英文论文日常生活社会学

Ann. Rev. Sociol. 1987. 13:217-35 Copyright © 1987 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved EVERYDAY LIFE SOCIOLOGY Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler Department of Sociology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130 Andrea Fontana Department of Sociology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154 Abstract Everyday life sociology comprises a broad spectrum of micro perspectives: symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and existential sociology. We discuss the underlying themes that bind these diverse subfields into a unified approach to the study of social interaction. We outline the historical development of everyday life sociology, indicating the individuals, ideas, and surrounding context that helped to shape this evolving theoretical movement. We then examine three contemporary developments in everyday life sociology that represent significant theoretical, substantive, and methodological advances: existential sociology, the sociology of emotions, and conversation analysis. Within these areas, we outline major themes, review recent literature, and evaluate their contribution to sociology. Every- day life sociology has had influence outside its arena, stimulating grand theorists to create various micro-macro syntheses. We consider these and their relation to the everyday life themes. We conclude by discussing the major critiques and assess the future promise and problems of this perspective. INTRODUCTION Any attempt to offer a brief but thorough outline of the focus and scope of everyday life sociology is difficult because of its diversity and the lack of systematic integration among its subfields. In fact, the sociology of everyday 217 0360-0572/87/0815 -0217502.00 www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews 218 ADLER, ADLER & FONTANA life is an umbrella term encompassing several related but distinct theoretical perspectives: symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, labeling theory, phenom- enology, ethnomethodology, and existential sociology. The questions arise, then: Is everyday life sociology merely a collection of fragmented parts, arbitrarily referred to as a single perspective for the sake of maintaining proprietary interests? Is there anything that characterizes the everyday life perspective as a distinctive body of theory? We argue that everyday life sociology does represent a theoretical arena (although it is often associated with certain methods~ and substantive interests) characterized by a climate of intellectual compatibility and eclectic synthesis among sociological thinkers using a micro perspective. Within this overarching approach, individual practitioners can seek relevance for their empirical findings by drawing on a variety of interrelated perspectives, incorporating ideas from diverse camps into their own theoretical formulations. The everyday life field has thus been one of evolving adaptation, with new subfields emerging out of ideas creatively drawn from both within and outside of micro sociology. MAJOR TENETS OF EVERYDAY LIFE SOCIOLOGY The Critique of Macro Sociology A central impetus to the development of everyday life sociology was the growing dissatisfaction in mid-twentieth century American social thought with the approach contained in classical and contemporary macro theory. Both positivism and critical sociology were seen as overly deterministic in their portrayal of the individual in society: The actor was depicted as either a tabula rasa, internalizing the norms and values of society out of a desire for group membership, or as a homo economicus, developing social, political, and ideological characteristics as a result of his/her class membership. As a result, these traditional approaches generated an overly passive and con- strained view of the actor. In its determinism, macro sociology also tended to be a monocausal gloss, failing to capture the complexity of the everyday world. Some of the early critiques of macro sociology from the everyday life perspectiv e include Douglas (1970a), Filmer et al (1972), Lyman & Scott(1970), Psathas (1968, 1973), Tiryakian (1962, 1965, 1968), Wilson (1970), and Zimmerman & Wieder (1970). Everyday life sociologists critiqued traditional sociology epistemologically for its "absolutist" stance toward studying natural phenomena (DoUglas 1970a, 1976; Douglas & Johnson 1977; Feyerabend 1972; Johnson 1975; 1For a fuller ’discussion of the various epistemological stances associated with symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology (with respect to ethnography), and existential sociology, see Adler & Adler (1987). www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews EVERYDAY LIFE 219 Kauffman 1944; Manning 1973; Mehan & Wood 1975; Phillips 1974). They rejected the premise of subject-object dualism: the belief that the subject (knower) and the object (known) can be effectively separated through scienti- fic principles. Procedures such as the objectification, detachment, control, and manipulation of abstracted concepts and variables violate the integrity of the phenomena under study (Cicourel 1964; Douglas 1970a, 1976; Schutz 1962, 1964). Contextuality Everyday life sociologists sought to respect this integrity by studying people in their natural context: the everyday social world (Cicourel 1964; Denzin 1970; Douglas 1970a, 1976; Garfinkel 1967; J. Lofland 1971, 1976). This is the most fundamental and central emphasis of everyday life sociology. Natur- ally occurring interaction is the foundation of all understanding of society. Describing and analyzing the character and implications of everyday life interaction should thus serve as both the beginning and the end point of sociology. This includes the perceptions, feelings, and meanings members experience as well as the micro structure they create in the process. Model of the Actor Everyday life sociologists move from studying interaction and communica- tion in two directions. First, they move inward, toward consciousness, deriv- ing a model of the actor based on people’s everyday life attitudes and behavior. This includes the interactionist view of the self, the ethnomethodo- logical view of cognitive structure, and the existential view of brute being. To a degree, the relationship between consciousness and interaction is seen as reflexive: people are shaped or socialized by interaction as well as in- strumental in shaping the character of interaction. Social Structure Second, they employ a view of social structure and social order that derives from interaction and is also characterized by a reciprocal relation to it. Social structure, organization, and order do not exist independent of the people that interact within them (Blumer 1969). Rather, they are endogenously con- structed, or constituted, as people negotiate their way through interactions (Garfinkel 1967; Heritage 1984; Maines 1977, 1982; Strauss 1978). The rituals and institutions they thus create then influence the character of their behavior through the expectations and micro social norms they yield (Goff- man 1967). Interaction is thus both voluntaristic and structured (but not completely determined) because of this reflexivity. www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews 220 ADLER, ADLER & FONTANA HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EVERYDAY LIFE SOCIOLOGY The groundwork for the development of everyday life sociology was laid in the 1920s and 1930s in two philosophical traditions that established an ideological foundation and direction for micro sociological theory. At the University of Chicago, Mead was forging a pragmatic social behaviorism that would ultimately evolve into symbolic interactionism (Bulmer 1984, Rock 1979). In Germany, Husserl and Schutz were creating the emerging phe- nomenological perspective (Wagner 1983). During this era, however, phe- nomenology and social behaviorism were fairly disparate and isolated, with little reciprocal or combined influence. By the 1950s and 1960s this isolation began to abate. Schutz came to the New School for Social Research where his influence spread among American scholars. Blumer moved from the University of Chicago to the University of California, Berkeley, and brought with him symbolic interactionism, his revision of Mead’s behaviorism. Shortly thereafter he was joined by Goff- man. Blumer’s interactionism (1969) took shape in California, where he in- corporated Mead’s conceptions of the rationally voluntaristic actor, reflexiv- ity, and role-taking, with an emphasis on the way actors construct their worlds through subjective meanings and motivations. He therefore directed his stu- dents to look toward shared meanings established in social interaction and to explore various "meaning worlds" (J. Irwin, personal communication). His work was a critical impetus to the everyday life perspective in sociology. Goffman’s new subfield, dramaturgy, was launched with The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). Influenced by the works of Blumer, Burke, and Durkheim, Goffman offered an analysis of the individual in society which made the arena of interaction the locus of reality, of socialization, and of societal regeneration. Goffman’s work speaks to both roles (the nature of the self) and rules (micro-social norms). Instead of role-taking for the purpose cooperatively aligning their actions with others, Goffman’s actors intentional- ly and manipulatively role-play for the purpose of managing others’ im- pressions of them. This occurs through the interaction rituals of everyday life rituals that shape the individual’s inner self by externally imprinting their rules on him or her at the same time they ensure the self-regulatory character of society (Collins 1980, Fontana 1980, Lofland i980, Vidich Lyman 1985). Garfinkel broadened the everyday life perspective with his Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967). Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology addressed Parsons’ grand questions about social order and social structure, using Schutz’s (1962, 1964, 1966, 1967) hermeneutical perspective of the actor as a vocabulary for www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews EVERYDAY LIFE 221 answering them. He directed practitioners to study the mundane routines of everyday life through which social order is created and maintained. He drew on Husserl (1970a, 1970b, 1973) to focus on the rationality and commonality within people that underlies the situational contextuality of behavior. Ethnomethodology thus differs from other everyday life sociology by being less interested in how situations are defined and how subjective meanings emerge.~ It focuses, rather, on how people negotiate and apply rules which embody the social structure on an everyday level (Heritage 1984, Zimmerman & Wieder 1970). The 1960s and 1970s brought a surge of sociological interest in phenomenology due to the English translation of Schutz’s and Husserl’s work. Sociologists applied these philosophical ideas to an empirical plane and evolved another everyday life perspective: phenomenological sociology.3 Early works in this tradition include Berger & Luckmann (1967), Douglas (1970b), and Psathas (1973). The former tied phenomenology’s emphasis consciousness as the locus of reality to a social constructionist view of society. Douglas’ edited volume contained seminal theoretical essays advanc- ing, critiquing, and synthesizing the ethnomethodological, symbolic in- teractionist, and phenomenological/existential perspectives. This work was one of the first applications of the term "everyday life" to the new sociologies. 4 Psathas’ book further discussed and empirically applied the phenomenological sociology perspective. Everyday life sociology thus had its birth during these decades. It emerged in an atmosphere, especially in California, of eclectic synthesis and excite- ment about the creation and synthesis of new ideas (Manning 1973). Every- day life sociology was also nurtured and shaped by the surrounding back- ground of California’s secularism, heterogeneous beliefs, and pluralistic sub- cultures, fostering an atmosphere of innovation, divergence, and freedom (Vidich & Lyman 1985). From Berkeley, use of the everyday life perspective spread to the other sociology departments of the University of California system, where compatible thinkers were located. Unfortunately, this burgeon- ing perspective was somewhat marred by the in-fighting and drift which effectively prohibited "everyday life" from becoming the focal theme of these 2For a distinction between ethnomethodology and phenomenological sociology, see Rogers (1983) and Zimmerman (1979). For the difference between ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism, see Gallant & Kleinman (1983) and Zimmerman & Wieder (1970). See Johnson (1977) for a contrast between ethnomethodology and existential sociology. Finally, Per- inbanayagam (1974) contrasts ethnomethodology and dramaturgy. 3Zaner (1970) has suggested that we should speak of phenomenologically derived sociology rather than of phenomenological sociology, for the goals of phenomenology as a philosophy are different from those of its sociological derivatives. ’*Douglas first used the term everyday life phenomena in his (1967) work, where he dis- tinguished between "everyday" and "anyday" phenomena. www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews 222 ADLER, ADLER & FONTANA theorists. While a unified concept remained, no movement developed to press for the identification and recognition of all this work under the everyday life rubric. As a result, individual practitioners chose freely from among the various theories, used and combined them as they saw fit, and made their own decisions as to whether they wanted to affiliate themselves with the everyday life label. The late 1970s and 1980s brought a new generation of everyday life sociologists. In this era, we have seen a continuation of both the unity and diversity of the everyday life perspective. On the one hand, there has been a growing awareness of the overarching everyday life label. More people identified their work with everyday life sociology, and a number of books appeared that addressed this theme. Morris (1977) produced a theoretical treatise offering comparisons, contrasts, critiques, and historical discussions of the various "creative," or everyday life perspectives. Mackie (1985) em- ployed a phenomenological/existential perspective to analyze the drift of the modern everyday world and the individual’s alienated role within it. Text- books were offered by Douglas and his colleagues (1980), Weigert (1981), and Karp & Yoels (1986). A number of empirical works, drawn from the various subfields, all explored the problematic and mundane features of everyday life. Among these are L. Lofland (1973), Irwin (1977), Cohen Taylor (1976), and the collected works found in Brissett & Edgley (1975), Lofland (1978), and Psathas (1973, 1979). During this period the diversity of everyday life studies in sociology also continued in a variety of directions. For this forum we have selected three to explore more fully: existential sociology, the sociology of emotions, and conversation analysis. These three arenas represent the major successes of everyday life sociology that emerged from the churning dissension and con- sensus of the 1960s and 1970s. We have chosen them because they represent recent advances in, respectively, theoretical, substantive, and methdological arenas of everyday life sociology. EXISTENTIAL SOCIOLOGY Existential sociology is located within a philosophical tradition that dates back to the ancient Greek culture. Early Greek existentialists include both Thrasy- machus, the sophist from Chalcedon who rejected Socrates’ rational search for an understanding of human beings within the cosmos, and the god Dionysus, who represented the inner feelings and situated expressions of human beings, unbridled by any rational restrictions. More recently and directly, this tradition draws on the existential philosophy of Heidegger, Camus, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenology of Husserl and Schutz, and the hermeneutics of Dilthey (Fontana 1980). www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews EVERYDAY LIFE 223 Existential sociology is the most recent of the everyday life theoretical perspectives. It shares with the others a common critique of the absolutist sociologies and an orientation toward the same set of focal concerns and beliefs. It goes beyond them in integrating subfields, combining them with a more complex, contradictory, and multidimensional view of the actor and the social world. Existential sociology also differs from other everyday life theories in its view of human beings as not merely rational or symbolic, or motivated by the desire to cooperate by interlinking actions. Instead, its proponents I~elieve that people have strong elements of emotionality and irrationality, ~and that they often act on the basis of their feelings or moods. People are simultaneously determined and free, affected by structural con- straints while remaining mutable, changeable, and emergent (see Zurcher 1977, for a fuller discussion of the relationship between social change and the existential self). At the same time, existential sociologists view society as complex and pluralistic, divided by power struggles between different groups (see Doug- las, 1971, for an existential analysis of American social order). Torn by the loyalties of their multiple memberships, people experience inner conflict. Since most groups in the society have things they want to hide from other groups, people present fronts to nonmembers. This creates two sets of reali- ties about their activities: one presented to outsiders, the other reserved for insiders. Drawing on the perspectives of Goffman (1959) and Machiavelli (1532), existential sociologists also believe that people manage the im- pressions they present to others. Researchers, then, must penetrate these fronts to find out about human nature and human society (Adler & Adler 1987, Douglas 1976). The main theoretical works in this tradition include Lyman & Scott (1970), Manning (1973), Douglas & Johnson (1977), Kotarba & Fontana (1984). A number of empirical works illustrate the application and analytical value of this perspective. These works share a focus on individuals’ search for meaning and self in an increasingly bureaucratized modern society. They also emphasize the importance of individuals’ core feelings and emotions in guiding their perceptions, interpretations, and lives. The Nude Beach, by Douglas & Rasmussen (1977), offered a multi-perspectival view of the complexity of feelings, motivations, rationalizations, behaviors, fronts, and micro and macro politics associated with public nudity and sexuality. In Wheeling and Dealing, P. A. Adler (1985) portrayed the greed and narcis- sism, rationality and irrationality, hedonism and materialism, secrecy and exhibitionism, and the alienation and involvement associated with the fast life of upper level drug dealers and smugglers. Kotarba’s (1983) study, Chronic Pain, described the anxiety and uncertainty faced by chronic sufferers as they confront the futility of their search for solutions that will both alleviate their www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews 224 ADLER, ADLER & FONTANA pain and provide viable meanings for their experience. The Last Frontier, by Fontana (1977), explored the emotional issues, loneliness, and existential identity changes that underlie and render insignificant the rational meaning of growing old. In P. Adler’s (1981) book, Momentum, he analyzed the dynam- ics and self-reinforcing excitement and depression caused by momentum- infused individuals, groups, and masses. Last, a series of articles that address the existential self in society are noteworthy: Altheide (1984) on the aggran- dized nature of the media self; Ferraro & Johnson (1984) on the victimized self of the organizational me