Peter L. Callero

Role identity and reasoned action in the prediction of repeated behavior

In this study we compare predictions derivedfrom the theory of reasoned action and identity theory regarding intentions to give blood and blood donation behavior over a seven-month period. Using a sample of 658 blood donors stratified by number of donations, we found that the addition of measures of the importance of the blood donor role identity, of social relations connected to blood donation, and of habit significantly improved the prediction of intentions and donation over the levels provided by the Fishbein-Ajzen model. A developmental analysis suggested that the theory of reasoned action was most effective in predicting intentions and donation for first-time donors. Whereas the full augmented model was most applicable to long-term donors. The results were interpreted to mean that although the Fishbein-Ajzen model may be the most parsimonious model for the prediction of many non-role behaviors, it should be augmented with identity-theory variables for the prediction of established role behaviors.

Role-Identity Salience

The concept of role-identity salience plays a critical role in many contemporary discussions of the self-concept. It has also been invoked, in one form or another, in a variety of other areas within sociology. However, there has been conspicuously little empirical investigation of the concept. This paper attempts to fill this void with an empirical examination of role-identity salience as it applies to the act of voluntary blood donation. The data are based on 658 responses to a mail questionnaire sent to a sample of blood donors. Analyses are organized into two sections. In the first section a number of hypotheses specifying correlates with salience of the blood donor role-identity are examined. Significant associations between salience and self-definition, a tendency to view others in terms of the role-identity, increased social relations premised on the role-identity, expectations from other, andfuture behavior, were found. In the second section, salience and the variables mentioned above are used to predict number of donations six months after completing the questionnaire. Results from a regression analysis find support for salience, self-definition, and social relationships as significant predictors. Implications and limitations of the findings are discussed.

Helping Behavior as Role Behavior: Disclosing Social Structure and History in the Analysis of Prosocial Action

Dominant approaches to the study of helping behavior are characterized by an empirical focus on temporally isolated acts of helping with little concern either for social structure or for interactional history. We suggest that Meads conceptualization of role offers a unique theoretical basis for incorporating dimensions of both social structure and history. This conceptualization of role also points to certain circumstances in which role and person merge; the extent of role-person merger has direct implications for action. We hypothesized that the degree of merger between person and a particular role, that of a blood donor, is both distinctfrom and compensatory to more traditional variables such as social and personal norms in its influence on blood donation behavior. We examine this suggestion empirically using a sample of 658 blood donors. Support was found for the three specific predictions derived from this general hypothesis. This approach illustrates the importance of conceptualizing helping behavior as role behavior, facilitating incorporation of both social structural and historical characteristics of such behavior.

From role-playing to role-using: understanding role as resource

Any attempt to conceptualize social structure must ultimately confront the dilemma posed by the problem of agency. The emerging consensus among sociologists is that society consists of both powerful, determining structures and actors that possess a degree of efficacy, freedom, and creative independence. This paper is an attempt to aid in developing an approach to role theory that is more versatile and more capable of addressing the agency-structure duality. First, a definition of role as a «cultural object» is proposed. This new conceptualization views roles as resources in the production of both agency and structure. Second, two dimensions of role variance are introduced: role type and role use

Critical Pedagogy and Classroom Praxis

In this paper we argue for the incorporation of critical pedagogy in the teaching of sociology. We first establish the theoretical and emancipatory rationale for critical pedagogy with a review of the neomarxist concept of reproduction. We then examine a specific application of critical pedagogy in the sociology curriculum of Western Oregon University. We give particular attention to a course sequence on community organizing in which students have developed a successful tenants union that serves as a vehicle for both personal and social transformation.

Role Theory and Social Cognition: Learning to Think like a Recycler

While the interactionist tradition of sociological role theory has been recognized as a promising conceptual framework for linking theories of social structure and social cognition, there remains little empirical research that examines the link between cognitive structure and role behavior. Our study tests the fundamental assumption that commitment to role behavior is associated with the development of a corresponding cognitive structure, through an analysis of a six-week field experiment designed to produce commitment to the role of “recycler.” We propose that intervention program participation resulted in recycler role-identity development, as well as corresponding changes in cognitive structure—i.e., the development of cognitive schemata—linked to the emergence of a new role-based view of self.

Learning to “Give to Unnamed Strangers”

In 1971, Richard Titmuss published a book called The Gift Relationship in which he compared the British and American blood collection and distribution systems. Speaking of the British system, which is based entirely on the voluntary Community donor, he described such donation as “a free gift of blood to unnamed strangers” (p. 239). In this chapter, we shall describe several aspects of a large-scale research project in which we are trying to understand how individuals in Madison, Wisconsin (where the donation system is also based on the voluntary Community donor) develop and maintain the moyivations and habots underlying sustained, repeated, regylar blood donation.Again, quoting Titmuss, “How can they and how do tey learn to give to unnamed strangers, irrespective of race, relirion, or colour?” (p.12).

Self, Identity, and Social Inequality

A unique feature of human social structures is that they emerge from symbolic interaction. For this reason, self and identity processes are foundational to the study of social inequality. This chapter reviews research that demonstrates support for the relationship between identity and inequality at three levels of analysis: person, interaction, and culture. At each of these levels, identity meanings associated with value and power demonstrate particular influence. Forms of inequality linked to identity include poor physical and psychological health, asymmetrical patterns of engagement in face-to-face encounters, and patterns of unequal resource distribution defined by status hierarchies. There is also evidence to suggest that the self may function as a mechanism in converting social interaction into higher order patterns of equality and inequality. While this research may help explain processes associated with reproduction and resistance at separate levels of analysis, theory and research linking self and identity to social inequality is not well integrated. Understanding how self and identity processes operate at different levels of analysis may facilitate a more comprehensive explanation of social inequality.

The Political Self

The theoretical tradition of symbolic interactionism is often criticized by more macro-oriented sociologists for its failure to consider and develop issues of power that go beyond the dynamics of interpersonal relations. During the decades of the 1960’s and 70’s critics such as (1970) and (1973) chastised symbolic interactionists and microoriented sociologists such as Goffman, as irrelevant, and naive when it came to the larger and more central concerns of sociology. The publication of (1980) Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version, can be read at least in part as a response to these criticisms. By merging key elements of role theory with a symbolic interactionist theory of self, Stryker was able to construct a conceptual framework more open to mainstream (i.e. macro) sociological concerns. While his theory does not explicitly focus on social forces of domination and control, (1980: 151) does stress that “there is nothing inherent in symbolic interactionism that necessitates either naivete with reference to, or denial of the facts of differentially distributed power.”

Living Alone: Globalization, Identity, and Belonging

apparently prosperous times, conservatives emphasized higher oil production as the solution to national problems, a stance that easily became the ‘‘Yes, blood for oil’’ slogan in 2003 and ‘‘Drill, baby, drill’’ during the 2008 elections. Taxes and environmental regulation allegedly cut oil production and were therefore the hated enemy of the right. When some environmental elites favored taxes such as Clinton’s BTU tax and cap-and-trade during the Obama administration, conservatives could rally around the low tax, high growth banner that had been planted in the culture of chem-lawns. Among the many books on petroleum, Lifeblood stands out through its unique theoretical contribution. For Huber, the interpretation of culture and institutions are central, as they were for David Harvey, Michel Foucault, Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, and Karl Marx. Huber finds inspiration from two concepts in Marx: first, the reproduction of social life under capitalism, and second, the fetishism of commodities. First, Marx argues that in the realm of work, the capital and machinery of the Industrial Revolution ‘‘subsumed’’ the productive activities of workers (p. 12). Huber points to how petroleum provided the power for twentieth-century industrial mass production, and then goes on to extend Marx to analyze reproduction of the work force and everyday life. Huber demonstrates how oil and automobile transport made possible the suburban life that gives individuals the sense that they are in charge, despite their subsumption to capitalism and its wealth, mechanization, and privatization (p. 16). Second, Huber insists that oil is not merely a thing. Oil is a complex product of social relations. Huber parallels Marx’s argument that a commodity is not just an object exchanged on a market for other commodities. Marx saw regularities in the market as a product of patterns of relationships between people—among workers and between workers and capitalists. Huber attempts to capture the complex dialectics between material objects and social constructs. A geographer by training, Huber emphasizes the importance of both the physical and the cultural world through analyzing spatiality. He examines the geography of oil, its concentration in OPEC nations, and its dispersal to omnipresent filling stations that became nodes of symbolic meaning, shown in the photographs in his book. Huber makes an empirical contribution by tracing the appeal of market-productivist sound bites like ‘‘Drill, baby, drill’’ back to vicissitudes of twentieth-century petroleum culture, in turn rooted in nineteenth-century ideologies of supposedly self-regulating markets. Slogans of the right appeal broadly, partly because of their resonance with popular standards. Authoritative political determination, whether it be by OPEC, crony capitalists, or federal bureaucrats, violates American standards of fairness, which would hold that persons should be rewarded and should sacrifice in proportion to their productive contributions. How these standards of fairness historically develop surely deserves further study. Perhaps such study will reveal how middle-class fairness standards generate other slogans, like the original ‘‘No blood for oil,’’ that very well might end up being resonant, persistent, and politically influential.