CH 6 Contemporary Theories of Everyday Life

1. Symbolic interactionism, like the other theories discussed in this chapter, focuses

on everyday life, especially interaction (as well as action and people as agents)

and the symbols (and their meanings) that are deeply implicated in it.

2. Symbolic interactionism is defined by a set of fundamental assumptions:

a. People act toward things on the basis of the meanings those things have for

them, and these meanings stem from their interactions with other people.

b. People do not simply internalize the meanings that they learn through

social interaction; they are also able to modify those meanings through an

interpretive process.

c. People, in contrast to other animals, are unique in their ability to use and

rely on symbols.

d. People become human through social interaction, especially in the early

years with family members and then in school.

e. People are conscious, capable of reflecting on themselves and what they do,

and therefore capable of shaping their actions and interactions.

f. People have purposes when they act in, as well as toward, situations.

g. Society comprises people engaging in social interaction.

3. Erving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy is a view of social life as a series of

dramatic performances akin to those performed in the theater.

4. From a dramaturgical perspective, the self is a sense of who one is that is a

dramatic effect that emerges from the immediate scene being presented.

5. Impression management involves techniques that actors use to maintain certain

impressions in the face of problems they are likely to encounter and methods

they use to cope with these problems.

6. The front stage is that part of dramaturgical performance that generally

functions in rather fixed and general ways to define the situation for those who

observe the performance.

7. The back stage is where facts suppressed in the front stage or kinds of informal

actions may appear.

8. Role distance is the degree to which individuals separate themselves from the

roles they are in.

9. Stigma involves a gap between virtual social identity (what a person ought to be)

and actual social identity (what a person actually is).

10. A discredited stigma occurs when the actor assumes that the differences are

known by the audience members, or are evident to them, whereas a discreditable

stigma is one in which the differences are neither known by audience members

nor perceivable by them.

11. Arlie Hochschild has extended Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy by studying the

role that emotions play in social performances.

12. Emotion management comprises the techniques people use to display emotions

appropriate to particular performances.

13. Emotion management relies on both surface acting and deep acting.

14. Emotion management is shaped by the feeling rules of a particular culture.

15. Ethnomethodology is the study of ordinary members of society in the

everyday situations in which they find themselves and the ways in which they

use commonsense knowledge, procedures, and considerations to gain an

understanding of, navigate in, and act on those situations.

16. Ethnomethodologists are concerned with accounts, accounting, and accounting

practices.

17. In breaching experiments, ethnomethodologists violate social reality to shed

light on the methods by which people construct social reality.

18. George Homans’s exchange theory is based primarily on behaviorist principles.

19. The heart of Homans’s exchange theory lies in a series of propositions that

describe how people reinforce each other’s behavior.

20. The focus in rational choice theory is on actors.

21. In rational choice theory, actors are seen as being purposive, or as having

intentionality; that is, actors have ends or goals toward which their actions are aimed.

22. Actors are also seen as having preferences (or values, utilities). Rational choice

theory is unconcerned with what these preferences, or their sources, are.

Of importance is the fact that actors undertake actions to achieve objectives

consistent with their preference hierarchies.

23. In addition, rational choice theory must take into account scarcity of resources

and opportunity costs, or the costs of forgoing the next most attractive action, as

well as the constraints imposed by social institutions.

24. Utilizing a rational choice approach and starting at the micro-level of rational

individual behavior, Coleman seeks to explain a series of macro-level phenomena,

including collective behavior, norms, and the corporate actor.

looking-glass self–The idea that we form our sense of ourselves by using others, and their reactions to us, as

a mirror to assess who we are and how we are doing (Cooley).

primary group–An intimate face-to-face group that plays a crucial role in linking the individual to the larger

society. Of special importance are the primary groups of the young, mainly the family and friendship groups

(Cooley)

sympathetic introspection–The methodology of putting oneself in the places and the minds of those

one is studying, doing so in a way that is sympathetic to who they are and what they are thinking and trying to

understand the meanings and the motives that lie at the base of their behavior

fieldwork–A methodology used by symbolic interactionists and other sociologists that involves venturing into

the field (the day-to-day social world) to observe and collect relevant data.

observation–A methodology closely related to fieldwork, in which symbolic interactionists (and other soci-

ologists) study the social world by observing what is transpiring in it. In the case of symbolic interactionism,

this enables researchers to engage in sympathetic introspection and put themselves in the place of actors to

understand meanings and motives and to observe the actions that people take.

setting–The physical scene that ordinarily must be there if the actors are to engage in a dramaturgical per-

formance (Goffman).

personal front–Those items of expressive equipment that the audience identifies with the performers and

expects them to carry with them into the setting (Goffman).

appearance–The way the actor looks to the audience, especially those items that indicate the performer’s

social status (Goffman).

manner–The way actors conduct themselves, which tells the audience what sort of role the actors expect to

play in the situation (Goffman)

mystification–An effort by actors to confound their audience by restricting the contact between themselves

and the audience, concealing the mundane things that go into their performance (Goffman).

team–Any set of individuals who cooperate in staging a single performance (Goffman).

outside–Neither front nor back; literally outside the realm of the performance (Goffman)

surface acting–A performance in which a person manipulates surface appearances such as facial expression

and tone of voice to convey an emotional expression to others (Hochschild).

deep acting–A performance in which a person recalls personal emotional experiences to create an authentic

emotional performance in the present (Hochschild).

emotion memory–A memory of an autobiographical episode that carries within it strong feelings

(Hochschild).

feeling rules–Culturally determined standards for emotion management (Hochschild).

commercialization of feeling–The management of emotion to produce economic value in service indus-

tries. Examples include the work conducted by flight attendants and restaurant servers (Hochschild)

accounts–The ways in which actors explain (describe, criticize, and idealize) specific situations

(ethnomethodology).

accounting–The process by which people offer accounts to make sense of the world (ethnomethodology).

accounting practices–The ways in which one person offers an account and another person accepts or

rejects that account (ethnomethodology)

operant conditioning–The learning process by which the consequences of behavior serve to modify that

behavior (exchange theory).

generalization–The tendency to extend behavior to similar circumstances (exchange theory).

discrimination–The tendency to manifest behavior only under the specific circumstances that proved suc-

cessful in the past (exchange theory)

rewards–Actions with positive values; an increase in such actions is more likely to elicit the desired behavior

(exchange theory).

punishments–Actions with negative values; an increase in such actions means that the actor is less likely to

manifest undesired behaviors (exchange theory).

cost–Rewards lost in adopting a specific action and, as a result, in forgoing alternative lines of action (exchange

theory).

profit–The greater number of rewards gained over costs incurred in social exchange (exchange theory).

utilities–An actor’s preferences, or values.

opportunity costs–The costs of forgoing the next most attractive action when an actor chooses an action

aimed at achieving a given end (rational choice theory)