David R. Maines

In Search of Mesostructure: Studies in the Negotiated Order

in which he advocated the merging of social organization and social psychology. Or perhaps it was earlier, in a synthesis of Mead and Park, initially through the work of Hughes, and later through scholars such as Becker, Habenstein, Roy, and Stone. In any case, while it is true that there were symbolic interactionists working on problems of social organization prior to the 1960s, a basic conceptual scheme consisting of organizing concepts and statements about how organizations and social orders operate did not exist. A more focused perspective, however, began to develop in the 1960s with the work of Strauss and his collaborators, and by the end of the 1970s, a systematic conceptual framework for such study had been sketched out. That framework-the negotiated order-currently represents the dominant perspective on social organization to have been born from the domain assumptions of symbolic interactionism, and its fertility can be measured by the increasing amount and variety of research activity generated by it. The purposes of this article are fairly straightforward. I will provide a brief account of the development of the negotiated order perspective, in which it has changed from a general theoretical stance to a more focused and paradigmatic framework. I will also

Narratives, community and land use decisions

Abstract This article explores the narrative character of community, arguing that communities are intrinsically storied. Narratives are conceptualized as social acts and are thereby of inherent importance to social scientific endeavor. Following Weber, narratives also are seen to be entrenched in institutions and in the political economy of communities. State tourism and land use decisions are suggested as ideographic situations in which such entrenchment is found.

CONCEPTUAL MODELING AS A TOOLBOX FOR GROUNDED THEORISTS

Conceptual modeling is proposed as a set of analytic procedures that further the grounded theory approach to theory-discovery and development. The compatibility between grounded theory and conceptual modeling is discussed, and data from a short ethnographic study of a hair salon are used to illustrate the roles of conceptual modeling in the early stages of theory discovery. The major focus of conceptual modeling is on three simultaneous, explicit, continuing respecification dialogues: the nature and dimensionalization of concepts, the relative importance of concepts, and the nature of relationships among concepts. We argue that this focus facilitates the discovery and development of conceptually dense theories.

POLICY AS PRACTICE First Holy Communion as a Contested Situation

This article addresses the processes of change that were put into motion by the Second Vatican Council. Our focus is on the central liturgical Vatican II principle of the “full, active, conscious participation of the faithful.” This tenet changed the terms through which community was to be enacted. Our inquiry focuses on the consequences of this policy, and we approach our concern with the Weberian and Pragmatist assumptions that all human affairs must be worked out in processes of social action. We specifically follow Hall and Estes and Edmonds in conceptualizing policy as a set of intentions. We present observational and interview data from a local parish that show how parish members and officials interpreted the policy of active participation as it pertained to the ritual celebration of first holy communion. We then discuss issues of segmentation and the changing church in contemporary America.

Culture and Temporality

I suppose in a sense that Leach is correct when he says that humans find time as necessary because they are social animals &dquo;rather than because of anything empirical in our objective experience of the world&dquo; (1961, p.125). After all, there is something to the idea that the complexity of human societies and culture entails the creation of things that subsist but do not necessarily exist. In this sense, a distinction can be made between things that exist (the empirical world) and things that are perception-dependent (things that subsist).

Ecological and Negotiation Processes in New York Subways

Most investigations of subway behavior fall into either of two theoretical approaches. The first is the ethological approach which seeks to explain human behavior as the result of environmental stimuli; the second is the dramaturgical approach which lodges its explanations in interpersonal and situational processes. Both approaches, however, assume that subway systems are of a heterogeneous composition that is essentially formless. Data relevant to this assumption were collected through direct observations of 455 racial and sexual seating relationships on the IRT and IND lines of the New York City subway system. Statistically significant differences were found which demonstrate the existence of patterned seating behavior. It is concluded that the physical environment of subway cars does indeed structure conduct, but that these settings are situationally transformed as well. These results inform a theoretical discussion of environmental constraint and situational transformations in terms of the ethological and dramaturgical approaches. Negotiation theory, which emphasizes the interplay between structure and process, is suggested as an alternative theoretical formulation.

Research Note: Evidence of and Speculations on Catholic de facto Congregationalism

Scholars have speculated that the influential de facto congregationalism hypothesis applies to Catholies as well as to Protestants and recent immigrams. Considering that parish choice is central to that hypothesis, we present data from 49.604 Catholic families in the Detroit Archdiocese regarding parish membership in relation to residence. While findings indicate that 43% of these families attend parishes outside their home parish boundaries, which are consistent with the hypothesis, we conclude that the scope conditions of the hypothesis should be questined in the case of Catholics. As a modification of the hypothesis, we propose a mixed-process theory in which de jure factors stemming from Vatican II combine with secular trends in American society in an elective affinity that might better explain Catholic congregationalism.

On the Liminality of Post-Positivism and the Conceptualization of Culture: an Editorial Introduction

a good scientific definition of it so we can have uniform interpretations of findings. I think this was the impulse behind Weiss’ long essay that listed thirty-six definitions out of which he hoped &dquo;to make the culture concept clear and distinct,&dquo; which &dquo;should prove to be precisely applicable to the reality which we are studying, such that distinguishable entities are named and their relations to each other specified&dquo; (1973, p. 1404). The kind of work Weiss was doing there is important in the sense that one of the goals of scholarly work is the development of abstract theories of human group life. However, regardless of how laudable attempts at clarification and specification might be, part of the impulse to clarify often is accompanied by the impulse to impose closure. We saw this sort of thing in the late 1950’s when Kroeber and Parsons (1958) held

Theorizing movement in an urban transportation system by use of the constant comparative method in field research

Abstract Blending acquaintance knowledge and theoretical knowledge is one of the strengths of field method research. That blending can be systematically related by utilizing the constant comparative method developed in the grounded theory approach to theory construction. A detailed account of the use of a version of that method is given from research on New York subway systems. That account describes how on-site designs can be devised to test successive provisional hypotheses. Ethnographic research is accordingly characterized as a way of thinking rather than being solely a set of observational techniques.

Status Symbolism and the Ecology of Participation in Group Counseling Sessions

The “ecology of participation,” a conceptual approach to relationships between spatial orders and social interaction, is used to analyze changes in behavior patterns in group counseling sessions in a psychiatric halfway house. Through alterations in seating arrangements, substantial and fairly rapid improvements in the level of participation, risk-taking, and degree of group control were observed. The transformations in group and individual behavior are discussed in terms of their implications for improving the therapeutic value of group work, and it is concluded that small group ecological variables must be taken into account as significant elements of group counseling.