Wiley: Symbolic Interaction: Table of Contents

Identity Impermanence as a Generic Social Process: The Malleability of Gender in Transgender and Nonbinary People's Lives

Stef M. Shuster, Andrew Kirks‐Cler — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:00:40 -0700

Drawing on 40 in-depth interviews with transgender and nonbinary people, we found that respondents' gender identities or displays shifted day-by-day and audience-by-audience. The first describes respondents shifting their identities and displays based on feeling their way through gender while the latter describes feeling out an audience. These shifts are nonexclusive to trans and nonbinary people. Instead, we offer new tools for symbolic interactionists by theorizing the impermanence of identity as a generic social process. Examining such impermanence reveals how people feel their way through facets of the self and audiences to quell the possibility of experiencing social inequalities in interaction.

Studying and Teaching Emotions

E. Doyle McCarthy — Thu, 21 May 2026 08:43:46 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Looking for Trouble: Pre‐Intervention Monitoring in Human and AI Driver Training

Mathias Broth, Erik Vinkhuyzen, Jakob Cromdal — Thu, 21 May 2026 02:26:39 -0700

We compare two types of situations involving monitoring of car driving: a driving instructor overseeing a trainee driver and a safety driver overseeing the performance of autonomous vehicle (AV) software. Our focus is on instances of monitoring that precede (1) interventions that are aborted before impacting the driving and (2) actual interventions on the driving in these two different settings. We find that in both cases the monitoring party “waits and sees” whether each type of “driving agent” will notice the impending trouble and adjust the driving appropriately. However, there are also marked differences: In the case of a driving instructor, the monitoring and intervening is a socially accountable event that may be responded to by the trainee driver, while in the case of an autonomous vehicle there are no such considerations, resulting in a difference in how the monitoring activity is embodied.

Rethinking Interpretive Social Science From a Schutzian Perspective

Ekkehard Coenen — Wed, 20 May 2026 02:21:18 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

The Grammar of Exclusion: Slurs, Stigma, and the Racialization of Turks in Iran

Sevil Suleymani — Tue, 19 May 2026 05:48:05 -0700

This study employs a qualitative meta-synthesis to explore how racial slurs function as mechanisms of symbolic violence and racial governance against Turks in Iran. Drawing on interviews conducted in 2017 and 2024, the analysis shows how slurs, often framed as jokes, operate across schools, workplaces, media, and digital spaces, embedding exclusion into daily life. These slurs discipline Turkish identity, reinforcing a linguistic and cultural hierarchy that privileges Persianness. Building on Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence and Butler's notion of performativity, the study argues that slurs are not just reflective but constitutive acts that regulate national belonging and racialization. Adapting Alcoff's idea of “ethnorace,” it reveals that Turkishness in Iran is racialized through language, regional affiliation, and perceived disloyalty to Persian national identity. This racialization is deeply gendered: Turkish men are stereotyped as aggressive, while Turkish women are romanticized as obedient and domestic, sustaining patriarchal-nationalist norms. Extending frameworks of stigma and colorblind racism beyond Western contexts, the study shows how non-phenotypical markers of difference produce durable systems of exclusion, normalizing racism through humor, denial, and institutional complicity.

Hashtag ChristianGirl: The White Commodified Self on TikTok

Amanda Hernandez, Sarah Ventimiglia — Tue, 19 May 2026 05:30:28 -0700

Scholars have long examined the intersection of consumption and culture. Other studies note the ways that U.S. Christianity overlaps with consumption culture. This study focuses on the ways this intersection manifests on TikTok by exploring the ways that performances of white womanhood act as a conduit to sell products and messages. We identify three distinct tactics used by content creators. Our analysis reveals that each of these strategies relies on gendered and racialized performances that uphold an idealized version of white Christian womanhood. Our findings suggest that Christian women in this online space embody a white commodified self.

Jürgen Habermas, Symbolic Interactionism, and the Crisis of Public Life

Christopher T. Conner — Tue, 19 May 2026 05:15:13 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Emotions and Mood. Can We Remain Hopeful for the Future?

Krzysztof T. Konecki — Tue, 19 May 2026 04:04:19 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Intimacy in the Occupational Rehabilitation Group for Ultra‐Orthodox Women of Low Socioeconomic Status

Gitit Sagiv Zuri, Avihu Shoshana — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

This ethnographic study of an occupational rehabilitation group for low socioeconomic status ultra-Orthodox women in the Israeli labor market investigates the expression, and role, of intimacy. The findings demonstrate that intimacy appeared early on, revealing an immediate intersubjective understanding between the women, which manifested in empathy, harmony and advocacy, and shared language. They experienced a cross-cultural encounter with a neoliberal model contradicting their values and culture and used their similarity and applied intimacy to emphasize their shared identity and oppose the neoliberal discourse. We discuss intimacy as a practice of hidden, everyday resistance counteracting intercultural tensions and conflicts.

Mask Wearing as an Emotional Practice: Collective Emotional Work in the COVID‐Conscious Digital Counterpublic

Maja Sawicka — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

In this article, I explore the collective emotional dynamics that have contributed to sustaining mask wearing as a significant practice within a selected online COVID-advocacy group. Combining Hochschild's notion of collective emotional work with Scheer's concept of emotions as practices, I document how community members “do” concern for COVID-19, transform shame into pride, and manage anger in digital interactions. Rather than concentrating on the factual differences that distinguish groups centered around COVID, this investigation highlights the emotional foundations of truth-making in digital counterpublics, revealing how collective emotional processes contribute to adherence to protective measures.

Moral Entrepreneurs of the Mastodon Migration

Sean Ward, Jenny L. Davis, Adrian Mackenzie, Paul K. Jones — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Social media platforms are imbued with politics and values through an interplay of coded architectures, platform policies, economic models, and algorithmic curation, together shaping and shaped by the activities of users. This dynamic set of relations is most evident during moments of disruption, in which platform politics and values come under debate. We examine one such case of disruption through a mixed methods analysis of post-Musk Twitter, tracking the mass user migration from Twitter to Mastodon—an alternative platform distinguished by its federated servers and decentralization. Observed through the lens of symbolic interaction, Twitter and Mastodon are mediated moral enterprises, with migrating users acting as moral entrepreneurs who make claims through both words and actions about how social media platforms ought (and ought not) operate. At the intersection of symbolic interaction and social media studies, we theorize mediated moral enterprise as a tripartite process of idealization, materialization, and actualization, documenting these interrelated elements in the Mastodon migration. This work offers a twofold contribution, elucidating the conditions of a platform disruption while expanding and adapting theories of moral enterprise and moral entrepreneurship for platform-mediated contexts.

The Trajectory of an Agreement: Tracing Objectivated Knowledge Across a Series of Mundane Encounters

Sarah Hitzler, Jonas Kramer — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

This article adds to the sociological study of time and temporality in everyday life by building on recent longitudinal developments within conversation analysis. It investigates members' methods to bring about change within their shared (life) world. It examines how, as part of an extended project of action, one agreement made early on is continually re-evoked, used for accounting purposes, and serves to prepare specific actions. This “item of objectivated knowledge” ties together a series of situations. Thereby, members create shared expectations which serve as resources to solve local action problems and which can be revoked once those problems no longer exist.

The Interactional Pathways of Mass Killings: Toward a Novel Understanding of Rampage School Shootings

Anne Nassauer — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Rampage school shootings, where students go to their own school to randomly kill classmates, teachers, friends, and strangers, are among the most drastic types of human behavior. While research increasingly points to interaction dynamics as being key for the emergence of crime and violence, scholars have not yet systematically studied interaction dynamics in school shootings. Further, existing research usually focuses on a handful of cases where many victims were killed and overlook rampages with no or few fatalities. To fill these gaps, my study analyzes interaction dynamics in a full sample of US rampage school shootings. It triangulates novel types of data in a mixed methods approach that combines in-depth qualitative analyses, cross-case comparisons, and descriptive statistics. Findings highlight that specific interactional patterns to rampages exist that correlate to whether shootings end in mass killings. Shooters systematically use interactional pathways in which they avoid facing victims. They further show that most shooters are bad at killing, despite motivation and planning. Findings have implications for our understanding of violence and school safety, as well as the role of situational interaction in leading to social outcomes more broadly. Please see video abstract at: https://youtu.be/H7xHMQd5RT0.

“Are We Watching the Same Video?”: On the Definition of the Situation and Audience Sense‐Making on Social Media about the Sexual Abuse Allegations Against Marilyn Manson

Stacey Hannem, Christopher J. Schneider — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

How situations are defined is a social process. This paper examines how users on YouTube make sense of the alleged sexual assault perpetrated by shock rocker Marilyn Manson in the 2007 “Heart Shaped-Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)” music video. Actor Evan Rachel Wood revealed in a 2022 documentary that she had been “essentially raped” by Manson in the video. Using qualitative media analysis, we collected and analyzed a total of 5466 user-generated comments on YouTube posted in response to the “Heart-Shaped Glasses” video after the publication of Wood's allegations. The research question that we explore is: How do users on YouTube understand the “Heart-Shaped Glasses” video in light of Wood's allegations? Does the video depict a consensual simulated sex scene or is it documentation of a criminal sexual assault? Our analysis and findings reveal that users' interpretations of social cues provided in the video are subject to external forces of narration. Specifically, users draw explicitly and implicitly on both rape myths and on counter-narratives stemming from the #MeToo movement to justify their support for Manson or for Wood, respectively. Media narratives about the “Heart-Shaped Glasses” video and the user's orientation to the problem of sexual violence appear to be more salient social cues than the video footage itself in determining how commenters defined the video. These findings offer some insights specifically into how definitional processes, with respect to sexual violence, draw on socially established narratives, like rape myths or pro-survivor activism. More generally, the findings provide a lens to consider how definitional processes operate in other kinds of situations in which the definition of actions recorded on video is contested. Video Abstract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo7qxmTwA-U.

Intrapersonal Interactions on Social Media: Self‐Curatorship within the Museum of Self

Sicong Zhao — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

This study investigates the intrapersonal dimension of social media use through an analysis of Chinese indie music enthusiasts' digital practices, exploring how individuals engage in self-oriented social media activities for documenting, reflecting, and constructing the self. Through interviews and online ethnography, the study uncovers three key aspects: social media serves as a digital platform for self-documentation and self-reflection, forming the basis for digital intrapersonal interactions; the act of posting self-oriented content is a pivotal moment for intrapersonal interactions, facilitating transition and integration between the “I” and the “me”; and intrapersonal interaction on social media demonstrates temporal dynamics in self-construction processes, interweaving past, present, and future selves. Drawing from this empirical investigation, the study proposes concepts of museum of self and self-curatorship to capture the unique nature of self-oriented social media practices. The study aims to bridge the gap between the multi-faceted understanding of self-construction in symbolic interactionism and the lack of attention to intrapersonal interactions in social media research. It contributes to the ongoing dialogue within symbolic interactionism by further extending its framework into digital research, providing new insights into the processes of understanding and constructing the self in a digitally mediated era and highlighting the constructive interactions within an individual.

Paradoxes of Displeasure: Understanding Collegiate Hookup Culture's Resilience to Negative Emotional Energy

Lisa Wade — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Most US college students express ambivalence toward collegiate sexual cultures. Why, then, do hookup cultures persist? This article uses Interaction Ritual Theory to explore five emotional pathways through hookup culture: interaction ritual chains with distinct emotional trajectories. At least four are argued to potentially reproduce hookup culture, but only one produces primarily positive emotions. This analysis suggests hookup cultures can persist despite producing widespread negative emotions. I conclude that, while robust social scenes are previously believed to include high levels of positive emotions, it may rather be the mix of positive and negative energy that gives social scenes their power.

Invoking (Dis)Likes at the Dinner Table

Hansun Zhang Waring — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Socializing children into proper eating habits often entails a great deal of “interactional bargaining”, a central resource of which comprises food assessments. Based on video recordings of mealtime conversations that involve a 3-year-old child and her parents, the current project further investigates how claims of (dis)likes are differentially deployed by parents and the child in pre-taste and post-taste positions (i.e., before and after tasting the food) not as expressions of stable psychological preferences, but as interactional resources for advancing the participants' own agendas in situ. As will be argued, it is via being repeatedly run through these (dis)like sequences that the child ascertains, deliberates, and revises her taste, all the while learning to use claims of (dis)likes to service her own projects in these food negotiations. Findings of this study contribute to our growing understandings of subject-side assessments within the context of managing food resistance and socializing food preference in parent–child interaction.

Accounting for Friendlessness: Stigma and the Quest for an Honorable Self

Laura Eramian, Peter Mallory — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

How do people who identify as friendless make sense of their condition in a moment when friendship is extolled for the support and satisfaction it offers? This article draws on interviews with 21 adults in an Atlantic Canadian city. We argue that our interviewees were rarely at ease with their friendlessness and were at pains to recover an honorable self as people who felt looked down upon. We identify six types of interpretations of friendlessness, which we treat as “accounts” that aim to “neutralize” unexpected conduct and bring order to experience. The article contributes to understandings of difficulty in personal life and the accounts literature by attending to people's failures to find logic in their circumstances.

The Ethnographic Ear: Circularity and Emotion in Carceral Soundscapes

Juliana de Oliveira Horst — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 473-475, May 2026.

Inhabiting Science in an Age of Global Institutional Diffusion

Amelia K. Hawbaker — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 476-479, May 2026.

Dancing Their Hearts Out

Richard E. Ocejo — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 480-483, May 2026.

The Bonds of Black Brotherhood: Brotherhood University and Black Friendships

Julien C. Grayer — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 469-472, May 2026.

Issue Information

Tue, 12 May 2026 07:23:45 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 221-222, May 2026.

The “We” and “Me” of Identity in Hazardous Industry Organizations: Face Work Tactics Among Practicing Engineers

Sarah Maslen, Jan Hayes, Michael James Walsh — Sat, 09 May 2026 01:06:36 -0700

In this paper, we use Goffman's notion of “face work” to examine how pipeline engineers perform and present their working selves as competent experts. Our analysis identifies various faces and face work tactics, including a focus on professional judgment, actively selling one's expertise relative to others, protective self-deprecatory strategies, and positioning self as part of an organization. This face work mostly reflects a focus on the individual that is out of step with typical explanations of structure and agency in studies of engineering work and disaster causation. In only rare cases did engineers effectively hide behind their organization in presenting their working selves.

Performing Integrity: Managing Misalignment while Researching Transgressive Social Worlds

Thaddeus Müller — Sat, 09 May 2026 01:00:55 -0700

The qualitative literature criticizing REBs suggests that researchers should develop an approach to research ethics that does justice to their daily practice of fieldwork. In this article, I contribute to this exploration by presenting three cases of negotiating research ethics while researching transgressive social worlds. These cases are related to political tension while researching cannabis shops, privacy issues while using visual methods to research an anarchist community, and contentions with a research participant while researching academic fraud. In the description of these cases, I highlight the essential role of performing integrity, which is an interactive and dynamic social process in which researchers present themselves as reliable and credible. In the cases that I present here, there were instances of misalignment, which triggered an internal conversation on the part of the researcher, who subsequently reflected on possible aligning actions. This article discusses how performing integrity and (re-)aligning activities differ by audience and by research phase.

Formation of Distance‐Based Orientation: Political Identity through Relational Positioning in Israel

Tammar Friedman, Asaf Saadon — Wed, 06 May 2026 06:37:54 -0700

Distance-based orientation describes how pejorative labels may serve as anchor points for political identity. Existing research on political labeling has largely emphasized stigmatization, overlooking how labels may acquire durability and orienting capacity without losing pejorative force. Drawing on publicly circulating discourse, we trace positioning typologies around the label “Bibist” that render it an interactional achievement through repeated positioning rather than semantic transformation. This analysis extends personalized affective politics beyond top-down populist strategy, showing how political actors orient themselves relationally to a persona-based anchor rather than to traditional partisan ideology.

An Outline of a Theory of Play

Seth Abrutyn — Wed, 06 May 2026 06:21:27 -0700

Play is often dismissed as trivial, yet it is a fundamental and adaptive aspect of human and mammalian life. This paper develops a sociological theory of play, treating it as a total social fact that spans biological, psychological, and social dimensions. Drawing on classical and contemporary sociology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and ethnography, I argue that play varies along two central dimensions: autotelic motivation—whether the activity is engaged in for its own intrinsic pleasure—and structural formalization—the degree to which rules, resources, and social arrangements shape the encounter. This framework accounts for a wide range of activities, from solitary and parallel play to games, sports, and collective cultural practices, while explaining variation in affective engagement, temporality, and relational dynamics. The paper further explores implications for studying childhood development, adult play, and highly ritualized or formalized activities, highlighting opportunities for integrating interdisciplinary research. By situating play as both serious and consequential, this work advances a positive sociology attentive to the pleasures and sociality that sustain human life.

Accomplishing Ethics‐Work as a Generic Social Process

Deana Simonetto, Antony Puddephatt — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 19:11:33 -0700

Existing systems of university research ethics are often criticized by those in the qualitative research tradition. A common thread is that ethics cannot be fully anticipated before the research begins, as is expected by most institutional review boards. This is because learning about the ethical priorities of a group must happen emergently, alongside the discovery of other concepts and patterns in our analyses. As such, we introduce the concept of a grounded and processual notion of “ethics-work” that happens in ways not well captured in formal ethical applications to research ethics boards. To best explore the dynamics of these sometimes clandestine aspects of ethics-work, we make use of Robert Prus' generic social process framework. Developing a research agenda to study ethics-work as a social process, we invite others to reflect on their own ethical negotiations in the field and provide lessons for others. Our aim is to move closer to an approach to ethical engagements that are more realistic, flexible, adaptable, and grounded within community contexts.

Gonzo Governance and the Media Logic of American Fascism

David L. Altheide — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 16:53:31 -0700

Symbolic interactionist concepts and theory underlie a communication-based theory of the authoritarian takeover of the United States. Analysis of mass media and digital formats that propelled the campaigns of Donald Trump illustrates how his identity and ability to define situations with digital media contributed to the assault on major American institutions and democratic processes. The impact is shown of the role of media logic and mediatization in promoting Gonzo Governance as an alternative to established institutions and norms in favor of a new order led by Donald Trump. I suggest that the generalized other is less significant than an Algorithmic Generalized Other, which refers to the complex interplay between technology, social interaction, and individual identity in the digital age. I argue that these same media, especially legacy media, can help counter the fascist onslaught of American institutions, including the rule of law.

Surviving the Edge: Precarious Lives on the Venice Beach Boardwalk

Jacob Avery — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 04:35:12 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in the Field: Revelations Made in “Sticky Moments”

Rory Sommers, Allison Chenier, Andrew Hathaway — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 03:47:05 -0700

The impossibility of knowing in advance what might be ethically contentious in ethnographic research is exemplified by the dilemmas faced by having a multitude of inside and outside positionalities that are often fluid and evolve throughout a study. Based on active interviews and fieldwork in two studies of police and bylaw officers and municipal officials, this article reflects on unanticipated ethical challenges arising throughout the research process, from the recruitment of participants to obtaining informed consent to trying to “fit in” as both insider and outsider. The resulting tension is unavoidable, inevitable, and generates new insights based on actual experiences that are often unforeseeable. Ethnographers accordingly rely on their own instincts when deciding what is ethical rather than fixed protocols prescribed by Research Ethics Boards. To complicate things further, note the authors, such dilemmas are a manifestation of evolving power relations between researchers and informants and institutional gatekeepers needed to gain access, but with differing priorities than those imposed by REB regimes.

Sex Lives of the Chaste: A Lesson in Sociological Ambivalence

Lukas Szrot — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:09:09 -0800

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

The Goffman Nobody Knows

Colin Jerolmack — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 05:17:41 -0800

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

The Adventures of Structure

Iddo Tavory — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 06:54:39 -0800

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Being Patient

Leo McCann — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 06:02:23 -0800

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

“The Civil Rights Movement of Our Time”: Reentry Workers' Moral Identity Work

André Vaughn Ivey, Douglas P. Schrock — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 21:57:41 -0800

Based on in-depth interviews with social workers in prison reentry programs, which aim to help formerly incarcerated people integrate back into their communities, we analyze the discursive construction of moral selves. We show how reentry workers used discourses of religion and social justice to portray themselves as altruistically motivated to do the work. We also show how they rhetorically invoked shared experiences with trauma and incarceration to present themselves as compassionate. Their moral identity work sometimes varied according to their biographies or the organization they worked for (e.g., faith-based vs. secular), and it sometimes resonated with moral discourses of progressive whiteness or racial uplift. We conclude by addressing contributions to reentry research, conceptualizing and studying identity work, and understanding moral identity work as a generic social process that can be implicated in systemic inequality reproduction.

All I See Are the Gaps: Semiotic Realignments in the Post‐Renaissance Tattoo Culture

William Ryan Force — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 21:37:26 -0800

This paper presents the claim that the contemporary Post-Renaissance tattoo culture—a period of time subsequent to the professionalization and the relative destigmatization of tattooing—can be characterized by a series of semiotic shifts in cultural perception(s) of this practice. Using the Zerubavelian framework of cognitive sociology, the author suggests retronyms and changes in the marked/unmarked indicate that the occupational world and esthetic styles of contemporary tattoo culture have undergone a cultural turn. Qualitative data are drawn from participant observation, interviews, and content analysis of social media to illustrate these transformations.

Emancipatory Potential of Naming: A Study on Church Employees' Personal Stories of Negative Experiences

Minna Leinonen, Dorien Van De Mieroop, Melisa Stevanovic — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 17:56:20 -0800

To address interactionally troublesome exchanges (e.g., bullying, discrimination, or harassment) in the workplace, giving a name to negative personal experiences is crucial. Drawing on discussions of hermeneutical injustice, we explore the emancipatory potential of naming in post-hoc tellings of these experiences, with particular attention to accountability and face-work in naming practices. Our analysis of interviews with church employees illustrates how managing discrepancies between the story world and the storytelling world, as well as the degree of dependency on the teller–recipient relationship, shapes naming practices with implications for agency and accountability. While tellings can be emancipatory for the teller, agency can become jeopardized.

Temporal and Spatial Organization in Collaborative Work by Nurses in an Emergency and Critical Care Center

Hiroki Maeda, Yumi Nishimura — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 02:00:34 -0800

This study describes the work at an emergency and critical care center, focusing on the collaboration of multiple nurses when moving patients from the outpatient department to the ward. This study is an ethnomethodological ethnography based on fieldwork at a hospital and analysis of video data. The patient transport process is temporally organized into three parts: request, confirmation, and transport, and each patient's process is conducted in parallel. The nursing station is the “center of coordination,” where nurses organize their colleagues' activities, achieving the division of labor and enabling them to coordinate multiple time flows.

The Narrative Construction of Identities: Scenes, Audiences, and Generalized Others

Thomas Janoski — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:33:49 -0800

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Erving Goffman: The Visible Scholar

Gary Alan Fine — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:20:30 -0800

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Forged in Heat: Craft, Body, and Knowledge in Fire Craft

Claudio E. Benzecry — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 20:57:59 -0800

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Constructing Difference: Maternal Boundary‐Work in Science‐Based and Natural Mom Groups on Facebook

Darryn DiFrancesco — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:24:54 -0800

Boundary-work describes the activities of social groups as they seek to differentiate themselves from others to establish credibility, authority, or to protect their interests. While a growing body of literature explores occupational boundary-work in health care, limited research has focused on how lay actors practice boundary-work online. This study draws on 18 months of qualitative research from a comparative internet ethnography of two Facebook “mom groups”—one “science-based,” the other “natural”—to examine how mothers with ideologically divergent concepts of health engage in boundary-work. I find that both groups used a common set of strategies including gatekeeping, identifying legitimate knowledge, dichotomous “othering,” and policing. However, tactics differed. While the science group emphasized rationality, scientific/medical authority, and exclusion, the natural group prioritized epistemic pluralism, personal health agency, and inclusion—differences that mirror occupational boundary-work between biomedicine and holistic medicine in health care. Situating these findings in the context of intensive and neoliberal mothering, I argue that maternal boundary-work is a response to the pressures of contemporary parenting. Through boundary-work, mothers align themselves with concepts of ideal mothering while distancing themselves from perceived inferior approaches. I conclude that insofar as these strategies are inherently individualist, they do little to ameliorate collective problems faced by mothers and their families.

“I'm a Good Guy Who Deserves Better, Yet Nobody Wants to Give me Better”: The Accounts of Nice Guys

Brooke Weinmann, Dennis D. Waskul — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 08:21:32 -0800

Within Western popular culture and online discourse, a “Nice Guy” is someone who enacts niceness for which they believe they are owed, deserving of, or entitled to something in return—especially the romantic or sexual attention of women. In this study, we examine the use of accounts in personal narratives told in an anonymous online discussion forum about Nice Guys. In their stories of their failed pursuits with women, the men in our study often implement elements of hybrid masculinity by framing themselves as existing outside the hegemonic masculine ideal. We conceptualize the symbolic meaning of “niceness” which, as our data suggests, is intertwined with perceived authenticity. We find that the men in the Nice Guy forum primarily offer two accounts—excuses and justifications—for their behavior toward women and their inability to “successfully” attract or date them. We also suggest two other types of accounts: (1) admissions, in which an actor admits to the pejorative quality of their action and takes full responsibility, and (2) denials, in which an actor denies both the pejorative and their responsibility for an action.

From River to Review: An Autoethnographic Inquiry into the Negotiated Self in Academic Publishing

Alvenio G. Mozol Jr. — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 02:36:04 -0700

This autoethnographic sketch examines how academic rejection is socially constructed as a powerful social object, impacting the academic self and influencing meaning-making processes within the “publish or perish” university social world. Drawing on symbolic interactionism, particularly concepts of the situated self, role-taking, and negotiated order, I trace a personal journey from childhood immersion in nature, a realm of differently-mediated meaning, to navigating the symbolic currents of scholarly publishing. Through reflective narrative, I analyze how the meaning of rejection is taken on, redefined, and how humor and engagement with nature serve as interactional strategies for maintaining well-being and sustaining a resilient professional identity. This piece contributes to interactionist understandings of academic life as a complex social world where meanings are continuously negotiated and the self is perpetually in formation.

Contrastive Self‐Categorization as a Resource for Defending Cultural Stereotypes

Nadja Tadic — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0700

This study explores how speakers defend morally sanctionable cultural stereotypes from challenges in adult second language classrooms. Within the conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis frameworks, I examine two extended video-recorded class discussions in which students maintain face-threatening, stereotypical portrayals of different cultures despite repeated challenges from their recipients. The analysis highlights one resource as an effective defensive strategy: the construction of the speaker's own cultural category as an evident contrast to the stereotyped culture. With these categorial contrasts, speakers elicit acceptance of their morally accountable talk, in the process reinforcing exclusionary category work. Findings contribute to symbolic interaction and second-language education research.

A Sociology of Creativity from Canadian Art and Design Universities

Jiayi Tian — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 06:08:45 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

“Time‐Tripping” and Memory‐Making: A Grounded Theory of Grounded Theory

Barry John Gibson, Robert Porter, Richard Ekins — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 21:14:15 -0700

This paper explores the development of grounded theory methodology through the lens of memory studies, introducing the concept of “time-tripping” as a key generic social process. The paper identifies several sub-processes of time-tripping, including “reclaiming,” “resisting,” “retro-casting,” and “landscaping,” which shape the methodological “imaginary.” Through a “grounded theory of grounded theory” approach, the authors analyze how these processes, influenced by individual and collective memory, authorship, and power dynamics, have contributed to the pluralism of the method. The paper concludes by suggesting that time-tripping offers a valuable framework for understanding the social processes of memory and forgetting in science.

The Everyday of Epistemic Tensions in U.S. Psychiatry

Baptiste Brossard — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:50:01 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Modernity, Culture, and Feeling Authentic

Seth Abrutyn — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 21:28:43 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Rethinking Face‐to‐Face Interaction: Lessons from Studies of “Autistic Sociality”

Lars E. F. Johannessen — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 03:04:16 -0700

Face-to-face interaction is a foundational concept in microsociology. This article surveys the social experiences of autistic people, who are commonly known for having a strained relationship with interactions face to face. By interpretively reviewing and synthesizing the broader literature on “autistic sociality,” the article provides a nuanced account of autistic people's relationship to the face-to-face domain. This account, in turn, helps expand and diversify microsociological theory by (1) suggesting the potential existence of a distinct autistic interaction order and (2) illuminating alternative perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of face-to-face interaction for communication and social bonding.

“Do You Want to Continue?”—Coordinating the Closing of Conversations and Managing Face Concerns

Emmi Koskinen — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 23:30:08 -0700

This study investigates how participants manage the decision to end or continue their conversation when directly asked about their preferences. The dataset consists of 19 conversations where the researcher explicitly asked if the two participants wanted to continue their conversation, thus causing some potential interactional trouble for the participants. The participants' decision to continue was intertwined with the local sequential context in which the question occurred. The results show how participants follow the norms prioritizing face-saving even in a quasi-natural setting and illuminate how micro-level interaction order can outweigh individual preferences in ending conversations.

The MBTI as a Cultural Meme, Its Diffusion on Chinese Social Media, and Its Significance for Millennials' and Gen‐Zs' Selves and Identities

J. Patrick Williams, Si Wu — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0700

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI, has recently gained popularity among Chinese millennials and Gen Zs. Framing the MBTI as a cultural item or meme, this article explores its emerging significance on Chinese social media. We combine Gary Fine's conception of cultural items' diffusion with the concept of cultural memes to show how the MBTI is Known, Usable, Functional, Appropriate, and Triggered (KUFAT) among young Chinese on social media platforms. Our analysis highlights the memetic spread of the MBTI among Chinese millennials and Gen Zs and demonstrates how they use the MBTI to express self-understandings and social identities that supplement those in traditional Chinese culture. The study offers new empirical insights into the cultural and social-psychological dimensions of the MBTI among Chinese youth. In addition, it offers new conceptual insights regarding the use of the KUFAT model for research on social media networks, thus generalizing its relevance beyond small groups and their idiocultural contexts.

Intersectional Feminism and the Politics of Respectability in Iran

Foroogh Mohammadi — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 03:05:02 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Community Choirs: Communities of Practice and Dilemma

Jiwon Yun — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 02:18:42 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Drama at Work: From “Destructive Obedience” to Resistive Practices

Philippe Sormani — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 23:53:50 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Angry Place Claims and the Deceptive Female Body

Morten Kyed, Betül Özkaya — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 23:19:55 -0700

In this article, we explore bodily challenges women can experience when making angry place claims in social interactions based on interviews with 47 women across two generations and Candace Clark's concepts of social place claims and micro-hierarchy. Our empirical analysis explores situations where women experience that their bodies negatively affect the reception of their anger and the enclosed challenges they experience in claiming an “angry place.” First, we examine how general stereotypes associated with female biology challenge women's anger expression. Second, we explore how specific physical traits, such as weaker bodies and shrill voices, put some women at a disadvantage when they feel angry and wish to assert authority. Finally, we consider how crying when angered, a mainly female phenomenon, is communicatively deceptive and undermines efforts to claim place based on righteous anger in social interactions. We conclude that the body matters for social negotiations of place claims and that microsociology could benefit from further explorations of the role of the body vis-à-vis place claims.

Managing Popular Culture Stigmas: A Comparative Analysis of Managing Stigmas Associated with Country and Hip Hop Fandom

Braden Leap — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 03:24:15 -0700

Though millions of individuals enjoy stigmatized music, television, and literature, how popular culture fans manage potential stigmatization associated with their fandom has received limited attention. I address this topic through a comparative analysis of how Peloton instructors sought to manage stigmas after portraying themselves as at risk of being stigmatized for their self-proclaimed country and hip hop music fandom. Across 58 stationary bike classes set to either genre, instructors creatively deployed a range of stigma management techniques such as disclosure etiquette, transcendence, deflection, and discrediting discreditors. Although hip hop is generally considered more stigmatized than country in the United States, instructors also repeatedly stressed contemporary country musicians' incorporation of hip hop had rescued country from its stigmatized past. These results are discussed in relation to emerging literature on stigmatization, inequalities, and power—with a particular focus on how individuals manage potential stigmatization stemming from popular culture fandom. I argue that popular culture fans manage potential stigmatization by creatively navigating meanings associated with popular cultural products in settings structured by racial and class inequalities.

Resisting the Confines of Colonialism, within and with Walls

Robin James Smith — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 22:28:25 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

The Stories We're Told: Nation‐Specific Narratives of Race and Racism

Brandon A. Jackson — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 04:24:06 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

“Excluded Participation”: Some Observations of Non‐Reciprocal Interaction in a Danish Fifth Grade Classroom

Jørn Bjerre — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 06:42:46 -0700

This article introduces the concept of excluded participation to examine how inclusion and exclusion are negotiated in real time within a Danish fifth-grade classroom. Using a micro-sociological framework, particularly the work of Erving Goffman, the study focuses on the case of Anders, a student whose participation is symbolically recognized yet functionally unreciprocated. Through observations and narrative analysis, this study illustrates how Anders' engagement takes on an as-if quality, sustained through a collective mise-en-scène of inclusion that conceals his exclusion. This demonstrates how exclusion can persist in ostensibly inclusive settings, not through overt rejection but through the absence of reciprocal validation. The study thereby highlights the need to account for the micro-processes of interaction that shape participation in everyday school life as a foundation for developing realistic inclusion policies.

Beyond Subculture and Post‐Subculture: Embracing Sensitizing Concepts

Philip Lewin — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 06:34:05 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Embedded Interactions and Selective Disclosure: Network Effects on Conversations aboard Skylab

Michael Schultz, Leslie DeChurch, Noshir Contractor — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:14:47 -0700

How do absent others influence our interactions? We argue in this paper that interactions are embedded within networks formed by chains of specific relationships between known third parties. The anticipation of future interactions with external others conditions our interpretation of the current situation and affects our behavior in the interaction. We employ embedded interactions to analyze the case of conflicts between the astronauts and ground control during NASA's Skylab 4 missions. Our analysis reveals how anticipation of eventual interactions between uninvolved actors led the crew to withhold important information from ground control, information that would have been shared with ground control if the astronauts had been able to prevent its future transmission. Skylab astronauts were heavily concerned with how their actions would be framed through these chains of interactions and eventually interpreted by Congress and the general public. The astronauts' attempts to save face by controlling information about themselves at these distant sites led them to deviate from protocol and produced the conflicts for which Skylab 4 is best known.

“Being Nice” as Modus Vivendi in Classrooms: A Collective Behavior Approach to Deviant Behavior in Primary Schools

Doris Bühler‐Niederberger, Leon Dittmann, Claudia Schuchart — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 17:39:10 -0700

This study of first-year primary school draws on Goffman's concept of “collective behavior” to examine how order is established and disrupted through the mutual adjustment of all participants' actions. We employed a multi-method longitudinal design, using semi-standardized observations and qualitative interviews with teachers and children at three points during the year. We found that children contribute to the social order of the classroom by “being nice,” which means being recognizably willing and ready to acknowledge and respond to teachers' expectations and respect their authority. Meanwhile, rule-breaking is frequent and inevitable, and teachers accept this when children are obviously “nice.” It is only when this “being nice” prerequisite is no longer met that teachers identify a disruptive child as being outside the norm and the child may then become a “case.”

Where Memoir and Method Collide: Reconstructing Rules of Sociological Inquiry

Jacob Avery — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 01:03:15 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Authoritarian Beliefs in an Unstable World

Jennifer M. Whitmer — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:59:07 -0700

Symbolic Interaction, EarlyView.

Types of Struggles in Disrupted Interaction: A Case of Hard‐of‐Hearing Employees

Ida Friis Thing — Sat, 31 May 2025 03:57:40 -0700

Everyone experiences disrupted interactions in their everyday life. However, research indicates that people with functional impairments are particularly exposed to patterns of interactional inequality at work. Despite this, little is known about the specific disrupted interactions in everyday life and the various types of interactional struggles this group encounters. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two Danish workplaces and 29 interviews with Danish hard-of-hearing employees, colleagues, and managers, I identified four types of struggles in disrupted interactions: (1) concealing interactional disruptions, (2) managing conflicts, (3) keeping track of the conversation, and (4) reintegrating into interactions. This article highlights how some hard-of-hearing employees are at constant risk of defacement, micro-conflicts, and failed interaction rituals, constituting a form of social stratification. The article contributes to existing micro-sociological literature on interaction by conceptualizing different types of struggles in disrupted interaction.

“Bad Things Happen in Philadelphia”: Managing Stigma and Threats in the Wake of False Criminal Accusations

Steven Windisch — Thu, 29 May 2025 05:49:40 -0700

In the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. election, the boundary between activism and extremism blurred, with election officials reporting violent threats and false accusations of election fraud. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, these attacks provide a unique lens for examining the consequences of being falsely labeled a criminal. This study utilizes data from in-depth interviews with 15 election officials to explore the nature of informal false accusations, participants' subjective interpretations of these labels, and their behavioral and emotional strategies for managing their “spoiled identity.” The findings highlight the criminalizing and dehumanizing effects of these accusations, with officials enduring verbal abuse, hate speech, and death threats. These experiences triggered emotional and psychological distress, including feelings of isolation, helplessness, and damage to their credibility and personal safety. Theoretically, this study contributes to identity negotiation research by demonstrating how distorted and violent societal reflections not only hinder adaptive identity work but also compel individuals to adopt defensive or compartmentalized strategies to preserve their sense of self. By examining the emotional and behavioral consequences of false criminal labels, this study enriches our understanding of stigma management and the resilience of public service professionals in the face of personal and professional attacks.

Normalizing the Shamed Self: Stigma, Neutralization and “Narrative Credibility” in Interviews on White‐Collar Transgression

Thaddeus Müller — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 06:08:26 -0800

In this article, I analyze my interviews with Mark (pseudonym), a social scientist who committed major academic fraud in over 50 top-tier journal articles in the first decade of this century. I explain how stigma played a central role in how Mark and I shaped our interaction. I focus on how Mark, a former Professor and Dean with a distinguished career, constructed normalizing narratives using neutralization techniques. Mark was named a selfish, narcissistic person and labeled as an academic folk devil, which hurt him deeply. He felt he was vilified, ostracized, and demonized. I also focus on my reaction to Mark's representation of being stigmatized, specifically on how I navigated between empathizing and challenging to elicit answers with “narrative credibility.” This article contributes to the field of neutralization techniques in two ways. First, by focusing on the specific interview situation, I show how neutralization techniques are constructed in the unfolding interactional dynamics between the researcher and the research participant. Second, this research describes how neutralization techniques are used to normalize “the shamed self.”

The Self from a Radical Interactionist's Perspective: Its Basic Components, Phylogenesis, and Ontogenesis

Lonnie Athens — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 06:10:33 -0700

The radical interactionist (RI) perspective is based on three root images: (1) collective act, (2) the self, and (3) social habitat. Considerable attention has already been devoted to all these root images, except for the self, which is still in need of exposition. During this exposition of the self, its basic operating components are not only explained, but also contrasted with those examined from a traditional symbolic interactionist (SI) perspective. It is concluded that the idea of the self as conceived from the newer perspective of RI surpasses the view of the self from the much older SI perspective; the RI conception of the self offers a more consistent and less confounding explanation of its basic operational components, phylogenesis, and ontogenesis. Unlike this SI view of the self, which operates on the principle of sociality, the RI view, which operates on the principle of domination, accomplishes this explanation without succumbing to romantic idealism.