaska Days. New York: spinART Records. 8. REM. (1996) Leave. On: New Adventures in Hi-Fi. New York: Warner Brothers Records. 9. The bold type connotes the responses I received from various students in the classes I taught. 10. Buty (1994). Do Tramt´aryre (To Neverland). On: Ppoommaalluu (Sslloowwllyy). 11. Thank you for reading this footnote, which is intentionally positioned here to reflect the dearth of information within the US about this region of Europe. Eastern and Central Europe today, in many respects, is considered geo-politically marginal outside of its Cold War context. Hence, accurate historical and contemporary cultural information about the countries of the region remain to be gleaned solely through personal initiative. But it must be understood that this is not so for the United States in the region (and world, I would argue). The people of these countries are confronted with our presence (military, culture, entertainment, tourists, etc.) everyday, whereas information about the Czech Republic (or,
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for that matter, most nominal ‘non-western’ nations in the world) is not generally engaged in US daily life. In other words, it remains very easy to disregard other nationalities and their contextuallyspecific history, interests, and lives from within the United States, like it is easy to disregard my endnote in this paper. But such a state of affairs is fast becoming untenable in the modern day. Fostering greater awareness, interaction, and sensitivity for other countries and peoples remains a pressing concern (especially in much of the US in light of 9/11/01). With this in mind, I offer the following insights. The term ‘Eastern Bloc’ – referring to the former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern and Central Europe – not only disregarded the wide diversity of cultures and languages that reside in this region, but through its continued application also serves today rhetorically to position this region and its inhabitants within an outdated and erroneous framework of understanding (namely as being “backwards,” “developing,” or “in transition”), and implicitly situates these countries in the lower echelons of an international hierarchy intrinsically based upon the values and the ideology associated with and produced by capitalism and its resultant commercial culture. The result is often an unintentional proclivity for ‘westerners’ of all sorts to speak in a pejorative, condescending and/or pedagogical manner to or about the citizens of these nations; a somewhat ironic notion when one considers that the majority of just such individuals are not even aware, for example, of where Czechoslovakia was located geographically, its significant historical contributions to western thinking, history and philosophy, or for that matter, that it no longer exists (it has been two countries – the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia – for over 10 years). 12. Buty (1999). N´ad St´adem Kon´ı. On Kaprad´ı (Fern).
SOLOING Merrill Chandler Last night, John Coltrane came to me again in my dreams. Trane was playing up in Harlem as I sat in the audience; his spiritual sound and passion filled the room, flowing through note after note, chord after chord. He played with such tenderness and emotion, never seeming to pause for breath. He plays, constantly adopting new ideas with each chord, never abandoning the old ones, forging them into a new production through his playing. I see him, playing, onstage, alone, just as I am, soloing. Soloing was not something I chose; it chose me. I never wanted to solo; I longed to play with the band, a quartet, backed by the rhythm section. I wanted to witness friendly nods from the other players, “Yeah that’s it. Go head now!” Playing that takes us into the early morning hours. I have learned to play without the direction of an instructor. I learned to play by ear, without the hand of an older mentor, one who challenges my sound, my path, my direction, one who encourages my playing. I’ve sought the assistance of others to learn to read the notes, yet few heard my calls for help. No one offered to help; no one offered suggestions to improve my playing, to hear my playing. I now wonder whether I even called for help? I just want my sound to slip into the background. As I grow older, I finally start to get it right. My playing is improving, I am practicing more, I am acquiring the temperament of the soloist. I understand now that I can play without supporting players. I’ve separated from them, now exploring only that which I appreciate. Finally understanding that I now have to solo to survive. I no longer ask that family, friends, enjoy my playing; no longer do I hope to see them in the audience.
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Still, on occasion I am asked to play with an ensemble, a small group, but now I am a soloist! I am stubborn. I need no accompaniment. Even at hours when my darkness was made visible, I never shared a single discordant note with family and friends in hope that they would listen; or that their listening and advice would set my playing straight. I have not retrenched from soloing. These days, I am being asked to take even greater risks, “play free jazz, play experimental jazz.” Move away from the conventional, the traditional, that which is the norm. From the audience Denzin snaps, “Your sound must be more political, more moral, and more personal.” “Your field is awash with those playing in the earliest moments; those still conducting ‘black box’ evaluations. You understand the power relationships in program evaluation don’t you? Who do you think is conducting all of those evaluations in urban schools? You’ve read “Quieting Reform” haven’t you? You’ve seen the damage that can be done, yes?” “C’mon man, play what you feel, not what they feel most comfortable listening too! You’re up there because you wanted to solo, right? Do it!” My playing is muted, confused, disconsonant. I want to run from the sound. How I long for the comfort of the rhythm section; the guidance, acceptance from those who have come to hear me play, wanting to hear me play. Yet no one is there. There is music in the distance. I can hear it through the silence, and soon I recognize that like Trane, I too am soloing.
THE INTERVIEW Alejandro Padilla This is a performance text (see Conquergood, 1985) created out of an epiphany that occurred while conducting what would be considered a traditional sociological interview to gather information. This performance text is a critique of traditional interview models of qualitative inquiry that, “conceal the lived, interactional context in which a text was co-produced, as well as the handprint” of the person who writes the final text, presuming that the interviewer is distant and objective from the subject (Richardson, 1997, p. 140). Performance text is political, transgressive, and gendered (Denzin, 1997; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). Therefore, this performance makes a moral stance that illuminates the world/lived experience in different ways, illustrating an intent that is embedded to move others to action (see Conquergood, 1985; Denzin, 1997). There is no distance between what is written and what is happening (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). It is meant to be performed, read out loud, and use words that act on the world. This performance text is put together using excerpts of the interviewee’s actual responses (text on the left column) to questions asked from an interview instrument. In addition, my autoethnography (right column) is created from thoughts occurring during the interview in response to his answers and self-reflection after having completed the interview which, “displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural” (Ellis & Bochener, 2000, p. 739). The style in which it is written is influenced and inspired by the work of Anna Deavere Smith’s (1994), Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, and Richard Price’s (1998) The Convict and the Colonel. From Anna Deveare Smith, I borrow the manner in which the interviewee’s responses are laid out in a minimalist form. Furthermore, the inspiration for using a split text format comes from Richard Price, who
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uses it to illustrate for one, the possibility of multiple experiences and interpretations of a single event. In this performance piece I have attempted to do what both do brilliantly in their works, searching for the character of those they have interviewed in an attempt as Dwight Conquergood (1985) states, “deeply sensing the other”. However, unlike their work that leaves out the author’s voice from the performance/ethnographic text, my voice is part of it, contributing to a critical selfreflection that draws me nearer to my own sense of self. There is no correct way of reading the piece. No methods of reading/performing or interpretations are privileged. Some possibilities of how one can read/perform the text are: reading/performing it from the left to right column or vice versa; reading/performing only one person/column at a time from beginning to end (Parts I, II, & III); reading/performing just one person/column without doing the other; or individual parts could be read/performed independent of the others; it could be read/performed across from left to right or from right to left, having the persons engage and respond to one another; and or the italicized text can also be read independently of the main body of the text; etc. The flexibility in the manner in which the text can be read/performed contributes to readers/coperformers from being able to have multiple interpretations. As a result of it being an example of “messy texts” the readings/performances, “tend to reflexively map multiple discourses that occur in a given social space”(Denzin, 1997, p. xvii; Conquergood, 1992).
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SAL STEREOTYPES Local Politician
Alejandro Padilla, Doctoral Student in Educational Policy Studies
Is an older person who identifies as a White Amer-
Was born in Mexico in 1972 and oldest of
ican. He is bald and the hair that grows on the
four siblings. In 1975 was brought across the
sides of his head is gray and thin. His skin is wrin-
border through Tijuana and settled in Chicago.
kled, loose and spotted. He has been a politician
Remained undocumented until 1988. Attended
for over forty years. He was born in the 1920s and
the Chicago public schools. Started off with 772
raised in a suburb of Chicago. Attended and grad-
freshmen and graduated number five out of 285
uated from the local high school. He still lives in
seniors from, Benito Juarez high school. Attends
one of the many of identical bungalows in the
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
town, that were built in the early to mid 1900s to
Received his bachelors in secondary social stud-
meet the great housing demands of Eastern and
ies education in 1995 and is now working, on his
Southern European immigrants. He is wearing a
Ph.D. He is wearing a dress shirt, pants, shoes,
two piece dark navy blue suit that is tailored to
and a tie. His hair cut is very short and combed
fit his frame. The suit is complimented by gold
forward. He wears a beard. People mistake him
cuff links; a crisp white shirt, silk striped tie, and
for being Middle Eastern and say he looks like
hand buffed black leather shoes.
everything, but Mexican. Others have told him that he has an accent, even though he can’t hear it himself. He identifies as being a Mestizo MexicanoLatino of the Americas.
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PART I
(I double-check my planner. The appointment time and date is correct)
(Shifting papers on his desk and putting pens in a cup . . . he looks up) What do you want? Who
I want Life not death,
do you represent? (Looking at his watch and the clock on the wall) Well I have no time right now. Can you come back another time to do this? (Leaning forward in his leather chair lowering
Social Justice not Oppression, not Incarceration, But I represent myself. (Staring right at him) No! This needs to happen today we have been waiting for over
his voice he begins slowly) Look, you and I know that nothing is held in confidence. So if you think I am going to tell you the “truth”,
Liberation
not Misery, But Happiness
500 years! Even if you were telling the “truth”, it would be your “truth” and not mine.
you must be kidding. (He sits back)
(I nod my head to show “interest”) It has been
Stores that were once
like this for as long as I can remember.
vacant
A community
are now thriving with Hispanic operators . . . it
full of
was an older community . . . they were replaced
life and energy,
with Hispanics and when the young Hispanic
unlike the stories in the papers or television
families came . . . several schools that were
with images and words that paint an area that is
being rented because of low enrollment were not
decaying, full of vice, and with schools being
enough. They are full now.
overrun by gang bangers, delinquents,
They have been overcrowded by kids.
criminals . . .
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PART II
(I continue with the questions from the interview instrument)
(Hesitating for a moment in a reflection of his thoughts. He closes his eyes and begins to talk) When my grandparents came from Eastern Europe, we had to learn English.
Latinos want to learn English! What about the line that stretched for over three blocks long at your local community college for adult ESL registration and
(Opening his eyes and raising his voice) Why
over half got turned away because there were
must we change everything so that we have to
not enough instructors?
learn to speak Spanish? (He begins to rock in his chair) Many of the Hispanics that come here are in the
Have you ever thought that some people lost their way of life
trades, I think that we have to think that we have
because of things such as NAFTA? My cousin
to think about how everybody isn’t meant to be a
is a civil engineer in Mexico, but now he must
computer operator or entrepreneur or a
make sure (I nod my head to show “interest”)
lawyer or a doctor or an Indian chief. (While rocking back he begins to make a thumping sound as his foot hits his desk. Thump, Thump)
not to lift with his back while he is working here for minimum wage, with no benefits in a U.S. factory. I remember how Linda Chavez in Reagan’s
You know
administration learned to fend for herself and
what I’m talking about, right?
the hand that feeds her. Oh, you mean like the
Parties in power have made room and starting to
fact that MexicanoLatinos continue to have the
bring Hispanics in to learn to fend for themselves
same high school drop out rate as during the
and be a part of government. But you know,
Great Depression or the # of Latino undergrads
things can’t change overnight. They take time.
at UIUC in 2001 is the same as in 1990, roughly
You understand, don’t you?
6% of 28,000 undergrads!
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PART III (Chewing on a foam coffee cup) The quicker you can
How quickly we forget because people have given
make citizens
their real names in the past.
out of people, the quicker you can start getting
For example, why aren’t the
the tax rolls out . . . they give you a different name
generations of Mexicanos who were working here
and nobody bothers to check it and even the government doesn’t bother to check it because that money goes into social security and nobody gets credit for it.
legally under the Bracero Program receiving any of their retirement benefits? They did pay into the system for about three decades.
However, you shouldn’t worry because
Laugh now and cry later,
you have Luis Gutierrez and if he can’t
because Gutierrez is modeling what we need to
straighten it out for you, he’ll go
do in whatever position we hold. With numbers,
take over an island
education, and political
(ha ha Ha Ha Ha HA HA HA). Unfortunately, with all the redistricting, I wonder if you’ll have representation from the state in these towns. You’ll have all of the Hispanics, but the lion’s part of the body will be here, splitting it five ways, and so you’re going to probably get a lot less by having your own. You will probably never get another answer that honest again.
mobilization power will be ceased. The island is just the beginning, next is the South West and then the major cities like Chicago and New York. You did not tell me the Truth, you didn’t lie to me either. (I turn off the recorder, shake his hand, thank him, and leave)
but
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge Professor Norman K. Denzin, for his mentorship and introduction to this scholarly work and for making a sacred space available for this scholarship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge Professor Laurence Parker, for his guidance and (my loving wife) Guadalupe Martinez, (dear friends) Hugo Campuzano and Veronica Gonzalez for their support and critically constructive feedback. In addition, a special thanks to the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dome University for allowing me to use material from an interview that was part of a larger study.
REFERENCES Conquergood, D. (1985). Performing as a moral act: Ethical dimensions of ethnography performance. Literature in Performance, 5, 1–13. Conquergood, D. (1992). Ethnography, rhetoric and performance. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 78, 80–97. Denzin, N. K. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st century. London: Sage. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Ellis, C., & Bochener, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: researcher as subject. In: N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds), The Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 733–768). London: Sage. Price, R. (1998). Convict and the colonel. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields at play: Constructing an academic life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Smith, A. D. (1994). Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. New York, NY: Doubleday.
SURVIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM: CON EL ALMA POR DENTRO Alejandro Padilla This is an example of a personal narrative derived from lived experience that is turned into a performative text. Dwight Conquergood (1995/1998) states that performative text is necessary because: (1) Performance-sensitive ways of knowing hold forth the promise of contributing to an epistemological pluralism that will unsettle valorized paradigms and thereby extend understanding of multiple dimensions and wider range of meaningful action; (2) performance is a more conceptually astute and inclusionary way of thinking about many subaltern cultural practices and intellectual-philosophical activities (p. 26).
Therefore this performance text is a counter-story to the social construction of a Latino identity by juxtaposing my authored identity that challenges, resists, and critiques the larger cultural apparatus itself, its versions, and structures that have impinged on my life. Written as a counter-story/performative text my lived experience may become part of stories that “create their own bonds, represent cohesion, shared understandings and meanings” with others who have had similar experiences. Nevertheless, as an example of “messy texts” there are no conclusions, privileged interpretations, or ways of performing it. However, this performance piece combines two self-portraits and words that re-present my life-long lived experience with the “American Dream” and my words that act on the world allowing for a transcendence that goes beyond self-definition (Wells, 1999). As Denzin (1997) and Denzin and Lincoln (2000) asserts, performance is moral, political, and transgressive. I join, as Conquergood (1985) states, “other humanists who Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 303–305 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260226
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celebrate the necessary and indossoluable link between art and life . . .”, blurring the lines between visual art, literary work, research, and lived experience. As found in CRT/LatCrit and narrative “testimonios” this performance piece demands that the reader/coperformer bare witness to the injustices endured growing up in the United States in a socially, politically, and economically marginalized Latino experience (see Beverley, 2000; Delgado, 1995; Padilla, 1999). Hence, this performative text enacts an ethic of care, empowerment, and love, which call people to act against a world that allows an oppressive human existence to go on.
In Response to Your Go Back!!! In Response to Your Apple Pie . . . In Response to Your Power . . . In Response to Your Money . . . In Response to Your Individualism . . . In Response to Your Brady Bunch . . . In Response to Your English Only . . . In Response to Your Yo Quiero Taco Bell . . . In Response to Your Forget and Leave Behind . . . In Response to Your War . . .
Mi Corazon palpita I’m here to Stay My heart beats Flan Mi corazon palpita Justice My heart beats Humanity Mi corazon palpita community My heart beats mi companera y familia Padilla-Anguiano Mi corazon palpita en Espa˜nol My heart beats Tacos from Taqueria La Unica Mi Corazon palpita to remember and Keep el Pasado My heart beats la paz and love
In Response to Your Spick, Wetback, Illegal Alien . . .
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge, Professor Lauurence Parker, for his unwavering mentorship and teachings of Critical Race Theory and LatCrit scholarship. In addition I would like to acknowledge Professor Norm K. Denzin for his support, Guadalupe Martinez, Hugo Campuzano, Veronica Gonzalez, Dr. Martha Zurita, and Eulalia Ortiz for their critical feedback. Most of all this is dedicated to mi familia for providing me with the strength and knowledge to survive.
REFERENCES Beverley, J. (2000). Testiminio, subalternity, and narrative authority. In: N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds), The Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 555–565). London: Sage. Conquergood, D. (1985). Performing as a moral act: Ethical dimensions of ethnography performance. Literature in Performance, 5, 1–13. Conquergood, D. (1995/1998). Beyond the text: Toward a performative cultural politics. In: S. J. Dailey (Ed.), The Future of Performance Studies: Visions and Revisions. Denzin, N. K. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st century. London: Sage. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Delgado, R. (1995). Legal storytelling: storytelling for oppositions and others: a plea for narrative. In: R. Delgado (Ed.), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (pp. 64–74). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Padilla, L. M. (1999). Social and legal repercussions of Latinos’ colonized mentality. University of Miami Law Review, 53, 769–786. Wells, C. P. (1999). Speaking in tongues: Some comments on multilingualism. University of Miami Law Review, 53, 983–988.
DELIVERING MALINCHE Alice Filmer . . . from the autobiographical arises a desire to recover a self that has been subjugated by the dominant structures of racism, sexism, and colonialism in everyday life. A utopian impulse is at work. If the previously suppressed self can be recovered, liberation, freedom, and dignity will be experienced (Denzin, 1997, p. 58).
´ ESTADO DE MEXICO: WINTER 1985 From our garden in Tepetlixpa, we have a stunning view of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl. Both volcanos are tipped with snow now, but with the afternoon sun warming us, it doesn’t feel that cold. Only late-night expeditions to the outhouse warrant complaints about the winter weather. Right now, sitting on the grass, surrounded by the fragrant presence of chamomile and spearmint, we talk of what the coming summer holds in store. If it’s a girl, her name will be Xochitl Malintzin Ashton Gonz´alez. Those names are Nahuatl, English, and Spanish. The Nahuatl names have been chosen by her Mexican father, my compa˜nero, Arnoldo. The last two are surnames from both of our families. Though my Spanish is fairly fluent by now, Arnoldo knows my Nahuatl is nil. “Xochitl quiere decir ‘flor,’ ” he explains. My mind calculates: Xochitl = flor = flower. That’s a pretty name! How about Malintzin? What does that mean? He pauses momentarily before replying, “Malintzin es Malinche.” In my burgeoning vocabulary, the only word I know that sounds remotely similar to Malinche is malinchista. Roughly translated, it means ‘traitor.’ No, that can’t be what he’s saying; I must be confused. Well, yes and no. Here in the lee of these magnificent volcanos named after the mythic warrior, Popocatepetl, and his princess, Ixtaccihuatl, I learn the story of La Malinche. Or, Studies in Symbolic Interaction Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26, 307–317 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/PII: S0163239602260238
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if you prefer, Malintzin. Or Malinali Tenepat. Or Do˜na Marina to the Spaniards. She goes by many names. Little do I realize that I’ve already been introduced to her in the guise of her least flattering appellation, La Chingada. I hear it daily in the exclamation, “¡Hijo de La Chingada!” or its truncated variations which slide out of Arnoldo’s mouth at times when I would tend to blurt, “Shit!” or “Fuck!” Often enough, it’s just over some simple annoyance or frustration. Other times, it’s over the big stuff. Who is this infamous figure who goes by so many titles and commands such a presence? Here is one version of the story: In the annals of the famous European discoverers there is invariably an Indian guide, a translator – willing or not – to facilitate, to preserve Europe’s stride. These seem to have become fluent in pallor before Europe learned anything of them. How is that possible? The most famous guide in Mexican history is also the most reviled by Mexican histories – the villainess Marina – “La Malinche.” Marina became the lover of Cort´es. So, of course, Mexicans say she betrayed India for Europe. In the end, she was herself betrayed, left behind when Cort´es repaired to his Spanish wife (Rodriguez, 1992, p. 22).
Oooh. Now, I’m beginning to understand the gravity of calling a Mexican a malinchista. But, Shit! Wouldn’t you know it’s the woman – in this case, a slave of the Aztecs – who gets saddled with the blame? In spite of how pretty the Nahuatl name is, I’m thinking: do we really want to saddle our child with a name that carries such complicated historical baggage? For reasons I am yet to understand, Arnoldo remains convinced of this baby’s gender and her name. I am the one who thinks it would be a good idea to choose another name, just in case this girl is a boy.
ESTADO DE SONORA Not me sold out my people but they me. Malinali Tenepat, or Malintzin, has become known as la Chingada – the fucked one. She has become the bad word that passes a dozen times a day from the lips of Chicanos. Whore, prostitute, the woman who sold out her people to the Spaniards are epithets Chicanos spit out with contempt (Anzald´ua, 1987, p. 22).
Six weeks later and 2000 kilometers north of Tepetlixpa, I’m sitting in the front seat of my brother-in-law Miguel Angel’s aged, white, Datsun sedan. We are en route to the Hermosillo airport where I will begin another long journey, this time from Arnoldo’s family home in Sonora to mine in California. There are no direct flights from here, the desert capital, to San Francisco. The air travel portions of my itinerary are: Hermosillo to Tijuana (on Aero Mexico) and San Diego to San Francisco (on Southwest Airlines). The middle leg of the trip – from Tijuana to San Diego – is by ground transportation only. Just thinking about it makes me tired. Crossing the US-Mexico border on the ground, headed north, is at best a
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tedious process, even for a gringa like me who carries a U.S. American passport. From the seat behind me, Arnoldo’s knees are propping up the broken, black vinyl-upholstered seatback I’m leaning against. He will not be traveling with me beyond this point just yet. There are still problems with his “papers” that need to be fixed. The reason I’m going home is to begin prenatal care and to be in familiar surroundings for my first time giving birth. Our conversation moves to the subject of names for the baby, and Miguel Angel is intrigued with Arnoldo’s idea of Xochitl Malintzin. He shares the opinion that Mexicans ought to stop blaming one poor indigenous woman for the conquest of their land by the Spaniards. After all, why should she be held solely responsible? Studious of such details, I’ve noticed that, like Arnoldo, Miguel Angel also takes Malinche’s name in vain, though not nearly as frequently. And instead of La Chingada, he tends to favor the milder invocation of La Fregada, which he clearly feels more comfortable uttering in front of women and children. I check back into the conversation in time to hear Miguel Angel ask us both an obvious question, “¿Y si es var´on, el beb´e?” Arnoldo is silent, so I say out loud for the first time the boy’s name I’ve been considering: Eugene. Or, if you prefer, Eugenio. It means “well born” in Greek. No, there’s no one in my family with that name. I just like how it sounds. It brings to mind creative souls like Eugene O’Neill. And Eugene Ionesco. And Eugene Roddenberry. Arnoldo and Miguel Angel immediately try the name on for size, finding Eugene somewhat difficult to pronounce. Eugenio, on the other hand, slides sonorously over their Sonoran lips. They joke around recalling that its diminutive form is “Queno, ¿que no?” All talk of names is suspended upon our arrival at the airport.
CRUZANDO LA FRONTERA A ‘contact’ perspective emphasizes how subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other. It treats relations among colonizers and colonized, or travelers and “travelees,” not in terms of separateness or apartheid, but in terms of copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power (Pratt, 1992, p. 7).
The flight to Tijuana from Hermosillo is short, barely an hour. Alone now, I struggle somewhat carrying both my suitcase and the little wicker cradle Arnoldo gave me for the baby. I hail a taxi for the brief ride into downtown Tijuana where I catch the “Mexicoach” bus that will take me across the border to downtown San Diego. From there I’ll take a city bus out to the airport for the last stretch of this trip. The immigration cop who boards our bus to check IDs at the crossing is cocky and
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brash in that inimitable Yankee style that never fails to leave me feeling ashamed of being a U.S. American. He plays the role of the colonizer’s agent, guarding a hijacked “frontier” from illegal penetration of its boundaries by the descendents of the people who inhabited this territory for centuries before EuroAmericans arrived. Does he know that this border was once located hundreds of miles north and east of where our bus is presently idling its engine? That for centuries, it has been known in Nahuatl as Aztl´an? Or, homeland of the Aztecs. It goes by many other names, too. The ones he’s familiar with are California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado. Or if you prefer, the U.S. Southwest. If he knew his history, he would know that temporally and spatially, the gringo is the obvious “alien” presence here. But, I don’t suppose he does. With the exception of one other passenger and me, everyone else on the bus is from Mexico. Based on the conversations I’ve overheard, most of them are entering the U.S. just for the day to shop or work. Green cards get fished out of wallets and purses as the gringo guard finishes joking around in his pidgin Spanish with the Mexican bus driver and heads down the aisle to inspect each passenger’s documents. Striking a posture reminiscent of “the Duke,” this portof-entry inspector expects us all to sit up and take appropriate notice. I will have no part of it. Thinking I can afford to be unimpressed with this clown, I let my navy blue passport do the talking and look out the window as he approaches me. Evidently, his attention is caught by my round belly and the wicker cradle beside me. In a resolutely anglophonic accent that John Wayne would be proud of, he bellows at me so everyone can hear, “¿Fue un Occidente?” Not waiting for an answer, he throws his head back and laughs at his own “joke.” I look up in utter amazement. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what on earth is so funny and what the Occident has to do with me or my belongings. I am stupefied into silence. . . . But the contact zone also implies a distance, a distance from the society of the Self, as well as of the Other. The Orientalist . . . is ‘Orientalized’ himself or herself in the very process of entering the ‘Orient’ intellectually and sentimentally (Dirlik, 1997, p. 119).
The bus driver, meanwhile, has turned faux red and breaks the tension on the bus by joking aloud, “Don’t look at me!” He is clearly trying to appease the officer so we can be on our way. In that moment, I understand what the Mexicoach driver has already deduced. Accustomed to hearing battered approximations of his native language innumerable times daily as he crosses and recrosses this border, he knows from the context to interpret Occidente as accidente. The code has been cracked, confirming my sense not only of the cop’s racism, but his sexism to boot. “Was it an accident?” is his commentary on my pregnancy, meant as an opprobium, not a question. He can see that I’m headed back to the U.S. from an extended stay in Mexico (evidenced by the visa in my passport), that I’m traveling alone, and that
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I wear no gold band on either hand. Though part of the evidence is missing, he thinks he’s got a pretty good hunch about what race the father might be. And he’s right, of course. Under the searing scrutiny of this inspection, I feel like a spitted duck getting acquainted with the transformative aspect of fire. Though it hurts at first, I’m oddly consoled by the implication of this man’s question. Little does he realize that in those same three words, he has unwittingly flattered me. I take the fact that he addresses me in his limited Spanish, rather than in our common mother tongue, as a sign that he recognizes my relationship with Mexico is more than skin deep. That I’m no returnee from a Tijuana shopping spree. That I fail to fill the profile of a Club Med beach rat. Untanned, unmarried, and unaccompanied, I am an Angloestadounidense sojourner homeward bound from the saguaro-studded desert of Sonora. I’m sure he knows all kinds of names for errant women like me. But, not proper names like Malinche.
IDENTITY STATES In attempting to work out a synthesis, the self has added a third element which is greater than the sum of its severed parts. That third element is a new consciousness – a mestiza consciousness – and though it is a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm (Anzald´ua, 1987, pp. 79–80).
Six straight months of living in Mexico’s interior and speaking nothing but Spanish has irrevocably changed me. Off-boarding the bus at the Mexicoach depot in downtown San Diego, I feel myself aurally savoring the last few snatches of Spanish before the inevitable onrush of English floods my senses. I am viscerally aware of crossing over into another state of perception as the sound of my native tongue, emanating from the mouths of strangers, begins to surround me after such a prolonged hiatus. Hearing English again is like meeting an old friend. There’s an immediate intimacy. No need for introductions. Here, my name is Alice. Al otro lado, me llamo Alicia. Or La Licha, as Arnoldo likes to call me at times. In the environs of this geopolitical border, my mind enters and leaves the identity states of Alice and Alicia at will. No passport required. No barbed-wire fences to negotiate. No John Waynes to contend with. It’s a peculiar sensation of Du Boisian double consciousness. Only for me, it’s a linguistically-catalyzed experience of perceptual twoness marked not by imposition, but by choice. I wonder how Malinche would have described what she was feeling 500 years ago when she answered to some of her names: Do˜na Marina. Malintzin. Malinali Tenepat. Or how our mestizo child will describe the sensation of belonging to la raza c´osmica,
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whose rich roots span continents, territories, cultures, languages, peoples. If her name is Xochitl Malintzin, she appears in my mind’s eye as a flower bearing the weight of history upon her petals. If he is called Eugenio, or Eugene, I see a boy borne upon the wings of the wind. I take it as an Indian achievement that I am alive, that I speak English, that I am an American. My life began, it did not end, in the sixteenth century . . . [when] . . . Mexico initiated the task of the twenty-first century – the renewal of the old, known world, through miscegenation. Mexico carries the idea of a round world to its biological conclusion (Rodriguez, 1992, p. 24).
A few months pregnant now, I live within another kind of twoness, of in-betweenness. It’s something like the physiological equivalent of inhabiting the subjunctive mode where “reality” has not quite culminated. It’s like looking at the world from a place of possibility, where outcomes are still mutable. Like being engaged, but not yet married. Or openly discussing a work in progress that’s still not ready to go public. Like discussing names for the yet-to-be born. Things are “off the record” even though spoken aloud. Moving from the subjunctive into the indicative mode, where outcomes transpire in time and space, is a realization. Like an existential commitment. Or a verbal instantiation of “reality.” Like the act of naming someone or something. Going indicative is to co-create the world, to give birth to ideas and beings. Like choosing to wake up in the morning out of an alpha dream state and go about your day. Like coming to understand as a result of going through something, not around it. Like crossing the border by swimming the Rio Grande. One enters another state of being and gets wet in the process. As I look out my window on the port side of the plane, I am mesmerized by the Pacific Ocean sparkling in the late afternoon sun. Out of those depths, so much life has emerged. Borne high aloft the cold waters beneath me, I pray for a dry landing.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA: SPRING 1985 Dominant ideologies are never total or monolithic, never totally successful in incorporating all individuals or subjects into their structures. So, to uncover the rootedness of ‘modern’ knowledge systems in colonial practices is to begin what Raymond Williams called the process of ‘unlearning’ whereby we begin to question received truths (Loomba, 1998, p. 66).
From my mother’s kitchen window in Berkeley, I can see the profile of Mount Tamalpais across the bay in Marin County. Like Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, Tamalpais dominates the landscape in all directions. She is known as “the sleeping maiden,” thus named by the Miwok Indians after a young princess from their mythology who fell tragically to her death. There are all kinds of fallen women. I am neither princess nor maiden, but a prodigal daughter returned home. Sitting
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across the small kitchen table from my sister, Deborah, I lean against the wooden chair that squeaks at the place where the back meets the rush-woven seat. As always, when I find myself in this particular chair, I try not to stress it further by reclining against it with my full weight. Pregnant now, this challenge is harder than ever. In the all-knowing tone of voice that older sisters are wont to use with younger siblings, Deborah tells me that I’ve made “a big mistake,” and then goes on to ask if I’m going to “keep” the baby. Her words are to be understood however I see fit, I suppose. I feel hurt by her judgment and disturbed by the implication of her question. “Yes, I am. We are.” Though this pregnancy may be unplanned, it is decidedly no “accident” – a word that insidiously enters most conversation these days, implied if not actually articulated. I gather from my sister’s comments that what troubles her is not the issue of miscegenation, but of marriage. Or rather, the lack thereof. My younger brother, Charles, knows better than to question my decision. He knows it will set me off on a long lecture and he’s not about to subject himself to that inevitability. Deborah, on the other hand, finds it necessary to remind me that if Arnoldo and I remain unwedded, our child will be “illegitimate.” Alarm bells scream inside my head. Stubbornly refusing to recognize the adjective “illegitimate” when it precedes nouns like “child,” I rise abruptly to my feet and launch into the very sort of tirade guaranteed to drive Charles out of the room. “How can a baby be illegitimate?” I demand, outraged. “Only the relationship between the child’s parents could ever be deemed so, and only in a worldview defined by the values of capitalism and patriarchy where material property is valued above human life! You know I don’t subscribe to that reality. Why are you harping on this?” At this point, my mother tries unsuccessfully to intervene in the quarrel, but is drowned out by our loud exchange. From the kitchen doorway, Charles shakes his head in our direction, but declines to comment. “You can think whatever you want to, Alice!” my sister protests. “But, don’t forget that most of the world defines things differently than you do!” My mother approaches us from where she’s been standing at the old Wedgewood stove and puts an arm around each of her daughters. As she holds us to her, I realize that Deborah is shaking like I am. It is then that I grasp my sister’s reaction as a sign of her own fear. I remember the reassuring words of my father, uttered over the telephone earlier in the day. “Things will work out,” he told me. And he’s right, of course.
STATE OF MIND The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view.
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She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode – nothing is thrust out, the good, the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into something else (Anzald´ua, 1987, p. 79).
Despite my outwardly confident appearance, inside I’m scared. I have no job, I have no savings, and I have no idea when Arnoldo will get here. Even when he does, what can I expect that he’ll be able to earn as an artist, a poet, and an anarchist? With a bit of a drinking problem, I might add. I keep telling myself not to worry about it. After all, being around heavy drinkers is nothing new to me. I grew up in a family full of them. I’m sure we’ll figure things out once Arnoldo gets here. The important thing is that he’s promised to work and help support us. My mother has offered us the little apartment downstairs from her flat, rent free until we’re settled and have some income. If need be, I can always go back to my previous line of work as a mechanic and a welder while Arnoldo looks after the baby and learns English. When I look at things in this light I don’t feel quite so worried. What upsets me most are the people who unburden their own anxieties about my situation directly onto me. My family no longer asks me difficult questions, satisfied now that I have some kind of plan. But, I continue to be dogged by wellmeaning neighbors and family friends with fearful expressions on their faces who want to know: “How are you going to manage, Alice? How is Arnoldo going to get into the country? You mean, he doesn’t speak English? Won’t he need a green card to work here legally? Don’t you think you’d better get married right away? How are you going to fix cars with that big belly or when you’re nursing the baby?” Do they think I haven’t considered these same questions? For the most part, they want me to soothe them with solutions. For their sake, not mine. I avoid these burdensome conversations as much as possible. They drain me, physically and emotionally. As does the lengthy and complicated explanation about why Arnoldo is having so many problems getting his Mexican passport and a U.S. visa. And why we haven’t been able to get married so far. It comes down to one missing document – his cartilla militar. From all this stress, I sense the baby feeling nervous, too, wondering if it’s safe to come out into the light. I stroke my swelling belly and murmur reassuring words. For both our sakes. Lives and their experiences are represented in stories . . . A life and the stories about it have the qualities of pentimento. Something new is always coming into sight, displacing what was previously certain and seen. There is no truth in the painting of life, only multiple images and traces of what has been, what could have been, and what is now (Denzin, 1989, p. 81).
The thing about my sister is that I know deep down she respects me. I suppose she’s entitled to disagree with my choices. After all, she didn’t make them, but she’ll still feel some of their brunt anyway. She’s family. I suppose she’s entitled to
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be sensitive as well. She’s been shunned for being a member of our family before. I remember, when I was seven years old, one of the first few times my father was fired because of his drinking. It was the beginning of the ’60s, MAD missile crisis time, and my dad was working in the aerospace industry in Santa Clara County, just south of San Francisco. His first job lasted a few years, the next one for about twelve months or so. By the time he landed at Lockheed, where he was a manager in their electrical engineering division, he managed to keep things together for just a few short months before they canned him. Too many absences in the middle of important national defense projects. For a while, we lived on a small inheritance of my mother’s. When that money ran out, we moved in with her parents who lived in a fancy town in Marin County, just north of The City. It was only supposed to be for a little while, until my dad got on his feet again. But his unemployment stretched into more than a decade. Every new job he got, he lost it for the same reason. Not showing up for work because he was drunk. The mid-year transition for us kids into a new school district was hardest on my sister, who as the oldest was a sixth grader at the time. Flat-chested and noticeably near-sighted, Debbie – as we called her then – was an easy target for the snobby brats of the local professional class to snub. When the mother of one of her few friends learned that our father was an alcoholic, she told her daughter that she couldn’t play with Debbie anymore. Holy Shit! Treated like an untouchable, she was blamed for something she couldn’t explain. Shamed for bearing our family name. As I recall, that incident was the most blatant example of discrimination on account of our father’s drinking that any of us experienced in grammar school. Nonetheless, the sensation of being treated differently in our community was like a low-grade fever that we endured. Debilitating, but for the most part undiagnosed. Certainly nothing to keep you home from school for very long. It was a heavy burden to carry. And none of us knew how to talk about it at the time. She waits till the waters are not so turbulent and the mountains not so slippery with sleet. Battered and bruised she waits, her bruises throwing her back upon herself and the rhythmic pulse of the feminine. Coatlalopeuh [Guadalupe] waits with her (Anzald´ua, 1987, p. 23).
As these foggy midsummer days stretch on, my sister and I start to talk about it a lot. About the alcoholism and other traumas that we experienced in our family. And how they’ve affected our lives, and those of our brothers. Neither of us wants to recreate the same familiar dramas we grew up with. “You know something, Alice? I’ve thought long and hard about this and I’ve pretty much decided not to have kids,” Deborah confides. “I don’t want to be responsible for putting anyone else through what I went through.” I’m quiet, but in my mind I’m thinking about how much fun I’ve seen her have with her friends’ children. How great she is with little kids. How much I used to love the treasure hunts and puppet shows she put together
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for me and our brothers when we were little. “I just think it’s the best thing, for me,” she adds. “And you’re certainly entitled to make the choices that are right for you. Even when they’re different from mine.” We both know there’s no getting around the thorny briar patch of our family history intellectually. Being delivered from its on-going lacerations means we’re going to have to pass right through the belly of the past, down the gantlet of our memories and feelings. I’m so grateful and fortunate that our conflict has brought us closer together. I know I’m going to need my sister as a friend on the long road that lies ahead.
DELIVERING THE INDIGENE: AUGUST 1985 The Indian stands in the same relationship to modernity as she did to Spain – willing to marry, to breed, to disappear in order to ensure her inclusion in time; refusing to absent herself from the future. The Indian has chosen to survive, to consort with the living, to live in the city, to crawl on her hands and knees, if need be, to Mexico City or LA (Rodriguez, 1992, p. 24).
Arnoldo is still waiting on paperwork in Mexico when the time comes to bear our raza c´osmica child. My compa˜nero is not at my side the day that Eugene is delivered into my waiting arms, in my own bed at home. In the room just beneath my mother’s kitchen, I am attended by my sister Deborah, my aunt Deborah, a few close friends, and a team of nurse-midwives. Or if you prefer, parteras. Seeing Eugene for the first time feels like meeting a very old friend. I’m so happy that he has made the long journey safely. Malinche, it turns out, has remained behind in the phantom world of mythology, an enigma still. La mestiza has incarnated as el mestizo after all. Over the telephone, Arnoldo is very excited and is saying that he’s known for some time now that it was going to be a boy. That’s news to me, but who cares? He tells me that he’s giving up on the idea of a journey to California sanctioned by both our governments. He wants to be with us badly enough to cross the border por debajo del agua – illegally, that is. Oh, what the hell! Life is full of risks and sometimes we have to make tough choices. I talk to a family friend, originally from San Diego, who lives in the Bay Area now. She knows a man who knows another man who knows some people who can smuggle Arnoldo across the border. For a big fee, of course. It’s a deal and a risk Arnoldo is willing to take. We book passage for one, to be paid in cash on delivery. The end of this tale will be his to tell. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to do but wait for the next important arrival in our family. I lean back in one of the ochre-red Adirondack chairs in the garden. One of its arms is perpetually wobbly, but the back is good and solid. Sipping fresh spearmint tea, I nurse Eugene in the
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waning, mid-day sunshine. Only the afternoon fog warrants complaints about the summer weather in Berkeley. And I can always put on a sweater. En unas pocas centurias, the future will belong to the mestiza. Because the future depends on the breaking down of paradigms, it depends on the straddling of two or more cultures. By creating a new mythos – that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave – the mestiza creates a new consciousness (Anzald´ua, 1987, p. 80).
REFERENCES Anzald´ua, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. Denzin, N. K. (1989). Interpretive biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Denzin, N. K. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dirlik, A. (1997). The postcolonial aura: Third world criticism in the age of global capitalism. Boulder: Westview. Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism/postcolonialism. London: Routledge. Pratt, M. L. (1992). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation. London: Routledge. Rodriguez, R. (1992). Days of obligation: An argument with my Mexican father. New York: Viking.
THINGS WE SAID TOMORROW . . . Michael D. Giardina PART I: “SPEECHLESS . . .” I’ll give it to you as I remember it . . . a sequence of things that did all happen within a period. So, it’s my recollection of them.1
It’s early morning. I stumble into the living room, flip on the TV. That’s weird. What is that? Looks like Armageddon.2 Who’s that director . . . Wait, what? Breaking news just in to CNN Center in Atlanta: a second aircraft has apparently crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
“What . . . the . . . fuck???” I stare in disbelief. “Second aircraft?” I sign onto my AOL account. Seconds later (simultaneous Instant Messages):3 FettsInNYC: Yo, this is fucked up. Giardina99: You ok? You hear from Marc? Matty? Kristen? FettsInNYC: This isn’t right, I can * see* the building . . . the smoke I mean, it’s just gone Giardina99: I’m watching it now . . . FettsInNYC: I’m so pissed off right now FettsInNYC: The fuckers got us good . . . Giardina99: What . . . what happened? (just got up) FettsInNYC: (Marc is ok) Giardina98: (Good . . .)
Tate24: Giardina99: Giardina99: Tate24: Giardina99: Tate24:
Giardina99: Tate24: Giardina99:
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Are you watching this shit? Yeah Fetts is online, too Anything new? Lots of news . . . you have a TV at work? Dude, we’re on the 40th floor here, this is freaking me out, the planes left from freaking Logan Yeah . . . freaky fucked up Matty’s mid-town, right?
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FettsInNYC: They hijacked planes, hit the Pentagon, too. Terrorists, has to be the middle-East, maybe . . . who knows, just them FettsInNYC: We had it coming though, too. Damn this shit! Giardina99: What are you doing now? The city looks like it has stopped . . . FettsInNYC: I was near the trade center last week for a meeting . . . damn this . . . Giardina99: Christ, that’s too close FettsInNYC: Still, I go by there all the time, way too close FettsInNYC: Going to try and head out there and see if I can help out in some way
Tate24: Yeah, and Kristen Tate24: Like 40–50 blocks away, pretty safe I think Giardina99: Fetts said Marc is ok Tate24: Thank God Tate24: At least we’re all accounted for Tate24: Dude, though . . . this makes no fucking sense Giardina99: I know . . . it’s beyond words *** Giardina99: Listen, I need to get to campus and teach class. I’ll let you know if I hear anything new Tate24: Same here Tate24: Let me know if you hear from anyone else from IC, ok? Giardina99: BTW, Fetts is going to head out and see if he can help . . . peace
*** I teach my class. An eerie pall of silence swallows the wind-swept fields of Champaign. (Driving/thinking): . . . have to call Elle . . . she doesn’t have their new numbers . . . wait, she won’t be able to get through to New York City anyway . . . wonder what is going on in Virginia . . . need to find a TV . . . Dan Rather is on the radio? Huh? Oh, simulcast . . . I’m painfully numb . . . I can’t listen to this . . . maybe a CD . . . Abraham, Martin, and John.4 Great . . . *** I get home. Answering machine flashing. TV: those same horrific images again and again and again. I check my messages: Hey, it’s me. Just callin’ to see if y’know anything about Andy and Marc and the rest of ’em. It’s like two your time, so, y’know . . . call me . . . t’night.
It’s Elle – Thank God . . . she’s okay. News reports roll in. Thousands feared dead.5 Mass carnage. Talking heads and guarded speech. Flags at half-mast at 10 Downing Street. Putin expressing sorrow. The world at a standstill, going through the motions. *** Gorgeous countryside. Can’t wait for lunch at Ciottone’s – best seafood in Venezia. EuroStar comfort. Ice cold Coca-Cola. Pringles. USA Today. A Costa Rican law student. A French artist. And me.
Things We Said Tomorrow . . .
Javier: Me (looking up from the newspaper): Javier: Me: Javier:
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’Scuse me. Y’mind if I b’rrow the sports page? No, go ’head. Here. Thanks. Say, are you American? Uh, yeah, actually. What about you? ‘From Costa Rica. Was in Rome but ’ad to see Venice b’fore I went ’ome.
Gil (looking up from his copy of The Guardian newspaper): Can I ask you guys something? Javier/Me: sure/yeah. Gil: What do you think of the stuff going on in Genoa today?6 Javier (laughing): It’s pretty much an embarrassment. But what, y’expect any less? Gil (laughing): Well said. Me (sarcastically): The peaceful demonstrators there are getting such great coverage, too. International news media making them all out to be anarchists and anti-democracy . . . throwing around the word “Liberalism” like it’s the new “Communist” scare. Gil (rolling his eyes): Ya, because true democracy is what the U.S. and every other hypercapitalist country strives for. Javier: Just ask Mr. Gore about that one. “Number One Country” my ass. *** 7:00 p.m. . . . It’s just getting worse out there, in here, everywhere. Tasteless frozen pizza. Lukewarm Coca-Cola. Time to call Elle. Her: Me: Her: Me: Her:
Hel-lo? Hey . . . it’s me. Hey . . . how ya doin’? Some day, huh? Yeah. [pause]. We didn’t have a TV this morning, but my patients kept coming in with bits of info. We had a radio going, though. It’s just . . . it’s just . . . it’s . . . messed up . . . Me: I heard from Andy; he’s okay, was leaving the city . . . trying to, anyway. Her: The other guys?
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Me: Andy says Marc’s okay; Matty works in mid-town, too, so he’s . . . uh . . . probably okay, too. Don’t know about Kristen, though, but she doesn’t work near there, either. Her (relieved): Well, that’s some good news for today. My mom was upset ’cos dad was flying to Atlanta, but he left real early in the morning, before everything happened . . . Me: We were all just near the Trade Center . . . before a Mets game last month. Went to dinner at that one place . . . [why do the Beatles jump into my head, coming to somewhere yet going from nowhere? . . . though I know I’ll never lose affection For people and things that went before I know I’ll often stop and think about them In my life I’ll love you more7 ] Her: Davis said they were bringing wounded to her hospital in north Jersey. Someone she works with was on the phone to someone in one of the towers when it went . . . down. *** This is unreal – a paramnesiac fantasy, a night of soot in the blackest time.8 *** Later, reflections of ex-lives left on the line. We’d always seem[ed] to be like John & Paul, like Rubber Soul – a beautiful team.9 Even Macca wrote that I’d fall for her from the fleeting moment I first opened my heart and saw her soul, a night of shooting stars and fragile fragments. So . . . what went wrong? Me: Drifting along in divergent directions, Of breadsticks, balconies, and borderlines. Witty exchanges and sarcastic repartee, Why do I write (you)? The answer must be found in the attempt. Her: A lone sailboat sliding through an illusory fog, Its captain dreaming of Camelot’s knights.
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But this night remains calm, An understanding engraved forever in sand. The fiction of life’s truths, Gazing momentarily at its author. Us: A story with no beginning in sight, A conclusion without end. (I miss you). *** Enough of this news “coverage.” Commodification of information. Gatekeeping. “Opinion polls” and the manufacture of consent. Whatever it is that deigns to pass for journalism, journalistic integrity. I click on the TV remote. Dennis Miller’s face appears, ranting: . . . Despite the CIA’s dismissal of one mid-level intelligence agent and the disciplining of six others for the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which killed three and wounded twenty, officials in Beijing said that their actions were not enough. [now joking] . . . CIA officials reacted to the Chinese by saying: Hey, maybe you didn’t hear us, we . . . fired . . . a guy.10
If only the chasm between the truth of the joke and the joke of the truth wasn’t so shallow. And now, after 9/11, who knows how bad it will get [pretty bad]. Kyoto Treaty – like that has a chance now. ABM Treaty – sure, right. Lincoln Navigators with bicycle racks and Green Party bumper stickers. Ann Coulter spewing hate-filled, anti-Arab rhetoric under the banner of the American flag.11 “Bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age” posters in New York City. Kissinger talking about the ethics of warfare on network news. [Has no one read The trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens, 2001]. Seven thousand body bags ordered from the government. [What a gut-wrenching sickness it is to hear – to write – those words]. A President who looks like he’s wearing a suit three sizes too big. We sit. We watch. We wait. ***
PART II: “IN 64 DAYS . . .”12 The sorrow songs of scandal that sing of the exploitation that is always “elsewhere” (even a few blocks away) are in this sense aggressively songs of mourning.13
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The next day. The day after. And beyond. I surf through BartCop, BuzzFlash, MediaWhoresOnline, SmirkingChimp, AlGoreIsOurPresident, and even the DrudgeReport.14 At least they have the guts to say something different, post non-mainstream reactions, make calls for peace, try to figure out the Why? question that has an answer other than “They hate our way of life, our freedom.” Why is it that The Boondocks – a comic strip – is the only popular voice to declare, “How about America stops and thinks about why some people hate us”?15 But it’s not enough; CNN still dominates the Nielsen ratings – they kept NEILSEN RATINGS – for 11th September. What choice did we have in the choice that we have?16 Did no one watch the insightful expos´e and roundtable discussion on BBC World that was carried via C-SPAN? A print journalist fired for voicing dissent against the almighty establishment. When did we become the Russia of 1970? I think of John Lennon, and his words strike a chord: I’m sick and tired of hearing things, from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics.17 They march on, “compassionate conservatives” who long for an impossibly sanitized empire bring us to the brink of World War III, toward this “inexorable, lifelong lunge toward death, this need to move that we can neither deny nor escape.”18 Carte blanche maneuvering for Bush in Congress under the vitreous veil of bipartisanship – guess it’s so long ANWR,19 a real Patient’s Bill of Rights, common-sense gun control, and fiscal responsibility. And Bill Maher, too, since he had the guts to say what he believed on national television, even if it wasn’t PC.20 [Come on, the show is called Politically Incorrect, what did you expect him to say?] Since when has pride in country meant conformity and blind faith? It’s blind allegiance to what is situationally palatable that is truly dangerous.21 But, alas, Paul was right, The fool on the hill Sees the sun going down And the eyes in his head, See the world spinning ‘round’22 *** Sixty-four days after the attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, and “the American way of life.” How quickly our civil liberties have come to be threatened, and at the hands of our own (s)elected officials, no less. Military tribunals to be held in secret. Facial recognition systems.23 National identification cards.24 Increased racial profiling tactics.
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More tax breaks for Big Business while the “working-class heroes” get shafted? Not a bad few months of work for the fraudulent adminsitration. An ocean – Vast and seamless, Extending forever. Stars – Glimmering and bright, Falling like stardust. An ocean of emptiness – Unexplainable and sad, I don’t understand. A smile – Angelic and bright, A delusion angel. Loved ones – Smiles & tears, “I’ll see you later.” Amidst repeated breaches in airport security [how about we pay the screeners a decent wage, eh?], unsolved cases of inhalation anthrax, and an impending worldwide recession, the Bush Administration goes after the legality of doctor-assistedsuicide in Oregon,25 medical marijuana use in California,26 and Roe vs. Wade.27 It must be part of that “less invasive government/increased states’ rights” agenda Bush promised, right? As Dennis Miller might opine: “Color me reactionary, but what the hell is going on here?” *** Somewhere along the way, though, you wonder why your fellow liberal – no, make that, fellow American – isn’t up in arms about this threat on our democracy, our civil liberties. In the non-debate over non-issues that doesn’t rage throughout Middle America, something’s just not right – and most people don’t seem to care, because “the disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference.”28 It sickens me that Fox employs on-screen graphics and war slogans that make a World Wrestling Federation broadcast look tame and unoriginal by comparison – a war for the Nintendo generation without a reset button.
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*** But then you do hear someone stand up and say what we in the real world under the yellow sun have been waiting for: someone sticking up for his/her fellow liberal colleagues in the face of the O’Reillys, Limbaughs, and Coulters of the world, telling them all what we know in our hearts to be true: You all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said “liberal” means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense, and we’re going to tax you back to the Stone Age because people shouldn’t have to work if they don’t want to. And instead of saying, “Well excuse me you Right Wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, progun, Leave it to Beaver-trip-back-to-the-Fifties,” we cowered in the corner and said, “Please, don’t hurt me.29
But then you realize this rhetorical tongue-lashing comes courtesy not from the lips of Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York), Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), or Diane Feinstein (D-California), but from the pen of Aaron Sorkin (D-Hollywood). From a character in a freaking television show. *** What happens next? Do we sit idly by, by idling our time while the Bush Administration trounces on civil liberties in the name of “Homeland Defense?” Where do we go from here? Racial profiling at airports? Who amongst us hasn’t looked – one second longer – at some other “Other” post-9/11? National identification cards? Doesn’t that hearken back to the blatant xenophobia and radical conservatism of Pat Buchanan’s speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention? Unlimited “surveillance” of ourselves by ourselves against ourselves? Can I use the Freedom of Information Act to free democracy from the pallid squalor of our collective inanity? How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?30 Lennon wrote that Hatred and jealousy, gonna be the death of us.31 He was on the right track. And so was John . . . and Bobby . . . and Martin . . . and Malcolm – and yet only Paul survives.32 Like a spring’s wind against my face, An autumn leaf on my path, Or a white white flag that tells That my heart comes home From a war – I am free!33 (Right?)
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NOTES 1. Paul McCartney, quoted in Miles, B. (1997). Paul McCartney: Many years from now. New York: Henry Holt, p. xiii. 2. Michael Bay director, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, screenplay by Jonathan Hensleigh and J. J. Abrams, released by Touchstone Pictures in association with Jerry Bruckheimer Films/Valhalla Motion Pictures, starring Bruce Willis (Harry S. Stamper), Billy Bob Thornton (Dan Truman), Ben Affleck (A. J. Frost), Liv Tyler (Grace Stamper), and Steve Buscemi (Rockhound), running time 144 minutes. 3. Screenname’s have been changed to shield the identity of my friends. In the hours immediately following the terrorist attacks on New York City, Instant Messaging and e-mail were the predominant means of contacting people in the city itself, as phone lines were thoroughly jammed with callers trying to reach people living and working there. 4. Dion, Abraham, Martin, and John. Words/music Richard Holler. Published 1968. 5. As of 9/11/02, the total count of missing and dead is officially listed at 2,801 (MSNBC). 6. The 27th annual meeting of the Group of 8 (a.k.a. G8) brought together the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States, and Russia for three days of discussions related to global issues of economic, environmental, and health concerns. An estimated 100,000 activists took to the streets of Genoa, Italy, to protest, among other things, the failure to move forward with implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the failure to address the growing AIDS epidemic in Africa, and the growing divide between 1st and 3rd world countries in terms of economic support and stability (Gerstenzang, 2001; Lewis, 2001; Tagliabue, 2001). 7. Lennon/McCartney, In My Life. Words/music Lennon/McCartney. Published November 2, 1973, Apple Records. Rubber Soul album. 8. Per Gessle, Happy for a While. Words/music Per Gessle. Published 1985, EMI Svenska AB. Scener album. [Note: author’s translation from the Swedish Lycklig en stund.] 9. Per Gessle, Apple in the Mud. Lonely Boys album. Published 1995, EMI Svenska AB. 10. Dennis Miller. Quoted on Dennis Miller Live. Airdate: April 14, 2000. HBO Entertainment in association with Happy Family Productions. 11. In a column that appeared in the National Review Online (NRO) following the 9/11 tragedies, conservative political analyst Ann Coulter suggested: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” According to the Boston Globe, NRO refused to publish a follow-up piece in which Coulter suggested that airport security would be well-served to closely scrutinize the passports of “suspicious-looking swarthy males.” (“America prepares/daily developments,” 3 October, 2001, p. A22). 12. “In 64 days . . .” is taken from a conversation with Norman K. Denzin in which we were discussing the incomprehensibility of, at that point, “the last 64 days” since 9/11. 13. Lauren Berlant (1999). “The subject of true feeling: Pain, privacy, and politics.” In: E. Bronfen & M. Kavka (Eds), Feminist Consequences: Theory for the New Century. Columbia U. Press. 14. These being (for the most part) liberal/progressive websites dedicated to the pursuit of “truth” in media: http://www.bartcop.com; http://www.buzzflash.com; http://www.mediawhoresonline.com; http://www.smirkingchimp.com; http://www.algoreisourpresident. com; and http://www.drudgereport.com. 15. Aaron McGruder, The Boondocks (September 27, 2001). Universal Press Syndicate.
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16. Christopher Hitchens, interview with Dennis Miller. Dennis Miller Live. Airdate: March 31, 2000. HBO Entertainment in association with Happy Family Productions. 17. John Lennon, Give Me Some Truth. Words/music John Lennon. Published September 9, 1971, Apple Records. Imagine album. 18. Kohn and Slowikowski (1998, p. 26). 19. ANWR is the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Drilling in the Reserve is a key part of the Bush Administration’s proposed national energy policy. Such action has, however, been roundly criticized by environmentalists and Democrats alike. According to The Los Angeles Times, “The refuge is estimated to contain 3.2 billion barrels of oil that can be pumped without economic loss, enough to supply the nation for about six months. It would take roughly 10 years for these supplies to reach gasoline pumps. We could save five times as much oil by raising the fuel efficiency standard of new autos by three miles per gallon” (“Arctic drilling is still bad,” 28 September, 2001, p. 16). 20. Shortly after 9/11, Bill Maher, comedian and host of the late-night round-table talk-show Politically Incorrect “shocked” mainstream audiences by stating: “We [the United States] have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building – say what you like about it, it’s not cowardly.” In response to Maher’s comments, both FedEx and Sears pulled their sponsorship of the show. The incident took on added national interest when White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer weighed in on the issue by suggesting that Maher – and Americans in general – needed to “watch” what they said in post-9/11 America. Maher later apologized for the timing of his remark; however, it was not enough to save his progressive show, which aired its final episode on June 28, 2002. (“Bill Maher says the unsayable: Politically Incorrect show in politically incorrect shock,” October 5, 2001, The Guardian (London), p. 5; “Oh spare us pop media’s post-attack correctness,” October 1, 2001, San Diego Union-Tribune, p. D1, Peterson, 2001). 21. Dennis Miller, 1996, p. 54. The Rants. New York: Doubleday. 22. Paul McCartney, Fool on the Hill. Words/music Paul McCartney. Published November 27, 1967, Capitol Records. Magical Mystery Tour (Beatles) album. 23. In the wake of 9/11, and the inevitable assault on the airline security industry, the use of facial recognition systems – a video surveillance and imaging technique which creates a digital map of person’s face – at airports and other high visibility public space began to generate increased interest as a viable security device. However, civil libertarians have voiced strong protest to the possible slipper-slope usage of such systems. David Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “Once this type of potentially invasive technology has a foot in the door for the immediate goal of fighting terrorism, it’s use will expand for other purposes. What are the due process rights [of innocent individuals]?” (O’Harrow, 2001, p. A14). 24. Another (reactionary) response to the question of Homeland Security has been the discussion of national identification cards which, in theory, would work like a credit card and contain a person’s biographical history and “other” pieces of information. While some (mainly, but not exclusively, on the Right) see such ID cards as a common-sense approach to safe-guarding the American public, the facts do not prove out. Besides impinging on carefully guarded personal freedoms, the technology behind it is both costly and fallible (what’s to stop anyone from recording race, ethnicity, spending habits, medical histories, etc., onto such cards, especially considering the amount of information tracking that currently goes
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on). To guard against (the likelihood of attempted) counterfeit, such cards would “need to be encoded with biometric data such as a fingerprint, retinal scan, or blood sample” (Woellert, 2001, p. 90). However, Professor David J. Farber, a technology expert at the University of Pennsylvania, has bluntly stated that “biometrics are fallible” (quoted in Woellert, p. 90). See also Safire, 2001, for further information. 25. Under Oregon state law, physicians are allowed to legally prescribe potentially lethal medication for terminally ill patients. This law was upheld by a 60–40% ballot vote four years ago. However, in November of 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft “directed federal drug agents to revoke the licenses of any doctor” (Verhovek, 2001) who prescribes such medication. In response, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction pending further review. 26. On October 25, 2001, the Drug Enforcment Agency (DEA) raided the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center, a “source of marijuana for patients with doctors’ prescriptions for its use as a painkiller” (Broder, 2001). Although the agents had acquired and executed a proper search warrant to effectively shut down the Center, the action flies in the face of more than just common sense. When California voters first approved the use of medical marijuana five years ago, “Los Angeles County Sherrif Sherman Block and officials of West Hollywood encouraged [Scott] Imler [President of the Center] and his associates to set up operations, even finding them a building they could use” (Broder, 2001, p. B7, my emphasis). While the DEA technically has the legal authority to act in this situation – the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state law does not override federal law classifying marijuana as an illegal drug – the case serves as yet another example of the Bush Administration’s willingness to become actively involved in the blatant disregard of states rights in favor of far more invasive federal government intervention than was alluded to in his campaign platform. It is important to remember, as Broder so poignantly does in his editorial, that, “at the time of the raid, 960 people – most of them with AIDS, the rest with cancer, Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and other serious illnesses – were alleviating pain and nausea with marijuana from Imler’s center” (p. B7). 27. Days after President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address, the White House announced plans to classify a developing fetus as an “unborn child” for purposes of “giving low-income women access to prenatal care.” Under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a fetus would become eligible for health care. However, many see the move as the first step in moving toward the abolition of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. In response to the proposal, Gloria Feldt, President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, lashed out at the Bush Administration by stating: “If their goal was really about expanding access, they’d say, ‘We’re going to cover more pregnant women.’ But their goal isn’t expanding access to health care, it’s about redefining ‘child’ to limit the rights of women to make their own childbearing choices” (Planned Parenthood Press Office, 31 January 2002). See also the official White House announcement, available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020118-10.html. 28. Christopher Hitchens, 1993, For the sake of argument: Essays and minority reports. London: Verso, p. 226. 29. The West Wing. Airdate: November 14, 2001 on NBC. Written by: Aaron Sorkin. Executive producers: Aaron Sorkin, Thomas Schlamme, John Wells. Produced by: John Wells Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television. 30. John Lennon, How? Words/music John Lennon. Published September 9, 1971, Apple Records. Imagine album.
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31. John Lennon, Scared. Words/music John Lennon. Published September 26, 1974, Apple Records. Walls & Bridges album. 32. Rest in peace, George, our guitars gently weep . . . 33. Per Gessle, Rickie Lee. Words/music Per Gessle. Published 1985, EMI Svenska AB. Scener album. [Note: author’s translation from the Swedish of the same title.]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author thanks Norman K. Denzin, Eileen Gebbie, Synthia Sydnor, and Mary E. Weems for their insightful commentary and enlightening feedback, as well as Laura Hess for our discussions on all things political. The title is a play on “Things we said today,”(Lennon/McCartney, published July 10, 1964, Capital Records, A Hard Day’s Night album (UK release).
REFERENCES Arctic drilling is still bad. (2001). The Los Angeles Times (September 28), 16. Berlant, L. (1999). The subject of true feeling: Pain, privacy, and politics. In: E. Bronfen & M. Kavka (Eds), Feminist Consequences: Theory for the New Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Broder, D. S. (2001). DEA marijuana madness. The Washington Post (November 11), B07. Gerstenzang, J. (2001). Summit opens amid deadly street protests. The Los Angeles Times (July 21), 1. Kohn, N., & Slowikowski, S. (1998). How do you warm up for a stretch class? Sub/in/di/verting hegemonic shoves in sport. In: G. Rail (Ed.), Sport and Postmodern Times. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hitchens, C. (1993). For the sake of argument: Essays and minority reports. London: Verso. Hitchens, C. (2001). The trial of Henry Kissinger. London: Verso. Lewis, F. (2001). Summit split over Bush’s rejection of Kyoto pact. The San Diego Union-Tribune (July 22), A1. Miles, B. (1997). Paul McCartney: Many years from now. New York: Henry Holt. Miller, D. (1996). The rants. New York: Doubleday. O’Harrow, R. (2001). Facial recognition system considered for U.S. airports; Reagan National may get scanning device. The Washington Post (September 24), A14. Peterson, K. (2001). Oh spare us pop media’s post-attack correctness. The San Diego Union-Tribune (October 1), D1. Planned Parenthood Federation of America Press Office (2002). Planned Parenthood questions Bush Administration’s respect for women: A statement by Gloria Feldt, President, Planned Parenthood (January 31). Available [Online]: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ About/PR/013102 child.html Safire, W. (2001). Threat of National ID. The New York Times (December 24), A15. Tagliabue, J. (2001). Genoa summit meeting: The protesters. The New York Times (July 21), 14. Verhovek, S. H. (2001). Assault on assisted suicide. The New York Times (November 11), S4-2. Woellert, L. (2001). National IDs won’t work. Business Week (November 5), 90.
TALKING ABOUT ALCHEMY, THE GRID, THE WING, AND THE CRYSTAL BALL Desiree Yomtoob CATEGORIES1 Living in my space like I deserve to What is this way that I can inhabit myself Living in the margins PersianJewish IranianAmerican ArtistIntellectual Writersingerdancer
I remember my love
WorkingClassMiddleClass
I remember who I am
1 This piece is scored in three lines, to be performed by seven voices, two male voices, three female voices, the voice of the composer and the voice of the metronome player. A conductor is cast to cue in speakers with physical cues, a wave of the hand or nod of the head. Metronome markings are assigned to sections of the text, intended to push, pull or keep the flow of the words as the conductor sees fit. The assignment of text to voices is done with the intention of which kind of voice would be either the most or least likely to speak the lines. The voices of the piece are scored with attention to quality and density of sound and one section of the work includes writing from the class on sound and war, spoken by class members.
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Woman AdultChild from a difficult family Survivor of family suicide
That is how I survive No group no category works
I live in my body That I know is fully mine That is where the categories stop And I just am
THE SINGER A singer whose voice is caught in her throat What kind of singer is that? What kind of singer is that? People ask, The singer that I am. That I am I am A little girl I went to school I didn’t know the language I learned the language A little less little I went to my grandma’s house I didn’t know her language anymore I was confused I didn’t want to learn that language again Which was better? Why wasn’t my grandma’s good enough For everyone else It was good for me So I listened but not to language anymore To sound and the space it made And quietly sweetly softly Sound has come out of me since then When I listened at my grandma’s house Sound and the people I loved and the safety I was in, was all one ** So between language, in sound I found a special voice A voice that knew space knew wisdom A sound that washes over everything And makes it one Knew clearly about me, you and us And all the me’s and us’s inside too. ***
THE PROBLEM OF MY EPIPHANIC MOMENT And the problem became how to find that voice, that self again When I wanted to let her back in, I had gotten so used to doing it the way others wanted To take my cues from someone else I am extremely empathic A survival skill I discovered In moments when the space was taken from me That which was mine, of my humanity, No longer trusting the world I knew,
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Sensing deeply fear, I searched for protection And so now it’s hard to be me all the way I didn’t fit anywhere too many categories I fit everywhere Rather I acted like that Acted like they act, And they act, and they act And I fit everywhere Everywhere but with me ***** On the sunny bright quad at the U of I, a journalism student looks into a camera, she smiles and says, “We are here today to ask the public’s opinion about Hollywood’s response to the tragedy in New York through it’s fundraising efforts.” She is blonde and young. She reminds me a lot of the face of the woman I saw on TV, two Tuesdays ago, when the buildings were falling. She was shaking and crying, she had just escaped from the inside of one of the nearby buildings that was affected by the crash. The woman on the TV was blonde and well coifed, like this woman on the quad. She was about ten years older. I was sitting in my therapist’s office watching her on TV. I had gotten up and like any usual morning I was listening to NPR on the Radio and brushing my teeth. I was listening to the voice of the newscaster that I was used to, but I knew right away there was something wrong by the shock and fear in his sound. “Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, New York..blah, blah,” the radio was in the other room. I couldn’t hear it . . . but something was going on in New York. I stepped into the other room, to hear clearly, that an airplane flew into one of the Twin Towers in New York City. **** I have a keychain I carry with me. I bought it in the gift shop near the Ed Sullivan Theater where David Letterman does his show. The gift shop’s owners Serajul and Mujibar were regular visitors on the show. The keychain is an image of an apple printed onto a small square piece of acrylic. Inside the apple is a representation of the New York City Skyline. There is the Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building and The Twin Towers. Near the Ed Sullivan Theater is the Brill Building where a lot of the tunes from the Tin Pan Alley Era were written. These were the people who crafted a great deal of the . . . “the Twin Towers” . . .. I thought when I was listening to the radio, that is south, near Wall Street and Battery Park, Lila works in Mid-Town, near the Empire State Building, she’s going to work today, she had no reason to be around there, “Good.” I call her cell phone, the circuits are busy. I go back to the radio, another plane has crashed into the other tower. “This is starting to sound bad, “I think. The phone rings, it is my sister, she is panicked. I ask her if she is safe. She says yes. I ask her if she is all right, she says no . . . I ask her where she is, she is at work, her co-workers are outside at the curb watching.
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I remember the skyline. How you can see the whole city from a good view on any city block, the closer giant buildings looming over you where you are standing, the further and even taller buildings giving a feeling of space in the distance. “Lila, what are you afraid of?” I ask her. “What is going to happen next?”, she says. I laugh, “Don’t worry this isn’t the beginning of World War III,” I try to cheer her up, we promise to talk later. She tells me to call the rest of the family to tell them she is ok. I get off the phone. I am listening to the radio. A plane has just crashed into the Pentagon. “What is going to happen next?”, I think. I had a very busy day planned that day. Pushing a lot of deadlines. But I didn’t even know if it was safe to walk outside. I go to therapy, we squeeze in a bit of my inner work between images on the TV. I hug her when I leave. She is great. I stop by friends’ house, the front door is open. I peek my head in. One of them looks at me for a minute, nods me in. Their faces are ashen. They are glued to each other. Their eyes are glued to the TV set. “Desi, do you know what happened?”, one says wideeyed. They can’t find the words to speak. They had just woken up and heard the news. “Yeah, I know about it.” That look on their face, I was there two hours ago. *****
TWO WEEKS LATER Over 6,000 people are reported dead, buried in the rubble of 220 stories of the World Trade Center, twin towers. A part of New York City has been decimated. The United States president, via, the media declares war five different ways each day. I listen trying to predict what might or might not happen, wishing it would go away. Carefully finding a stance. Aware that everything that I know about the political situation is reported to me by a news media that I don’t trust, so what do I really know? Looking for signs of de-escalation but the escalation is so fast I can’t even keep up with it, one week, two weeks, the details are dizzying. It is an illusion to think I can really know what is going on – there is no one world to this, none – the whole of this post-modern nightmare will not translate into a real picture for me – I get flashes of it now and then. Very intricate actions and plans are being implemented extremely quickly. The president must be a real genius or these strategies have had to have been in play for a long time. All of this has been going on but hidden from the public view, their “emergency actions” are extensions of already working schemes. There are no public discussions of policy. The people who are the public have been given no time to grieve, not one official day off. They are declaring war, calling up reserve units, I am watching the flags and military uniforms appear in the neighborhood. The deluge of news is impossible to keep up with . . . germ warfare scares . . . people in clusters around the world waiting and
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ready to harm . . . the destructive might of the U.S. Military poised to strike, the history of the relations in the Middle East . . . are you telling me we didn’t know about any of this before . . . when the news of Sheila Chandra and Monica Lewinsky were the top stories, . . . why are we only hearing about it now . . . we keep going to work . . . the American People are encouraged to maintain their regular way of life and spend . . . their money . . . there are no clear answers coming from anywhere except from financiers, they make guesses about what will happen with the economy, and they can tell people how to act to support their country, spend their money. They say stocks in pharmaceutical companies will go up but not to buy in the defense sector because the prices have spiked. And the voice on the radio from the finance show tells us that the U.S. will show the enemies that we are strong, because we are so much richer than we were when Pearl Harbor was bombed and look at how we could beat them then . . . almost destroyed the whole nation of Japan with our might and our riches. It is only within this connection between Military Might and Finance, where any story about government policy has integrity, damn them. Most People are tired, so tired, right now, not a moment to think to grieve and we are thrown into a War, one that could conceivably finish us all off for good, it’s the “new war” that frenzies us . . . the mean trick is that that war was already going on. We are told to spend and patriotism is confused with grief. Grief lets us feel the human that is like all the other humans. Patriotism does not. In the meantime a piece of the most pluralistic part of the United States has been ruined. I believe that the good part of the American dream is and has been possible. I know that as a daughter of immigrants, whose grandmothers were not deemed worthy enough to learn to write their names because they were women. From parents whose religious persecution was so dense in their other country and whose joy in religious practice in the United States is inspirational. The History of New York City is about the plurality, the multitudes making the world. I know it from the streets. The Knowledge is in my blood, from my family, that made their world there. The City is wounded and that hurts me. amidst the frenzy, the speeded up time of a pumped up political-infomania, there is the strange slowness of the lives of the people whose family members and loved ones died in the September 11th tragedy. The image of human flesh torn to pieces by an explosion of that magnitude is difficult to hold in one’s imagination for even a second. For some this is a reality that must somehow be understood, as having been experienced by people they loved. Death is inevitable, the wish for peaceful death, as entry into rest, seems only fair. Fair to be sent off in a beautiful way from the human collective. I know the slowness from missing, shattered meaning too
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well . . . the missing and shattered place where smell, touch and the space where our loved one occupies is no longer. This story should not be one that is mixed in with the rest of them. This one must stand apart . . . *****
TWILIGHT NO. 1 HOMI BHABHA LITERARY CRITIC/WRITER/SCHOLAR This twilight moment is an in-between moment. It’s the moment of dusk. It’s the moment of ambivalence and ambiguity. The inclarity, the enigma, the ambivalences, in what happened in the L.A. uprisings are precisely what we want to get hold of. It’s exactly the moment when the L.A. uprisings could be something else than it was seen to be, or maybe something other than It was seen to be. I think when we look at it in twilight we learn To . . . we learn three things: . . . one, we learn that the hard outlines of what we see in daylight that make it easy for us to order daylight disappear. So we begin to see its boundaries in a much more faded way That fuzziness of twilight allows us to see the intersections of the event with a number of other things that daylight obscures for us, to use a paradox. We have to interpret more in twilight, we have to make ourselves part of the act, we have to interpret, we have to project more. But also the thing itself in twilight challenges us to be aware of how we are projecting onto the event itself. We are part of producing the event, whereas, to use the daylight metaphor, there we somehow think the event and its clarity . . . as it is presented to us, and we have to just react to it. Not that we’re participating in its clarity: (Deavere Smith, 1994, pp. 232–234). *****
CATEGORIES II Who is America? Is George Bush America? Or Am I America? And how are the people who died in the World Trade Center, the visiting Japanese Chilean, Thai, and Indian workers, How the hell are they Americans? Who is Osama bin Laden? Who are the Taliban? What is the American Way of Life? What is Freedom? What is a war on terror?
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A War on Terror? Who are the Arabs? Am I the Jews? Am I America? And what is the Flag? Transgress. You can’t be pretty unless you are rich And have somebody take care of you. You can’t be a singer unless you are pretty. You can’t be a singer unless you act stupid and act sexually. You can’t sing cause your projects made you not a lady and that killed your mom. You not being a lady killed your mom. You were too smart and independent, you wanted to do things your own way, so you didn’t help her enough, so she killed herself. You aren’t rich, so you aren’t pretty And you can’t sing Keys Where are my Keys, I am always afraid I have lost my Keys To get into my house. I am afraid because Now this is the only true house I have, since my mom died. My keys, I am standing at the doorway to my house frantically looking for the keys and they are right in my hand. I stand this way for eight years. Eight years. Now I see them. Can I use them or are you not feminine if you use your own keys to unlock your door? Do I need to get help from a man? Or the approval of a community? Or the love of the whole world? Keys I look up at the poster of a piano keyboard on my wall. Keys?????!!!!!!!! For this, change happens in space first then in texts, my own stories. I always have the texts first, but the truth, for me, is that the change doesn’t happen till it is in my presence, my gesture. Even if I say what I want to say, it can’t Happen until I have felt it. In this life. My singing needs to be found in space, but how? I almost had it before the buildings Exploded. No more, no more shifting ground. I don’t care how different I am. I needed to believe my mother’s suicide was my fault, I needed to do that to bring sense to senseless tragedy. The absurdity of the deaths at the World Trade Center, I know now that there are things just as senseless. Angry, I reach for my right to myself. I have my own solid ground.
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Some people wage war Others do not Have to put up with the rages of war?
Why do the peaceful ones
****** I heard a story the other day on the radio. In an Arab neighborhood in Chicago A lot of people gather to chant U.S. USA, USA, to the Arabs that LIVE there. They tell the Arabs to go home, home, HOME . . . they wave the flag. So sometimes they are outside a Mosque and when the Mosque lets out there are a lot of people on the streets. Some of these people stick around and chant back. They chant U.S., USA, USA. What happened HERE is that there was one of the “anti-Arab” chanters was HOLDING one end of a huge U.S. flag and chanting and somehow the other end of the flag got handed to one of the Arab people living in the neighborhood and they were both standing there chanting “USA, USA, USA” ACTION: Person holds up Picture of American Flag in front of them and says: I want to know what it will take to change the paradigm of . . . The domination of violence over peace ****** I don’t want to tell a difficult story about a difficult thing. I don’t want it to be heavy with blame at all. I want it to be a light story about a difficult thing. A story about how growth can come easy if you feed the seeds. I want it to be a good story about a heavy thing that turns light because of the way it is told. These days I feel kindness around me everywhere, people are kind and they make space for each other . . . The story is about how to make positive things happen . . . like the movie Smoke signals . . . Light story . . . heavy thing . . . big lesson and some times all it takes is to remember. I love Walt Whitman . . . From Song of Myself I celebrate myself and sing myself . . . Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe . . . the fragrance myself and know it and like it . . . All truths wait in all things . . . The insignificant is as big to me as any. (What is less or more than a touch?) . . . I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps . . .
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And a summit and flower there is the feeling of love they have for each other, And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific And until one and all shall delight us, and we them . . .. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey of the stars . . . Listener up there! What do you have to confide in me? Look me in the face . . . Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself I am large I contain Multitudes . . . Missing me one place search another . . . I stop somewhere waiting for you. (Whitman, 1942, pp. 25–110). The way Smoke Signals tell its story reminds me of how some of the Native American People I know talk. They seem laid back and tell jokes and stories that mean more than they are . . . Put some joy on the problem, lightly tickle it and know you can direct the energy. I know that if I want to change big things, hard things, I need to make the energy as small as I can then make an even smaller change in the way I am doing things. My heaviness makes the problem so much worse. It reminds me of this stupid war thing – There are a lot of us living on earth – a lot of us humans – and it’s complicated being a person, it really is hard to be a person and interface with some of the societies the way they are set up right now. I don’t know why it is so messed up – It can get really confusing for me and then when I remember that to take the kind of space I want to take, all I have to do is take it, none of it matters anymore – It doesn’t matter who says what about me or who is more privileged than me. I just take the space – your experience cannot be taken from you, if you know, if you remember. There are a lot of things I am angry about believe me . . . right now I just want to be patient with the world. Patient. Maybe it’s because I know about singing and praying and I know that singing can fill the holes up in you right away. Sound/Energy/Force About force – ok here we all are, living our lives and this September 11 day comes along and a horrible thing happens near us, it is horrible, and it isn’t a natural disaster, where we can just say fate . . . blah, blah, blah, nature you know, survival of the fittest . . .. Whatever. It’s a human thing, about an escalated confusion, that all of us have experienced in ourselves. I think it shattered our hearts, seeing what we can do to one another. I think it made us scared and angry and confused about ourselves. And people have all of these weird responses. Some people respond in kind Well, I can be a bigger self-hater than you, watch this. I’m thinking this is a very confused response like banging your head on the wall to stop feeling pain in your foot. Or cutting yourself to stop feeling sad or nothing. Or blowing up the world just cause you don’t like someone on the other side of it, or next to you, or cause they are next to you – right next to you, reminding you . . .
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Of what, I don’t know but suddenly force is on the center stage. I’m not a big fan of force. Get out of the way and people fall from their own force towards you. I am a peaceful person. I strongly dislike the way the U.S. has handled itself and I’ll tell you I sure will be feeling better when I know there aren’t people trying to blow up or gas or hurt the people I love, the place I live, but I don’t want to respond with the same force that they have. I don’t want to copy that energy. I want to stay calm. I want to love the differences, I see, the world I see, quiet down and love it. I wish I would never give away another minute of my life. Close your eyes, blow on the system, massage it a bit and redirect the energy. It may not work but changing myself, turning myself into someone else because of them . . . I don’t want to. I want to choose a dominant story. My uncle is great. He is a notably kind man. He hasn’t had any easy life. We worry about him. But when we are around him and he disarms us with a comment so full of heart it almost knocks you off your feet, we know he has a deep reserve of something very precious. That’s the kind of world I want to live in. A kind of world full of care and tender gesture. Light story. Heavy thing. Has it changed yet? I liked Thomas in Smoke Signals – how he kept telling his stories – whenever he wanted. I’ll tell you what I am seeing – A lot of people are believing in war and they are all ready to go – more senseless destruction – A lot of messed up identity excuses, a lot of big noise. And then there is the listening, the care, the concern, the questioning, The mobilization to empower, to understand The instinct to heal That keeps me Good I focus on that and peace I don’t want to hear the words war, America, or terrorist, anymore After all we breathe the life into these things by believing in them Now peace is my mantra. ****** Immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center, the way I heard sound changed. That first day I don’t think I noticed any sounds. That night the sounds started to feel effected. I was sitting outside with a friend and some kind of siren went off an ambulance or police car. Both of our ears perked up, we looked at each other. “See, I said. “Yeah, I know,” he said. That night the sounds were the same, but they had a different meaning. I always stop to say a prayer whenever I hear any siren but suddenly those sounds meant a whole different thing to us, they sounded much more ominous, made of some larger unknown, comprehension wasn’t as easy as it had been. Our world was changing. The familiar was no longer.
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The next day it got a little weirder. It was so strangely quiet in the neighborhood, no birds. People were still, not saying much. I was walking around a corner near my house and there was some strange buzz, something I had never heard before. Multi-layered with a lot of harmonics. I was startled, “what the hell is that?” I got closer. It was a riding lawnmower. That night at work, an alarm went off. My boss and I looked at each other, very concerned. I very seriously told him I would look into it. I mustered my courage. Went to the neighboring department. It was the weather emergency alarm . . . alarm . . . alarming . . . alarm . . . there was hail in Indiana and it might be coming our way. My sister’s voice on the phone has been sweeter. I haven’t heard the sound of my hand knocking on wood more – Laughter sounded so much more hearty and needed. The sound of the voices of the people who bother me went mute – the sound of those I care for became richer. A week later I went to a concert. I really didn’t feel like going but it was a concert in honor of a well-loved composer, who had died a few years back. I knew the concert would be good. I knew his wife and I wanted to be there. First half, the music was good but nothing touched me. Great compositions, skillful musicians, nothing moved. The audience was worn out, sad, me too. Second half of the concert, the premiere piece, the Cuban born composer/ conductor had spent 24 hours trying to get to Illinois from Florida. He was a U.S. citizen and the officials at the airport had asked him for his passport. There was a row of wineglasses filled with water, that were played with the tips of fingers, a string quartet and double bass. Suspended sound. The piece was slow and so beautiful and long. Long sounds with slight modulations barely noticeable that would build and turn into something new. Moment by moment the layers of hurt and numbness peeled off, there was joy again. Ears anxious to hear the next note, bathing in the comfort of sound. Relief, we were all unwound. The piece was over. The audience clapped slow and bodies heated from the sound of it, we were warm. We glowed. The applause was just like the sound of the music suspended, soft. The second piece, ‘Calm Like a Bomb,’ began. A violin ran into an amp that modified the sound. Whatever the violin played was turned into a sound that had the stroke of the violin bow and faded out then into a loud roaring sound, unmistakably fighter planes. Shrill whistles, long reliefs, big booms. There was Dorothy throwing her whole body into the sound. She leaned forward and bowed and bowed and bowed hard, quickly, repeatedly, and the sound came back into us. This terrific sound and Dorothy at her violin. Only Dorothy, always elegant, understated, smart and sassy, making this sound. I watched I listened and she played so hard. I was afraid and calm, calm like a bomb, she took that sound back.
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On the way home a lot of the tension I had carried with me on the previous days was gone. ***** In the practice room Newly liberated I sit at the piano Keyboard What do I bring that is new? Changed? Change Change I play the Keys Stop, wait Patiently Where is the Energy? Quietly, I direct it. The Categories fall away It is only Sound. I listen How do I want to hear? The notes inside me. I hear them on me Through me Notes pour out! What am I looking for? Make the energy small I can hold it all The multitudes, Through acceptance They belong to me. I don’t belong to them. I shift through the splits Moving quietly now I live them all How about this way Or this way No more fighting between the pathways One onto the next Sound as gentle gesture **** Our lives, each one of us, has a right to a good life. I wake up every night at three a.m. wondering if anything bad has happened. I listen to the wonderful BBC correspondent from Afghanistan recommend that the US ask the United Nations to do a inquiry into the terrorist attack and send aid to Afghanistan. I hear cricket scores and the reading of ‘Breakfast as Tiffany’s’ in parts. I go back to sleep. I want to know how to turn this situation into a marker of when the worlds got good with themselves. *** The scent of autumn breeze. The sun’s warmth brings us home. The sky’s blue imagines us endless possibility. The light plays stories onto our eyes. Hearts swell at the vision of loved ones, blood boils at threat. Arms reach out in acceptance, away in fear, around each other in comfort. Eyes flash in anger. Sparkle in affection. Smile in joy. Bodies move together and apart. Arms, legs, heads tilt to one side or another to charm or repel. All blessed animals are we. Questions, answers, conflicts, more answers, more questions. We bask in the light and are drawn back into the shadows. The sun shines brightly onto the moon lighting the night, the earth casts it’s shadows. How does it all mean? We look to and against each other for reasons. love.
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GESTURE: (Movement Piece)
Piece consists of subtle movements of arms, facial expression And feeling. Performer stands with both feet flat on the ground, there can be a small amount of weight shifting during the performance. Arms at side, open eyes. Starting with arms at side, perform a small amount of arm movement, including shifting of eye expression and tilt of head, performing welcome, honesty, flying, gratitude, pride, gifting asking, etc. Movement should not be done as static postures But as fluidly and continuously as possible to follow shifting states in being.
THE ANSWER The sound I can make And when it is found
Is sometimes lost to me It is the greatest mystery
Sometimes found With an answer so simple
It’s not even an answer belief All one
It’s a shape It’s about being My core
And a presence and a Insideoutside
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TOOLS FOR PRACTICAL APPLICATION The Grid: I was thinking about Michael Jordan. How does he move like that all the time? I thought about the times I’ve seen him play. What is he doing? Then it dawned on me. He is moving in his own time. His movements are not entrained with the others on the court. He chooses his own rhythm and stays with it. His movements don’t copy the feel of the others on the court. He doesn’t react. It is as if he is on his own three-dimensional grid. Completely in his own space. He moves as if he is electric energy responding within his grid. Like a bolt of lightning in the sky. Responding to directional choices only he makes. So now I’ve decided to be that way everyday to act/move like that. The Wings: I realized all the answers I needed were going to come from my body and my actions. Arms outstretched dreams about flying and feeling like I could fly. My fear response was holding my shoulders and my ribcage prisoner. To sing, they needed to be free. The sound of tiny birds could be heard for miles.
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What practical application could they help me with? I had fashioned a single wing out of clay, eight years ago at the beginning of this exploration. Two months ago I fashioned the second one. The pair didn’t match perfectly but they would do. I could use them. One month ago I read a novel, “Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith,” done in the style of Magical Realism. The novel, written by a Jewish Iranian Woman, held the key to so many questions for me. Every part of the novel reminded me of my home, that I knew so little about. This magical realism was how we Persians were. I remembered and didn’t feel so crazy for a while. My singing is connected to moving like a Persian person does, I know it. In the novel the main character understood the power of eros and could grow wings and fly. As a child, she flew in her dreams. When her mother tried to push her off the roof to kill her because she felt the daughter’s strange powers were a curse, for the first time, the girl grew her wings and flew. She used those wings to leave every situation that rejected her because of her powers. Wings, I had a set of anatomy cards, printed on the package was the card that showed the shoulders and the muscles that create them. I looked at that package everyday for an answer. Then one day the answer came. I was unlocking my bike, and very close to my front wheel was the single wing of a bird. I was frightened, and awed. Why, I thought. Near the wing I saw the torso of the bird, what was left of its neck and shoulders. I noticed how the shoulder lay long and what was left of the bird muscle connects the shoulders loosely, letting them be wide and helping them to move, freely like hands can. The Crystal Ball: The ball is all of the separated me’s and the core, holds all of it together. But how do I find the sound? By believing I can be the person that makes the sound. Believing in it was not enough. I had to believe it in space. Act my belief.
THE KEYS: { } ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This piece titled, be the change you want to see, was written for and performed by Stephanie Golisch, Norman Denzin and our Communication 414 class in the Fall of 2001 at the University of Illinois Urbana Campus. Thanks to the many that led me to this work.
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Special thanks to Dr. Denzin for his support, belief, brilliant teaching, and for sharing the wonderful framework through which this work was inspired. My deepest prayers to all those harmed by the events of September 11th and it’s aftermath. May we soon find a solution to violence.
REFERENCES Deavere Smith, A. (1994). Twilight Los Angeles, 1992 on the road: A search for American character. New York, NY: Doubleday. Whitman, W. (1942). Selected poems. New York, NY: Walter J. Black.
