Tim Hallett

The Myth Incarnate: Recoupling Processes, Turmoil, and Inhabited Institutions in an Urban Elementary School.

The study of institutional myths has been central to organizational sociology, cultural sociology, and the sociology of education for 30 years. This article examines how the myth concept has been used and develops neglected possibilities by asking: What happens when myths become incarnate, and how does this occur? In other words, what happens when conformity to a rationalized cultural ideal such as ‘‘accountability’’ is no longer symbolic but is given tangible flesh? Data from a two-year ethnography of an urban elementary school provide answers and reveal ‘‘recoupling’’ processes through which institutional myths and organizational practices that were once loosely connected become tightly linked. In the school studied here, recoupling accountability with classroom practices created a phenomenon that teachers labeled ‘‘turmoil.’’ The findings advance our understanding of the micro-sociological foundations of institutional theory by ‘‘inhabiting’’ institutionalism with people, their work activities, social interactions, and meaning-making processes.

Symbolic Power and Organizational Culture

With the recent wave of corporate scandals, organizational culture has regained relevance in politics and the media. However, to acquire enduring utility, the concept needs an overhaul to overcome the weaknesses of earlier approaches. As such, this paper reconceptualizes organizational culture as a negotiated order (Strauss 1978) that emerges through interactions between participants, an order influenced by those with the symbolic power to define the situation. I stress the complementary contributions of theorists of practice (Bourdieu and Swidler) and theorists of interaction (Goffman and Strauss), building upward from practice into interaction, symbolic power, and the negotiated order. Using data from initial reports on the fall of Arthur Andersen and Co., I compare this symbolic power approach to other approaches (culture as subjective beliefs and values or as context/public meaning). The symbolic power model has five virtues: an empirically observable object of study; the capacity to explain conflict and integration; the ability to explain stability and change; causal efficacy; and links between the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels of analysis. Though this paper focuses on organizational culture, the symbolic power model provides theoretical leverage for understanding many situated contexts.

How Institutions Form Loose Coupling as Mechanism in Gouldner’s Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy

This article uses a mid-century text to reengage a late-1970s concept to answer a new century question. The authors return to Alvin Gouldner’s classic (1954) study Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy to reexamine the “coupling” concept in contemporary institutionalism in a way that engages the following question: How do new institutional forms emerge? Based on Gouldner’s detailed observations of work in a gypsum mine, the authors argue that coupling processes are key mechanisms in the emergence of institutional forms. Examining coupling as a dynamic process and activity helps us to understand how the institution of bureaucracy emerged in the gypsum mine and interacted with previous social orders of authority and control. Gouldner’s account of coupling at the mine is a story of formal and informal power struggles and active conflict over meaning, bringing the process of local institutional formation into sharp relief.

Between Deference and Distinction: Interaction Ritual Through Symbolic Power in an Educational Institution

In this article I provide a meso-level account of the interactional-institutional link by revisiting Goffmans analysis of deference and demeanor in light of Bourdieus discussion of institutional fields, cultural capital, and symbolic power. To acquire deference, one must exhibit the appropriate demeanor towards others, and one must be equipped with the cultural capital that fits the institutional context. Once acquired, deference is a kind of credit that can be deployed as the symbolic power to frame (define) actions, situations, and events in ways that induce compliance and shape the social order. I also consider how these dynamics are gendered in particular contexts. Data from a two-year ethnographic study of “Costen Elementary School” brings the emergent theory to life. The theory helps explain interactions at the school and the efforts of administrators who tried to change the institutional order from autonomy to accountability. By analyzing how deference and symbolic power operate in an institutional context, I advance the “negotiated order” branch of symbolic interaction. Because social psychologists have long held that actions are informed by the definition of the situation, I argue that symbolic power is central to the field.

Gossip at Work: Unsanctioned Evaluative Talk in Formal School Meetings

This article uses a form of linguistic ethnography (LE) to analyze videotaped recordings of gossip that took place during formal school meetings.By comparing these gossip data against existing models of gossip based on data collected in informal settings, the authors identify eleven new response classes, including four forms of indirectness that operate to cloak gossip under ambiguity and seven forms of avoidance that change the trajectory of gossip. In doing so, this article makes three larger contributions. First, it opens a new front in research on organizational politics by providing an empirically grounded, conceptually rich vocabulary for analyzing gossip in formal contexts. Second, it contributes to knowledge about social interactions in organizations. By examining gossip talk embedded within a work context, this project highlights the nexus among structure, agency, and interaction. Third, it contributes to understandings of gossip in general. By examining gossip in a context previously unexamined, this project provides analytical leverage for theorizing conditions under which gossip is likely and when it will take various forms.

EMOTIONAL FEEDBACK AND AMPLIFICATION IN SOCIAL INTERACTION

This article develops an interactive, theoretical model of emotional feedback and amplification. Whereas the sociology of emotions typically examines how affect arises, this article focuses on the aftermath of an evoked emotion as it evolves in ongoing interaction. I argue that interactions serve as a stimulus to evoke emotional responses, but as interactions continue, these interactions provide an additional stimulus that feeds back into the initial emotion, amplifying it. I articulate two modes of emotional feedback and amplification: spontaneous and managed. Spontaneous amplification is a by-product of unplanned but continuous interactions. In contrast, managed amplification results from purposeful interactions and can be initiated through either surface acting or deep acting. The process of feedback and amplification is more likely under structural and cultural conditions that facilitate ongoing interactions. An empirical elaboration of the model is drawn from an ethnographic study of “TDs Restaurant.” Examining how feedback and amplification occur in different settings is an ongoing task for sociologists interested in emotions, work and occupations, mental health, and social movements.

Group Cultures and the Everyday Life of Organizations: Interaction Orders and Meso-Analysis:

Drawing on sociological conceptions of interaction, small groups, and group cultures, we argue that organizational studies benefits from a meso-analysis of everyday life. Small group cultures are a means through which colleagues and co-workers share embedded and powerful self-referential meanings that shape ongoing organizational activity. Through this perspective we argue for a group-level approach to organizations that emphasizes the local production of knowledge and structure. Drawing upon ethnographic research on field offices of the US National Weather Service, we emphasize the importance of shared awareness and memory, performance, and differentiation, building on a vibrant group culture in which workers collaborate and challenge each other. In conclusion we examine connections and differences among the group culture approach, and related approaches that emphasize inhabited institutions, institutional logics, institutional work, and organizational culture.

Stranger and stranger: creating theory through ethnographic distance and authority

Purpose – Classical ethnographic research begins with the recognition that the observer starts as a stranger to the group being studied, a recognition as evident in the analysis of formal organizations as of gangs or tribes. From this position of difference the researcher must learn the themes and dynamics of a setting of otherness. The researcher begins as an outsider, a stance that creates initial challenges, yet permits the transmittal of novel information to external audiences. This is particularly true while studying organizational worlds that explicitly focus on occupational socialization. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper relies on the close reading and analysis of three major ethnographies of occupational socialization. Findings – The reality that (many) ethnographers begin as strangers permits them to understand socialization processes while observing how group cultures change. The authors defines this as the “stranger paradigm.” This othe...

A Long-Neglected Mother of Contemporary Ethnography Annie Marion MacLean and the Memory of a Method

As ethnographers look forward, we risk losing sight of the past. Short memories are common, and most sociologists have a certain “amnesia” (Gans 1992). Sometimes old scholarship is best forgotten, but this is not always the case. We argue that the neglected ethnographic work of Annie Marion MacLean— who was writing at the turn of the last century—deserves our attention despite its age. To the extent that contemporary ethnography has a metaphorical “genetic code” in common, MacLeans work has these traits, and we argue that her work speaks to contemporary concerns: it gives us perspective on the realist-postmodernist debate, it demonstrates the challenges of ethnography as a career and how it can change over the life-course, and it forces us to reflect on our short scholarly recall. Much can be learned from MacLean and other relevant but neglected ethnographers. Failing to engage these works stunts our ethnographic growth.

Introduction of Gary Alan Fine 2013 Recipient of the Cooley-Mead Award

‘‘Gary Alan Fine spits ink!’’ So said my fellow graduate student, Minna Bromberg, when I told her about the interaction I’d just had with Gary. It was 1999, and Gary and I had crossed paths outside of the Northwestern sociology department. I’d asked him, ‘‘How’s it going?’’ He exclaimed, ‘‘Great! I just sent in two book manuscripts.’’ Two! Amazing as this sounds, this was no anomaly. Since 1983, on average Gary publishes about 1.5 books or edited volumes per year. So Gary really does spit ink. When I nominated him for this award he’d published 31 books and edited volumes. He’s also published over 200 articles and book chapters, and that doesn’t even count his folklore articles, another 37. The golden strands that tie together this huge bundle of work are the centrality of meaning and groups in society, and this is where Gary is an important boundary spanner: his work spans two of the ‘‘faces’’ of social psychology (symbolic interaction and group processes). In many ways, Gary was born a social psychologist, or, at least a psychologist. His father was a Freudian psychoanalyst, and Gary took this interest with him when he went to college at the University of Pennsylvania, but he also sought to expand his horizons. At the time, Penn allowed students to craft their own courses of study, as long as they could secure the blessing of a faculty member. Gary’s angel was another future CooleyMead winner: Jane Piliavin. Among the many things she taught him was, ‘‘Do what you will, but do it well . . . and don’t let the bastards grind you down’’ (Fine 2009:206). Blessing secured, Gary created a major in ‘‘Human and Social Relations.’’ Penn had a renowned folklore program at the time, so Gary took many of those classes, as well as psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, and philosophy. He took classes with E. Digby Baltzell and was influenced by his view of civil society. He took Goffman’s graduate seminars as an undergraduate, and Goffman cites one of Gary’s undergraduate papers in Frame Analysis, and I want to thank Michael Flaherty, who also wrote in support of Gary’s nomination, for pointing