Iddo Tavory

Shadowing Warrants for Intersituational Variation in Ethnography

This article makes the case for shadowing as ethnographic methodology: focusing attention on what occurs as interlocutors move among settings and situations. Whereas ethnographers often zoom in on one principal set of situations or site, we argue that intersituational variation broadens and deepens the researcher’s ethnographic account as well as affording important correctives to some common inferential pitfalls. We provide four warrants for shadowing: (a) buttressing intersituational claims, (b) deepening ethnographers’ ability to trace meaning making by showing how meanings shift as they travel and how such shifts may affect interlocutors’ understandings, (c) gaining leverage on the structure of subjects’ social worlds, and (d) helping the ethnographer make larger causal arguments. We show the use value of these considerations through an analysis of violence and informal networks in an ethnography of immigrant Latinos who met to socialize and play soccer in a Los Angeles park.

Review symposium on There Goes the Gayborhood

Gays come to the city; this is an old story. But how they come and what happens next, that is a newer story and one that informs Amin Ghaziani’s There Goes the Gayborhood? For urban scholars, those schooled in the classics of urban sociology in particular, the case of the gayborhood goes against the inherited analytic grain—in ways taken up with wide-ranging intelligence by a group of critics whose remarks follow this introduction. The distinctive demographic and cultural texture of a particular group has transformed the meaning of places and their occupants. Before there were gay people, there were “homosexuals” relegated to the “zone of transition”—the city’s social dumping ground where investments ceased while awaiting the higher and better uses to come. Granted some degree of refuge through this neglect, gay people’s beings could not be discussed much less be featured in urban analysis. The muck of deviance was residual. What a flip! In the new model of urban dynamism, gays come to be branded as creative heart. The ethnic groups and remaining subalterns may continue the trudge across the concentric rings and into the suburban sectors, but their distinctive potential dissipates as inter-mating and cordiality take their toll. There is, of course replenishment through the new migrants from around the world, sometimes celebrated for their “energies” (or at least cheap labor). But settlements of the other Americans—the great white washed—have become dynamically useless. The opinion surveys reveal that for no other group has public attitude so shifted as toward gays and lesbians—in an overwhelmingly positive direction. Indeed, the stigma system has almost been turned on its head: gays (the men in particular) are where it is happening. Good economic and networking cred comes from associating with their lifestyle, whether as gayborhood resident, once resident, or just part of the alliance. Of course, as Ghaziani notes, the US is not free of gay oppression, and some of it is systemic and violent. But the gayborhood, as it exists and is widely interpreted, sits as shining beacon: the ghetto on the hill not only for those whose sexuality makes them dream of such a place, but for anyone who dreams that powerful shifts in social and political life are possible.

Between Situations: Anticipation, Rhythms, and the Theory of Interaction

This article pushes interactionist sociology forward. It does so by drawing out the implications of a simple idea, that to understand the situation—the mise en scene of interactionist theory—we must understand it in relation not only to past-induced habits of thought and action but to future situations anticipated in interaction. Focusing especially on the rhythmic nature of situations, the paper then argues that such a recalibration both unsettles core tenets of interactionism and helps solve some problems in the sociology of culture. As an illustration, it focuses on two such puzzles—the place of disruption in interaction and the relationship between the notion of “boundaries” and of “distinctions” in the sociology of culture.

The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead

Sociology is in the midst of a pragmatist revival. Peirce’s work is dusted off; Dewey is read far more closely than before; and Mead, the most sociological of classical pragmatists, is gaining renewed attention. The current volume, edited by Hans Joas and Daniel R. Huebner and a little unfortunately named ‘‘The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead,’’ is a welcome addition to this stream of thought. First, and most important, is the quality of the contributions. An edited volume is judged, roughly, on two criteria: how good the papers are, and how coherent a statement it makes. The current volume does surprisingly well in terms of the former. The book is organized in three sections— one primarily dealing with history and historiography, the second with ‘‘Nature, Environment, and Process,’’ and the third with ‘‘Cognition, Conscience, and Language’’— and includes fifteen contributions by people whose work is indebted to Mead across disciplines: intellectual historians, philosophers, and sociologists. This breadth is refreshing. The book flits from Mead’s view on religion to his writing on democracy, from the philosophy of mind to the study of language, from environmental concerns to intellectual history that locates Mead in relation to other intellectual movements of the time, especially in Germany. And while all the contributions are of high quality, some stand out. Charles Camic’s short piece about how Mead changed his syllabus about movements in nineteenth-century philosophy manages to be both breezy and insightful—tracing the growing importance of processual thought, evolution, and science on his thought. Hans Joas’s own contribution, less breezy, is a highly evocative comparison of Mead’s pragmatism and German historicism, showing important moments of convergence and outlining the movements’ emphasis on the revisability of the past. Daniel Cefaı̈’s writing on the idea of ‘‘social worlds’’ is simply one of the best texts ever written on the subject, melding Meadian insights about the way to understand an ecology of actors with sly references to the phenomenology of a shared world. Ryan McVeigh’s argument about the way in which taking Mead seriously would revise our approach to the theory of mind in philosophy and cognitive science is provocative and convincing. In terms of the latter criterion, however, the volume does not do as well. Timeliness brings together academics across disciplines, united by little other than their interest in Mead and pragmatism. Joas and Huebner valiantly try to get around this limitation in their introduction, and organizing the volume into three thematic sections does put some order in this cabinet of curiosities. But this is partial and, especially in the section about ‘‘Nature, Environment, and Process,’’ is somewhat forced. Although this is nigh inevitable for such an edited volume, this means that few readers, apart from committed pragmatists, will find the entirety of the volume equally compelling. A second limitation that some of the articles sometimes fall into is the adoration of ‘‘a great philosopher.’’ Although it occurs only in spots, there are some moments in the text where the author’s point seems to be that Mead was ‘‘ahead’’ of his time, in the sense that his insights, radical or Reviews 335

Watching Closely: A Guide to Ethnographic ObservationWatching Closely: A Guide to Ethnographic Observation, by Nippert-EngChristena. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 276 pp.

more violent in many places around the world. Nepstad also argues that we know little about movements that protest non-state targets (organized crime, police corruption, structural violence, etc.), and that more work should attend to shifts between nonviolent and violent tactics within the same movements. Although we often need good comprehensive texts by authoritative voices, it can be hard to find books that are engaging, understandable, up to date, and with sufficient coverage to orient students and those new to an area of study. This book is a rare exception. It is likely to jumpstart future scholarship in what Nepstad calls a ‘‘small but vibrant field’’ that has come ‘‘into the scholarly limelight’’ (p. x).

17.95 paper. ISBN: 9780190235529.

Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical tradition that accounts for the emergence of meanings, selves and social life as the outcome of concrete interactions between actors. This chapter traces the rise of interactionism and outlines the different research traditions inspired by symbolic interactionism. It focuses on three traditions: (a) an account of the crystallization of particular social selves over time; (b) the study of recurrent patterns of situations, and; (c) the emergence and structure of collectives. The chapter then confronts some critiques of interactionism. It shows how interactionism confronted questions of micro-macro links and emotion. Turning to the question of culture and the importance of embodied habits, it then shows how new interactionist work moves from the situation to inter-situational analysis, and locates interaction between emergent meaning and widely available cultural affordances.