Sociology Week 2 - "Five Features of Reality" by Hugh Mehan and Houston Wood (1975)

Detailed Notes: "Five Features of Reality" by Hugh Mehan and Houston Wood (1975)

Overview & Central Thesis

Main Argument: Reality is not an objective, fixed entity "out there" but is actively constructed through social practices. All realities—whether scientific, mystical, or everyday—share five fundamental features that make them seem real to those who inhabit them.

Theoretical Framework: Ethnomethodology—the study of how people construct and maintain their sense of social reality through everyday practices.

FEATURE 1: REALITY AS A REFLEXIVE ACTIVITY

The Azande Oracle Case Study

Ethnographic Context (Evans-Pritchard, 1937):

• The Azande: African people who consult oracles for important decisions

• Decisions include: where to build houses, whom to marry, whether sick will live

The Oracle Ritual Process:

1. Gather substance from bark of certain tree

2. Prepare substance during séance-like ceremony

3. Pose question in yes/no format

4. Feed substance to small chicken

5. Decide beforehand whether death = affirmative or negative

6. Always receive unequivocal answer

For Monumental Decisions (Two-Step Verification):

• Feed substance to second chicken

• Ask same question but reverse meaning of chicken's death

• If first chicken's survival = yes, second oracle must kill chicken to be consistent

The Western Scientific Perspective vs. Azande Perspective

Western View:

• Tree bark contains poisonous substance

• Poison kills some chickens

• Chemical properties explain deaths

Azande View:

• No knowledge of tree's poisonous qualities

• Tree doesn't play part in ceremony

• Ritual transforms tree into oracle

• Bark is merely vessel for oracle to enter

• Oracle "hears like a person and settles cases like a king"

• Chickens die because oracle decides, not because of tree properties

The Problem of Contradictions

Apparent Contradictions:

1. First and second oracle administration produce opposite answers

2. Someone else consults oracle about same question → contradictory answers

3. Oracle contradicted by later events (approved house site floods, selected wife dies or is terrible)

Western Question: How can Azande continue believing despite contradictions?

Critical Insight: "What I have called contradictions are not contradictions for the Azande"

• Only contradictions from reality of Western science

• Westerners look at oracular practices to determine if oracle exists

• Azande KNOW oracle exists—that's their beginning premise

• All subsequent events experienced from that assumption

Incorrigible Propositions

Gasking's Definition (1955):

Example: 7 + 5 = 12 (whatever your experience counting, this remains true)

Application to Azande:

• Incorrigible faith in oracle compatible with any conceivable state of affairs

• Not faith about a fact in world, but faith in facticity of world itself

• Same as faith many have that 7 + 5 always equals 12

Secondary Elaborations of Belief

Definition: Explanations that preserve the incorrigible proposition when apparent contradictions arise

Azande Secondary Elaborations (when oracle "fails"):

• Taboo must have been breached

• Sorcerers intervened

• Witches interfered

• Ghosts intervened

• Gods intervened

Function:

• These "mystical" notions reaffirm reality of world where oracles are basic feature

• Failures don't challenge oracle

• Failures provide evidence for constant success of oracles

• Beginning with incorrigible belief in oracles, all events reflexively become evidence for that belief

Evans-Pritchard's Observations

On Trying to Convince Azande: When events revealed inadequacy of mystical faith, Evans-Pritchard tried to make Azande understand failures as he did. They responded with:

• Laughter

• Point-blank assertions

• Evasive secondary elaborations

• Polite pity

• "Entanglement of linguistic obstacles, for one cannot well express in its language objections not formulated by a culture"

Critical Passage:

Mathematical Analogy

Gasking on Mathematics: When counting 7 + 5 yields 11, you describe what happened as:

• "I made a mistake in my counting"

• "Someone played a practical joke and abstracted one object"

• "Two objects have coalesced"

• "One object has disappeared"

Never conclude: 7 + 5 = 11

Same reflexive process as Azande oracle!

The Chloroform Scientist Example

Scenario: Western scientist using chloroform to asphyxiate butterflies

Incorrigible Idiom: Chemistry tells scientist substances have certain constant properties

• Chloroform of certain volume/mix capable of killing butterflies

When Butterfly Doesn't Die (contradiction):

Secondary Elaborations Available:

• Faulty manufacturing

• Mislabeling

• Sabotage

• Practical joke

Result: Continue to reaffirm causal premise of science

• Don't reject chemistry

• Reflexively support reality that produced poison's unexpected failure

Key Point: Scientists use same reflexive process as Azande!

The Ptolemaic vs. Copernican System

Ptolemaic System:

• Sun seen as planet of Earth

• Astronomers looked at sun and saw orb circling Earth

Copernican Revolution:

• Offered little new empirical data

• Described old "facts" in different way

• Required shift of vision

• Sun seen as star, not planet

Critical Insight: "Seeing sun as star and seeing it as planet circling Earth are merely alternatives. There is no a priori warrant for believing that either empirical determination is necessarily superior to the other."

The Object Constancy Assumption

Definition: Belief that objects remain the same over time, across viewings from different positions and people

How Choice is Made Between Equally Compelling Alternatives:

Convert to Copernican system could say: "I used to see a planet, but now I see a star"

• But this allows belief object can be both star and planet simultaneously

• Not allowed in Western science

Instead, Copernican concludes: Sun was star all along

• By so concluding, exhibits incorrigible proposition of Western thought

• When presented with contradictory empirical determinations, doesn't consider sun changes through time

• Says: "I once took the sun to be a planet, but I was mistaken"

Result: "Discovery" of sun as star doesn't challenge object constancy belief, just as oracular "failure" doesn't challenge Azande belief

Commonsense Reflexivity: The Missing Pen

Everyday Example: Search for object you knew was "right there"

Scenario: Find missing pen in place you know you searched before

• Evidence indicates pen first absent, then present

• But that conclusion is not reached

• Would challenge incorrigibility of object constancy belief

Secondary Elaborations Invoked:

• "I must have overlooked it"

• "I must not have looked there"

Function: Retain integrity of object constancy proposition

Explaining Away Alternative Seeings

The Process:

Without object constancy assumption: No problems about alternative determinations

With object constancy as incorrigible:

• Person faced with alternative seeings must choose one and only one as real

• Choosing one automatically reveals other as false

Explaining the Rejected Alternative:

• Defective sensory apparatus

• Cognitive bias

• Idiosyncratic psychological dynamics

• Explain inconstancy as product of experiencing, not feature of object itself

Reflexive Loop: Once alternative seeing explained away:

• Accepted explanation provides evidence for object constancy assumption

• That assumption made the explanation necessary in first place

• By demanding we dismiss one of two equally valid empirical determinations

• Object constancy assumption leads to body of work that validates that assumption

• Work justifies itself afterward, in world it has created

Reflexivity Beyond Reasoning: The Reflexivity of Talk

Key Insight: Reflexivity not only facet of reasoning—it's recurrent fact of everyday social life

Talk is Reflexive:

• Utterance not only delivers particular information

• Also creates a world in which information itself can appear

Zimmerman's Visual Example

Three Boxes with Words:

Box with "PROJECTION":

• Word interacts with box to change nature of box

• Reflexively illuminates itself

• In other settings, "projection" wouldn't mean what it does here

• Word creates scene in which it appears as reasonable object

• Doesn't merely report on scene—creates the scene

Box with "INDENTATION":

• Takes meaning from context

• Reflexively creates that very context

• Creates reality in which it may stand as part of that reality

The Reflexivity of Greetings

What "Hello" Accomplishes (partial list):

Saying "hello" both creates and sustains a world in which persons acknowledge:

1. They sometimes can see one another

2. A world where it's possible to signal to each other

3. Expect to be signaled back to

4. By some others but not all of them

The Reflexive Work:

• Without superstitious use of greetings, no world where greetings are possible "objects" would arise

• Greeting creates "room" for itself

• Once verbal behaviors regularly done, world built up that takes their use for granted

When Reflexive Work Becomes Visible:

Normal: Other replies with expected counter-greeting → reflexive work masked

Breach: Other scowls and walks on → reminded we were attempting to create greeting scene and failed

Response to Breach:

• Rather than treat as evidence greetings not "real"

• Rejected greeter turns it into occasion for affirming reality of greetings

• Formulates secondary elaborations:

  • "He didn't hear me"

  • "She is not feeling well"

  • "It doesn't matter anyway"

The Function of Reflexivity

Provides grounds for absolute faith in validity of knowledge:

• Azande takes truth of oracle for granted

• Scientist assumes facticity of science

• Layman accepts tenets of common sense

Incorrigible propositions serve as criteria to judge other ways of knowing:

• Using absolute faith in oracle, Azande dismisses Evans-Pritchard's Western science contradictions

• Evans-Pritchard, steeped in efficacy of science, dismissed oracle as superstitious

Conclusion: "This suggests that all people are equally superstitious"

FEATURE 2: REALITY AS A COHERENT BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

Meta-Observation About the Five Features

Reflexive Loop:

• These five features are themselves incorrigible propositions of reality of ethnomethodology

• They appear as facts of external world due to ethnomethodologist's unquestioned assumption they constitute the world

• These features themselves exhibit reflexivity

Relationship Among Features:

• Five features inextricably intertwined

• Kept separate only upon analysis (heuristic, not literal)

• Like "ladder with five steps that may be climbed and then thrown away" (Wittgenstein)

Case Study: The "Freaks" (Zimmerman & Wieder)

Research Context:

• Self-named "freaks"—frequent drug users in America's counterculture

• Both freaks and academic ethnographers describe freaks as radical opponents of straight culture

From Straight Society's Standpoint:

Discovery: Apparent Anarchy is Actually Coherent

First Appearance: Reality seems anarchical

Upon Investigation:

Key Point: Different values, same rational structure!

The Place of Drugs in Freak Life

At First Glance: Drug use appears irrational

Upon Investigation:

Not Function of Ignorance:

• Freaks studied knew chemical and medical "facts" about drugs well

• Organized these facts into different, yet coherent corpus of knowledge

Peter Suczek's Folk Pharmacology Taxonomy

Table 1: The Folk Pharmacology for Dope

Top Level: "Dope" (what chemist calls "psychotropic drugs")

Two Main Categories:

1. Mind-Expanding Dope

Subcategory: "Grass" (marijuana)

Subcategory: "Hash" (hashish)

Subcategory: Psychedelics

• "LSD" or "acid" (lysergic acid)

• Mescaline:

  • Synthetic

  • Organic

  • Natural (peyote)

• Psilocybin:

  • Synthetic

  • Organic

  • Natural (mushrooms)

• "DMT"

• Miscellaneous (e.g., Angel's Dust)

2. Body Dope

• "Speed" (amphetamines)

• "Downers" (barbiturates)

• "Tranks" (tranquilizers)

• "Coke" (cocaine)

• "Shit" (heroin)

3. (Untitled category)

Freak Knowledge of Psychedelic Drugs

Common Knowledge Among Freaks (Zimmerman & Wieder):

• Kinds of drugs

• Instances of the same kind of drug

• Choice to ingest or not

• Time of ingestion relative to state of one's physiology

• Time of ingestion relative to state of one's psyche

• Timing relative to social and practical demands

• Appropriateness of setting for having a psychedelic experience

• Size of dose

• Effectiveness and risk of mixing drugs"

Comparison: Freaks and Scientists

Similarities:

• Both concerned with "the facts"

• Both use knowledge according to plan

• Both realities reflexively prove facts as absolute

Differences:

• Facts differ between the two systems

How Freak Assembles Knowledge:

• Not loath to borrow from discoveries of science

• But first tests scientific "facts" against auspices of own incorrigible propositions

• Doesn't use scientists' findings to determine danger of drug

• Uses them to indicate particular dosage, setting, etc., under which drug should be taken

Scientific Researchers:

• Frequently attend to experiences of freaks

• Incorporate facts freaks report about dope into their coherent idiom

Analogy:

Reflexive Use of Freak Taxonomy

When Knowledge "Fails": Produces not "high" but "bummer"

Response:

• Incorrigible propositions of freak pharmacology not questioned

• Instead, these propositions invoked to explain bummer's occurrence

Examples of Secondary Elaborations:

• "It was a bad time and place to drop"

• "My head wasn't ready for it"

• "It was bad acid or mescaline, meaning it was cut with something impure"

• "It was some other drug altogether"

Parallel to Azande:

• When oracle contradicted itself, contradiction became occasion for proving oracular way of knowing

• Reality of oracles appealed to in explaining failure of oracle

• Just as reality of freak pharmacology used to explain bad trip

Futility of Cross-Reality Explanation:

The Researcher's Construction of Coherence

Zimmerman & Wieder's Methods:

• Employed many methods to construct freak's taxonomy

• Freaks interviewed by sociology graduate students and peers

• Interviewers provided accounts of own drug experiences

• Additional freaks not acquainted with research purposes kept personal diaries

• Used portion of massive data to construct taxonomy

• Tested validity against further portions of data

Critical Point: "Such systematizations are always the researcher's construction"

Coherence is Found Upon Analysis:

• To claim any reality exhibits coherent body of knowledge

• Is to claim coherence can be found upon analysis

• Coherence located in reality is found there by ethnomethodologist's interactional work

• Coherence feature operates as incorrigible proposition, reflexively sustained

Analogy: Linguists and Grammar Rules

How Linguists Work:

• Within language-using communities, discover "rules of grammar"

• Linguist empirically establishes grammatical rules

What Speaker-Hearers Know:

• Cannot list the rules

• Rules can be located in their talk, upon analysis

• But language users cannot describe them

Application to Freaks:

• Freaks could not supply taxonomy Zimmerman & Wieder claim they "really" know

• It was found upon analysis

• It is imposition of researcher's logic upon freak's logic

Castaneda's Work on Yaqui Sorcery

The Teachings of Don Juan (1968)

Structure:

• Detailed ethnography of experiences with Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan

• In this reality, common for:

  • Time to stop

  • Men to turn into animals, animals into men

  • Animals and men to converse

  • Great distances covered while body remains still

Final Section: Castaneda systematizes his experiences

• Presents coherent body of knowledge undergirding Don Juan's teachings

• Like Zimmerman & Wieder, organizes "nonordinary" reality into coherent system

A Separate Reality (1971): Don Juan's Reaction

Castaneda's Systematization: Told Don Juan he discovered mitotes (peyote sessions) are "result of subtle and complex system of cueing"

Don Juan's Response (after 2-hour explanation):

Initial reaction: Frowned (Castaneda thought explanation must be challenging)

Then: Turned frown into smile, then roaring laughter

Don Juan's Challenge:

Castaneda's Interpretation: "I thought for a moment that he was being evasive; he was not really answering my question"

Don Juan's Insistence:

Castaneda Persists: Insisted such explanation not possible, begged for explanation of how agreement reached

Don Juan's Final Answer:

When Asked How People Agree:

Interpretation of Don Juan's Rejection

What Rejection Means:

• Not evidence that Castaneda's systematization incorrect

• Indicates investigator reflexively organizes realities he investigates

Key Principle:

• All realities may upon analysis exhibit coherent system of knowledge

• But knowledge of this coherence is not necessarily part of awareness of its members

Features Emerging "Upon Analysis"

Nature of "Upon Analysis" Features:

• Particular instance of reflexivity

• Features exist only within reflexive work of researchers who make them exist

This Does Not Deny Their Reality:

• No need to pursue "chimera of presuppositionless inquiry"

• Because all realities ultimately superstitious

• Reflexive location of reflexivity not a problem within ethnomethodological studies

• Rather, provides them with most intriguing phenomenon

Interconnection of Features

Observation:

• Any one feature separate from others only upon analysis

• In describing reflexivity: forced to assume existence of coherent body of knowledge

• In discussing coherent systems: couldn't avoid introducing "upon analysis" (implicit reference to reflexivity)

Will Continue as remaining features discussed:

• Though attempt to keep separate, only partially successful

• Five features inextricably intertwined

• Nevertheless, continue to talk of five separate features (heuristic, not literal)

• Like Wittgenstein's ladder: "provides ladder with five steps that may be climbed and then thrown away"

FEATURE 3: REALITY AS INTERACTIONAL ACTIVITY

Core Principle: Realities dependent upon ceaseless social interactional work

Case Study: Wood's Mental Hospital Study (1968)

Research Discovery: Psychiatric attendants shared body of knowledge

Attendant Labels for Patients:

• "Baby"

• "Child"

• "Epileptic"

• "Mean old man"

• "Alcoholic"

• "Lost soul"

• "Good patient"

• "Depressive"

• "Sociopath"

• "Loafer"

Nature of Labels:

• Borrowed from psychiatry

• But constitute corpus of knowledge reflecting attendants' own practical nursing concerns

• Can be arranged in systematic taxonomy

Table 2: The Meaning of the Labels

Four Parameters of Nursing Problems:

1. Work (causes nursing trouble)

2. Cleanliness (causes cleanliness problems)

3. Supervisory (requires supervisory attention)

4. Miscellaneous (other concerns)

Label Breakdown (with frequency x 60):

• Mean old man: Work✓, Cleanliness✓, Supervisory✓, Miscellaneous✓ (2)

• Baby: Work✓, Cleanliness✓, Supervisory✓ (20)

• Child: Work✓, Cleanliness✓, Miscellaneous✓ (4)

• Loafer: Work✓, Supervisory✓, Miscellaneous✓ (1)

• Epileptic: Cleanliness✓, Miscellaneous✓ (4)

• Sociopath: Work✓, Miscellaneous✓ (3)

• Depressive: Miscellaneous✓ (2)

• Alcoholic: Supervisory✓ (8)

• Lost soul: Work✓ (12)

• Good patient: None (6)

Two Models of Label Application

The "Matching Procedure" Model

Assumptions:

• Essentially psychological theory

• Treats behavior as private, internal state

• Not influenced by social dimensions

• Assumes patients' behavior has obvious features

• Trained personnel monitor and automatically apply appropriate label

Wood's Alternative: Social Construction Model

Key Finding: Labels not applied by simple matching process

Instead:

• Molded in day-to-day interaction of attendants with one another and with patients

• Labeling is social activity, not psychological one

Case History: Jimmy Lee Jackson

Official Psychiatric Label (remained constant over 3-month hospitalization):

• "Psychoneurotic reaction, depressive type"

Ward Attendants Saw Jackson Differently Over Time:

• At one time: "Loafer"

• At another: "Depressive"

• At yet another: "Sociopath"

These Changes Reflected: Deep change in meaning Jackson had for attendants

What "Loafer" Meant

Attendant Perceptions:

When Jackson Became "Depressive":

• All these negative attributes withdrawn

Critical Point: Change in attribution cannot be explained by matching procedure

• Attendants' social interactional work produced change

• Independent of Jackson's behavior

• Suggests realities are fundamentally interactional activities

The Toothache Incident

What Happened:

• Jackson suffering from toothache

• Unable to secure medical attention

• Ran his arm through window pane in locked door

• Severe laceration of forearm requiring stitches

Label Transformation:

Evening Shift Returns (following afternoon):

• Discovered morning shift decided Jackson attempted suicide

• Jackson no longer presented as loafer

• Morning shift gave meaning to event they themselves never considered

• Nevertheless, evening shift accepted validity of label change

Consequences of Label Change to "Depressive"

Label Change Indexed Far Larger Change:

Jackson's Past History Reinterpreted:

• Now accorded different treatment by attendants on all shifts

New Treatment:

• Listened to sympathetically

• Given whatever he requested

• No longer exhorted to do more ward work

Belief Change:

• All attendants came to believe he had ALWAYS been depressive

• Believed they had ALWAYS seen him as such

Second Label Change: To "Sociopath"

Few Weeks Later: Jackson became yet another person

New Understanding:

• Attendants no longer accepted he was capable of suicide attempt

• New label applied retrospectively

• Not only incapable of committing suicide now

• Believed to have ALWAYS been incapable of it

Reinterpretation of Window-Breaking Incident:

• Attendants agreed it had been "fake" or "con"

• "Just the sort of thing a sociopath would do"

Reinterpretation of Same Behaviors:

• Work praised when he was depressive

• Now pointed to as proof he was "conniver"

• Requests for attention and medicine:

  • Promptly fulfilled for depressive Jackson

  • Now ignored for sociopath Jackson

  • Or used as occasions to attack him verbally

Jackson's Actual Constancy

Wood's Description:

• Jackson remained constant despite changes in attendant behavior

• Did same amount of work whether labeled loafer, depressive, or sociopath

• Sought same amount of attention and medicine regardless of label

Conclusion: "What Jackson was at any time was determined by the reality work of the attendants"

Wood's Personal Experience of the Interactional Construction

Wood's Reflection:

Evening of Arm-Cutting:

Next Day:

During Label Changes:

Two Months Later (After Leaving Ward):

Critical Point:

• As Wood says, Jackson could never have meaning apart from some social context

• Meanings unfold only within unending sequence of practical actions

Correspondence Theory of Signs vs. Indexical Expressions

Correspondence Theory of Signs

Three Analytically Separate Elements:

1. Ideas that exist in the head

2. Signs that appear in symbolic representations

3. Objects and events that appear in the world

How Meaning Works:

• Meaning is relation among these elements

• Signs can stand on behalf of ideas in head

• Signs can refer to objects in world

• Signs stand in point-by-point relation to thoughts or objects

• Meanings are stable across time and space

• Not dependent on concrete participants

• Not dependent on specific scenes

Matching Procedure Assumption: Labels applied in accordance with correspondence principles

Indexical Expressions (Alternative Theory)

Wood's Finding: Labels not applied in accordance with correspondence principles

Instead, Labels are Indexical Expressions:

• Meanings are situationally determined

• Dependent on concrete context in which they appear

• Participants' interactional activity structures indexical meaning of labels

What Determines Meaning:

• Relationship of participants to object

• Setting in which events occur

• Circumstances surrounding definition

The Relationship Between Reality and Signs

Traditional View: Realities possess symbols "like so many tools in a box"

Interactional Feature Indicates: Reality and its signs are "mutually determinative" (Wieder, 1973)

• Alone, neither expresses sense

• Intertwining through course of indexical interaction, they form a life

FEATURE 4: THE FRAGILITY OF REALITIES

Core Principle

Every Reality Depends Upon:

1. Ceaseless reflexive use of

2. A body of knowledge in

3. Interaction

Result: Every reality is also fragile

• Suppression of activities disrupts the reality

• Every reality is equally capable of dissolution

Incongruity Procedures / Breaching Experiments

Purpose: Demonstrate fragility feature through deliberate disruption

Garfinkel's Tick-Tack-Toe Experiment

Setup:

• 67 students as "experimenters"

• Total of 253 "subjects"

• Engaged in game of tick-tack-toe

Normal Procedure:

1. Draw figure necessary for game

2. Request subject to make first move

3. Subject marks a cell

The Breach: 4. Experimenter's turn: Instead of simply marking another cell:

• Erased subject's mark

• Moved it to another cell

5. Continuing as if this were expected behavior

6. Experimenter placed own mark in now-empty cell

Results:

• Produced extreme bewilderment and confusion in subjects

• Reality of game, which seemed stable and external, suddenly fell apart

• Subjects exhibited "amnesia for social structure"

Why This Works

The Unspoken Rule:

• Usually unnoticed feature: rule prohibiting erasing opponent's mark

• When unspoken "rule" broken, makes first public appearance

• If we were aware of fragility of our realities, they would not seem real

Application to "Real Life" Situations

Garfinkel's Discovery:

Examples of Real-Life Breaches:

• Standing very, very close to person while maintaining innocuous conversation

• Saying "hello" at termination of conversation

Results:

• Elicited anxiety

• Indignation

• Strong feelings of humiliation and regret (both experimenter and subject)

  • Demands by subjects for explanations

  ---

  Additional Breaching Procedures

  Store and Restaurant Experiment:

  • Student experimenters sent into stores and restaurants

  • Told to "mistake" customers for salespersons and waiters

  • (Details in Reading 31 of original volume)

  ---

  Refined Breaching Experiments

  Garfinkel's Refinements (to prevent subjects from escaping the breach):

  Three Conditions for Successful Breach:

  1. The person could not turn the situation into:

     • A play

     • A joke

     • An experiment

     • A deception, etc.

  2. Subject must have insufficient time to work through redefinition of real circumstances

  3. Subject must be deprived of consensual support for alternative definition of social reality

  Purpose: Prevent subjects from reflexively turning disruption into revalidation of their realities

  • Incorrigible propositions of social knowledge not adequate for present circumstances

  • Removed from supporting interactional activity possessed before breach

  ---

  Consequences of Refined Breaches

  Positive Consequence:

  • Increased bewilderment of subjects

  • Subjects became more and more like desocialized schizophrenics

  • Persons completely devoid of any social reality

  Negative Consequence: They were immoral

  • Once subjects experienced fragility, could not continue taking stability of realities for granted

  • No amount of "cooling out" could restore subject's faith

  Resolution: "But what is too cruel to impose on others can be tried upon oneself..."

  ---

  FEATURE 5: THE PERMEABILITY OF REALITIES

  Core Principle

  Because:

  • Reflexive use of social knowledge is fragile

  • And interaction dependent

  Therefore:

  • One reality may be altered

  • Another may be assumed

  • Cases where person passes from one reality to another, dramatically different, reality vividly display this permeability feature

  ---

  Case Study: Tobias Schneebaum's Journey

  Background

  Who: Tobias Schneebaum—painter who lives periodically in New York

  Book: Keep the River on Your Right (1969)

  • Entered jungles of Peru in 1955 in pursuit of his art

  • Gradually lost interest in painterly studies

  • Found himself drawn deeper into jungle

  • Unlike professional anthropologist: carried no plans to write about travels

  • Book not written until 13 years after his return

  ---

  Encounter with the Akaramas

  The Akaramas: Stone age tribe that had never seen white man

  Initial Reception:

  • Accepted him quickly

  • Gave him new name: "Habe" (meaning "ignorant one")

  • Began teaching him to be as they were

  ---

  Learning the Akarama Reality

  Physical Practices:

  Sleeping Arrangements:

  • Learned to sleep in "bundles" with other men

  • Piled on top of one another for warmth and comfort

  Survival Skills:

  • Learned to hunt and fish with stone age tools

  Language and Storytelling:

  • Learned Akaramas' language

  • Learned ritual of telling stories of hunts and hikes

  • The telling taking longer than the doing

  Personal Habits:

  • Learned to go without clothing

  • Learned to touch casually the genitals of companions in play

  ---

  Perception of Death

  Incident: Man Dying of Dysentery

  The Scene:

  • Man crying out at excretions of blood and pain

  • "The others laugh and he laughs too"

  At Night (in sleeping pile):

  • Man whimpering and crying among them

  • Schneebaum writes:

  "Not Michii or Baaldore or Ihuene or Reindude seemed to have him on their minds. It was as if he were not there among us or as if he had already gone to some other forest"

  When He Dies: Immediately forgotten

  • This is normal perception of death within Akarama reality

  Another Incident:

  "There were two pregnant women whom I noticed one day with flatter bellies and no babies on their backs, but there was no sign of grief, no service..."

  Result: Gradually, Schneebaum absorbed even these ways

  ---

  Changed Sense of Time

  Visit to Mission:

  • Left Akaramas to visit mission from which he'd embarked

  • Startled to find seven months had passed

  • Not the three or four he had supposed

  ---

  Loss of Former Reality

  As More Permeated by Stone Age Reality:

  "I began to feel that my 'own world, whatever, wherever it was, no longer was anywhere in existence'"

  On Disappearance of Old Reality:

  "My fears were not so much for the future... but for my knowledge. I was removing my own reflection"

  ---

  The Raid: Complete Transformation

  The Day of the Raid

  Began Like Many Others:

  • Rose to begin hunting expedition with sleeping companions

  But Different:

  • Went much farther than ever before

  • Painted themselves in new way

  • Repeated new chants

  ---

  The Attack

  Arrival at Strange Village:

  • Swooped in (Schneebaum too)

  • Shouting sacred words

  • Killing all men they could catch

  • Disemboweling and beheading them on spot

  • Burned all huts

  • Kidnapped women and children

  • Hiked to own village without pause through entire night

  ---

  The Victory Celebration

  The Dance:

  • New dance begun

  • Meat of murdered men cooked

  Consumption of Human Flesh:

  • As new movement of dance begins

  • Meat gleefully eaten

  • Exhausted, stumbled together on ground

  ---

  The Ritual with the Heart (Full Passage)

  "We sat or lay around the fires, eating, moaning the tones of the chant, swaying forward and back, moving from the hip, forward and back. Calm and silence settled over us, all men. Four got up, one picked a heart from the embers, and they walked into the forest. Small groups of others arose, selected a piece of meat, and disappeared in other directions. We three were alone until Ihuene, Baaldore, and Reindude were in front of us, Reindude cupping in his hand the heart from the being we had carried from so far away, the heart of he who had lived in the hut we had entered to kill. We stretched out flat upon the ground, lined up, our shoulders touching. Michii looked up at the moon and showed it to the heart. He bit into it as if it were an apple, taking a large bite, almost half the heart, and chewed down several times, spit into a hand, separated the meat into six sections and placed some into the mouths of each of us. We chewed and swallowed. He did the same with the other half of the heart. He turned Darinimbiak onto his stomach, lifted his hips so that he crouched on all fours. Darinimbiak growled, Mayaarii-ha! Michii growled, Mayaari-ha!, bent down to lay himself upon Darinimbiak's back and entered him."

  ---

  Analysis of the Transformation

  Acts Schneebaum Participated In:

  • Mass murder

  • Destruction of entire village

  • Theft of all valuable goods

  • Cannibalism

  • Ritual eating of heart

  • Before publicly displayed homosexual acts

  Critical Point: "He could not have done them his first day in the jungle"

  But After Gradual Adoption of Akarama Reality: They had become natural

  Moral Transformation:

  "It would have been as immoral for him to refuse to join his brothers in the raid and its victory celebration as it would be immoral for him to commit these same acts within a Western community. His reality had changed. The moral facts were different."

  Conclusion: Schneebaum's experience suggests even radically different realities can be penetrated

  ---

  Why We Have This Account

  Critical Observation: We wouldn't have this account if stone age reality had completely obliterated Schneebaum's Western reality

  • He would still be with tribe

  The Dynamic:

  • More he permeated Akaramas' reality → more suspect his old reality became

  • More he fell under spell of absolutism of new reality → more fragile his old reality became

  Like the Cannibals (Changed Time Sense):

  "My days are days no longer. Time had no thoughts to trouble me, and everything is like nothing and nothing is like everything. For if a day passes, it registers nowhere, and it might be a week, it might be a month. There is no difference"

  ---

  The Decision to Leave

  Experience of Fragility:

  • As vision of old reality receded, Schneebaum experienced its fragility

  • Knew he must leave soon, or there would be no reality to return to

  The Departure (in Schneebaum's words):

  "A time alone, only a few weeks ago, with the jungle alive and vibrant around me, and Michii and Baaldore gone with all the other men to hunt, I saw within myself too many seeds that would grow a fungus around my brain, encasing it with mold that could penetrate and smooth the convolutions and there I would remain, not he who had travelled and arrived, not the me who had crossed the mountains in a search, but another me living only in ease and pleasure, no longer able to scrawl out words on paper or think beyond a moment. And days later, I took myself up from our hut, and I walked on again alone without a word to any of my friends and family, but left when all again were gone and I walked through my jungle..."

  ---

  Akarama Response to His Departure

  They Would Not Miss Him:

  • Would not even notice his absence

  • For them, there were no separate beings

  Schneebaum's Attachment:

  • Felt their reality obliterating "the me who had crossed the mountains in a search"

  • Schneebaum was attached to this "me"

  • So he left

  ---

  Conditions for Moving Between Realities

  Three Conditions Necessary for Successful Breaches (from previous section):

  1. No place to escape

  2. No time to escape

  3. No one to provide counter evidence

  Same Conditions Required to Move Between Realities

  Castaneda's Insight: In order to permeate realities, one must first have old reality breached

  Castaneda Named This: Establishment "of a certainty of a minimal possibility" that another reality actually exists

  Application to Don Juan's Teaching:

  • Successful breaches must establish that another reality is available for entry

  • As Don Juan attempted to make Castaneda man of knowledge

  • First spent years trying to crack Castaneda's absolute faith in reality of Western rationalism

  ---

  Relations Between Fragility and Permeability Features

  Mehan and Wood's Note:

  • Castaneda's work suggests many relations between fragility and permeability features

  • Not purpose of this reading to explore relations of five features

  • But want to emphasize such relations can be supposed to exist

  ---

  Theoretical Equivalence of All Reality Passages

  The "Exotic" Case: Relied on person passing from Western to stone age reality to display permeability feature

  But: Any two subsequent interactional encounters could have been used for this purpose

  All Passages Equally Important Theoretically:

  • Between movie and freeway driving

  • Between person's reality before and after psychotherapy

  • Between "straight" acquiring membership in reality of drug freaks

  • Before and after becoming competent religious healer

  • All are the same

  Differences: "Merely" methodological, not theoretical

  What to Study in Each Passage: How reflexive, knowledge, interactional, and fragility features affect the shift

  ---

  Ethnomethodology as a Reality

  Self-Application:

  • All realities are permeable

  • Ethnomethodology is a reality

  Purpose of This Reading:

  "This book is an attempt to breach the reader's present reality by introducing him to the 'certainty of a minimal possibility' that another reality exists."

  ---

  THEORETICAL DISCUSSION: ON THE CONCEPT OF REALITY

  Contrast with Schutz's View

  Schutz's Concept of Reality (e.g., 1962, 1964, 1966)

  The Paramount Reality:

  • Reality of everyday life is one paramount reality

  • Other realities exist but derive from paramount reality

  Assumptions of Paramount Reality:

  • Assumption of tacit, taken-for-granted world

  • Assumed practical interest in that world

  • Assumption that world is intersubjective

  Other Realities (Examples):

  • "Scientific theorizing"

  • "Fantasy"

  • Appear when some basic assumptions of paramount reality temporarily suspended

  Elastic Quality:

  • After excursions into other realities

  • We "snap back" into everyday

  ---

  Mehan and Wood's Different View

  Core Disagreement: "I do not wish to call one or another reality paramount"

  Central Claim: "Every reality is equally real. No single reality contains more of the truth than any other."

  From Western Everyday Life Perspective:

  • Western everyday life will appear paramount (as Schutz maintains)

  But From Other Perspectives:

  • From perspective of scientific theorizing or dreaming or meditating

  • Each of these realities will appear just as paramount

  Why This Happens:

  • Because every reality exhibits absolutist tendency mentioned earlier

  • "There is no way to look from window of one reality at others without seeing yourself"

  Critique of Schutz:

  "Schutz seems to be a victim of this absolutist prejudice. As a Western man living his life in the Western daily experience, he assumed that this life was the touchstone of all realities."

  ---

  Affinity with Wittgenstein

  Mehan and Wood's Concept: More in common with Wittgenstein (1953) than with Schutz

  ---

  Wittgenstein's Language Games

  Recognition: Human life exhibits empirical multitude of activities

  Language Games:

  • These activities called "language games"

  • Forever being invented, modified, and discarded

  Fluidity:

  • Fluidity of language activities do not permit rigorous description

  Family Resemblances:

  • Analysts can discover that at any time, number of language games associated with one another

  • This association not amenable to rigorous description

  • Instead, language games exhibit "family resemblances"

  • Can recognize certain games going together

  • But could no more articulate criteria for this resemblance than predict physical characteristics of unseen member of familiar extended family

  ---

  Forms of Life

  Definition: Collection of language games bound together by family resemblance = form of life

  Relationship to Realities:

  • Forms of life resemble what Mehan and Wood call "realities"

  • Realities far more fluid than Schutz's terms "finite" and "province" suggest

  Dynamic Nature:

  • "Forms of life are always forms of life forming"

  • "Realities are always realities becoming"

  ---

  KEY THEMES AND IMPLICATIONS

  1. The Equality of All Realities

  No Hierarchy:

  • No reality is more "real" or more "true" than any other

  • Western science not superior to Azande oracles

  • Everyday reality not paramount over dreams, meditation, or psychosis

  Each Reality:

  • Has own incorrigible propositions

  • Uses reflexivity to maintain itself

  • Exhibits coherence upon analysis

  • Depends on interactional work

  • Is fragile and permeable

  ---

  2. The Absolutism of Every Reality

  From Inside:

  • Every reality appears absolute, true, factual

  • Every reality dismisses alternatives as false, superstitious, crazy

  Mechanism:

  • Reflexivity provides grounds for absolute faith

  • Incorrigible propositions serve as criteria to judge other ways of knowing

  • All people equally superstitious from this perspective

  ---

  3. The Social Construction Process

  Realities Are Not Discovered: They are actively constructed through:

  • Reflexive work: Using contradictions to reaffirm beliefs

  • Knowledge systems: Organizing observations into coherent frameworks

  • Interaction: Continuous social activity that constitutes objects and meanings

  • Maintaining fragility: Constant work to prevent collapse

  • Permeability: Possibility of moving between realities through breaching

  ---

  4. The Methodological Implications

  For Ethnomethodology:

  • Study how people accomplish sense of reality

  • Focus on practices, not mental states

  • Recognize researcher's own reality-construction

  • Accept reflexivity as central phenomenon, not problem

  For Understanding Other Cultures:

  • Cannot judge from outside using own incorrigibles

  • Must recognize coherence in seemingly "irrational" practices

  • Understand social interactional basis of all meaning

  • Appreciate fragility and permeability of all systems

  ---

  5. The Ethical Implications

  From Breaching Experiments:

  • Revealing fragility of realities is cruel

  • Once experienced, cannot unknow it

  • Cannot restore faith after successful breach

  From Cross-Cultural Contact:

  • Moving between realities requires breaching old reality

  • Complete transition may eliminate former self

  • Moral facts change with reality

  • What's immoral in one reality may be required in another

  ---

  6. The Reflexive Loop

  The Five Features Themselves:

  • Are incorrigible propositions of ethnomethodology

  • Appear as facts due to ethnomethodologist's assumptions

  • Exhibit reflexivity

  • This is not a problem but "most intriguing phenomenon"

  Implication: No presuppositionless inquiry possible

  • All knowledge ultimately superstitious

  • All realities equally real/unreal

  • Ethnomethodology itself is a reality being constructed

  ---

  7. The Fluidity of Reality

  Against Static Conceptions:

  • Not fixed "provinces" or "finite" regions

  • Always forming, always becoming

  • Continuously accomplished through ongoing work

  • Can break down at any moment without maintenance

  Wittgenstein's Influence:

  • Family resemblances rather than rigid categories

  • Forms of life always forming

  • Cannot predict all characteristics from known instances

  ---

  CONNECTING TO PREVIOUS READINGS

  Relationship to Miner's "Nacirema"

  Both Demonstrate:

  • How cultural practices can be made strange

  • Importance of perspective in determining what seems "real"

  • All cultures have elaborate ritual systems that seem bizarre from outside

  Mehan and Wood Add:

  • Theoretical framework for understanding why this works

  • Reflexivity explains how Nacirema maintain beliefs despite "contradictions"

  • Shows American reality is no more/less real than any other

  ---

  Relationship to Babbie's "Concepts, Indicators, and Reality"

  Babbie's Conclusion: Concepts don't exist; they're figments of imagination

  Mehan and Wood's Expansion:

  • Not just concepts, but entire realities are constructed

  • Provides mechanism (five features) for how construction happens

  • Shows this applies to scientific reality too

  • Reflexivity explains how we maintain faith in our concepts

  Both Agree:

  • Knowledge is socially constructed

  • No direct access to "reality itself"

  • What we call "facts" depend on our framework

  ---

  Relationship to Best's "Missing Numbers"

  Best Shows: How statistics can be missing, forgotten, or legendary

  Mehan and Wood Explain Why:

  • Different realities have different incorrigible propositions

  • What counts as "fact" depends on reality inhabited

  • Interactional work determines what gets counted and how

  • Coherence found "upon analysis" means different analysts find different patterns

  Example Application:

  • School shooting "epidemic" vs. declining violence statistics

  • Different realities (media drama vs. criminological data)

  • Each uses reflexivity to maintain its view

  • Each has coherent knowledge system

  • Each depends on specific interactional contexts

  ---

  CRITICAL CONCEPTS SUMMARY

  Incorrigible Propositions

  • Beliefs never admitted as false whatever happens

  • Compatible with any conceivable state of affairs

  • Examples: 7+5=12, oracle exists, object constancy

  • Serve as foundation for entire reality systems

  Reflexivity

  • Using a belief system to prove itself

  • Contradictions become evidence FOR the system

  • Creates self-sustaining loop

  • Provides grounds for absolute faith

  Secondary Elaborations of Belief

  • Explanations that preserve incorrigible propositions

  • When apparent contradictions arise

  • Examples: "I made a mistake," "taboo was breached," "it was bad acid"

  Object Constancy Assumption

  • Objects remain same over time

  • Across viewings from different positions/people

  • Foundational to Western thought

  • Forces choice between alternative seeings

  Coherent Body of Knowledge

  • Every reality exhibits coherence upon analysis

  • Coherence is researcher's construction

  • Members may not be aware of it

  • Like grammar rules: used but not described

  Indexical Expressions

  • Meanings situationally determined

  • Dependent on concrete context

  • Reality and signs mutually determinative

  • Contrast with correspondence theory

  Breaching Experiments

  • Deliberately disrupt taken-for-granted reality

  • Reveal fragility through violation of unstated rules

  • Three conditions: no escape, no time, no consensual support

  • Too cruel to continue because destroy faith

  Forms of Life (Wittgenstein)

  • Collections of language games with family resemblances

  • Always forming, never fixed

  • More fluid than Schutz's "finite provinces"

  • Equivalent to Mehan and Wood's "realities"

  ---

  Final Insight: This reading itself attempts to breach reader's current reality by introducing "certainty of minimal possibility" that ethnomethodological reality exists—demonstrating its own principles through its own practice.