Pub Date : 2024-01-21DOI: 10.1177/07352751231223203
Seth Abrutyn, Jienian Zhang
Despite the prevalence of symbolic interaction’s theory of the self, alongside alternative implicit models in dual-process and practice theory, sociology continues to struggle with incorporating affect into models of the self. To address this gap, we distinguish between the conventional sociological understanding of Goffman’s self as cynical and masked and an alternative construct we excavate by paying close attention to negative cases like Goffman’s Asylums and Stigma. This alternative theory of self treats self and situation not as one-sided but as mutually constitutive. Unlike most models of self, our alternative is continuously motivated by humans’ desire to maintain reputation within a given situation; reputation making is dependent on the situation, and its ceremonial rules provide the context for the self’s realization of affective rewards. After considering how reputational claims around ceremonial rules reveal an affectively driven, moral self, we consider the theoretical and methodological implications of the theory for major strands within symbolic interactionism.
{"title":"Morality, Affect, and Reputation in the Making of a Motivated Social Self","authors":"Seth Abrutyn, Jienian Zhang","doi":"10.1177/07352751231223203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231223203","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the prevalence of symbolic interaction’s theory of the self, alongside alternative implicit models in dual-process and practice theory, sociology continues to struggle with incorporating affect into models of the self. To address this gap, we distinguish between the conventional sociological understanding of Goffman’s self as cynical and masked and an alternative construct we excavate by paying close attention to negative cases like Goffman’s Asylums and Stigma. This alternative theory of self treats self and situation not as one-sided but as mutually constitutive. Unlike most models of self, our alternative is continuously motivated by humans’ desire to maintain reputation within a given situation; reputation making is dependent on the situation, and its ceremonial rules provide the context for the self’s realization of affective rewards. After considering how reputational claims around ceremonial rules reveal an affectively driven, moral self, we consider the theoretical and methodological implications of the theory for major strands within symbolic interactionism.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139609688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-19DOI: 10.1177/07352751231222889
Tyler Leeds
Habitus is society inscribed on the body, but Bourdieu does not explore how biological processes interact with habitus, namely, how action flows from a bio-habitus. I engage pain science to illustrate this point. First, I document how dispositions—specific components of habitus—mediate pain both before and after its onset. Second, I explain how pain alters cognition and affect, an interaction I contend inhibits the habitus. Far from placing the biological over the social, my discussion illustrates how the two are inseparable, a unity underlined by the term bio-habitus. I demonstrate how this concept intervenes in Bourdieusian debates over social reproduction and how the biological inhibition of habitus compares to work on hysteresis. I end by discussing resonances with and implications for disability studies.
{"title":"The Bio-Habitus: Using Pain Science to Reconstruct Bourdieusian Theory","authors":"Tyler Leeds","doi":"10.1177/07352751231222889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231222889","url":null,"abstract":"Habitus is society inscribed on the body, but Bourdieu does not explore how biological processes interact with habitus, namely, how action flows from a bio-habitus. I engage pain science to illustrate this point. First, I document how dispositions—specific components of habitus—mediate pain both before and after its onset. Second, I explain how pain alters cognition and affect, an interaction I contend inhibits the habitus. Far from placing the biological over the social, my discussion illustrates how the two are inseparable, a unity underlined by the term bio-habitus. I demonstrate how this concept intervenes in Bourdieusian debates over social reproduction and how the biological inhibition of habitus compares to work on hysteresis. I end by discussing resonances with and implications for disability studies.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139524807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-30DOI: 10.1177/07352751231218479
Oded Marom
How do civic groups judge what issues are appropriate for public discourse? And how do they know what kinds of arguments to use where? Cultural sociologists identify varying “orders of worth,” that is, historically defined systems of typification and evaluation people draw on to evaluate public arguments. Yet it remains unclear how these take form in ongoing group practices. This article theorizes how groups’ ongoing interaction patterns, or “style,” typify social scenes to steer members toward distinct orders of worth in varying situations. As I argue, different typifications of public and private scenes condition the type of arguments members deem appropriate for public discourse, with meaningful implications for their politics. Combining style and orders of worth allows us to ask how ostensibly similar groups may publicly define different political goals and value varying forms of civic engagement. I illustrate this theoretical framework with an ethnographic study of two culturally distinct groups of libertarians in the United States.
{"title":"Situational Orders: Interaction Patterns and the Standards for Evaluating Public Discourse","authors":"Oded Marom","doi":"10.1177/07352751231218479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231218479","url":null,"abstract":"How do civic groups judge what issues are appropriate for public discourse? And how do they know what kinds of arguments to use where? Cultural sociologists identify varying “orders of worth,” that is, historically defined systems of typification and evaluation people draw on to evaluate public arguments. Yet it remains unclear how these take form in ongoing group practices. This article theorizes how groups’ ongoing interaction patterns, or “style,” typify social scenes to steer members toward distinct orders of worth in varying situations. As I argue, different typifications of public and private scenes condition the type of arguments members deem appropriate for public discourse, with meaningful implications for their politics. Combining style and orders of worth allows us to ask how ostensibly similar groups may publicly define different political goals and value varying forms of civic engagement. I illustrate this theoretical framework with an ethnographic study of two culturally distinct groups of libertarians in the United States.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2023-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139136996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-28DOI: 10.1177/07352751231206838
Amanda R. Cheong
This article theorizes “omission,” which I define as the condition of being left out of administrative apparatuses, such as civil registers, censuses, and identity management systems. According to this theory, omission is not necessarily accidental but can constitute a political strategy. When even excluded statuses can be powerful grounds for claiming rights, resources, or membership, state actors can subvert such claims-making potential by depriving unwanted populations of the practical, material capacity to establish their legal personhood through documents and records. To situate omission, I develop a typology of documentary strategies additionally comprising “recognition,” “claims-making,” and “evasion.” Although my theorizing is informed by ethnographic research with unregistered families in Malaysia, scholars can apply this typology to multiperspectival, relational analyses of other empirical cases of documentary politics. Studying omissions has scholarly and ethical imperatives, not least to record the lives of populations denied, at times with existential consequences, the right to recognition.
{"title":"Theorizing Omission: State Strategies for Withholding Official Recognition of Personhood","authors":"Amanda R. Cheong","doi":"10.1177/07352751231206838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231206838","url":null,"abstract":"This article theorizes “omission,” which I define as the condition of being left out of administrative apparatuses, such as civil registers, censuses, and identity management systems. According to this theory, omission is not necessarily accidental but can constitute a political strategy. When even excluded statuses can be powerful grounds for claiming rights, resources, or membership, state actors can subvert such claims-making potential by depriving unwanted populations of the practical, material capacity to establish their legal personhood through documents and records. To situate omission, I develop a typology of documentary strategies additionally comprising “recognition,” “claims-making,” and “evasion.” Although my theorizing is informed by ethnographic research with unregistered families in Malaysia, scholars can apply this typology to multiperspectival, relational analyses of other empirical cases of documentary politics. Studying omissions has scholarly and ethical imperatives, not least to record the lives of populations denied, at times with existential consequences, the right to recognition.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136233587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-26DOI: 10.1177/07352751231206411
Stefan Hirschauer
Alongside subsystems, classes, and types of socials relations, societies differentiate between categories of their personnel, referring to their age, sex, “race,” (dis)ability, performance, geographic and social origin, sexual preference, religious conviction, profession, and so on. This article outlines a theory of human differentiation with the aim of viewing processes leading to reified memberships of human categories in an encompassing comparative approach. Differentiating humans distinguishes them perceptively, categorizes them lingually, shapes them physically, segregates them spatially, and subjects them to othering and unequal evaluative treatment. The analytic vocabulary developed in this article puts forward five elementary processes—prelingual distinction, lingual categorization, official classification, material marking/dissimilation, and segregation—and three advanced processes of asymmetrical differentiation: the alterization of humans, their differential evaluation, and the escalation into boundary constitution and polarization. Processes of human differentiation are stabilized via coupling with social and societal differentiation, but they can also be practically minimalized, normatively contained, and institutionally diluted.
{"title":"Telling People Apart: Outline of a Theory of Human Differentiation","authors":"Stefan Hirschauer","doi":"10.1177/07352751231206411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231206411","url":null,"abstract":"Alongside subsystems, classes, and types of socials relations, societies differentiate between categories of their personnel, referring to their age, sex, “race,” (dis)ability, performance, geographic and social origin, sexual preference, religious conviction, profession, and so on. This article outlines a theory of human differentiation with the aim of viewing processes leading to reified memberships of human categories in an encompassing comparative approach. Differentiating humans distinguishes them perceptively, categorizes them lingually, shapes them physically, segregates them spatially, and subjects them to othering and unequal evaluative treatment. The analytic vocabulary developed in this article puts forward five elementary processes—prelingual distinction, lingual categorization, official classification, material marking/dissimilation, and segregation—and three advanced processes of asymmetrical differentiation: the alterization of humans, their differential evaluation, and the escalation into boundary constitution and polarization. Processes of human differentiation are stabilized via coupling with social and societal differentiation, but they can also be practically minimalized, normatively contained, and institutionally diluted.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136381661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-26DOI: 10.1177/07352751231203716
Aliza Luft
Scholars have long argued that dehumanization causes violence. However, others have recently argued that those who harm do so because they feel pressured or view violence as justified. Examining the Rwandan genocide, this article contends that contradictory theories of dehumanization can be reconciled through consideration of cultural and moral sociology. Research on culture and action demonstrates that when people strive to implement new practices, they often explicitly work through them cognitively and emotionally. With time, however, these conscious processes diminish until actions that were once new proceed with ease. In another vein, morality research suggests our affective responses to actions indicate their moral significance; when we do not react emotionally to actions, they are morally irrelevant. Herein, I combine these ideas with a temporal analysis of Hutus’ recollections of killing Tutsi and find cognitive, emotional, and relational transformations rendered killing mundane over time. Dehumanization was a consequence of violence, not a cause.
{"title":"The Moral Career of the Genocide Perpetrator: Cognition, Emotions, and Dehumanization as a Consequence, Not a Cause, of Violence","authors":"Aliza Luft","doi":"10.1177/07352751231203716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231203716","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars have long argued that dehumanization causes violence. However, others have recently argued that those who harm do so because they feel pressured or view violence as justified. Examining the Rwandan genocide, this article contends that contradictory theories of dehumanization can be reconciled through consideration of cultural and moral sociology. Research on culture and action demonstrates that when people strive to implement new practices, they often explicitly work through them cognitively and emotionally. With time, however, these conscious processes diminish until actions that were once new proceed with ease. In another vein, morality research suggests our affective responses to actions indicate their moral significance; when we do not react emotionally to actions, they are morally irrelevant. Herein, I combine these ideas with a temporal analysis of Hutus’ recollections of killing Tutsi and find cognitive, emotional, and relational transformations rendered killing mundane over time. Dehumanization was a consequence of violence, not a cause.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134909226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-26DOI: 10.1177/07352751231198129
Rebecca W. B. Lund
In this article, I argue that Smith’s continued relevance coincides with more recent retrievals of Marx-inspired materialism. This materialism and the associated understanding of human beings—the social, language, and world people share in common—certainly do not capture all there is to say about Smith’s eclectic and expansive social theory. However, the material dimension distinguishes her work from many other feminist sociologies and results in her continued relevance as a thinker who brings to the table another way of doing feminist sociology. I illustrate this by showing how Smith’s Marx-inspired materialism and its associated understanding of language offer a productive and timely alternative to the feminist social theory of anti-categorical intersectional theory and new materialist theory.
{"title":"Retrieving Materialism: The Continued Relevance of Dorothy Smith","authors":"Rebecca W. B. Lund","doi":"10.1177/07352751231198129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231198129","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I argue that Smith’s continued relevance coincides with more recent retrievals of Marx-inspired materialism. This materialism and the associated understanding of human beings—the social, language, and world people share in common—certainly do not capture all there is to say about Smith’s eclectic and expansive social theory. However, the material dimension distinguishes her work from many other feminist sociologies and results in her continued relevance as a thinker who brings to the table another way of doing feminist sociology. I illustrate this by showing how Smith’s Marx-inspired materialism and its associated understanding of language offer a productive and timely alternative to the feminist social theory of anti-categorical intersectional theory and new materialist theory.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134958023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-08DOI: 10.1177/07352751231197834
Marjorie DeVault
Dorothy E. Smith was a second-wave feminist scholar of the 1970s who brought forward an insistent critique of women’s exclusion from knowledge production and the resulting distortions of sociological theory. I offer here a reading of the theory Smith developed as she worked toward a sociology that could move the field beyond those distortions, toward a method of inquiry that could be useful for women and generally for people puzzled by the circumstances of their lives. I highlight Smith’s commitment to knowledge that is anchored in a shared, material world; the originality of her approach to the investigation of textually mediated social organization; and the goal of mapping social organization that underlies her approach.
{"title":"Dorothy Smith’s Sociology for People: Theory for Discovery","authors":"Marjorie DeVault","doi":"10.1177/07352751231197834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231197834","url":null,"abstract":"Dorothy E. Smith was a second-wave feminist scholar of the 1970s who brought forward an insistent critique of women’s exclusion from knowledge production and the resulting distortions of sociological theory. I offer here a reading of the theory Smith developed as she worked toward a sociology that could move the field beyond those distortions, toward a method of inquiry that could be useful for women and generally for people puzzled by the circumstances of their lives. I highlight Smith’s commitment to knowledge that is anchored in a shared, material world; the originality of her approach to the investigation of textually mediated social organization; and the goal of mapping social organization that underlies her approach.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49312481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-05DOI: 10.1177/07352751231197832
Freeden Blume Oeur
In 1992, Barbara Laslett and Barrie Thorne organized a symposium in Sociological Theory with the aim of tearing down a “wall of silence” between feminist theory and the mainstream of sociological theorizing. For help, the editors turned to the work of Dorothy E. Smith, the renowned theoretician and methodologist. Smith’s theorizing today carries even greater appeal, having expanded from a sociology for women to a sociology for people. This wider scope never sacrifices her project’s theoretical versatility and nimbleness and disdain for abstraction. In offering a critical tribute to Smith, who passed away in June 2022 at the age of 95, the present symposium invited three scholars—Paige Sweet, Rebecca Lund, and Marjorie DeVault—to share new reflections on the legacy of Smith’s powerful mode of inquiry.
{"title":"Dorothy Smith’s Legacy of Social Theorizing: Introduction","authors":"Freeden Blume Oeur","doi":"10.1177/07352751231197832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231197832","url":null,"abstract":"In 1992, Barbara Laslett and Barrie Thorne organized a symposium in Sociological Theory with the aim of tearing down a “wall of silence” between feminist theory and the mainstream of sociological theorizing. For help, the editors turned to the work of Dorothy E. Smith, the renowned theoretician and methodologist. Smith’s theorizing today carries even greater appeal, having expanded from a sociology for women to a sociology for people. This wider scope never sacrifices her project’s theoretical versatility and nimbleness and disdain for abstraction. In offering a critical tribute to Smith, who passed away in June 2022 at the age of 95, the present symposium invited three scholars—Paige Sweet, Rebecca Lund, and Marjorie DeVault—to share new reflections on the legacy of Smith’s powerful mode of inquiry.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47949951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-31DOI: 10.1177/07352751231197833
Paige L. Sweet
I focus on Smith’s phenomenological insights related to the concepts of “bifurcation” and “consciousness” to explore the persistent tension in her work between particularity and abstraction. For Smith, because marginalized groups’ experiences are excluded from dominant ways of knowing, we must begin inquiry from the embodied activity of everyday life, never from the abstracted categories of accepted knowledge. Smith’s concept of bifurcation is essential to understanding this. When people experience the world as bifurcated, we should ask how that split illuminates the ongoing production of marginality as constituted by historically specific relations of ruling. “Consciousness” is likewise essential for Smith because it reflects her concern with how forms of domination get incorporated. For Smith, consciousness is not “micro” but reflects the temporal organization of social power. Starting from the particular seems “small” but is actually incredibly ambitious: The most shrouded aspects of social power are visible there.
{"title":"The Particular and the Provincial: Thinking with Dorothy Smith’s Phenomenology","authors":"Paige L. Sweet","doi":"10.1177/07352751231197833","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751231197833","url":null,"abstract":"I focus on Smith’s phenomenological insights related to the concepts of “bifurcation” and “consciousness” to explore the persistent tension in her work between particularity and abstraction. For Smith, because marginalized groups’ experiences are excluded from dominant ways of knowing, we must begin inquiry from the embodied activity of everyday life, never from the abstracted categories of accepted knowledge. Smith’s concept of bifurcation is essential to understanding this. When people experience the world as bifurcated, we should ask how that split illuminates the ongoing production of marginality as constituted by historically specific relations of ruling. “Consciousness” is likewise essential for Smith because it reflects her concern with how forms of domination get incorporated. For Smith, consciousness is not “micro” but reflects the temporal organization of social power. Starting from the particular seems “small” but is actually incredibly ambitious: The most shrouded aspects of social power are visible there.","PeriodicalId":48131,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41484862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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