Personal Sociology
Edited by Paul C. Higgins John M. Johnson
PRAEGER New York Westport, Connecticut London
First published in 1988
Contents
AcknowledgmentsviiIntroduction 1Paul C. Higgins
1 It's Good for 'Em: Object Lessons in Youth Sports13Jeffrey E. Nash
2 Social Roles and Interaction29Louis A. Zurcher
3 Growing Up Among Ghetto Dwellers51Stanford M. Lyman
4 The Sociologist as Stranger: The Power Games of Race Relations67John H. Stanfield II
5 Battered Flesh and Shackled Souls: Patriarchal Control of Women81Kathleen J. Ferraro
6 Rationality and Practical Reasoning in Human Service Organization103Jaber F. Gubrium
7 Work and Self119Jeffrey W. Riemer
8 Political Activist as Participant Observer: Conflicts of Commitment in a Study of the Draft Resistance Movement of the 1960s133Barrie Thorne
Bibliography153
Index163
About the Contributors167
Acknowledgments
We appreciate the support of the Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina, in particular, the assistance of Mrs. Debra Brown and the late Mrs. JoAnn Hess, and the support of the School of Justice Studies, Arizona State University.
Introduction
Paul C. Higgins
Art "comes from the life of the artist -- out of his own life, his own environment."
David Smith Painter, sculptor, draftsman
You and I create the social world in which we live. Through our thoughts and actions, both individually and collectively, we develop and give meaning to the practices and products which constitute our world. In starring roles and in bit parts, on important stages and makeshift platforms, and before appreciative audiences and those who leave early, we "perform" the dramas of our lives. Without our involvement, whether it be willing or reluctant, recognized by us or not, the dramas of family, education, politics, community, religion, art, work, athletics, love, hate, friendship, growing up, growing old, and so much more, which constitute the social world, would not be possible. Yet, while we create that social world, we are also constrained by it. Social worlds created by others (and ourselves) in the past, the present, and in anticipation of the future set the stage upon which we act. And our own actions become part of the social world with which we must further contend. Therefore, while the dramas of life are not nearly so scripted as are plays, the actors do not perform those dramas anew. Instead, given the conventions of their times -- the scenery, props, costumes, scripts, and such -- the actors create and recreate the dramas of life and, in doing so, transform those conventions and themselves.
Sociology seeks to understand that creation, constraint, and transformation. Yet, ironically, almost incredibly, sociology has been increasinglyquestioned as to its relevance for our lives. Personal sociology addresses that question.
PERSONAL SOCIOLOGY
Conventional sociology is little understood and even less appreciated. Society's humor concerning sociology underscores this point. A society's humor reflects its beliefs about the topics of that humor. However, with sociology not part of our popular imagination, there is little humor concerning sociologists. Jokes made about topics which are not part of common understanding are likely to fall flat ( Berger, 1963:1). Those Jokes concerning sociology suggest that sociology either restates what everybody knows already or absurdly challenges common sense. Either way, sociology is irrelevant. Thus, sociologists are fellows who spend "$100,000 to find (their) way to a house of ill repute" ( Berger, 1963:8). Or, in working at a placement bureau, sociologists may decide that a foreign applicant who "cannot speak a word of English," has "never driven a car," and "come(s) from a rural community" is "qualified for only one job: driving a cab in Los Angeles" ( Bombeck, 1981). Without any trace of humor though, no matter how disparaging, a recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature stated that one of the many reasons for which he wrote for children was that they detested sociology. Children, of course, have no idea what sociology is. Yet, when they grow up, they may conclude that, whatever it is, it is irrelevant to them.
Consequently, too often students of social life, whether having earned Ph.D.s or embarking on college degrees, sense little connection between their lives and their study of social life. Sociologists "segregate their professional insights from their everyday affairs" ( Berger, 1963:21). Their everyday affairs are not taken to be serious concerns, or if they are seen as serious, they are not taken to be understandable through sociology. Consequently, sociological insights are developed about and applied to "those people over there," never about or to oneself. Similarly, students, properly concerned about earning a living but in the process too often neglectful of learning about living, see no relationship between the systematic study of social life and their lives.
Personal sociology weds our lives with the study of social life. Those who practice personal sociology attempt to make sense out of their lives, out of their experiences and concerns. They use those experiences and concerns both as the reason for and as a resource in understanding social issues, issues which transcend their immediate experiences. In doing so, personal sociologists seek to transform not only their understanding but themselves and others as well ( Morgan, 1983:405). Personal sociologists 'live in society, on the job and off." Inevitably, their lives are "part of (their) subject matter" ( Berger, 1963:21).
Personal sociologists exploit their lives in order to understand social life ( Mills, 1959). They take advantage of their experiences, whether they be unique experiences such as confinement to a tuberculosis hospital or a prisoner of war camp, familiar social situations such as behavior in public places, or special expertise developed in being a musician, police officer, ex-con, or priest ( Riemer, 1977). The most mundane of life's activities and the most awful, both awe-inspiring and terrible, may become the basis for personal sociology; so too may childhood interests. Living in a city may seem inconsequential, but a personal sociology draws insight from that in order to understand the nature of public relations among strangers ( Goffman , 1971; Lofland, 1973). The suicide of a brother is traumatic, but in that loss a personal sociology develops an understanding of how those involved in various ways in the crises of a suicide make sense of them as meaningful social actions ( Douglas, 1967). And from being a "dedicated spaceflight nut" as a youth, a personal sociologist investigates the early spaceflight movement in Europe and America ( Bainbridge, 1985:520). Few experiences are too trivial or too sacred to be left unexamined. And none are wished away ( Zola, 1983:306). Personal sociology celebrates our experiences.
By necessity then, personal sociology is reflexive ( Gouldner, 1970). Those who practice it view their own lives in the ways that most now view the lives of others. There are no subjects to be studied, but people to be understood -- others and oneself.
The personal sociologists' experiences give rise to concerns that transcend those immediate experiences. The sociologist who is a musician seeks to understand art worlds ( Becker, 1982). The ex-con turned sociologist investigates the transformation of prisons and prison reform ( Irwin, 1980). The sociologist, involved in the women's movement and a student of organizations, examines men and women in corporations ( Kanter, 1977). "Navel gazers" they are not.
Collective Activity
While personal sociology is personal, it is neither individualistic nor idiosyncratic. While our lives are unique, we also share experiences and concerns with one another. While we may sometimes believe otherwise, we are not alone in the acts of life: the mundane and the dramatic, the routine and the unexpected, the sorrow and joy, which constitute the social world. Thus, one individual's personal sociology is likely to be in various ways many other people's personal sociologies. In pursuing one's own concerns, one necessarily confronts the similar concerns of others, providing insight to them and taking insight from them. Thus, personal sociology is ultimately a collective activity because people's lives are collectively lived.
Personal sociology is a collective enterprise in a second, related way. Not only are the experiences and concerns of people shared, but in order to understand the experiences and concerns of particular people, their lives must be viewed within the larger social and historical worlds in which they live. Personal concerns must be understood within the public contexts ( Mills, 1959). The personal troubles of poor people cannot be understood apart from such public issues as education, the economy, discrimination, and governmental programs. The plight of crime victims, oneself or others, may be more fully understood through observing society's responses to crime -- family members', neighbors', the criminal justice systems' and others' -- but so too may the practices of criminals. Or, in order for me to begin to understand the lives of deaf people, in particular my parents', I needed to locate their lives and the lives of other deaf people within a world which is largely created and controlled by those who hear. The assumptions and practices of hearing people, often well-intentioned ones, have created a world in which deaf people are outsiders. "They live within a world of sounds but are not fully part of that world" ( Higgins, 1980:22). Perhaps more important, not being seen as fully human, they have been denied full participation in society's activities. Whatever personally concerns us must be understood within public contexts. That necessity makes personal sociology a collective enterprise once again.
Personal Concerns
Out of those concerns and experiences grows the study of social life. And out of that scholarly confrontation develop responses to those concerns and experiences. Concerns give rise to study which leads to responses to those concerns. Political action, public presentations (including those made in classrooms), community organizing, and personal involvement, these and other responses complete the cycle of personal sociology. Some personal sociologists stress the study of social life. Others emphasize the responses to their concerns. After taking students to see poverty in order to teach about it, one personal sociologist decided to do something about poverty by opening and managing full-time a soup kitchen ( Will, 1983). Personal concerns, scholarly work, and responses to those concerns are interwoven in personal sociology. In no ivory tower dwells the personal sociologist.
Personal sociology does not grow out of idle curiosity or merely the desire to solve academic puzzles. Instead, personal sociologists are bedeviled by their concerns. Their need to understand those concerns drives them onward. Thus, personal sociology is passionate. There is no "objective" detachment here. To divorce one's work from the basis for engaging in that work is to needlessly and harmfully estrange one's self from oneself. However, to be passionate does not mean to be blinded by passion. Personal sociologists use their passions in pursuing their concerns. They develop insight about their concerns from their passions that have given rise to those concerns. They recognize that others involved in their collective concerns may be less passionate or passionate in different ways than are they. Yet, that recognition itself provides further understanding to personal sociologists.
Being passionately concerned to understand their concerns, personal sociologists are unashamedly moralistic, but not moralizing. What is studied, how it is studied, why it is studied, and the consequences of that study are addressed within a world of ethical choices. In their work, personal sociologists choose or choose not to undertake, investigate, reveal, conceal, inquire, ignore,, provide, withhold, and much more. Once made, those choices may be regretted, but they are never claimed to be unimportant or irrelevant. Personal sociologists do not deceive themselves that their work, which, of course, means their lives, can be conducted free of values.
Similarly, personal sociologists do not permit methods to determine what matters. The "stuff" of social life that personal sociologists confront cannot always or readily be reduced to that which is easily researched. No matter how "messy" social life may be to confront, personal sociologists resist the temptation to reduce its significance to that which is neat and tidy ( Westhues , 1982:16). For example, the great power of physicians to control medicine, which developed and has been transformed over the past two centuries in America ( Starr, 1982), cannot be reduced to a prestige rating of 93 out of 100 as some would like to do.
Because personal sociology springs from the lives and concerns of those who practice it, it cannot be "hired-hand" work. While personal sociology may be supported by others -- by those who provide the opportunity and the resources to do it -- personal sociologists do not seek to do the bidding of others. Instead, they address their own bedeviling concerns, and in doing so they may address the concerns of those who support their work. Thus, personal sociology answers the question asked over and over again "Sociology for whom?" ( Lee, 1978), with the reply: First for the personal sociologists and then for those who are concerned by their concerns.
Unlike "hired-hand" social science, personal sociology is not alienating, though it may be, of course, very demanding. In so much of what we do, sociology included, we are estranged from what we do. We do not realize our selves in our work but deny our selves through our work. Work is imposed upon us, not taken up by us. Demands, not challenges, drive us on. External gratifications, not internal satisfactions, enable us to struggle through our work. Instead of being caught up in the challenge of what is personally meaningful, we are trapped by the tiresome requirements of what is meaningless. The quitting siren sounds, and the workers, including those who do "hired-hand" sociology, gladly turn their backs on the work. No quitting siren sounds for personal sociologists. Instead, they seek to expand the day in order to address their concerns. Turning their backs on their work would be turning their backs on themselves.
Personal sociology embraces people and their behaviors. Even if personal sociologists disagree with what is done, they realize that it is people who are doing. In quiet desperation and in overwhelming joy, in cooperation and in conflict, with conviction and contempt, rationally and absurdly, people work, play, create, destroy, organize, and do so much more -- in short, live. Social life is lived drama. No puppets or cartoon characters here.
In contrast, much conventional social science disembodies social life. Whether through "biologizing the individual" or "naturalizing the social," much conventional social science extracts the meaningful, if not well understood, actions of people from social life. Either people behave according to their biologies, their hereditary endowments, or more typically, they act according to natural laws ( Stewart and Reynolds, 1985). For example, people are violent because that is human nature, or they are violent because frustration produces aggression. Or, members of some minority groups commit more crime than other people (though such pronouncements focus on street offenses such as assaults, not "suite offenses" such as corporate fraud) because of their intelligence, or they commit more crime because blocked opportunities propel them into it. But where are the people who create, confront, and recreate social life? They have been pushed off the stage, and social life is thereby cheapened.
Risky Business
Personal sociology is difficult and dangerous. Pressures and problems of all kinds become reasons for students of social life to abandon or never take up the task of personal sociology. Instead, they flee into other orientations for studying social life. Support for personal sociology, whether it be material or social, is often unavailable. Personal sociologists are likely to be stigmatized because their work is all too personal; it does not conform to the "proper" forms for studying social life. As one personal sociologist realized, "I have been continually struck by how much the events of my life have influenced what I do, see, and write about. It is not that I have been wholly unaware of this, but like most social scientists I have been loath to admit it. To do so, I feared, might open me and my work to the criticism of being tainted by personal involvement" ( Zola, 1983:3). No doubt, there is much more personal sociology than practitioners care to admit or even realize.
In personal sociology one confronts the danger of offending others and oneself. Unlike a polite science which strives not to offend those who support it, personal sociology's goal -- to respond constructively to one's personal concerns and in doing so to create and recreate the social world is too important to be sanitized by the possible discomfort of those to whom it is addressed, most importantly oneself. The understanding one creates may upset one's own and others' safe assumptions about the social world and our places in it. When we do personal sociology, our unexamined faith may be shaken. The resulting uneasiness, sometimes only in anticipation, may be enough to make one abandon the pursuit. The emotional costs of seriously examining, and, hence, often questioning what is personally meaningful can be overwhelming. Thus, those who have undertaken personal sociology have often taken years to do so, and often only in retrospect have they realized what they have done. Personal sociology is personally and professionally risky business.