INTERACTION
Series Editor: Norman K. Denzin
Recent Volumes:
STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC
INTERACTION
EDITED BY
NORMAN K. DENZIN
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
EDITOR OF BLUE RIBBON PAPER SERIES
LONNIE ATHENS
Department of Criminal Justice, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, USA
EDITOR OF COMMODITY RACISM
RICHARD KING
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA
MANAGING EDITOR
MYRA WASHINGTON
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
CO-MANAGING EDITOR
DONG HAN
AND
YING ZHANG
Institute of Communications Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
First edition 2009
Copyrightr2009 Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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ISBN: 978-1-84855-784-0 ISSN: 0163-2396 (Series)
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
ix
PART I: BLUE RIBBON PAPERS
INTRODUCTION TO ‘BLUE RIBBON PAPERS’:
INVESTIGATING THE EMPIRICAL WORLD
Lonnie Athens
3
THE WISDOM OF DISTRUST: REFLECTIONS
ON UKRAINIAN SOCIETY AND SOCIOLOGY
John M. Johnson and Andrew Melnikov
9
SITUATING PUBLIC PERFORMANCES: FOLK
SINGERS AND SONG INTRODUCTIONS
Scott Grills
19
THE MUSIC RINGTONE AS AN IDENTITY
MANAGEMENT DEVICE: A RESEARCH NOTE
Christopher J. Schneider
35
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Jude Robinson
47
THE STRUCTURE OF FLIRTATION: ON THE
CONSTRUCTION OF INTERACTIONAL AMBIGUITY
Iddo Tavory
59
BECOMING A SOCIOLOGIST: ONE WOMAN’S
JOURNEY
Virginia Olesen
75
PART II: COMMODITY RACISM: REPRESENTATION,
RACIALIZATION, AND RESISTANCE
COMMODITY RACISM NOW
C. Richard King
97
COMMODITY RACE AND EMOTION: THE
RACIAL COMMERCIALIZATION OF HUMAN
FEELING IN CORPORATE CONSUMERISM
Jeffrey Santa Ana
109
THE PRINCESS AND THE SUV: BRAND IMAGES
OF NATIVE AMERICANS AS COMMODIFIED
RACISM
Debra Merskin
129
YEAST: CANNIBALIZING THE ORIENT IN AMERICAN
CULTURE
Sheng-mei Ma
149
IT’S GOTTA BE THE BODY: RACE, COMMODITY,
AND SURVEILLANCE OF CONTEMPORARY
BLACK ATHLETES
David J. Leonard
165
CONSUMING ‘‘POLYNESIA’’: VISUAL SPECTACLES
OF NATIVE BODIES IN HAWAIIAN TOURISM
Vernadette V. Gonzalez
191
CINCO DE MAYO, INC.: REINTERPRETING LATINO
CULTURE INTO A COMMERCIAL HOLIDAY
Jose´ M. Alamillo
217
IF SANTA WUZ BLACK: THE DOMESTICATION
OF A WHITE MYTH
UNSETTLING COMMODITY RACISM
C. Richard King
255
PART III: PETER M. HALL LECTURE SERIES
INTRODUCTION TO DAVID ALTHEIDE’S
TALK: ‘‘TERRORISM AND PROPAGANDA’’
Susan Stall
277
TERRORISM AND PROPAGANDA
David L. Altheide
279
THERE’S OUR HITLER ENVY! ALTHEIDE’S
VERSION OF FEAR IT NOW
Michael A. Katovich
297
PART IV: NEW INTERPRETIVE WORKS
THE ESSENTIALS OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM:
A PAPER IN HONOR OF BERNARD N. MELTZER
Gil Richard Musolf
305
COMMUNICATIVE SUSTAINABILITY:
A FRAMEWORK FOR PERFORMANCE
ACCOUNTING
Wayne D. Woodward
327
THE INTER-PLAY OF POWER AND META-POWER
IN THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF
‘‘ENTREPRENEURIAL’’ PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
FIRMS: A PROCESSUAL ORDERING PERSPECTIVE
Mark W. Dirsmith, Sajay Samuel, Mark A. Covaleski
and James B. Heian
347
MYSTIFICATION OF ROCK
NARRATIVE FORM AND TEMPORALITY
IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE: ROMANCE, TRAGEDY,
AND AMERICA’S PRESENCE IN IRAQ
Robert L. Young
417
FOUR ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL PARADOXES:
REFLECTIONS ON THE WORK OF KENNETH
LIBERMAN
Scott R. Harris
443
LEAVING BLACK ROCK CITY
Jose´ M. Alamillo
Chicana/o Studies, California State
University Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA,
USA
David L. Altheide
School of Justice and Social Inquiry,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Lonnie Athens
Department of Criminal Justice, Seton Hall
University, South Orange, NJ, USA
Mark A. Covaleski
School of Business, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Mark W. Dirsmith
Smeal College of Business and the social
thought program, Penn State University.
University Park, PA, USA
Vernadette V.
Gonzalez
American Studies Department, University
of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
Scott Grills
Department of Sociology, Brandon
University, Brandon, MB, Canada
Scott R. Harris
Department of Sociology and Criminal
Justice, Saint Louis University, St. Louis,
MO, USA
James B. Heian
Division of Social Sciences and
Management, Utica College of Syracuse
University, Utica, NY, USA
John M. Johnson
School of Justice and Social Inquiry,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
C. Richard King
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies,
Washington State University, Pullman, WA,
USA
Michael A. Katovich
College of Liberal Arts, Texas Christian
University, Fort Worth, TX, USA
David J. Leonard
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies,
Washington State University, Pullman, WA,
USA
Wesley Longhofer
Department of Sociology, University of
Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA
Sheng-mei Ma
Department of English, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Andrew Melnikov
Department of Sociology, Eastukrainian
National University, Legansk, Ukraine
Debra Merskin
School of Journalism and Communication,
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
Gil Richard Musolf
Department of Sociology, Anthropology,
and Social Work, Central Michigan
University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA
Virginia Olesen
Department of Social and Behavioral
Sciences, University of California-San
Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Jude Robinson
The Health and Community Care Research
Unit (HaCCRU), University of Liverpool,
Liverpool, UK
Sajay Samuel
Smeal College of Business, Penn State
University, University Park, PA, USA
Jeffrey Santa Ana
Department of English, Stony Brook
University, Stony Brook, NY, USA
Christopher J.
Schneider
Irving K. Barber School of Arts and
Sciences, University of British
Columbia-Okanagan, Kelowna,
BC, Canada
Charles Fruehling
Springwood
Sociology and Anthropology Department,
Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington,
IL, USA
Susan Stall
Sociology Department, Northeastern
Illinois University, Chicago, IL, USA
Iddo Tavory
Department of Sociology, University of
California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA,
USA
Wayne D. Woodward
Department of Language, Culture, and
Communication, University of
Michigan-Dearborn, Michigan-Dearborn, MI, USA
Robert L. Young
Department of Sociology and
PAPERS’: INVESTIGATING THE
EMPIRICAL WORLD
Lonnie Athens
I am pleased to introduce the second issue in Studies in Symbolic Interaction’s ‘‘Blue Ribbon Paper’’ series. In contrast to the chapters in the first issue that focused exclusively on theoretical matters, the chapters in this one are focused on empirical problems. In John Johnson’s and Andrew Melnikov’s provocative article, ‘‘The Wisdom of Distrust: Reflections on Ukrainian Society and Sociology,’’ they examine the results of a nation-wide poll that shows among other things that Ukrainian citizenry paradoxically displays little faith in any of the branches of their democratically elected government. On the one hand, this finding is paradoxical because democracy is a relatively new experience for present day Ukrainians. Since their country had been for years a puppet state of the former Soviet Union, one would think that they now would be elated by the opportunity to elect their leaders. On the other hand, the founding fathers of our nation also displayed considerable distrust in government, including democratically elected ones, such as our own. In fact, their distrust was so great that it led them to build into our constitution an intricate system of checks and balances of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government. Although conventional psychological wisdom is that distrust of others is a sign of paranoia, Johnson and Melinkov conclude that
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 3–7 Copyrightr2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033002
being wary of governmental institutions and politicians may be a healthy state of affairs for a country’s citizens.
The authors of our next three chapters all examine different aspects of popular culture. In ‘‘Situating Public Performances: Folk Singers and Song Introductions,’’ Scott Grills analyzes the introductions that folk singers often provide to their songs during live performances. He collected his data primarily from conducting informal interviews with folk singers and participant observing their performances over a four year period at various folk festivals held across North America. Grills, an accomplished saxophonist, who has played in several blues bands, found that introducing a song serves a purpose other than merely killing time between tunes. According to him, ‘‘song introductions provide additional information to the audience that would be otherwise unavailable, provide the artists with an opportunity to influence audience interpretations, allow for legitimizing strategies to be utilized and, importantly, allow artists an opportunity to invoke disclaimers, accounts, and justifications’’ for their performances. Thus, they afford singers the opportunity to ‘‘situate’’ a song and, thereby, help the audience to place the right accent on the meaning of their performance. As Grills points out, prefacing a public performance is not a practice unique to folk singers or even singers, but is one that writers, filmmakers, magicians, musicians, comedians, and others also use to help insure that an audience will interpret their work in the proper light. Hopefully, Grills will push his enlightening analysis even further by identifying the properties of introductions that increase the likelihood of their success in making an audience respond positively to an artist’s performance.
Although we can switch the ringtones on our mobile phones ‘‘on’’ and ‘‘off,’’ this may not always be a practical option. Thus, depending on the audience, a ringtone can potentially reveal harmful or helpful information about our identities, and thereby, operate as either a positive or negative ‘‘tie-sign.’’
In ‘‘There’s No Place Like Home,’’ Jude Robinson examines still another important aspect of popular culture – the documentary film. She turns her perceptive eye on director Jeff Togman’s award-winning documentary, ‘‘Home,’’ which covers 10 weeks in the life of a Black middle-aged mother and her six children. The mother is confronted with the problem of whether to move her family from their present residence in an urban slum to a new residence in a ‘‘better neighborhood.’’ At first glance, the answer to this problem seems to be a no-brainer. As Robinson sees it, however, ‘‘Home’’ raises this problem to the level of a serious existential dilemma for this mother. On the one hand, she has the opportunity to move her family into bigger and better housing in a swankier part of town. On the other hand, she is reluctant to take advantage of this seemingly ‘‘golden opportunity’’ that has been handed to her on a silver platter. According to Robinson, the answer to this paradox is ‘‘Home is where your heart is.’’ As she explains, this mother’s ‘‘heart was never into moving away to a new house and neighborhood where she would be a nobody by leaving her old house and neighborhood where she was a somebody.’’ In her present neighborhood, this single-parent mother with six dependent children was a ‘‘somebody’’ because she was doing the seemingly impossible – raising good kids in a bad neighborhood. In a good neighborhood where the odds would be stacked much more heavily in her favor, however, she knew that she would no longer be considered anybody special because she would be doing only what every mother living in that neighborhood was expected to do.
changes the tenor of the interaction to a possible sexual one. During the final stage, the sexual advance that was made during the middle stage is further clarified making clear that it was a sexual advance. According to Tavory, the flirtation ceases as soon as the meaning of an ambiguous sexual advance becomes determinate. Thus, for him, flirtation is limited to the social interaction that takes place during this middle stage which lies somewhere ‘‘between and betwixt’’ making normal, everyday chit chat and an explicit sexual proposition. Tavory deserves credit for opening up for empirical investigation a class of interaction that Simmel and others have long speculated about, but few have subjected to direct empirical examination.
In the last chapter, ‘‘Becoming a Sociologist: One Women’s Journey,’’ Virginia Olesen describes the circuitous route that she followed in becoming a sociologist. She organizes her narrative around what her former mentor and later colleague, Anslem Strauss, called ‘‘turning points.’’ Although all the turning points that resulted in her becoming a distinguished medical sociologist cannot be mentioned here, I will highlight some of the key ones to give the flavor of her journey. Although an undergraduate at the University of Nevada at Reno, Olesen dreamed of becoming a journalist. After earning bachelor’s degrees in both history and english at Nevada, she landed a job at local newspaper on Mare Island, California where she worked first as a cub reporter and later as the editor. Despite her obvious success at this newspaper, she became bored with working on local news and personal interest stories. An early important turning point in her career came when she applied for a fellowship to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago. Though studying communication at Chicago, she met several outstanding sociologists, including Anselm Strauss, on whom she apparently made a good impression.
REFLECTIONS ON UKRAINIAN
SOCIETY AND SOCIOLOGY
$
John M. Johnson and Andrew Melnikov
THE WISDOM OF DISTRUST
Ukraine regained its independence in 1991, following over 7 decades of soviet domination, and about 300 years of Russian domination. Democracy and stable institutional development have proven problematic for Ukraine since 1991, arguably more so than any of the other Eastern European countries. Unlike the increasing economic development in the other countries, for example, per capita GNP in Ukraine has decreased by approximately 50% in the last decade. President Viktor Yushchenko’s ‘‘Orange Revolution’’ has promised certain westernized economic reforms, but political opposition has forced a new election scheduled for September 30, 2007.
During the summer of 1993, the director of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences commissioned a sociological survey to monitor the current social situation in Ukrainian society, its perspectives, structures and institutions, economics, politics, and national and cultural features reflected in Ukrainian public opinion. Sociologists Natalia Panina and Evgeniy Golova-kha were asked to head the survey team. In 2001, they produced a volume
$
Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, New York City, August, 2007.
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 9–18 Copyrightr2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033003
Tendancies in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001: Sociological Indicators, which reports the results of the first seven years of this exhaustive survey in Ukraine (Panina & Golovakha, 2001). Their report includes over 170 tables to summarize the polling data on citizen evaluations of the economic situation and attitudes toward economic reforms, standards of living and living conditions, consumption orientations, working activities, employment, and satisfaction with jobs. Also included are attitudes toward political orientations, social and political activity, toward state and institutional power structures, religion and beliefs, effectiveness of the legal system, the state of health, environment, and attitudes toward medical service. Everyday life, leisure, cultural activities, and interpersonal relations and psychological conditions are additionally included, as are education, mass media, knowledge, and attitudes about national identity and migration. Even the most casual reader is impressed with the exhaustive nature of the survey and the issues addressed.
A close reading of the report produces an unmistakable emphasis on the high level of distrust expressed about virtually all aspects of life in Ukraine. The authors refer to these ‘‘conditions of mass distrust of the state (and) civil society institutions’’ (p. 123), and further observe, ‘‘You can only look at the population’s trust in main social institutions and power structures and see that in the average citizen’s field of trust, there are only the citizen himself, the family, and God.’’ (p. 122) To further dramatize this, one table showing the comparative trust scores across realms of Ukrainian life (Table B2, p. 53) reveals that the trust scores for astrologers are higher than those of all official state institutions, specifically the Supreme Court, the Parliament, the Presidency, the militia, the political parties, the traditional trade unions, the private entrepreneurs, and the new trade unions. The high level of distrust is so overwhelmingly pervasive throughout the report that, when combined with the very high No Response levels, a serious reader develops a healthy skepticism about whether to even believe any of this; after all, with such high levels of distrust expressed about all aspects of the social order, by what warrant would one accept these responses and trust them? This is a very serious question, and one we cannot here answer. Even if we were to hypothetically speculate that Ukrainian citizens had a higher level of trust for the pollsters than they expressed for any other official, state, or civil institution (which would put it at the lower middle level on the scale), this would involve such a high rate of error that it would compromise the survey as a whole. It remains highly plausible that such polling results from Ukraine are severely and fatally flawed.
Ukraine, then why did they bother to respond at all? Another good question we think. Scholars trained in symbolic interaction would likely observe that the polling situation itself should be studied as an instance of a complicated social interaction, commonly between two or more persons who are previously unknown to each other in any intimate manner, and thus a context where the emergent meanings of specific statements or questionnaire items are negotiated in a face-to-face situation. This is the message to be taken from Aaron Cicourel’s (1964)bookMethod and Measurement in Sociology, where he asserts that interview or questionnaire results cannot be taken as unproblematic ‘‘data,’’ but should be examined to see how it is that pollsters and relative strangers manage and negotiate meanings during a face-to-face encounter. Those familiar with the writings of Herbert Blumer would additionally emphasize that meanings in face-to-face encounters have an emergent quality to them, that they flow out of a social process (the interview or questionnaire encounter) which cannot be assumed as a ‘‘given’’ in the research (Blumer, 1969). Without really knowing these aspects about the Ukrainian questionnaire interviews, one plausible speculation is that some of them may have interpreted the polling questions as an occasion to ‘‘vote’’ for a response, perhaps intending to ‘‘send a message’’ to those in power, concerning their elected options, independently of how they ‘‘really felt’’ about the question, or what they ‘‘really thought’’ about it. Whatever the answer is to this, it is clear that Ukrainian scientists and scholars take this high level of distrust as a serious problem for the immediate national future of Ukraine, as expressed by many of the selected essays edited by Golovakha, Panina, and Vorona for the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Golovakha, Panina, & Vorona, 2000).
The survey polling results reported by Panina and Golovakha inTendancies in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001provide the animus for this chapter, and our reflections on the nature and meaning of trust, for individuals and for society. We briefly address the issue of how trust arises in the life of most individuals, what it means for their lives, and how disruptions or betrayals of trust are dealt handled. We conclude these reflections with an assertion of our position that, for Ukrainian society the ‘‘problem’’ of distrusting citizens should be recast or reformulated as an issue of social justice.
THE NATURE OF TRUST
birth, even before that (during pregnancy) in most cases. Mother–infant bonding is a profound, primordial, and foundational experience for most individuals. The caring love shown by mothers toward infants is idealized and symbolized in all known cultures. In science, the world-renowned researches of Barry Brazelton (Brazelton, 1963, 1980;Brazelton, Kowslowski, & Main, 1974; Brazelton, Troncik, Adamson, Als, & Wise, 1975) have shown the profound significance of mother–infant bonding, and the well-known three-volume work by Harvard’s John Bolby (1971–1979) has shown the signi-ficance of this bonding for the larger issues of human attachment. The human animal has the longest period of dependency, when compared to other primates, so the first months of life are very important for what follows in an individual’s life.
In his famous workThe Art of Loving, Erich Fromm (1974)argues that early bonding or attachment is very important in terms of subsequent development, especially whether or not the child develops deep feelings of security or insecurity. ThelmaRowell (1972, p. 137)has additionally asserted this importance for other primates:
Many primates are captured as infants and hand-reared as pets, then transferred to zoos when they get older. Attempts to use such animals as breeding stock have a very low rate of success: typically these ex-pets show little or no mating behavior, and the females do not care for their infants, which are then hand-reared, thus creating the breeding problems of the next generation. The histories of these zoo animals are of course varied, and the fact that some of them do breed suggests that one might be dealing with quite short critical periods during which social experience is necessary. This was investigated in rhesus infants. Isolated for the first three months produced no permanent effects, if the infants were then placed in a group, but isolated for the whole of the first year destroyed all social ability. The period between three and nine months seemed to be critical for establishing normal social behavior, although the communicative gestures have nearly all appeared in the first three months.
spree, or serial killers, such as Theodore Bundy, who killed 33 women (abandoned by his mother Elizabeth Cowell), Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed in killing hundreds of women across the United States (savagely beaten by his mother, who became his first murder victim), David Berkowitz, the infamous ‘‘Son of Sam’’ shooter who killed 11 people in New York during the summer of 1976 (abandoned by his mother at birth, and who rejected him later after he had located her in his late teenage years), Charles Starkweather, who killed 7 people during an 11 day spree in Nebraska (abused by his mother), and so on (seeHickey, 2005).
Maternal mortality has been high historically, but in many of these cases there are maternal surrogates who step in and take the place of the mother, most commonly aunts, sisters, or grandmothers, and if possible even fathers. Infant bonding and attachment does occur with the father and others in the family, such as aunts or grandmothers, and in such cases the bonding attachments may have a cumulative effect, thus helping to produce feelings of security and being loved. Many developmental psychologists have been influenced by the seminal work of E. H. Erikson (1963) who said that children developed a sense of ‘‘basic trust’’ with their environment and its caretakers, or a sense of ‘‘basic distrust.’’ Basic trust means that the child has a generalized expectation that the external environment they encounter is basically good, and that good and positive things will most likely happen; basic distrust is the opposite. This is not to say that children do not encounter bad or untoward or inconsistent things. They do. Life is difficult and problematic. But the important point is that a child or person who has developed a sense of basic trust will process these untoward events in a different manner than the child or person who is distrustful. The distrustful child will begin to develop psychologically defensive expectations and adaptations to these untoward events or actions.
EARLY BETRAYALS OF TRUST
Although forms of trusting relations are found early in most lives, early disruptions, conflicts, and betrayals of trust are found too. These may come from within the family, with conflicts between siblings being common, or they may come from outside the family, with adolescent conflicts being common. Such conflicts or betrayals may be serious and consequential, or less serious and mild in their consequences. For young children, they may ‘‘patch up’’ or repair such disruptions, and continue their friendships. For older children who experience a ‘‘betrayal,’’ the more common pattern is to transfer one’s loyalties to a different friend, or to build a new friendship. Serious betrayals of trust possess the potential to be emotionally over-whelming, at any age. For more serious betrayals, an individual may respond with violence, revenge, or perhaps more commonly, to become less trusting.
Childhood sexual abuse and childhood physical abuse can be mild or severe, but when it is in the severe range, the consequences may be profound. These are forms of betraying trust which may affect the individual for the rest of their life, in the more serious cases. During the past four decades there has developed a vast scientific literature on these topics (for a summary, see
Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2005).
The important research of Heinz Kohut (1971, 1977) shows that infant and early childhood aggression is extremely common, and furthermore it arises as a reaction to significant others not providing crucial developmental needs. His term for this is ‘‘empathic optimal frustration,’’ which refers to the social process during which infants learn that it is not possible to have all of their needs met all of the time. This does not result because of some failure or neglect on the part of the caretakers, but because they cannot be there every minute of the time. Infants respond to the ‘‘optimal frustration’’ period with assertiveness or healthy aggression, and from this eventually learn that life is not perfect, and that the world does not exist for the sole purpose of providing for their needs. Infants also learn about their own healthy aggression from this process, and how to use it in interaction with significant others. In situation where the unmet needs are consistently and continually unmet, however, or in situations where young children are subjected to continual abuse or abandonment, then the healthy assertiveness can break down into hostile assertiveness. In the researches of Lonnie
violence toward others. In the most extreme cases of continual abuse or abandonment, the end result can be an individual who is paranoid, or even in the case of the Athens research a ‘‘dangerous, violent criminal.’’
The condition of trust is not intrinsic to the human being. Trust is learned and is learned in a slow, gradual, developmental process, a social process which includes conflicts, tensions, problems, even betrayals. Individuals learn from the betrayals of trust, just as they learn from the establishment and development of trust. As the individual grows and develops, there is an accumulation of trusting and distrusting experiences. These experiences are socially structured and stratified; those who grow up in large urban metropolises do not grow up trusting in the same manner as more isolated rural peasants.
DISTRUST IS NOT THE PROBLEM: JUSTICE
IS THE PROBLEM
Trust is learned. It is learned during the course of a developmental social process, often taking a considerable period of time. Distrust is also learned. Though an individual may learn to distrust over a longer period of time, it is more common for distrust to result from violations or betrayals of trust. If the citizens of Ukraine express such a high level of distrust toward their national political, state, and civil institutions, it is not because something is ‘‘wrong’’ with them as individuals, or as citizens. The distrust is a result of their lived experience of betrayal, that is, the betrayal of the political promises and expectations made by political or party leaders. In a later publication by Ukrainian sociologists and pollstersEvgeniy Golovakha and Natalia Panina (2000, p. 118), they seem to recognize this when they say:
This conflict between democratic ideals and realities has a rational foundation. It influences the formation of negative evaluations regarding both the rate and depth of democratic transformation. The current duality in attitudes about democracy reflects this ambivalence in social and individual consciousness. Social-psychological ambiva-lence divides the society into supporters and opponents surrounding the myth of equality and security for people living under socialist state patronage. Proof of individual ambivalence is evident in perspectives of Ukrainian political and economic development. These may be mutually exclusive, for instance, support for market economy and price controls or approval of a multi-party systemanddistrust of all parties.
central or totalitarian powers, commonly made with the promise of greater social order. But spreading fear and distrust are used in democratic societies too. The United States has a long history of ‘‘moral crusades’’ which were animated by fears of different racial or immigrant groups, drugs, alcohol, marihuana, sexual predators, and recently terrorists (see Altheide, 2006). Spreading fear in society can be a tactic to create social distance and isolation between groups, a ‘‘divide and conquer’’ strategy long favored by Western imperialists. In commenting on the death of the Russian brief experi-ment with democracy, former journalist (assassinated in 2005) Anna
Politkovskaya (2007, p. 255)observed:
Our society isn’t a society any more. It is a collection of windowless, isolated concrete cells. In one of these are the Heroes, in another are the politicians of Yabloko, in a third there is Zyuganov, the leader of the Communists, and so on. There are thousands who together might add up to be the Russian people, but the walls of our cells are impermeable. If somebody is suffering, he is upset that nobody seems concerned. If, in other cells at the same time, anybody is in fact thinking about him, it leads to no action, and they only really remember he had a problem when their own situation becomes completely intolerableyThe authorities do everything they can to make the cells even more impermeable, sowing dissent, inciting some against others, dividing and ruling. And the people fall for it. That is the real problem. That is why revolution in Russia, when it comes, is always so extreme. The barrier between the cells collapses only when the negative emotions within them are ungovernable.
The checks-and-balances of the U.S. Constitution seem to have worked reasonably well for approximately 200 years, but the recent emergence of the Imperial Presidency and the subjugation of the legislative and judicial branches to executive power reminds us again of the wisdom of the founding fathers, that political tyranny has been the dominant theme of history, and that any and all political forms may transform into something entirely different over time.
The meaningful institution of democracy always occurs in an historical and cultural context. It emerges and develops over time. It is unclear if the massive distrust of Ukrainian citizens will be transformed by progressive political action and social change, efforts to make the political decision-making processes open and transparent to all parties, efforts to create procedural justice and an independent judiciary, efforts to expand social justice to a broader spectrum of groups, interests, and organizations. But until large numbers are certain of such an accomplishment of social justice, it is wise to be distrustful of the political rhetoric and vacuous promises of politicians.
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Bolby, J. (1971–1979).Attachment and Loss, 3 volumes. New York: Basic Books. Brazelton, T. B. (1963). The early mother-infant adjustment.Pediatrics,32, 931–938. Brazelton, T. B. (1980). Behavioral competence of the newborn infant. In: P. Taylor (Ed.),
Parent-infant relationships. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Brazelton, T. B., Kowslowski, B., & Main, M. (1974). The origins of reciprocity: The early mother-infant interaction. In: M. Lewis & L. Rosenbaum (Eds),The effect of the infant on its caregiver. New York: Wiley.
Brazelton, T. B., Troncik, E., Adamson, L., Als, W., & Wise, W. (1975). Early mother-infant reciprocity. In: M. A. Hofer (Ed.),Parent-infant interaction. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Cicourel, A. (1964).Method and measurement in sociology. New York: Free Press. Erikson, E. H. (1963).Childhood and society. New York: Norton.
Fromm, E. (1974).The art of loving. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Golovakha, E., Panina, N., & Vorona, V. (Eds). (2000).Sociology in Ukraine: Selected works published during the 90th. Kiev: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Hickey, E. (2005). Serial murderers and their victims (4th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publication Co.
Kohut, H. (1971).The analysis of the self. New York: International Universities Press. Kohut, H. (1977).The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press. Panina, N. V., & Golovakha, E. I. (2001).Tendancies in the development of Ukrainian society
1994–2001: Sociological indicators. Kiev: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Politkovskaya, A. (2007).A Russian diary. London: Random House.
PERFORMANCES: FOLK
SINGERS AND SONG
INTRODUCTIONS
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Scott Grills
ABSTRACT
This chapter pays particular attention to the place of song introductions as an integral feature of public performance. Locating this analysis within the subculture of contemporary folk music, I demonstrate how song introductions can accomplish six important things: (1) provide an interpretive frame for understanding a performance, (2) cast perfor-mances in emotive terms, (3) situate perforperfor-mances in the larger context of marketing and sales, (4) contribute to moral entrepreneurial agendas, (5) align the performer’s actions, and (6) offer a venue for making disclaimers. By demonstrating how performers accomplish these things, I locate song introductions within the larger context of situating public performances more generally.
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Chapter originally presented at the Couch-Stone Symposium, Champagne-Urbana, May 4–5, 2007.
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 33, 19–34 Copyrightr2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2009)0000033004
At the risk of stating the obvious, there is much more to the performance of folk music, than is to be found within musicianship alone. Technical competency is, in and of itself, inadequate for understanding an audience’s reaction to a musical performance (Becker, 1973). In this chapter, I encourage the reader to attend to the performance aspects of onstage narrative utilized by contemporary folk musicians. My purpose in this chapter is to articulate the interactional strategies used by folk musicians to locate and otherwise situate their public performance and their place within this diverse subculture.1In this context, I am particularly interested in: the development of interpretive frames, offering claims to legitimacy and the contextualization of repertoire.
First a bit of a perilous exercise – what do I mean by ‘‘contemporary folk musicians?’’ The contemporary part is straight forward enough; I am limiting my analysis to people who are writing and performing today. That is, the reader would, inSchutz’ (1962)terms, have the theoretical possibility to be co-present with the artist. I, therefore, am rather deliberately excluding an analysis of archival footage, or the wonderful Smithsonian collections. A related and important point is that my analysis is limited to artists whose languages include English. My ability to chat with artists in languages other than English is too weak to be helpful. Happily, many international artists are more linguistically competent than I, and are able to accommodate my shortcomings.
But, what do I mean by ‘‘folk music?’’ Theodor Adorno (1974, p. 204)
offers that ‘‘everything that has ever been called folk art has always reflected domination.’’ Although folk music has often been associated with protest, conflict, and various other manifestations of unrest (Dunaway, 1987;
players, percussionists, guitarists, dobro players, and harmonica/harp players). For the purposes of this chapter I am limiting my discussion to the perspectives and work of professional performing musicians – those who make a living, at least in part, in the music business.
This chapter is based on an extended ethnographic research project that has involved observation, participant observation, and informal interview. Participant roles have included the following: audience member (at numerous venues and festivals in England, Canada, and the United States), conference delegate (at national and regional meetings for the folk industry), folk festival volunteer, folk festival board member and president, and saxophonist with several working blues bands. The time period represented by these various roles spans more than 20 years, however the data represented in this chapter has been collected over the past 4 years.
SITUATING PERFORMANCE: INTRODUCING
THE TUNES
Writing about music is, it has been suggested, like dancing for architecture.3 This is a rather glib comment that alludes to a fundamental reality of the work we are engaged in as a part of the creation of text. We are necessarily engaged in a derivative act. As HenriBergson (1965)has wisely taught, the dissection of that which exists in time (in duration, in process) makes the subject of which we write less than it is. Writing about a meal is necessarily distinct from, and if satisfying at all, much different than the eating of the meal itself.
motion picture award winners to situate their acceptance speeches, the disclaimers used by academics as they begin conference presentations, the opening and closing presentations made by trial lawyers to juries, and the patter constructed by stage magicians are all illustrative of the audience-attentive work that may be undertaken to frame, locate and situate public performance. Therefore, this chapter makes a contribution not only to understand more about the social world of folk singers and their audiences, but also contributes to our understanding of the social process of situating public performances more generically.
A word of caution, however, I would discourage readers from interpreting this work as somehow reflective of the strategies used by folk performers in all instances. Indeed, a number of artists do relatively little to introduce their performance and in fact may speak to audiences very little, if at all, beyond perfunctory comments such as ‘‘It is good to be in Baltimore’’ or ‘‘Thank you’’ following applause. As one artist articulated,
I am not really a big fan of long introductions and a lot of talking. People didn’t come to hear me talk; they came to hear me sing. So that is what I do. As a singer-songwriter I feel that if you can’t understand what I mean from the song, then I haven’t done a very good job of writing it. And then there is, well, if the song is meant to be a bit ambiguous then me telling everyone what I was thinking about when I wrote it ruins the whole thing. I don’t mind people thinking I have had a bit of a wild life, when really I stole the plot of the song from a movie I was watching in my hotel room. (Female, Singer-songwriter, Canadian)
However, artists have available to them the song introduction as an interactional resource, and it is to the strategies and processes associated with the situation of performance to which I now turn my attention.
INTRODUCTIONS AS PERFORMANCE
interpretations, allow for legitimating strategies to be utilized and, importantly, allow artists an opportunity to invoke disclaimers, accounts, and justifications to situate the performance at hand. Therefore, as a potentially integral part of performance, and of successful performance, artists may devote considerable backstage effort to develop, modify, and craft song introductions to effectively manage audience interpretations of the setting.
One of the most important things for me is to try and use the introduction to let the audience believe that they are getting something special tonight – a little glimpse into the world of songwriting and musicianship that is not normally shared. I do this bit on learning how to play guitar and how I learned to play it. I’ve had people come up to me after a show and say it was their favorite part of the show and thank me for it. They sometimes make it clear that they thought they were getting something special, but they don’t know that I’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow night. (Male, Singer-songwriter, Producer, Canadian)
The master has to be Arlo Guthrie. He can turn Alice’s Restaurant, which is over eighteen minutes long to begin with, into a forty-minute live show. The introduction, if you want to call it that, is woven right into the song as he tells the story of the song, which is in itself a story song. He really is amazing; it is as much a part of his thing as anything else is. (Male, Festival attendee, Canadian)
PROVIDING AN INTERPRETIVE FRAME
As works of art, folk songs may share an element of ambiguity much like other artistic human accomplishments. The meaning of the lyrics is necessarily open to interpretation, reinterpretation and debate. Where artists achieve some level of popular recognition, the music press may pay considerable attention to the alleged ‘‘real’’ meaning of a song or song segment.5 In exceptional circumstances, the quest for the ‘‘really real’’ obscured by the lyrics can overshadow the song itself. Folk-pop artist Carly Simon’s 1973 recordingYou’re So Vain has produced a more than 30-year long conversation about who the male reference is in the text. Simon has never publicly identified who she is writing about, or if it is in fact a single person. As she said in a VH1 interview,
Simon’s song is, in part, about a secret, and asSimmel (1950)has wisely taught, the power of the secret is lost in the telling. A part of the appeal of You’re So Vain is that in verse Simon is publicly challenging the likes of Warren Beatty, Kris Kristofferson, Mick Jagger, and Cat Stevens. The uncertainty ofYou’re So Vainis very much a part of the appeal of the secret that the listener participates in, but not fully so. The song is the interactional equivalent of the secret known and not revealed. The meaning of the lyrics is not in dispute, only the individual to which they may refer.
Therefore, while artists may have an interest in preserving the unknown in the song and actively participating in the creation of doubt and uncertainty (Grills & Grills, 2008), others may quite explicitly attend to audience perspectives and problems of meaning. Some such work may quite directly transform a more ambiguous song chorus into something more fully situated, by providing audiences with a resource that is not readily available in the text of the performance. In the brief song introduction below, the artist makes a connection to the labor of fishers that would not otherwise be readily available to the audience and by doing so, rather radically alters the interpretive frame that an urban, mid-western audience would bring to the text if left to their own resources.
I was spending too much time in Maine and I was watching the lobster boats pullin’ up trap after trap with nothing in them that they could keep. So I wrote this song. It is calledCome Up Full.(Female, Singer-songwriter, Eastern US)
Artists may also find that the audiences do not share a common language or set of cultural references that allow the ready establishment of shared meanings. If the intent of the writer is to be preserved, it may be necessary to do fairly extensive framing work.
I write about rural life. If people don’t know what aholleris then the whole point of the song is lost. (Male, Singer-songwriter, Eastern US)
Do you know what atruckieis? People over here don’t use the word much I guess. We use it in Australia all the time – it means a truck driver, and it is kind of important in this song. (Female, Singer-songwriter, Australian)
Performers may also attend to the potential for audiences to make rather fundamental interpretive errors in approaching their music and may adopt strategies to resist unwelcome interpretations and to situate their perfor-mance in a preferred light.
This is a song about killing a woman. Someone asked once what I would do if I ever found the perfect woman and I said that I would kill her. I would kill her so that no one else would ever have her. This is a song about thatybut I didn’t do it though. (Male, Singer-songwriter, Eastern US)
This song is a part of my agnostic gospel project. When I wrote it I thought, Oh no, I’ve written a deist songybut I thought if I heard it, at a Gospel or Bluegrass festival I would like it, so here it isy(Female, Singer-songwriter, Eastern US)
The British and the Canadians all have a similar sense of humor. Americans are much slower to get irony, I think. I love touring there, the music is great, I always pick up a few new guitar licks, but you have to tell them, this one is a funny one, you know, I don’t really mean what I am saying, and that guy I’m singing about, John Major, he was the fucking Prime Minster. (Male, Singer-songwriter, English)
Artists may also alter the interpretive frame of an audience by locating the song in its historical context and, by doing so, modify the experience of the performance. Some artists work quite deliberately and consciously within the very old tradition of the troubadour – the singer whose songs have a purpose of disseminating information about events that might otherwise be concealed or lost to time. Examples include Bob Dylan’sWho Killed Davey Moore (written about the death of the boxer of the same name in 1963), Buffy Sainte-Marie’sBury My Heart at Wounded Knee (with its references to Leonard Peltier and the American Indian Movement), James Keelaghan’s Hillcrest Mine(which references the deaths of 189 miners in Canada’s worst mining disaster in 1914), and Gordon Lightfoot’sThe Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (which commemorates the loss of 29 crewmen when the bulk freighter sank in Lake Superior November 10, 1975). These historical narratives differ from folk songs more generally in that the singer-songwriter is seeking to portray some element of cultural authenticity in their performance. Therefore, some artists make a point of distinguishing such songs from works that are to be understood in more fictionalized terms.
Additionally, song introductions may serve to alter the interpretive frame of the song by placing it within a human narrative, thereby locating the song relative to biography. In the quotation that follows, Pete Seeger locates his fairly well-known version of Guantanamera in the context of a place, a time and the political circumstances that he identifies as salient.
I am going to sing you another song. Jose Marti was born in 1853. When he was 17 years old he was active in the Cuban liberation movement. He was exiled by the Spanish government. He spent most of his life in exile including 12 years in New York City. He wrote 70 books-poetry, novels polemics. He was one of the greatest writers in the Spanish language. At the age of 42 he went back to Cuba and this is one of his last poems as he was killed within a year in an aborted uprising. After he died people put it to a popular tune. [Singing] Guantanameray(PeteSeeger, 1989[1963])
Seeger’s introduction of Guantanamera may also be interpreted as indicative of the emotion work that may be undertaken by artists. In her thoughtful work on gender and emotionShields (2004)makes the simple but important point that, when we study emotion, we are studying that which people take personally. To have an emotional relationship with a person or object is an indication that it is meaningful, and often deeply so, to the actors involved. Artists may, through their song introductions, invite audience members into a personal emotive relationship with the song and with the performance and at times may reveal their own emotive relationship with the song.
I lost my father three years ago now. He was the moral force in our home. He didn’t say much, but he was always there and you knew you were loved. He didn’t have to say anything. I was touring when he died. So I went home and I buried my Pa and went back out on the road again as though my life were normal. But it wasn’t and it would never be again. So I wrote these songs and I am grateful that some of you have found comfort in them too. (Female, Singer-songwriter, Midwestern US)
This was inspired by my parents fighting last year [and] how much it affected me. I’m all grown up, it isn’t supposed to. But it was my way of trying to let go of it all. I called itNo Peace to Keep. (Female, Singer-songwriter, Eastern US)
whereas the successful public performance of card and dice hustlers (Prus & Sharper, 1991) or jockeys (Case, 1991) rather centrally hinges on deceiving audiences, within folk music deception is more of an available resource than a required one.6
so he says, ‘‘I learned this one from the great Townes Van Zandt’’ and people clap and they don’t know it was from a concert video, or he says ‘‘One of the great privileges of my career was to share the stage with this guy or that guy,’’ but it was just a workshop at a festival, or he says, ‘‘this one is a love song to my lovely wife,’’ but he doesn’t tell them that it was wife number one and not number three. The audience thinks what they want to think and it is a good show. You think I’m going to call someone on it? Take Neil Young’s song ‘‘Old Man.’’ He has said on stage that song is about an old rancher on his farm, but lots of other people, me included, think it is really about is father, his old man. Neil can say it is about whatever he wants, and for all I know he doesn’t really even know what he meant when he wrote it all those years ago. (Male, Festival Board Member, Canada)
In the preceding I have paid particular attention to artists’ attempts to situate their performance through the influence audience members’ interpretation of and relationship to the song and its singing. As such, I have focused rather exclusively on material that is more fully attentive to song content and meaning. However, much of what may be included in on-stage introductions may have very little to do with lyrical content and much more to do with other aspects of the life and work of singer-songwriters. As
Becker (1982)has argued, art is to be understood relative to the community context within which it occurs – the art world. Therefore, like other public performers (e.g. speakers who encourage book sales, athletes promoting brand loyalty, and politicians seeking donations), folk musicians may be particularly attentive to situating their performance relative to the creation of markets and marketing opportunities more generally.
ATTENDING TO MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES
themselves of the opportunity to own a hand-signed copy of a CD, (c) purchase out-of-print CDs not available through retail outlets, (d) purchase music not currently available in the region, (e) purchase music before the official release date, and (f) provide financial support to independent artists. The following quotations illustrate these themes.
I’ll be signing albums down at that little signing place at 1 or 1:30 tomorrow. So come on down. If you buy one of my albums I’ll sign that, I’ll sign your program, I’ll sign your sister. I’ll sign just about anything, but I’d rather sign my CD. (Canadian guitarist, Folk Festival)
We will be taking a short intermission after we do one more for you. If you like what you are hearing and would like to support local music we have copies of both of our CDs available. They are $20 each and if you buy both of them you will get a free brownie. I’m not kidding, Danielle here makes great brownies and the only way to get one of them is to buy both CDs kids. You can’t buy the brownies, don’t ask, there might be a food inspector anywhere. Just buy the CDs. See you in half an hour. (Canadian band, community hall)
We have been performing this song for a couple of years now, and reflecting our expertise in marketing, it wasn’t on any of the CDs we had to sell. We have fixed that now and it is the opening track on our new album. So if you heard it before and liked it, tonight is your chance to own it. (Canadian band, community hall)
Canada has been really great to us, I mean really great, thank you. I understand that we are completely sold out in the record tent and we want to thank you for that. If you didn’t get the album you were looking for check us out on iTunes. We appreciate your support. (Australian band, Folk Festival)
MORAL ENTREPRENEURIAL WORK AND
CULTURES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS
movement, Aboriginal/Indian movements, and movements associated with prisoners of conscience.
Reflecting the participation of folk music and their audiences in the extended culture of public problems, artists may weave song introductions directly to performances that are explicitly oriented towards the processes of defining or otherwise engaging social problems. As such, artists may be rather fully engaged in what Blumer (1971) frames as the generic social processes that accompany the definition, legitimization, and official response to social problems. The following quotations illustrate examples of the work of folk musicians to participate in the development of community definitions of social problems.
There are lots of people who get discouraged about this damned human race but every time I think about it I think of Shakespeare-it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at allybut if you would like to get out of a pessimistic mood yourself I have got a sure remedy for you. Get out and help those people down in Birmingham, Mississippi, or AlabamayThere are many ways to do it, you don’t have to go down there yourself. There are all kinds of jobs to be done, it takes heads and hands and hearts, and then we will see this song come trueyWe Shall Overcome. (PeteSeeger, 1989 [1963])
This is one of the few overtly political songs I have ever written; it is a pinhead’s view of international relations. I’d send it out to Rumsfeld but he is gone, I’d send it out to George W. but I don’t think he’d get it so I guess it goes out to Condoleeze [Rice]. (Male, Singer-songwriter, US/British)
I’ve written several songs over the years that have to do with my opposition to the death penalty in my country – which is work I still do. And there are a lot of reasons for that. My opposition to the death penalty is pretty core. I object to the damage that it does to my spirit for my government to kill people because my government is supposed to be me and I object to me killing peopleyit is really simple. So this is calledOver Yonderand it is also calledJonathan’s Song. (SteveEarle, 2003)
Although most certainly variability exists between performers and performances, artists may significantly modify on-stage moral entrepreneur-ial activity in light of perceived differences between audiences, venues, and settings. Under some circumstances artists may adopt on-stage strategies that more directly challenge, whereas in other performances they may select lines of action that obscure or otherwise conceal political commitments.
Sure some of my material is pretty in your face, particularly some of my spoken word art. But if you want to make a living in this business you need to know how to match the material to the audience. If I get a job playing a rural coffee house, then I know that the people who come there on a Thursday night for my show are not there to hear my angry songs, my college show. I won’t hide who I am but if you manage yourself in such a way that people will not listen to you, you have lost any chance to have even a small influence on how they think about poverty, or gun controls, or the death rates in our urban centers. (Male, Poet & Songwriter, US-based)
DISCLAIMERS AND RELATED ALIGNING ACTIONS
An additional important interactional aspect of song introductions is in the extent to which artists may draw on introductions to offer disclaimers, accounts, justifications, or other related aligning actions as a means of situa-ting performance and portraying role competence. Artists may utilize song introductions to place the self in a particular relationship with the song and with song performance – as a means of establishing the self at a particular proximity to the performance.
Singer-songwriters do not have the distance of self from the material they perform that is available to interpreters of the music of others. For example, an artist interpreting a classic blues song that appears to tolerate domestic violence introduced the song this way.
I am going to do a number for you now that was made famous by the late, the great, Billie Holiday, Ain’t Nobody’s Business (audience applause). (Female, Singer, Mid-western US)
This simple introduction does not make a topic of the content of the song but associates the performance with a legendary voice among female jazz and blues singers. By doing so, the artist distances herself from the song topic. However, singer-songwriters do not have this resource available to them. As the authors of the content to be performed, their public self is very much associated with the lyrical content of the song. They may seek to make clear to audiences that they are the creative force behind the song and performance (as opposed to interpreters of the music of others), whereas at the same time engaging in distancing strategies that attend to emergent self-other identities.
[Singing sorrowfully] ‘‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.’’ [Speaking] That is how it all starts in my set, all moaning and complaining, then I complain some more. Best you get used to it. (Male, Singer-songwriter, Eastern US)
I don’t know if all songwriters have this experience, but you write a song and try it out and it is just okay you know, and you put it away and then someone you really trust says you should try it out again, so here it is. (Female, Singer-songwriter, Mid-Western US)
We have got a real downer for you, but we will have fun. It is about unemployment, adversity, and a natural disaster-something for everyone. (Male, Singer-songwriter, Western US)
Here is my get-even song. It may not be a great song but it should be a reminder to all of you. Don’t screw over a folk singer or we can write about you and then we can sing it over and over again. And ladies, I didn’t even change his name so if you are ever in [my hometown] and he comes on to you just run. I mean it, run. (Female, Singer-songwriter, Canadian)
Although disclaimers and accounts may be used to justify the selection of song and repertoire (Albas & Albas, 1993;Hewitt & Stokes, 1975;Scott & Lyman, 1968), performers may also use introductions to excuse perfor-mances that fail to meet subcultural expectations of professional musician-ship.7 Given that issues of performance competence are many and varied, nevertheless a rather central theme is the development of instrumental competence and musical fluency. Among singer-songwriters, this typically involves learning how to play the acoustic guitar. Reflecting concerns not dissimilar from those expressed by Haas and Shaffir’s (1987) study of medical students, some folk musicians may experience considerable ‘‘stage fright’’ that is directly related to their ability to maintain and sustain audience impressions of musical competence.
I’ll say, ‘‘I’m going to do one now in the key of E’’ and I move my capo, and make it look all professional, but the only way I know it is in E is because someone who was sitting in with me told me. I learned how to play the guitar on my own. When I am up there on those workshop stages it terrifies me. These other musicians, they know so much and I am really a poet with a percussion instrument with strings sitting there. (Female, Singer-songwriter, Northwest US)
CONCLUSION
and the news industry (Altheide, 2002), and revealed the social importance of the apparently inconsequential encounters between doormen and the tenants with whom they interact (Bearman, 2005). In the most modest of ways, this chapter joins this debunking tradition.
The work of the artist in framing their public performance is consequential to the musicianship to follow. It may both locate the performance and simultaneously be an aspect of performance. By attending to song introductions, locating them within a performance and subcultural context, and conceptually framing them relative to public performance more generally, the interactional relevance of this apparently mundane feature of human group life is drawn out and made analytically available. If one assumes that in the study of the performance of music that the ‘‘song is the thing’’ then important, relevant, and meaningful aspects of our under-standing of performance will unhelpfully lie outside of the sociologists gaze. I would respectfully suggest that the relevance of this chapter extends beyond the boundaries of folk music. The processes to which I attend have a generic quality to them that extend well beyond this subculture. The processes that folk musicians are undertaking as a part of performance – attending to meaning, managing audience interpretations, engaging in misdirection, promoting ongoing involvements, and portraying competencies – are rather central to the process of situating public performances more generally. However, an attentiveness to this dynamic in other settings requires that detailed ethnographic attention be paid to these processes where they occur. I would very much encourage other researchers to borrow from the themes developed herein to attend to the interactional equivalents present within their own research settings. For, by asking extended questions about how public performances are framed, located, and situated, we gain a much richer understanding of the subcultural context of public performance than we ever can by attending to performance alone.
NOTES
2. For a more substantively attentive definition of folk music readers are directed toForcucci’s (1984)discussion.
3. The original source of this quotation is unknown to me. It is attributed to both Elvis Costello and Steve Martin. It has made its way into popular culture and has been adopted by the bandDancing for Architecture.
4. For a discussion of folk musicians and their audiences more generally see
Sanders (1974).
5. For a related and helpful discussion seeFine’s (2004)examination of folk art and the place of artist identity therein.
6. For an extended discussion of music, manipulation, and related questions of identity seeMartin (2006).
7. In this, the strategies used by folk musicians share much with the author who attempts to distance themselves from a text by referring to it as a ‘‘first draft,’’ a research grant applicant who seeks funding for an ‘‘exploratory study,’’ and the administrator who transfers responsibility for their actions on those who report to them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I thank Lonnie Athens, Ken Bessant, Kathy Charmaz, Sheilagh Grills, Anthony Puddephatt, and Clinton Sanders for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. Of course, they share no responsibility for the shortcomings herein.
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IDENTITY MANAGEMENT DEVICE:
A RESEARCH NOTE
Christopher J. Schneider
ABSTRACT
The mobile telephone is an omnipresent feature of daily life. Mobile phone technology was made readily available to the general public in the early 1980s. A ‘‘ringtone’’ is the sound broadcast from a mobile telephone indicating an incoming call. The ringtones of early 1980’s mobile phones usually consisted of a few pre-programmed monophonic (single melodic line) sounds. These tones had no significance or practical use other than as indicators of social status (of having a mobile phone) and to alert the listener to an incoming call. The increasing popularity of ringtone ‘‘realtones’’ has prompted the need to empirically investigate the way these new technologies affect how people manage the impressions they make on others. Elaborating on Goffman’s presentation of self-thesis, this research note establishes the importance of ringtone technology in situating youthful identities in contemporary society. Implications for future researc
