Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24

STUDIES

IN SYMBOLIC

INTERACTION

VOLUME

24

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION EDITED BY

N O R M A N K DENZIN Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA MANAGING EDITOR

M A R K NIMKOFF University of lllinois, USA EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS

RUOYUN BAI JACK BRATICH HEIDI BRUSH MICHAEL ELAVSKY UMA PIMPLASKAR University of Illinois, USA

2001

JAI An Imprint of Elsevier Science Amsterdam

- London - New York - Oxford - Paris - Shannon - Tokyo

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Arthur P. Bochner

Communication Department, University of South Florida

Shing-Ling S. Chen

Communication Studies, University of Northern Iowa

Dionel Cotanda

Communication Department, University of South Florida

Gary Alan Fine

Department of Sociology, Northwestern University

Andrea Fontana

Department of Sociology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Elissa Foster

Communication, University of South Florida

Simon Gottschalk

Department of Sociology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Bruce E. Gronbeck

Communication Studies, University of Iowa

Peter M. Hall

Department of Sociology, University of Missouri

Monica Hardesty

Department of Sociology, University of Hartford

Regina Hewitt

Department of English, University of South Florida

Peter R. Ibarra

Justice Studies, Kent State University

Margarethe Kusenbach

Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

David R. Maines

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Oakland University

Reuben A. Buford May

Department of Sociology, University of Georgia ix

Joy Pierce

Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

William K. Rawlins

Communication Department, Purdue University

Laurel Richardson

Department of Sociology, Ohio State University

Efrat Tseglon

Department of Sociology, University College Dublin

Norbert Wiley

Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana.

REFEREES Lori Blewett Arthur R Bochner Tiffani Chin Martha A. Copp Norman K. Denzin Chris Dunbar Eric Eisenberg Carolyn S. Ellis Michael Flaherty Katherine Hill Linda Holmes-May Jack Katz John I. Kitsuse Dorrine Kondo Karl Kroeber Jennifer Leich Stephanie Limoncelli Dianna McCarty

David R. Maines Gwendolyn May-Barlow Bernard N. Meltzer Gil Musolf Mary Patillo-McCoy Joy Pierce Darryl Pifer Elizabeth Perea Honey Rand Monica Russel y Rodriguez Clinton Sanders Jennifer D. Slack Rob Sloane Anne Statham Debbi Storrs Marsha Vanderford Kenneth Watson

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SYMBOLIC INTERACTION AND COMMUNICATION: NCA SPOTLIGHT ON THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF DAVID R. MAINES Shing-Ling S. Chen and Arthur R Bochner In 1997 the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) became an affiliate member of the National Communication Association (NCA). For more than thirty years, social scientists within the NCA have focused their research and scholarship on symbolic communication and human interaction, frequently citing the influence on their work of symbolic interactionists such as Mead, Blumer, Goffman, Couch, Becker, and Denzin. The work of these symbolic interactionists, and many others, is routinely read by students of communication interested in interpersonal relations, group processes, media and cultural studies, communication theory, and symbolic studies of the self. More recently, symbolic interactionists have actively built alliances and collaborated with communication scholars and several have moved voluntarily into academic positions within communication departments. As these connections have evolved, an increasing number of graduate students and scholars in communication studies have become members of the SSSI, participating in symposia and giving papers at meetings, and publishing in journals .associated with the study of symbolic interaction. At the same time, the NCA has successfully encouraged greater participation at their meetings from symbolic interactionists in sociology. By designating affiliate member status to the SSSI, N C A institutionalizes and promotes greater recognition and visibility of the

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connections between sociologists and communication scholars, symbolic communication and human interaction. At the 1999 NCA Annual Convention in Chicago, the SSSI Affiliate presented the first in a series of "Spotlight" sessions designed to feature the works of distinguished scholars of symbolic interaction who have contributed significantly to the study of communication. The idea was to use the session to promote dialogue and engagement with the spotlighted scholar's ideas and research. Participants in the session would be distinguished scholars in their own work who were ideally positioned to react to, engage with, extend, and/or challenge the work being highlighted in the session. The inaugural "Spotlight Session" featured the work of Professor David R. Maines. The session was entitled "Symbolic Interaction and Communication: The Contribution of David R. Maines' Works In Interdisciplinary Inquiry". David R. Maines, Professor and Chair of Sociology at Oakland University, was one of the founders of the SSSI. His scholarship is extraordinarily broad in both scope and application, extending interactionist and pragmatist frameworks to the study of social organization and policy studies, the ways in which social order is negotiated, the narrative dimensions of sociological scholarship and writing, and the narrative production of social and cultural meanings. He has discussed these conceptual and theoretical issues in a wide range of specific contexts including friendship, chronic illness, industrialization, liturgy, and mathematics. Four distinguished scholars, two in Communication and two in Sociology, were invited to contribute papers to the session. Bruce E. Gronbeck traces Maines' journey from an emphasis on mesostructural analysis to rhetorical structuration and, then, to narrative modes of cultural construction. Gronbeck points to Malnes' useful attempts to suppress dualistic modes of thought while showing how difficult it can be, even for Maines, to avoid dualisms, especially when structure is viewed as the source of the problem. Gronbeck's suggestive conclusion is to reframe structure not as a context but as a tool for relating. Peter Hall extends Maines' work on temporality, narrative, and public policy processes to congruent work in the natural sciences and contemporary sociologists whose current work is impacted by these cosmological views of science and living systems. The historical, processual, and holistic approaches now emergng in these fields need, in Hall's view, to be applied to our understanding of the meanings and consequences of class, gender, race, and institutional logics. Gary Alan Fine takes Maines' writings on cultural production as his inspiration to ponder norms and their vulnerabilities. Fine theorizes an approach to understanding normative innovations at the interface of individual

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enactment and systemic expectations, one that embraces an individual's interpretive options in locally occasioned, interactional contexts, thereby rejecting a realist/materialist account of norms that fails to acknowledge the dynamic and creative qualities of interactional process in cultural formation and change. William K. Rawlins adopts a personal voice, acknowledging his long frendship with David Maines who has occupied, in Rawlins words, "an instructive and redemptive presence in my life". Rawlins attempts to bring a sense of coherence to what may seem a quite diverse and fragmented body of work, showing how some of Maine's later writings on narrative were foreshadowed by earlier scholarship that emphasized temporality and the negotiated, communicative character of social order. Showing his own talent as a storyteller, Rawlins reads Maines as a person who sees social life as "stories all the way down". The publication of these papers in Studies In Symbolic Interaction opens the conversation to present and future symbolic interactionists in sociology and communication who can and will extend, elaborate, refine, reshape, and apply Maines' work in order to better understand and cope with the world in which they live. Our goal is to keep the conversation going.

THE IDEA OF STRUCTURE AND COMMUNICATION IN DAVID MAINES' WORK Bruce E. Gronbeck I am pleased to have been asked to to provide a chapter commenting upon an aspect of David Maines' work. I've known him since the SSSI convened in Iowa City in the early 1980s, after which he and Carl Couch - undoubtedly against Carl's better judgment - asked me to formalize for a book chapter the paper that I had delivered at that conference (Gronbeck, 1985). I later joined David as an associate editor to the series on Communication and the Social Order he was overseeing for Aldine de Gruyter, and so have exchanged views and drafts of materials with him on and off for the last decade. This panel gives me a chance to construct yet another relationship with him: that of explicator-interpreter of his work. When Shing-Ling Chen asked what I wanted to think about, the word "mesostructure" came to mind immediately - a word in the title of the first of the essays he passed on to me (Maines, 1979). I initially took it as simply another piece of sociobabble, another hunk of someone else's jargon that I'd have to figure out how to use or benignly forget. Only later did I consider his arguments more thoughtfully. I now take those arguments seriously because he's convinced me that they are central to one of the key debates in 20th-century American social thought. Maines framed those debates in the following manner when writing about sociologists' misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Herbert Blumer. In exploring the ways in which sociologists have posited relationships between so-called micro and so-called macro levels of analysis, Maines nearly exploded:

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BRUCE E. GRONBECK I regard the distinction as a particularly ideological and political one rather than one that is descriptive and analytical. It is premised on long-standing dualisms (e.g. individual/ society, appearance/reality, internal/external) that the classical European sociologists imported into the field, and that became central to the agenda of modern sociology and its investigation of social facts and social processes as well as its mission to combat reductionist ontologies. The 'micro-macro line,' to build off Blumer's notion of the color line, therefore can be proposed as an ongoing set of structural relations that contains within it a set of operating dualisms and that has functioned to allocate legitimacy to sociological work. That is, it describes better how the discipline of sociology organizes itself than it does the phenomena sociology presumably is organized to investigate and understand (Maines, 1988: 52).

The Goliath, then, that this David is attempting to fell takes us to the heart of what Szacki (1979), among others, has suggested is a primary faultline sorting all American theories of sociality into two groups: dualistic vs. monist understandings of the social world. I do not wish to return to work on that faultline. But what I want to do is examine how Maines' own work especially over the last decade has labored on that line. I choose to talk about his ideas of structure because those probes show him off at his most creative and represent what sociological thought and research can contribute centrally to m y own work in rhetorical and communication studies. I am particularly interested in reprising his thoughts about social structures and communication processes: more particularly, can he maintain a consistently monistic theory of communication activity? If he can, then he is contributing to the destruction of some dualisms that likewise tend to control communication theory and research: the separation of context from communication act, of message content and the act of embodying or transmitting that content to others, and, of course, o f form and content as separable dimensions of communication processes. I will argue that David does generally suppress dualistic thought in his theorizing about social organizations and social psychology, but that he lapses back into such thinking when actually conducting research on social groups. What such a divided intellectual practice tells us about scholarship will be the topic of m y brief concluding remarks.

F R O M M E S O S T R U C T U R E TO R H E T O R I C A L STRUCTURATION Simply put, Maines has attacked the micro-macrostructure dualism, as I read him, via three strategies. In the late 1970s and early 1982, he was interested in a theory of mesostructure, which he develops most clearly in a 1982 essay in Urban Life entitled "In Search of Mesostructure: Studies in the Negotiated Order." At this stage of his thinking, Malnes was working in a direct sort of way

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out of Anselm Strauss's studies of medical collectivities - important because of the organizational and professional structures that were so clearly exhibited in such groups. Here, thought Maines (1982: 267), was a place where "symbolic interactionism as a perspective came to take matters of social organization seriously." The so-called "traditional rational-bureaucratic conception of organizational authority" (1982: 269) could be challenged by interactionists; what was thought about earlier as so-called "organizational background" (ibid.) - rules, policies, hierarchies, divisions of labor, career paths, and the like - was found to be subject to negotiation, leading to Strauss's articulation of negotiated order theory in his book Negotiations (1978). Important not only to Strauss but also to Maines were three concepts developed in that book: (1) negotiation, or types of actual interpersonal interaction; (2) negotiation context, which represents those aspects of settings that are subject to negotiation; and (3) structural context, or what Maines (1982: 270) described as "the larger transcending circumstances in which negotiations contexts exist." This was neat! In this formulation, the negotiation context - that is, whatever aspects of routine or normal procedure were under scrutiny - was a kind of mesostructure, lying between the structural context-inthe-large and the particular negotiations or interactions being undertaken. So, if the hospital staff and patients interacted regularly about, say, some hospital procedure, those interactions not only determined how staffs and patients acted toward each other but could also affect the sets of institutional rules and organizational relationships governing such collectivities. Or, in Maines' own words, "The negotiated order perspective attempts to show, on the one hand, how negotiation contributes to the constitution of social orders and, on the other, how social orders give form to interaction processes, including negotiation" (1982: 275). Here, micro and macro levels of social organization - for example, interactional analysis and structural analysis - are related to each other, he asserted (ibid.), dialectically, and hence they could be collapsed into each other in the meso-region of life processes. By the end of the essay, Maines (1982: 278) invoked another construct - interpenetration - as that which described "structure and process." Shortly thereafter, in a second stage of thought on the relationships of structure and process, Maines more or less abandoned mesostructure, that is, threw away the crutch. Throwing away that crutch was not - still is not, really easy, but through the mid- and late-1980s Maines tried to walk without the help of the idea of mesostructure, without a mediating structural construct. An essay on the negotiated order approach to the analysis of social organizations that he published with Joy Charlton (1985) eliminated the

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construct of mesostructure and more directed attacked the idea of organizational structure itself. That attack was launched after examining four case studies of negotiated orders - of the agricultural sciences, school systems, the American liquor industry, and debate over the Age Discrimination Act. What Maines and Charlton did was replace the idea of mesostructure with an enlarged theory of negotiation process. After reviewing three variables whose importance were illustrated in the case studies, they suggested that all such negotiations were dependent upon: (1) degree of consensus, (2) degree of exchange, and (3) use of communication strategies. Such an analysis led Maines and Charlton to assert that "The issue [of process] goes beyond that of simply demonstrating that negotiations take place under conditions of constraint [i.e. within structures]; rather, in the broadest sense, it is one of the extent to which social structures are negotiated social structures" (1985: 298). That is, there are not structures qua structures - that is, qua constraint - if all dimensions of relationships are up for negotiation. A second essay from the 1980s in which Maines attacked the idea of structure was, paradoxically, one (Maines, 1988) in which he was defending Herbert Blumer as a theorist of macrostructures. In that essay, Maines was out to demonstrate that Blumer was not only a micro-man but also a theorist with a developed theory of macrosociology. The macrosociological theory that he attributed to Blumer, interestingly, was one of relations. In discussing race relations, Blumer differentiated among seven forms of societal-level relations between people: formal-economic, status, preferential, ideological, attitudinal, orderly/disorderly, and manipulative or power relations (cited in Maines, 1988: 48). Such sets of relations, Blumer argued, affected definitively the impact of industrialization on race relations and are crucial to the operation of interinstitutional arrangements (pp. 49-53). Now, of course, what is interesting about such an emphasis on multifaceted relationships is that they are "fluid and unstructured" (p. 52), always subject to "political struggle and opportunities" (p. 53). Such relationships, as a matter of fact, exist "in and through communication processes," so that "sociology as a science must discover causal processes - the actual mechanisms, functioning relations, and meanings that generate, sustain, and change social forms and collective life" (p. 55). And thus, Maines' venture into the heart of negotiated order thinking drove him toward a monist theory of sociality, wherein communication mechanisms - the mechanisms of meaning making, unmaking, and remaking - are, in a sense, all that is holding human beings together in collectivities. And thus Maines was set up for his work in the 1990s--the study of the actual texts of social negotiation. I examined three pieces of his work that

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focused on narrativized relationships between social groups. The first was a study of competing narratives of land use and community development in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Maines, 1992). The second, a short response paper to a series of studies of welfare reform (Maines, 1993: 177) that analyzed cultural narratives because "the evaluation of any policy program for social change is inherently a moral assessment" and because such assessments are "made by invoking culturally sacred symbols" that "frequently take the form of cultural narratives?' The third paper was published under the title "Information Pools and Racialized Narrative Structures" (Maines, 1999). I will concentrate on that paper because it contains systematic reports of audience responses to a concrete narrative. The study is simple. African American and non-African American students were presented with a story about Church's Chicken. It was asserted that the fast-food chain was owned by the Klan and that it put special chemicals in the chicken that could sterilize black males and harm the fetuses of black female customers, leading to "domestic genocide of African Americans" (p. 379). The students were then asked a series of questions about whether they'd heard the story before, from whom, whether it was believable, with whom they'd discussed it, and how likely they thought it was that such conspiracies actually existed in the U. S. The results indicated that significantly more African Americans than non-black students had heard the story, believed it, found it plausible, had heard it more often from friends and family than institutional sources, had discussed it with other African Americans, and believed generally that such conspiracies were possible in this country. From his data, Maines sought to correct previous work in rhetorical studies on the believability and plausibility of narrative structures (esp. Fisher, 1984) and in sociology on sources of narrative content (esp. Fine, 1992). The persistence of such stories as the one about Church's Chicken Maines tied to embedded social relations - here, black-white relations of oppression - and not just to what Fisher calls narrative fidelity and probability. Furthermore, those embedded social relations, even more than what Fine identified as performance competency, account for believability. In Maines' theory (1999: 324), "Racialized narrative structures, I propose, are part of the cultural content that constitutes the gulfs of mutual suspicion and claims of mutual irrationality between black and white people in America." In other words, there exists a kind of symbolic isomorphism between narrative structure and social structure both understood, however, more as mutual constructions than as pre-existing constraints. The bases for both sorts of structures were thought about as information pools that are available within particular zones of a society.

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In this theory, while the idea of "structure" is articulated multiple times, in fact it is not a structural theory at all. The structure per se of the Church's Chicken story in no way accounts for its believability in the black community. Nor, for that matter, are structural characteristics of that community - except its perception of its oppression at the hands of white community members important to understanding how narratives do their cultural work. Malnes did not take the plot apart, nor did he do much with the structural mechanisms operative in the black community and responsible for giving the fast-food chicken story its credence. Rather, if anything - though Maines does not theorize this activity - it is in the regular performance of that story, presumably by authoritative members of one's primary groups, that provides it with plausibility, believability, and hence social power. Such performances are usefully thought of as communication acts, combining credible speakers with culturally relevant content and traditional communication forms, that function to manufacture social relations.

MAINES' WORK AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES That last point brings me to thoughts about my own field and Maines' utility in theorizing sociological contexts within which to understand human communication processes. As I noted earlier, it has been a goal, in many ways, of both sociological and communication studies to rid ourselves of dualistic thinking. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, of course, but dualisms often divide study areas in halves or thirds or quartiles, making it impossible for any of us to understand the social world in a kind of holistic way. More specifically, the dialectic often evoked when talking about "structure" and "process" makes it most difficult for sociologists to comprehend a holistic view of sociality and for communication theorists to understand human interaction in the same way. In my own field, as soon as human interaction was processually understood as an exchange flowing through time but structurally described as turn-taking between people often inhabiting or enacting social roles, then interaction came to be theorized dualistically. That dualistic conception of interaction was wonderfully machine-like and capable of producing cognitive theories of human interaction, but could not account for people's phenomenological experience of the act of talking with others in a serious, developmentally significant way. Some of the same thing, at bottom, is still happening in Maines' work. The move from mesostructural analysis to a negotiated order theory and on to a

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narrative understanding of cultural construction, maintenance, and repair is a journey from a place where structure is a separable feature of social living to a place where it is continually built anew every time two or more people attempt to communicatively coordinate their thoughts and actions. Yet, so far, Marines has not yet been able - or willing - to take the idea of "continually built anew" seriously. There are, even in his most recent research as I read it, residual theories of social structure that he cannot slough off. Until he does, he'll never be working in the most astrnctural version of negotiated order theory nor will he follow the most nuanced of contemporary narrative theorists, who view the social world as remanufactured in each telling of central cultural stories. Something approaching Giddens' hope that a theory of structuration not only makes the world comprehendible but also legitimizes the very structures in place for so consmlcting the world should be held out. That is: structure and even structuralism, per se, are not the problems. Undoubtedly the human being cannot deal with the uninterrupted flow of experience in toto. The perceptual-phenomenological world can be contemplated only with the help of beginnings, middles, and endings, with active agents who are intentioned and who are empowered to act, with symbolic constructions that make sensible the places within which human beings dwell and experience their lives. We all need ideas of structure within which to capture salient and pressing aspects of existence. But those structures need not be, simply, pre-existing, pre-ordained, and pre-legitimated. We are born into them - into family, local networks, institutionally marked environments. True enough. Yet, our communicative interactions with others bring those environments to life, making such environments themselves strategic weapons with which to make and remake our relations with others. Once the structures themselves are not simply contexts but in fact are tools for relating - strategic or rhetorical tools in the sense that I can use them as I would any other symbol to relate to the Others in my world - then dualistic conceptions of living can possibly be turned into monist theories of sociality. I hope that David Maines will continue his journey toward that goal.

Bruce E. Gronbeck is the A. Craig Baird Distinguished Professor of Public Address in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. This chapter was presented to a session honoring David Maines and assembled by Shing-Ling Chen of the University of Northern Iowa as one of SSSI's contributions to the National Communication Association Convention, Chicago, November 1999.

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REFERENCES Fine, G. A. (1992). Manufacturing tales. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case for public moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51, 1-22. Gronbeck, B. E. (1985). Symbolic interactionism and communication studies: Prolegomena to future research. In: D. R. Maines & C J. Couch (Eds), Communication and Social Structure (pp. 323-339). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Maines, D. R. (1979). Mesostructure and social process. Contemporary Sociology, 8, 524-527. Maines, D. R. (1982). In search of mesostructure: Studies in the negotiated order. Urban Life, 11(3), 267-279. Maines, D. R. (1988). Myth, text, and interactionist complicity in the neglect of Blumer's macrosociology. Symbolic Interaction, 11(1), 43-57. Maines, D. R. (1993). Cultural narratives and economic inconsistencies in welfare reform. Applied Behavioral Science Review, 1(2), 173-178. Maines, D. R. (1999). Information pools and racialized narrative structures. The Sociological Quarterly, 40(2), 317-326. Maines, D. R., & Bridger, J. C. (1992). Narratives, community, and land use decisions. The Social Science Journal, 29(4), 363-380. Maines, D. R., & Charlton, J. C. (1985). The negotiated order approach to the analysis of social organization. Foundations of Interpretive Sociology: Original Essays in Symbolic Interaction. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, SuppL 1 (pp. 271-308). N.p.: JAI Press. Swingewood, A. (1984). A short history of sociological thought. New York: Macmillan. Szacki, J. (1979). History of sociological thought. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

THE MAINES-STREAM: A PRAGMATIST PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND POLICY PRODUCTION Peter M. Hall INTRODUCTION I have been charged with the responsibility of discussing the contributions of David Maines in social organization and policy studies. While certainly not an easy assignment, it has been a pleasurable one. It afforded me the opportunity to reread an entire body of work, rather than just piece by piece as in the past. Seeing it collectively allowed me to see how the works fit together, how they are related and connected, and how they move in new directions and raise new questions. Thus it became an "educational moment", a learning experience because the scholarly corpus evoked reminders, suggestions, challenges, questions, and implications. One consequence of the reading is that one can not - or, at least, I can not - simply discuss social organization and policy because they require a context, which Maines has provided, and because the texts implicate and connect to other important and relevant concepts and subjects. For over 20 years, David Maines has been enunciating and explicating a pragmatist/interactionist perspective to frame discussions of numerous topics and concepts. As part of that effort he has represented the positions of Herbert Blumer, Anselm Strauss, and Carl Couch. Maines has been the foremost

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exponent of interactionism's attention to social organization. He has synthesized and critiqued the negotiated order scholarship. Using his constructed concept of mesostructure, Maines has extended organizational analysis into larger social orders with broad implications. Concepts of temporality and communication emerge as central to social organization and Maines has written on them as well. Another important dimension of his work has been exploring the implications of narrative for the perspective, theory, and research. Finally, and more recently, David Maines has addressed policy production and practice,

applied interactionism, and critical pragmatism. It is also important to observe that Maines' contributions have occurred in many ways, multiple roles, and through diverse social relationships. Clearly he has been an archivist, historian, and (re)interpreter of the tradition. As a synthesizer/articulator he has focused attention and discussion on the perspective and particular central topics. He has been a forceful advocate, debater, and critic in arguments about what the theoretical orientation stands for and can accomplish. David Maines has also been a theorist and a researcher in formulating concepts, emphasizing implications, and demonstrating utility and consequences. But it also should be noted that he has made impressive contributions as an editor of Symbolic Interaction, special issues of other journals, a series with a publisher, and a number of important books. His introductions as editor, I would suggest, contain some of his most seminal ideas. Finally, while I will only credit David Maines here, it should be emphasized that he and we have thrived on his collaborations with students, colleagues, and many of our significant elders, too many who are no longer physically present. This has, no doubt, helped Maines carry on the conversation but it has also demonstrated his commitment to the idea that knowledge and scholarship are dialogical processes and not merely individual accomplishments. In what follows, I want to emphasize some of Maines' foci and their contributions. This is not, by any means, an exhaustive, extensive, or definitive treatment but rather a brief excursion through the scholarship. The full examination awaits another writer and another day. I also want to suggest some directions and developments that flow from his writings as well as some of my ideas that are generated by his and are compatible. Thus I will present his view on pragmatism; negotiated order, mesostructure and social organization; temporality and narrative; and policy, applied :interactionism, and critical pragmatism. Using Maines as a springboard, I want to discuss issues around "stratification", institutions, and the implications of work in biology, physics, and cosmology for interactionism.

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PRAGMATISM Over the last 25 years, Pragmatism, that distinctively American philosophy, has once again become a major presence in our intellectual, sociopolitical, and academic life. Concurrent with that renascence, interactionists in general and Anselm Strauss and David Maines in particular have more explicitly grounded our work within that tradition. That has not only reemphasized the foundations of interactionism but also made visible its connections to others' efforts (e.g. Cornel West, Richard Rorty, Kenneth Gergen). This direction has placed an emphasis on action, process, consciousness, temporality, antidualistic dialectics, context, contingency, and complexity. I would argue that this grounding has had several significant consequences broadening sources and vision, reinterpreting some of the past, and transforming our starting point. If you reread Maines' (1977) Annual Review of Sociology article on symbolic interactionism and social organization you will encounter primary references to Mead and Blumer. If you examine Maines and Charlton (1985) those references include Park and Hughes. A reading of Maines and McCallion (in press) finds references to Dewey, Addams, Thomas, and Wirth. Indeed, the pragmatist consciousness facilitates a stronger link of interactionism to Chicago sociology and much broader attention beyond social psychology. Similarly one might argue this awareness prompts broader attention to Herbert Blumer's whole corpus than merely pp. 1-60 of Symbolic Interactionism (1969). The work Strauss began with Mirrors and Masks (1959) has developed a longer trajectory and a wider perspective. Another consequence of the link to pragmatism is the foundational focus on action in contrast to communication. Maines shows some ambiguity or tension on this. For example in the 1977 Annual Review article he begins with references to communication growing out of symbolic interactionism. More recently with specific reference to pragmatism he initiates assumptions sometimes with action and sometimes with communication. Anselm Strauss (1994) makes the significance of the starting point explicit and grounds it in the work of John Dewey and G. H. Mead. He argues in the context of action and the phases of act that the sequencing assumes ongoing action that becomes blocked and is followed by deliberation about further action. For Strauss, and I concur, while communication is a form of action, too much emphasis on symbolization and interpretation may lead to decontextualization and unproductive arguments about subjectivism and atomism. Strauss' perspective directs our attention to what people are doing together and from there to social organization. -

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This orientation to a "theory of action" and thought, I believe, is reinforced by Mead's often ignored discussion of the role of the hand in the manipulatory phase of the act and its consequence for mind, perception, language, and the self (Miller 1973). Of course there is a danger of mind-body dualistic thinking that we must transcend by maintaining a dialectical processual stance. However, Ian Tattersall (2000) recently discussed the nonlinear evolution of hominids and their behavioral interaction with the environment, first through the construction of tools and later with the emergence of language. Both facilitated the triumph of the Homo sapiens over the Neanderthals. Communication is a mediating process that supports social actions and interaction. As Strauss observes, attention to meaning is always underpinned by the theory of action. It is more pragmatic to view action and social construction in that context, in both senses of the meaning of pragmatic.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION - NEGOTIATED ORDER, SOCIAL ORDER, AND MESOSTRUCTURE David Maines has focussed interactionist attention on social organization and provided direction to the scholarship by creating and promoting conceptual formulations. He was the first to articulate and argue interactionism's capability to address matters of social structure in the mainstream sociological media (1977). He also contributed an updating of the negotiated order literature, culling out some critical problems and implications (1985 with Charlton). Finally he proffered the transcendent concept of mesostructure as a powerful route to mapping societal social organization and social orders (1982). Malnes (1982) observed that this movement occurred within two phases. In the earlier manifestation which he labeled "creating an imagery", Strauss, Maines, and others focussed on professions and hospitals, on the negotiated order of those institutions, and on a general view of social organization. The second phase, "constructing a paradigm", was characterized by formulation or inclusion of concepts connected to the negotiated order, being more explicit about attention to larger social orders, and finally to constituting mesostructure as an alternative to the macro-micro dichotomy. Each of Malnes' pieces established a grounding in the tradition, emphasized key constructive ideas, and made some points which had critical implications for directing future scholarship. In the 1977 essay Malnes began his public defense of Blumer's work, distinguished interactionism from ethnomethodology, and articulated a linkage to cybernetics and open systems theory (I want

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to return to the latter at the end of this article). Moreover he drew attention to Mead's perspective on the past and its multiple implications for interaction and negotiation. He encouraged interactionists to be more attentive to the structure of constraint and not to overemphasize open-ended interaction. As a consequence of seeing Strauss' Negotiations (1978) before publication, Maines began formulating a view of systematically linked intercontextual relationships, which would eventually become a conditional matrix to Strauss. Finally he connected the ideas of structural process to compatible European views of Bottomore and Gurvitch of "social structure as permanent process". In the 1985 article with Charlton, a dialectical perspective emphatically grounded the analysis of the negotiation order literature. They noted, drawing on Mead, relationships between order and change, freedom and constraint, individual and society, structure and process, and cooperation and conflict. In addition, they encouraged an outward looking expansion to thinking systematically about social orders rather than the dynamics of negotiation episodes. The authors also explained how negotiated order expressed the simultaneity of order and change through dialectical, temporal, and reflexive processes. The dynamic ordering could be envisioned as the interpenetration of structuring mechanisms and human reflection and resistance. The authors led us in new directions by explicitly invoking mesostructure and drawing out major analytical issues for further attention - the nature of negotiation, historical processes and contexts, and the limits and consequences of negotiation. While the first has drawn limited attention, the latter two - as represented by sedimentation, power, and conditional matrices - have been utilized to much advantage. The introduction t o t h e special issue of Urban Life (1982) "In Search of Mesostructure" is the occasion for Maines to more fully develop the concept of mesostructure that he used in other places - but only with the barest statements (1979, 1985). In language that has become now almost talmudic for me, Maines saw mesostructure as the realm of the interpenetration of structure and process, of structural arrangements that exist in and through processes that render them operative, of human conduct through which social structures are processed and social processes become structured. He commented again on the inherent dialectical and temporal quality of mesostructure and the immersion of human beings in webs of significance of their own making. Maines also began to draw the following important elements - the relationship of consequences and conditions, the dual sense of contextualization, and the significance of power and resources. He argued that meso is indeed somewhere between macro and micro but is intended as a realistic and productive replacement. Finally he

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calls attention to three dimensions of mesostructure - segmentation, mediating processes, and temporal orders. Segmentation in this context was meant to refer to social worlds that develop within social orders and that organize lines of communication and define the meanings (cultures) in which structures/orders are enacted. While this clearly makes sense in terms of differentiation within say, art worlds, and in explaining different perspectives between administrators and teachers and school board members, the idea of segmentation also allows us to think about different social orders or institutions which are similarly characterized as compartmentalized social spaces (but also open). This provides a link to an underdeveloped area by interactionists - namely institutional orders, which I return to later. Maines' second dimension, mediating processes, clearly has links to segmentation and social worlds. Certainly social reality, language, knowledge and more broadly, culture provide filters, lenses that shape how context, ends, action, actors, practices, and artifacts are given meaning and how those vary by time, place, order, interests, and biography. Herein are the webs of significance spun by social actors and sustained by their networks that cohere and sanction. Yet these too exist in time and in process, in the dialectic between order and change. Thus there is the necessity as Maines was implying of exploring relationships between culture and structure as much as with structure and process. Mesostructures are always temporal orders to Maines. Human action occurs within time and through time. Therefore time must be problemafized and conceptualized as process and in the relationships between present, past, and future. In addition, that also means past actions have consequences and may condition the present. It also signifies that within social orders, humans may construct different temporalities that express different historical perspectives, different rhythms and tempos of social life, and different consciousness of continuity and discontinuity. One aspect of this on which Maines comments suggests that '°structure" is not an omnipresence or deterministic but rather has conditional relevance, which varies by time. Thus, for example, when we attend to intersection of social orders of inequality, class, gender, and race, one ordering may be seen as more or less relevant in the specific situational or institutional context. (more on this later) David Maines provided a major piece of bridging, at least for me, between the works on social worlds, negotiated orders, civilizations, and arenas with the concept of mesostructure. It provided an umbrella over which to organize those studies, the emergent central concepts, and the development of mesodomain analysis as the intersection of action, historical, and structural contexts. -

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TEMPORALITY AND NARRATIVE As is evident from what has already been said, David Maines sees temporality as a central aspect of his perspective and of interactionism in general. He marks its presence in the pragmatist foundation and makes it a major dimension of mesostructures and negotiated orders. In addition, with Mike Katovich and Noreen Sugrue (1983), he articulated and elaborated G. H. Mead's theory of the past for its sociological (and interactionist) relevance. In examining Meadian temporality, the authors underscored the relationship between continuity and discontinuity through successive action and emergent novelty. In addition, they located the centrality of presents for action and its relationship to pasts and futures. Most importantly, they develop multiple dimensions of past(s) and their complex interrelationships: (1) symbolically reconstructed, (2) social structural, (3) implied objective and (4) mythical. The first represents what actors may come to regard as the selected relevant past and how they define it depending on the nature of the particular present. The second can be thought of as sequences of contexts and activities in process that constitutes conditions for shaping but not determining behavior. The third refers to "what must have been", the existence of previous events necessary for the existence of the present-even if actors do not have records or remember them. And finally, there are those fictitious creations that are useful resources for projecting futures and facilitating presents. There are not only dialectical relationships between the present(s) and past(s) and futures; there are also dialectical relationships between the multiple pasts. In this manner, we can entertain the interactions of action, culture, history, and structure. Actors can make (new) history by their actions in present contexts that respond to their present conditions and historical pasts on the basis of their perceptions, beliefs, values, and intention for the future. The study of temporal orders and mesostructures requires a distinctive methodology. Such an approach emphasizes action, process, events, contexts, contingencies, time, and space. It needs a logic that expands our ethnographic vision beyond the "here and now" and provides for historical and structural dimensions while remaining dynamic and agentic. David Maines (1993a) has articulated that methodology through his arguments for a genuine narrative sociology. While there is much more to his argument and multiple dimensions to his narrative turn, I want to focus here on what he laid out as basic elements because they fit the lines of scholarship I am discussing (and advocating). Maines stated that the three basics of a narrative approach are the following:

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(1) relevant events are selected and described; (2) the events are transformed into a story through emplotment, contextualization, and characterization; and (3) the events are arranged in a temporal ordering that answers questions of how and why and also provides depiction of tempo, duration, and pace. While Maines was making a strong case for the interpretive nature of science, social science, and sociology, we should not conclude that he meant all is merely fictional, ungrounded, or only in the mind of the storyteller. Rather it is clear that in the pragmatic conception of truth such efforts are interactive, collective, and grounded. Moreover the approach has widespread utilization and acceptance beyond those associated with symbolic interactionism. Kevin Gotham and William Staples (1996) demonstrated vividly and persuasively how the "new" historical sociology, particularly in studies of capital-state relations and urban sociology, utilizes the narrative turn. The culmination of their effort shows how scholars combine theoretical ideas and empirical research to understand sociohistorical reality. That reality is presented as historically contingent and context-dependent but also includes multi-level structural analysis. It shows processual unfolding in ways that avoid limitations of simple-minded causality by attending to dense contextuality, the interconnections of agency and structure, and the temporality of historical events. The authors support an approach that explore sequences of events, background conditions, causes and effects, individual action and collective mobilization, practical deliberations, complications, consequences and resulting actions. In fact, the authors are responding directly to Maines in showing how historical sociology is genuinely narrative and profoundly sociological at the same time. I suspect the narrative method to some is associated with actor's voices, biographies, or life histories; witness the article by Arthur Frank (1993) that followed Maines' - on the "illness experience as narrative". However as Maines observed narratives exist at various levels ranging from the personal to the institutional or cultural. Narratives - as seen by Gotham and Staples - also need not be first person or be simply local, developed in one site, or at one time. The narrator can be the observer following actions across space and time. Gotham and Staples include mesodomaln analysis as one of the array of those using historical narrative. They would also see, I believe, Anselm Strauss' ideas about conditional matrix and processual ordering where there are sequences of conditions - actions - consequences sequences across space and time as expressing a narrative mode. This synergy represents an explicit linkage to historical understanding, larger social formations, and the interpenetration of agency and contexts across space and time. Such work I would characterize as

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both interpretive and realist. It combines observation of concrete actions, presentation of real actors' voices, historical records, and analyst interpretations of intentions, conditions, and consequences. The Gotham and Staples argument extending Maines' narrative turn has some important implications. First, it obviously takes us into the historical domain, reinforcing that orientation. In addition, at one point it combines mesodomain analysis and study of the development of the welfare state in the same paragraph. There is a compatibility and synergy between mesostructures and historical institutionalism (Benson & Martindill, 1998). Those authors argue that greater contextualization is offered by the historical institutionalists while greater evidence of agency, action, and contingency is offered by mesodomain analysts. Together, Benson and Martindill say, those perspectives mount a stronger argument for the interpenetration of agency and context across space and time. David Maines' combination of a mesostructural theoretical perspective and a narrative methodology provide a strong basis to examine social enterprises, institutions, and orders dynamically across space and time. In the next section I discuss his utilization of this framework to study the policy process in the Catholic Church.

THE POLICY PROCESS One of the consequences of David Maines career mobility has been that his work has been affected by place - by local contextual problems, issues, and responsibilities and as well by the inhabitants of those places. Thus in Detroit, Michigan Maines became interested in the Catholic Church and worked with those who have some knowledge and similar interests in that topic. There Maines focussed his energies on exploring dimensions of the policy process within the Catholic Church as it implements aspects of Vatican II changes. Drawing upon the recent interactionist works on policy and emphasizing the connections to pragmatist orientations and Blumer's perspective on social organization, Maines together with Michael McCallion (and others) (1996) explored the implementation of church policies in the Detroit diocese and in local parishes. While some of the work is still in process, Maines and colleagues have added a valuable new context for the analysis of policy processes, the Catholic Church. The results to date have been useful. They reinforced the view of policy as transformational processes as "it" moves from site to site. They demonstrated clearly that policy implementation is not an act but an interpretive process and therefore those policy implementers axe also policy makers. The research illustrated how social change generates contested situations and how goals, values, and interests that are broad, general, and

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abstract must and do become transformed to be defined and practical as specific, concrete, and local. Thus, for example, in the working out of a ritual and new policy orientation, parishioners reject the hierarchical/professional/ religious experts and opt for a practical, interpreted, and traditional method. There are, as a result, of this scholarship some valuable new additions and emphases. Malnes and colleagues, while having noted the vertical path of policy as it moves down the church hierarchy, also observed a horizontal dimension or what they term the breadth of perspective - that is, the different views of participants located at different levels and places - those who initiated Vatican II and those who teach it to students have more global and strict interpretations of the text and its meanings while looser, more ambiguous and practical perspectives occur in diocese and parish locations. As the policy process played out, these different perspectives were a major instigator of conflicts, negotiation, adaptations, and transformations of intentions. The authors also focus on the nature of the social change - not only is it intended but it is mandated change. Thus as in some (and perhaps most) public policy cases, authorities at the top have decided on some goals that are being "imposed" on subordinates to implement. This is distinct, they noted from other intended changes that are bottom-up and arise from the grass-roots. More to the point, they focused upon the contradictions and oxymoronic character of the Vatican II charge - namely that it hierarchically and bureaucratically demanded democratic participation - or what Maines and McCallion label "obligatory local empowerment". This as they observed has some ironic consequences. But what they observe is an all-too-common element - namely that intended change or policy intentions often contain internal contradictions or engage opposing tensions in contexts. Analysts, taking note from this work, should always be alert to the presence of these conditions. This topic and setting provide multiple and rich opportunities to explore the policy process which Maines and colleagues used to full advantage. In one paper (1998) they compare the implementation of Vatican in two content areas for comparison focusing on a number of significant dimensions -.scope of goals, stakes, networks, visibility, concern, agents and implementation problems. While not unexpected the results showed that problematic implementation was associated with high concern, high visibility, and diffuse, ambiguous goals. The results, however, provide indications about the conditions for nonproblematic implementation. In addition, a beginning analysis of organizational change in the archdiocese (McCallion & Maines, 1999) in response to Vatican II and local conditions which examines different sites - suburban, inner ring, center city - showed that different contexts exist for handling the policy intent - affirmation, caution, disaffirmation leading to

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different behaviors. While we await the full elaboration of this work, it is clear that it adds important comparisons, policy characterizations, and contextual elaborations. APPLIED

INTERACTIONISM PRAGMATISM

AND CRITICAL

David Maines (1997) has more recently turned his attention to examining and advocating the use of interactionist insights and scholarship to "improve the situations of actual people in the world of practical affairs". This is not an unusual step either from studying policy-mandated change or for those schooled in the history of pragmatism and interactionism. Certainly G. H. Mead linked thought, problem-solving, and science as processes to social reform. Among Mead and John Dewey (the intellectual pragmatists), those called applied pragmatists - Jane Addams and others connected with Hull House, those connected with the Chicago School - Small, Park, Thomas, Wirth, there was the belief that social science could further the development of a healthy society. Maines makes this argument and draws on these sources. In addition, Maines (with McCallion in press) drawing on more recent interactionists (e.g. Harvey Farberman 1991) locates a more contemporary notion of critical pragmatism - one that links action process to the existing and changing political economy - noting that our local situations are embedded in this larger context and that local actors may not have the awareness of the connections. One goal of an intervention would then include creating this awareness, what I call mesodomain work, and also engaging in "purposive political action" to alter the arrangements for purposes of improving community life, an ordering process of intended change. Saul Alinsky, the famous community organizer and student of Robert Park, serves as the exemplar here. The focus of Maines and McCaltion's attention is to an effort to reduce the inequality between sectors of the Detroit metropolitan area through the involvement of a regional church - based coalition. (The formula is one developed in the Minneapolis area). Stan Saxton's (1993) model of the citizen-scholar provides the specific applied interactionist role the authors have in mind. This is not theorizing or studying from a distance or being a "hired gun" to evaluate implementation of a program. What Saxton wrote of, so compellingly, drawing on pragmatist thinkers among others, was much more closely connected to the level of the grassroots community and, indeed, in conjunction with them, participatory action research. What Saxton articulated so eloquently was the commitment of the philosoph3; and its practitioners to democratic processes, to values of

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justice, fairness, cooperation, and opportunity. Saxton would strongly support Maines and McCallion's argument that critical pragmatism "merges values, research competence, education, and practical politics in pursuit of community enfranchisement and a healthier society". The return to pragmatist roots prompts the challenge to engage injustice, inequality, and antidemocratic conditions with our science, mind, soul and action.

CONCLUSION Over the past 25 years David Maines has been a catalyst for my own work. And in the same process he has utilized that work to further his own. In an effort to continue that interaction, I would like to suggest some directions for further work, some of which I am currently undertaking and some that I hope he and others will entertain. Maines (1993b) once wrote that sociology was catching up to symbolic interaction. Some of that is clear if you examine the scholarship cited in Gotham and Staples (1996) and Benson and Martindill (1998). I also believe the net is wider because of parallel developments. There are some important developments and approaches in the natural sciences which are quite congruent with some interactionist and sociological orientations. Ernst Mayr, an important evolutionary biologist, recently presented his arguments about biology as a science (1997). He explicitly challenged the positivist position by arguing against a science that propagates essentialism, determinism, universalism, and reductionism. Rather Mayr believes that the science of biology (and others as well) requires an approach that accepts emergence, probablism, chance, population thinking, pluralism (multiple explanations), and historical narratives. He believes biological forms and levels are qualitatively different than their chemical components; that interactions, contingencies, and contexts create novelty as well as probable consequences; that all units of a population are unique and vary; that there are always, at least, two important necessary explanations - bow the object of study came to be over time and what is occurring now. Finally because of these factors, the mode of telling and reporting requires a historical accounting of interactions across time and space. In addition, congruent perspectives can be found in cosmology, astrophysics, and physics being integrated and presented by what is called complexity theory (Smolin, 1997; Kauffman, 1995). Fritjof Capra (1996) offers a readable and comprehensible synthesis of this perspective. Its characteristics of living systems include the following: complex organization, open boundaries, nonlinearity, nonequilibra, irreversibility, self-organizing, relationality, network

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structures, processuality, dynamics, feedback loops, amplification, dissipative structures (order and disorder), possiblism, and patterns. What this all symbolizes, from my perspective, is a view of society as mesostructures or social orders across space and time. It encompasses the contingencies, complexity, and consequences of action and interaction but grounded in conditional contexts. It explicitly conceptualizes time and space and the concurrent presence of both order and disorder and therefore change, process, and possibilities. It does not assume integration, totality, or closed systems. It also does not seek mechanical or simple causation but probablistic patterns of intersecting influences and/or possible innovations. Natural and physical scientists have made use of this perspective. Some sociologists of note (Wallerstein, 1997; Collins, 1998) have commented on its applicability to our endeavor. Some sociologists have explicitly applied it in their theorizing and research (Eve et al., 1997). However those applications have been advanced mathematical or quantitative formulations. One scholar among them commented on the absence of utilization by interactionists (Smith, 1997). David Maines once contemplated chaos theo12¢, a compatible variant of complexity, and found it wanting (personal communication). Perhaps he will see some new openings or applications from this recent elaboration. He certainly is one amongst us with that kind of vision. With this view of science and living systems, I want to suggest areas where we might utilize this perspective and which attend to some of David Maines' suggestions. In his introduction to the special issue on "Interactionism and Practice" (ABSR, 1997), Maines commented that all of the articles implicated but did not fully discuss stratification. He posed some specific questions that flowed from those implications. Pursuant to ideas expressed elsewhere by him about studying larger social orders, I want to take on a bigger agenda and suggest that we think about exploring the interrelated and intertwined social orders of class, gender, and race/ethnicity. While interactionists have for some time addressed race and ethnicity (e.g. Blumer, Shibutani, and more recently gender, power, and inequality (Musolf, 1992), this larger project remains to be analyzed from an interactionist stance. For some time scholars have made arguments that race is socially constructed and socially produced. Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1994) have referred to these processes as racial formation. Feminists have documented the social construction of gender and the gendering of social institutions and social practices (Acker, 1992). More recently, the concept of class has been analyzed as historically contingent and socially produced (J. Hall, 1997). Moreover, there is a general consensus that these forms and orders are not separate but interrelated, interpenetrating, interdependent and mutually

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constituting (Leruer, 1997). However still unresolved is the way(s) those forms of social inequality complexly weave together. Some argue for a unitary system or a structural matrix of domination (Sacks, 1989; Anderson & Collins, 1995). Cameron McCarthy (1990), in a manner congruent with complexity and mesostructnres, offers what he calls a "non-synchronous approach" - that is that while the three are related, the extent, form, and effect are problematic, contingent, contextual, and historically variable. Reflecting concerns about connections between agency and structure, micro and macro influences, and the play of history, the social construction/production of these relationships exhibits tensions, nuances, and contradictions. While contexts are places of unequally distributed resources and differentially advantageous "rules of the game", they are also places where there are different degrees of consciousness, interests, and ends where struggle, negotiation, and change may occur. In their relations among each other and in their conscious presence or relevance, forms of inequality may flow in and out of situations and in support of or opposition among each other. In any concrete setting then, some form may not be situated at the same time and place in the same degree. The presence, meaning, and consequence of class, gender, and race are not merely objective, determining, and obvious. They require systematic empirical attention through a perspective that is historical, processual, conditional, and action-oriented. In a brief addition, I want to encourage another area for us to address, namely the concept of institutions. David Maines has taken the policy process into the domain of organized religion. He has provided a comparison to my studies of education. The American institution of education, by the way, has a unique form in comparison to other countries which clearly affects its organization, culture, practices, and purposes. Fran Pestello and Patricia Voydanoff (1991) utilized mesodomain analysis for an insightful examination of the family institution in contemporary American society. Anselm Strauss' (1993) discussion of social worlds and arenas also lays out one interactionist mode of addressing institutions. In addition, the historical institutionalists have spelled out the mediating effect of the political institution (Steinmo et al., 1992). Roger Friedland and Robert Afford (1991) have offered a view of American institutions that focuses on the different institutional logics and their potentially contradictory consequences. If we start with Everett Hughes' idea of institutions as going concerns across space and time and begin a more systematic comparative examination of institutions empirically and conceptually, I believe we can reintroduce institutional analysis in a way that clarifies the significance of a comparative, historical, contingent, conditional, processual, and action-oriented perspective.

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I c o m e to the end o f a piece that perhaps got away from me. The breadth and depth o f D a v i d M a i n e s ' w o r k has had that effect on me. As I said at the beginning, it provokes, stimulates, suggests, encourages, and challenges. However, I clearly allowed the vision to wander because, in keeping with the watery metaphor, every time I stepped into the stream, it was a different place. David Maines is always down deep the strong and continuing undercurrent o f tradition, o f pragmatism, Chicago school, and Interactionism. At the same time, his energetic flow spills over on the banks, renews dried up creeks, and starts new rapids and branches that refresh, expand, and extend the perspective. A n d in the end, as I suggested, the flow enters a large sea o f distinctive character, clarity, and currents. It has been a pleasure to float this waterway knowing the steady hand and alert sight o f D a v i d Maines was at the helm. It was fun. It was exciting even i f w e meandered, got a little wet, and disagreed about when to stop. The sun was there at the end to dry us off. A n d the colleagueship was there to offer sustenance and conversation. L e t ' s keep on doing this. A n d let's also be sure there are enough intrepid voyageurs and rafters when the veterans take to rocking chairs on porches gazing at the wind-swept waters.

REFERENCES Acker, J. (1992).Gendered Institutions: From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions". Contemporary Sociology 21, 565-568. Anderson, M., & Collins, R H. (Eds) (1995). Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology. (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Benson, K., & Martindill, M. (1998). Toward a Dialectical Approach to Policy Analysis: Linking Historical Institutionalism to the Meso-Domaln. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting, San Francisco. Blumer, H. (1969), Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, NY: Prentice-Hall. Capra, E (1996). The Web of Life. New York: Anchor Books. Collins, S. H. (1998). On Book Exhibits and New Complexities: Reflections on Sociology as Science. Contemporary Sociology 27: 7-11. Eve, R., Horsfall, S., & Lee, M. (Eds) (1997). Chaos, Complexity, and Sociology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing. Farbennan, H. (1991). Symbolic Interaction and Postmodernism: Close Encounter of a Dubious Kind. Symbolic Interaction 14: 471-488. Frank, A. (1993). "The Rhetoric of Self-Change: Illness Experience as Narrative". The Sociological Quarterly 34: 39-52. Friedland, R., & Afford, R. (1991). Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions. In: W. Powell & R DiMaggio (Eds). The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, (pp. 232-263). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gotham, K., & Staples, W. (1996). Narrative Analysis and the New Historical Sociology. The Sociological Quarterly 37: 481-501. Hall, J., (Ed.) (1997). Reworking Class. Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press.

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Kauffman, S. (1995). At Home in the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press. Lemer, G. (1997). Why History Matters. New York: Oxford University Press. Maines, D. (1977). Social Organization and Social Structure in Symbolic Interactionist Thought. Annual Review of Sociology 3: 235-259. Maines, D. (1979). Mesostructure and Social Process. Contemporary Sociology 8: 524-527. Maines, D. (1982). In Search of Mesostructure Studies in the Negotiated Order. Urban Life 11: 267-279. Maines, D. (1993a). Narrative's Moment and Sociology's Phenomena. The Sociological Quarterly 34: 17-38. Maines, D. (1993b). Foreword. In: A. Strauss (Ed.), Continued Permutations of Action, (pp. XIIIXV). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Maines, D. (1997). Interactionism and Practice. Applied Behavioral Science Review 5: 1-8. Maines, D., & Charlton, J. (1985). The Negotiated Order Approach to the Study of Social Organization. In: H. Farberman & R. Perinbanayagam (Eds). Foundations oflnterpretive Sociology, (pp. 271-308). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Maines, D., & McCallion, M. (1998). Translating Policy into Practice: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic Ritual in the Vatican II Church. Paper presented at the Midwest Sociological Society annual meeting, Kansas City, MO. Maines, D., & McCallion, M. (In press). Urban Inequality and the Possibilities of Church-based Intervention. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, edited by N. Denzin, 23: Maines, D., Sugrue, N., & Katovich, M. (1983). The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead's Theory of the Past. American Sociological Review 48: 151-173. Mayr, E. (1997). This is Biology. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. McCallion, M., & Maines, D. (1999). Creating Vicariates and Reorganizing the Archdioceses of Detroit. Paper presented at the North Central Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Troy, ML McCallion, M., Maines, D. & Wolfel, S. (1996). Policy as Practice: The First Holy Communion as a Contested Situation. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 25: 300-326. McCarthy, C. (1990). Race and Curriculum. London: Falmer Press. Miller, D. (1973). George Herbert Mead. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Musolf, G. (1992). Structure, Institutions, Power, and Ideology. The Sociological Quarterly 33: 171-179. Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1994). Racial Formation in the United States. Second edition. New York: Routledge. Pestello, E, & Voydanoff, E (1991). In Search of Mesostructure in the Family: An Interactionist Approach to the Division of Labor. Symbolic Interaction 14: 105-128. Sacks, K. B. (1989). Toward a Unified Theory of Class, Race, and Gender. American Ethnologist 16: 534-550. Saxton, S. (1993). Sociologist as Citizen-Scholar. In: T. Vaughan, G. Sjoberg and L. Reynolds (Eds), A Critique of Contemporary American Sociology, (pp. 232-251). Dix Hills, NY: General Hall. Smith, T. (1997). Nonlinear Dynamics and the Micro-Macro Bridge. In: R. Eve, S. Horsfall and M. Lee (Eds), Chaos, Complexity, and Sociology, (pp. 52-63). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing. Smolin, L. (1997). The Life of the Cosmos. New York: Oxford University Press. Steinmo, S., Thelen, K., & Longstreth, E (Eds), (1992). Structuring Politics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Strauss, A. (1959). Mirrors and Masks. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

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Strauss, A. (1978). Negotiations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Strauss, A. (1993). Continual Permulations of Action. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Strauss, A. (1994). From Whence to Whither: Chicago-Style Interactionism. In: N. Denzin (Ed.), Studies in Symbolic Interactionism, Volume 16, (pp. 3-8). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Tattersall, I. (2000). We Were Not Alone. Scientific American 282: 56-62. Wallerstein, I. (1997). Social Science and the Quest for a Just Society. American Journal of Sociology 102: 1241-1257.

NORMATIVE TROUBLES: SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS AS CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS Gary Alan Fine

If groups are to maintain a stable social order - an order that supports social psychological needs for predictability - members must develop a robust system of expectations for behavior that allows for the actions of others within their perceptual fields to be treated as routine. These anticipations and their associated meanings constitute the group's culture. Despite the assumption of creativity in cultural production, the mundane, the ritual, and the foreseen makes a culture a collective property of individuals (Maines, 1984, 1989). The creation of shared understanding leads to the Hobbesian conundrum (the defining ur-question of sociology): how is social order possible in the face of individual interpretations and interests? This takes us to the question of norms and their vulnerabilities.

NORMATIVE TROUBLES The recognition that norms are subject to dispute poses a difficulty for the functionalist view of norms as unproblematic. If norms are given, they need not always be taken. Understanding the normative order must include both the regularities of normative action and the threats to these expectations. Norms are confronted in several ways: through vulnerability of their effectiveness, challenge to their legitimacy, and the novelty of replacement Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 33-39. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4

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norms. In the first case, norms are delegitimated because they no longer appear to "work"; the behavioral consensus surrounding them has broken down in a fundamental way; the community attempts to avoid "normative anarchy" - a state of Durkheimian "anomie." All norms do not break down at once, even in the most unsettled times (Swidler 1986) and so, despite the fraying, some level of social organization continues. A second case involves "normative challenge." Here social actors present an articulated challenge to behavioral expectations of a group, coupled with a narrative and/or ideological explanation of the legitimacy of the challenge and illegitimacy of the status quo. It is not only that a perception exists that the previous normative expectations are not functioning as actors believe that they should, but a counter-model is proposed. The third case concerns innovation, or normative novelties. Behavioral expectations change over time, as alternative models are presented. These innovations do not necessarily demand a critique of the previously accepted expectations, but provides new standards, often in response to new situations. Behavioral novelties may occur in the context of material, cultural, or technological innovation (e.g. the development of internet etiquette). Each of these views assumes that participants are stakeholders in the relevant community, that they believe that norms matter, and that they perceive themselves as being appropriate agents of change. These processes suggest that normative change is expected and involves a set of actors whose interests are linked to the resolution of normative troubles. Although structural constraints are important in shaping expectations, particular individuals are invested in the maintenance or alteration of behavioral expectancies. Access to cultural, rhetorical, and material resources bolster choices to defend or attack. Even if norms are often taken-for-granted, under certain circumstances they can become public issues in the community in which they had been embedded. Normative troubles can be linked to the creation of social problems by those concerned with undermining social consensus. Normative Vulnerabilities To some degree all norms are vulnerable. In reality, of course, normative behavior and expectations are often remarkably stable. Norms that reflect wellaccepted ritual behavior do not evolve rapidly. Yet, on occasion taken-for-granted norms are subject to cultural shifts. Consider, for instance, American attitudes toward the display of emotion. At one time it was far more likely and legitimate to display anger than today. Spanking a child in public was once normative, and the refusal to restrain an "unruly" child by using

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physical force might result in the public or private sanctioning of the adult for raising a "spoiled" child (Stearns & Stearns, 1986). Today this same behavior might be sanctioned by agents of social control. Likewise, yelling or other forms of loud expression were at one time a taken-for-granted feature of public life; today a scream is likely to provoke intense concern by those sharing the same auditory space. Norms, as the word suggests, are not behaviors that always occur, but rather behaviors that frequently occur and that, as a matter of routine, are expected. These behaviors are not reflexes, but behaviors that "make sense" given the immediate circumstances and social custom. When normative behaviors occur, the scene proceeds smoothly and when they are absent or subverted, problems may result; the event becomes "notable" and the absence of expected behavior may be the basis of a narrative account of improper action. The existence of behavioral expectations contributes to the collective definition of the situation. The smooth character of interaction is routinely capable of being subverted by those who violate social expectations. When violations occur, interactants search for explanations that explain the violation. In practice, explanations are often to be found, as when one points to exigencies about the occasion (the local constitution of events). Some alternative frame of meaning makes sense of what seems to be disorder. Within such situational interpretations, we often refer to some defect in the actor to explain the "disruption." In these cases we speak of "residual deviance" (Scheff, 1968), laying the blame at the feet of an individual or individuals who are incapable of understanding or performing those ritual actions that other actors take for granted. If the normative violation is sufficiently profound, labels such as mentally ill, deviant, or incompetent are common. Such claims become the basis of "moral anecdotes" that simultaneously support the social order and discredit the deviant actor. This strategy preserves the sanctity of the situation. Those who violate social expectations are normative deviants or, if the violation is both egregious and intentional, as "normative cranks." Most actors and situations can withstand some deviant or unexpected action without breaking: few occasions entirely lack flexibility, as Goffman (1974) points out. Only when the violations are frequent and systematic, and no easy explanation can be provided for the choices of the deviant actor (i.e. the actor's moral character), is the scene vulnerable. With enough threats, our sense of the morality and even the "reality" of the situation can be disputed. At times the ritualistic character of behavior must be reconsidered (Collins, 1981). Under circumstances of widespread rejection of normative action, the rules that bind a collectivity together weaken and the sense of social cohesion may falter (a claim often made of American normative struggles in the 1960s). As a

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consequence, social actors may consciously attempt to bolster legitimacy of social expectations, as group members become normative enforcers, further leading to social conflict over the legitimacy of social control.

Normative Challenges Normative challenges constitute a different type of trouble, more explicit than normative vulnerabilities. Here individuals or groups mount a conscious and deliberate attack on group expectations, often linked to social movements. While these challenges are unlikely to have immediate effects, they have the potential to provoke major normative change. A dramatic example of a normative challenge concerns public relations between men and women. The legitimacy of men holding open doors for women, whistling at attractive women, and making sexually provocative remarks has been challenged. Sexual harassment has become defined and redefined, altering behavioral expectations. I do not claim that these behaviors have vanished, but their routine acceptance has disappeared. If such behaviors are to occur, some negotiation must take place. The challenge to behavior that at one time had been judged acceptable was sufficiently effective that the presence of such behavior is now judged as putatively inappropriate (Gardner, 1995). Swidler's (1986) model of cultural change suggests that new cultural traditions (including norms) occur more frequently in "unsettled" times. One result of traditional models no longer seen as working effectively (normative vulnerabilities) is that social actors search for alternative behaviors (normative challenges) - a model not unlike that of Kuhn (1970) in describing scientific revolutions. While Swidler's model has not been definitively tested, it seems plausible that structural or institutional turmoil should lead to questioning of behaviors that had been taken for granted. In the case of these challenges, a set of normative critics present a case in words or behaviors that previous behavioral expectations must be altered. If these figures can gain support from like-minded others, can gather resources, or can make the costs of continuing normative behavior sufficiently high, normative standards can change. Systems of expectations are dynamic, particularly when movement actors choose to make an issue of behaviors that had been taken for granted, exerting collective action. Normative behavior varies in the costs of change. Some behavior is "sticky" in that the customs are sedimented culturally or in their benefits to particular groups (Busch, 1980, 1982); as a consequence change is difficult and costly, with resources used by others to block the change. Other behaviors are less consequential, and as a result change comes relatively rapidly.

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Norms represent routinized and expected behaviors that reflect group or institutional practices. As a result, we connect the analysis of normative challenge to the analysis of social problems (e.g. social constructionist theory) and social movements (e.g. resource mobilization theory). Changes in norms occur because of the motivated enactment of actors. Just as there are normative critics, other social actors, normative conservers, may vigorously defend those norms. Given the divisions in any complex and heterogeneous society, many behaviors that are taken for granted in one group may be challenged or ignored in another. To the extent that the groups are separated, alternate standards of behavior can coexist. While some norms (often proscribed behaviors, such as most killing and most incest) are universal within a society, other behavioral expectations are subcultural. Local conditions affect the evaluation of action.

Normative Novelty If norms represent the expressions of a cultural toolkit, how do we approach normative innovation: innovations that need not derive from a sense of failure of current behavioral expectations, but a belief that cultural change differentiates our identity from the past and other social categories, and that represent adjustments to material and technological changes. Again, actors who propose behavioral expectations are critical: normative entrepreneurs and normative gatekeepers. Normative entrepreneurs are those who propose changes - novelties - in standards of action. Normative gatekeepers are those with influence or with social roles involving structural centrality, permitting them to judge the validity of the proposed innovations. The acquiescence of normative gatekeepers largely determines whether novel behaviors become seen as "proper." As students of innovation have argued (Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971), social structure, networking, communication technology, and personal status influence the acceptance of novelty. Just as there exists a profound drive for continuity and tradition, a desire exists to vary that sameness - a drive for change. A break with the past reflects the essence of a differentiated identity. This process is evident in the coinage of slang, in the desire within numerous cultural worlds to create novel styles of dress and adornment, and in the continual production of fads and fashions. Although in some ways social life changes slowly, the superficial vestments of that life may alter rapidly. Norms can incorporate both behavior expressions of core values (and social instrumentalities in general) and the more epiphenomenal expressive culture. The search for the basis of innovation in behavioral expectations emphasizes the paradox that while norms are characteristics of social systems, they are

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enacted by individuals, and are performed because they appear to be "right": fight in a double sense. First, they are right in that they are validated by others, and have been learned through socialization. Second, they are fight in that they constitute an individual's identity. They contribute to how we imagine ourselves, linking to alterations that we are willing to make to our identity. As a result, normative novelty links to the plausible situated selves of targeted individuals. NORMS

AS CULTURAL

PRODUCTIONS

Norms and behavioral expectations should not be separated from the meaning systems of individuals who enact them or from interaction that occurs in local spaces in which they are enacted. I argue that the performance of norms involves a social construction based on the flaming of local context, negotiation of the interest of social actors, and the narrative depiction of behavioral rules. While I emphasize the agency of social actors to create and shape meaning, I recognize that this process is based upon an obdurate material reality and a consequential structure. Like all social construction, this depends on social actors adjusting their behavior in situ in order that interaction flows smoothly. From an interactionist standpoint, this desire for social comity provides the core motivation explaining why individuals give up their own material interests for the sake of others. Actors share a powerful desire to cause interaction to proceed without strain, and often make substantial adjustments in their behavior to ensure this result - choosing to satisfice rewards for the sake of harmony. This suggests that significant interpretive leeway may exist in response to behaviors - especially on occasions in which one's expectations are upended, but even when things go as "expected." In any social system norms are linked to culture in that violations become markers for talking about social standards (Maines 1984). The stories that we tell often become taken as the reality that ostensibly stands behind the narrative. Narratives provide accounts of what is and what should be. Postmodernists suggest that everything is a "text." Whatever this claim means in practice, it implies that stories are a means by which expectations are made concrete. Presenting a violation of social standards is the kind of notable event that individuals may reasonably share. Ultimately the normative structure presumes interpretative options, linked to the existence of a cultural toolkit. Individuals select from among a set of possibilities in responding to a particular interactional context. It is rare that a single behavior is judged to be the only appropriate option. This is particularly

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true in those situations in which formal, established rules do not exist and in which forces of social control stand behind these rules. Finally, norms are often sponsored by individuals, who become, in effect, normative entrepreneurs, helping particular norms and expectations emerge (or change). Social actors may endorse or oppose normative emergence, shaping the social order in the process. Individuals take responsibility for encouraging a particular relationship of individual to the interaction order, and encouraging certain frameworks of meaning at the expense of others. Norms are always potentially "in play," in a state of dynamic tension, being created, altered, or negated. Ultimately I reject the view of norms as something that exists - as real, material, and unchanging - separate from social life. In contrast, I argue that by conceiving norms as a part of a locally constituted interaction order and as belonging to the cultural domain, the vibrancy and vitality of norms as they are lived can be better appreciated.

REFERENCES Busch, L. (1980). Structure and Negotiation in the Agricultural Sciences. Rural Sociology, 45, 26-48. Busch, L. (1982). History, Negotiation, and Structure in Agricultural Research. Urban Life, 11, 368-384. Gardner, C. B. (1995). Passing By. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kuhn, T. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maines, D. R. (1984). Suggestions for a Symbolic Interactionist Conception of Culture. Communication & Cognition, 17, 205-217. Maines, D. R. (1989). Culture and Temporality. Cultural Dynamics, 2, 107-123. Rogers, E., & Shoemaker, E E (1971). The Communication of Innovation: A Cross-Cultural Approach. (2rid ed.). New York: Free Press. Scheff, T. (1966). Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory. Chicago: Aldine. Stearns, C. Z., & Stearns, R N. (1986). Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America's History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in Action. American Sociological Review, 51,273-286.

TELLING STORIES OF DAVID R. MAINES: AN ADMIRING FRIEND'S SAMPLER William K. Rawlins I was either reading or brooding in my office at Penn State in the gray early spring of 1987 when the phone rang. "Hello." I said. "Is this Bill Rawlins?" a voice said on the other end. "Yes." I answered. "I understand you are a symbolic interactionist." the voice suggested. "I don't enjoy labels," I replied, "and I try to avoid labeling myself as much as possible." "Well my name is David Maines, and I just asked your Department Head if there were any symbolic interactionists on the communication faculty, and he said that if anyone is, it would probably be you." "Well, if you put it like that, I'd have to say I draw a lot on the work of symbolic interactionists, and I'm a big fan of Bhimer and Mead." "I'm not far from you across the mall in the Sociology Department, do you have a few minutes to talk?" "Sure," I said, always tempted by telephone conversation. "Okay, I'll be fight over." A few minutes later there were three strong knocks on the opaque glass of my rickety old office door. "Come in." I said. You don't always know what hangs on the turning of door knobs and hinges. In this case a new character walked into my life story, altering its plot in significant ways - A Midwestern born, Missouri graduate-educated, dyed in the

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wool, American pragmatist. A scholar with few peers in knowledge about the history and theoretical contours of symbolic interactionism and its roots in pragmatism. A man on a mission to build active connections and constructive conversations between the disciplines of sociology and communication in light of his inspiring recognition of their deep lying affinities. But even more important to me, a person named Dave Maines, who has been an instructive and redemptive presence in my life. I would very much enjoy telling you about the range of experiences I have shared with David Maines from shooting baskets in my driveway to collaborating on essays and book manuscripts in various settings. Indeed, there is coherence and a consistency to his being-in-the-world-with-others that rewards close scrutiny, even as his latest thoughts or opinions might take you by surprise or otherwise challenge your complacency. But I will focus here instead on a subset of his extensive published oeuvre. In keeping with his penchant for and appreciation of a good story, I want to address briefly some examples of his work over the past decade or so concerning narrative. So I will tell a story within my story of knowing David Maines about some of his more telling stories about telling stories. When I met him, David had just published the prior fall what has come to be one of my favorite pieces of his. In a tightly argued and evidenced piece, entitled, "Reconstructive Legitimacy in Final Reports of Contract Research" (1986), Maines and his co-author, Joseph Palenski, describe the inherently rhetorical properties of writing research reports. They stridently observe that "final reports of contract research are best understood as documents embedded in a political economy rather than as objective depictions of reality" (1986, p. 573). Accomplishing for writers of contract research what Wolf (1992) would later achieve for ethnographers, Maines and Palenski demonstrate how palpably audience-centered and commodified different versions of "final" research reports can be. This piece has markedly influenced my teaching of scholarly writing since I first read it, and I have used it often to dramatize "the structural and processual dimensions of the production of distortions in final reports" (1986, p. 584). In typical Mainesian style the essay is positioned within a comprehensive discussion of pragmatist social theory. In a useful precis of Marxian and pragmatist thought, the authors state that "knowledge is not a cognitive or mentalistic phenomenon but always is a relation between the knower and the known. They cannot be collapsed into one another. Rather, they exist relationally and social organizationally, and refer to a set of practices which constitute the relations of what is 'known' about the world" (1986, p. 576). In this essay, the labor of writing is situated in time as a story of social activity in and of itself.

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In my opinion, this essay draws on previous writings and foreshadows David's subsequent work with narrative in some key ways. For one, we see him assuming an explicitly moral stance concerning the social production of knowledge, that is, the moral legacy of pragmatism that figures prominently in his nan'ative-based work is very apparent here. Second, broadly and in retrospect, it is compelling to witness how Maines' extensive prior work concerning temporality and social order as a negotiated, communicative accomplishment (see, for example Maines, 1982, 1983; Maines, Sugre & Katovich, 1983) seem to coalesce so strikingly in his emerging engagement with narrative. To my knowledge, David's first use of narrative or story in the title of a published essay occurs with his "The Storied Nature of Health and Diabetic Self-Help Groups" (1991). Here he reviews a typology of narratives and identifies "those elements which constitute stories as a form of enactment," which include 'Selecting events,' and 'Turning events into story elements" through "imposing a shape or structure on the flow of events" (1991, p. 188). The stream of social activity is given form and specified meaning through practices such as developing characters, constructing plots, and describing its settings. Maine's third element is "Temporality," which involves creating a temporal order that organizes the events and elements of a story. Though David specifies these necessary elements of narrative form in several other essays (Bridget & Maines, 1998; Maines, 1993, 1996), I like the use of gerunds in this formulation to highlight the active and ongoing nature of narrating as a situated social enterprise. Working from Mead, Dewey, and selected narrative theories, Maines wants to demonstrate how stories function as communicative tools in the continuously evolving production of human experience and social order. Keenly and comprehensively, he states an important theme for his narrative project: Stories, then, are types of communicative acts which, through their structure and use, contribute to social continuity and discontinuity. Although told by individuals, they are inherently collectiveacts. They are cultural enactments that link the private and the public, link events into temporal orders which give people a sense of historical continuity, and provide versions of reality which contribute to the flow of meaning at the heart of any society. Accordingly, stories are indispensable to societal organization insofar as they are one class of the actual practices through which such organization is created and maintained (1991, pp. 188-189). Consequently, in this field study Maines investigates in a sentence by sentence, turn by turn manner specific episodes of the exchange and co-construction of stories about health and diabetes in self-help groups. As he does so, it is important to note the persistent sociological aspirations of David Maines's

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work. While acknowledging the significance of these story-telling activities in the production of therapy, he also registers enveloping circumstances. He observes, "These groups formed themselves within a set of structural and cultural conditions pertaining to economic modes of production, urbanization, immigration, population change, technological change, and locus of administrative control which mobilized the changing conditions of personal life and health" (1991, p. 191). Although David would want to be the first to unpack how all of the concepts mentioned above are concepts, he is obviously concerned here with how these story-telling groups are situated in their enveloping material conditions. I will note below how this emphasis transmutes somewhat for Maines in later essays into a description of the situatedness of stories in enveloping narrative conditions. A classic tension persists throughout this work as Maines tries to account for how social structures get enacted by persons living on the cusps of their moments. He reflects: For structures to be structures - that is, for them to do the things we say they do (e.g., limit options, produce uniformity, guide action) - they must be coupled with a conception of agency or praxis. Structures, in other words, must be defined in terms of processes which enable them to exist and operate as structures. Stories help to do t h i s . . . (1991, p. 200).

While he finds the notion of stories helpful in this quest, the plots thicken as he works to reconcile the active and substantive discursive choices made by persons in the moment with the abstract constraints, redundancies, and narrative conventions of meaningful social participation that seem to transcend their individual lives. In 1993 in The Sociological Quarterly, David's thirst for theory and his appreciation of a good story culminate in his programmatic statement, "Narrative's Moment and Sociology's Phenomena: Toward a Narrative Sociology." When David presented an early version of this essay speaking at Purdue University in 1991, I was struck by his detailed examination of the extent to which narrative excerpts were used in the sociological classic, The Polish Peasant in Europe andAmerica (Thomas & Znaniecki, 1918-20). In this article he points out that some 800 pages of that 2200 page five-volume monograph are composed of narrative-based material. He does so in lamenting how the meaning of the term "empirical' in sociology somehow has been transformed into a preoccupation with measurement. Maines describes a midcentury forced march of quantitative social science across the former terrain of sociological inquiry and critiques the increasingly sedimented practices of mainstream sociological research. He pointedly declares: The issue of the multiple meanings of discourse was not squarely faced but was seen instead as a problem to be solved by replacing words with numbers. The issue of human

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agency fell into neglect, and the concept of structure gained currency over the concepts of process and emergence, thus moving sociology increasingly into ahistorical theories (1993b, p. 20). In the face of these tendencies, Maines presents a double-edged sticking point. First, he argues that narratives are an inherent focus of sociological inquiry, stating, "a substantial portion of sociology's phenomena is made up precisely of stories" (1993b, p. 32). Simultaneously, he asserts that sociologists themselves are narrators, storytellers of the first order, saying, "This focus would see sociologists as spinners of professional tales we call theories" (1993b, p. 32). To paraphrase Geertz (1973), David is telling us that in speaking and writing of social life, "It is stories all the way down." With this recognition, Maines brings the pragmatists' historical emphasis upon communication into bold relief. In what I take to be a veritable mandate for interdisciplinary dialogue between sociologists and communication scholars, he clarifies the intellectual heart of the narrative turn: As a construct, 'narrative's moment' objectifies the fact that the social is grounded in communication processes, that communication itself is social, and that all sociological work is communicative work. The disciplinary, and to some extent disciplined, neglect of these simple facts perhaps stems from their being so obvious that as a field sociology passes right over them. One of the great benefits of focusing on narratives is that they are one form of communication, and by conceptualizing sociology narratively, we are forced to take communication very seriously. This includes not only writing and teaching - activities that we often delegitimize as mere issues of education - but research, theory cons~uction, writing grants, consulting, administration, and most importantly, sociology's phenomena (1993b, p. 32). Quite simply, the piece issues a clarion call for an integrated view of sociological work as communicative in nature and communicative activity as socially constituted. In my judgment, this remains a crucial message that scholars from both disciplines should heed. With "Cultural Narratives and Economic Inconsistencies in Welfare Reform" (1993a), David Maines uses narrative analysis in the service of critiquing politico-economic policy and praxis. He identifies and exemplifies how various state-funded groups' experiences and life circumstances get narrativized in significantly divergent ways to the detriment of specific groups (for example, low wage earners) and to the benefit of others (for example, university professors). In some welfare analyses, narratives characterize certain individuals as moving toward self-sufficiency and therefore less eligible for continuing welfare support despite the fact that they are still quite poor. The operative concern here is that what constitutes "steady progress toward self-sufficiency" in evaluators' eyes is based on narratively accomplished depictions with worrisome consequences for poor persons' opportunities for material support.

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As frequently is the case in his other essays, in this piece you can clearly hear David Maines' voice. There is courage and plain speaking audible here that cuts through what Jules Henry (1971) once called "black sham," the kind of sham perpetrated by persons in power that sells weaker people down the river. Having already recognized and thematized sociologists as de facto narrators, in "Mythic Facts and Park's Pragmatism: On Predecessor Selection and Theorizing in Human Ecology" (1996), David Maines and co-authors Jeffrey Bridger and Jeffrey Ulmer present a narrative account of the march of theorizing in knowledge construction. Indeed, the work of sociologists (and by implication, all professional students of social life) is always a deep concern for David Maines. In his eyes, it is (or can be) honest work. In the pragmatist tradition the language of theory comprises specialized tools for getting things done, or in Kenneth Burke's happy phrase "equipment for living." "Mythic facts" is a term used in this essay to describe how original theories as tools can be dulled or even misshapen through how they are handled over time in subsequent texts. The authors are concerned with how received wisdom in a field can be based upon increasingly flawed representations of prior work that are taken as factual accounts without consulting the primary sources upon which they are based. They state, "We use the term 'mythic facts' to refer to the collective situation in which those transcendent texts, which are conventionally regarded as accurate, in fact contain consequential inaccuracies" (1996, p. 522). Similar to Burke's (1966) "terministic screens," such concepts simultaneously supply ways of seeing and not seeing. More worrisome to Maines and his colleagues, this conceptual filtering in the service of presently accepted or promoted scholarly accounts functions as a "constitutive rhetoric" (Charland, 1987) that legifimizes some work and delegifimizes other work. The authors conclude, "The constitutive power of mythic facts is that their status a s mythic facts is hidden from their consuming readers" (1996, p. 522). To support such claims, this article meticulously describes an inaccurate characterization of Robert Park's work on human ecology that has persisted as a tenacious storyline. Among other things, at issue here are competing conceptions of how theory development and knowledge production are accomplished (Camic, 1992). On one hand, there is the strategic, narrative accomplishment on an ongoing basis of the "theory growth model" that underpins much of the ethos of supposedly value-free hypothetico-deductive social science in mainstream sociology. In this story knowledge growth is a cumulative, linear process. An opposing model of theory development, the content-fit model, describes intellectual work as "politically agenfic and may be grounded in misunderstandings and the deliberate ignoring of some predecessors' work" (1996, p. 523). After carefully tracking and describing

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disparate m o m e n t s and concepts in Park's project, and then scrutinizing and documenting how they have been represented inaccurately in s u m m a r y narrative treatments, the authors conclude: By framing what in fact were mere nominal differences in focus and at best a division of labor in ecological research in terms of a temporal sequence, analysts of the field could tell a story of development of human ecology. And it was inevitably a story of progress . . . . which is the central component of the theory growth model (1996, p. 54.1). By M a i n e s ' and his colleagues' lights, the theory growth m o d e l involves the narrative a c c o m p l i s h m e n t o f selecting and deflecting prior theoretical work and thinkers and e m b e d d i n g preferred predecessors in a story o f progress that serves c o n t e m p o r a r y political purposes in the sociology o f knowledge. I dare say the concept of role is dear to the hearts and minds o f all symbolic interactionists. It is only fitting then that David would turn his attention to the intersections o f narrative and role theory at some point. H e does so in a g e m entitled, "Gender, Narrative, and the Problematics o f Role" (1996), which for m e constitutes one of the more poetic m o m e n t s in D a v i d ' s conceptual dance between structure and process with issues o f narration. H e is concerned that "Narrative theorists tend not to use the concept o f role and role theorists and researchers seem to be blind to the fact that people tell stories" (1996, p. 88). Consequently, he introduces the piece as a: Search for links between concepts which are currently victimized by disciplinary fractures; links between cultural blueprints and actual practices; links between aspects of social structure and discursive acts; links between myth and authenticity. As I have reflected on my topic, I think of this as a search which rests at the margins of choice and fate (1996, p. 87). Conceived in this way, there are breaks for David to straddle, and his bridge is narration. In this essay he will construct a folding bridge, hinging together narratives and stories as its pivotal components. A t this juncture for David, "Narratives are forms of collective stories that are implicit or e m b e d d e d in a culture or group and have some kind o f structure" (1996, p. 92). He continues: Such narratives are frameworks of meaning within which lives are configured; they are frameworks of meaning that can be told but mostly are simply tacitly believed and routinely enacted; they set limits to ordinary imaginations of the possible; and they define the boundaries of normalcy and acceptability. . . . In short, narratives are a cultural resource that in a significant measure give substance and texture to human lives (1996, p. 93). In contrast, stories "are acts o f telling. Stories are always performed, even in written texts" (1996, p. 93). He retains the elements of stories as a form of enactment, n a m e l y selection, e m p l o t m e n t and temporality, which he first

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stipulated in "The Storied Nature of Health . . . " (1991). In this way, David strives to have his narrative structure and enact it too. A n d these twin concepts are featured henceforth in M a i n e s ' narrative-based investigations. This article presents intriguing analyses of how narratives frame problematic situations of gendered identities and life choices. Persons are heard telling stories constrained by cultural narratives prefiguring their possibilities for b e c o m i n g other than who they have been and think they are supposed to be. Listening to a 48 year-old w o m a n n a m e d Lillian's reflections on the likelihood of being a mother, David reflects: Lillian tells of her struggles with a powerful gender narrative - that women should bear children - not that they can, but should. It is a moral mandate... (1996, p. 98)... Lillian can tell her life story of which struggles with motherhood and aging are things to be told about, but the tellings themselves articulate the struggle with authenticity.The problematic situations- the margins of choice and fate - in which she lives are themselves storied. Her story, that is, is not a passive, ad hoc recollection but an active, ongoing configurative attempt to create a future of authenticity. But she has been stuck in time because gender narratives have forecast futures which she cannot abide or live up to (1996, p. 99). Maines recognizes that he is speaking of a generic narrative like the one informing Lillian's story in its intact form. Yet, he believes that there are consequences when an individual consciously or unconsciously presupposes such a cultural narrative structure in telling her or his life story. In his view, such a narrative operates as a prefiguration of the life course; as a charting of sequences of meaning; as a prepackaging of personhood that can never quite deliver on its promises. Narratives such as these, regardless of their content, fate most of us to the problematicsof role because the press of actual living precludes the exact appropriation of selves and identities that are portrayed or defined in the narratives (1996, p. 99). Recently, David Maines has turned his attention to the nature and role of competing narratives in debates about public policy and decisions such as the Catholic Church closings in Detroit and other land use decisions, which affect significant numbers of people. That is, instead of scrutinizing how narrative structures may inform specific individuals' stories, such as Lillian's above, he and his colleagues are becoming more interested in the uptake and telling of stories by identified groups and communities. In "Narrative Structure and the Catholic Church Closings in Detroit" (1998), co-authored with Jeffrey Bridger, the notion of n a r r a t i v e s t r u c t u r e is fore-grounded. The authors state: Many, if not most, stories are told against the taken for granted backdrop of larger cultural paradigms. These narrative structures consist of cultural frames and ideologies that prefigure some stories insofar as group beliefs and values contain already articulatedplots. In this sense, a narrative structure is similar to Snow and Benford's concept of a master frame (1998, p. 321).

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With this apparent move towards an emphasis upon obdurate and collective narrative structures, as opposed to their ongoing and contingent accomplishment in the telling of stories, it would seem that David is going head-to-head with one of the cherished pronouncements of postmodernism, namely Lyotard's (1984) announcement of the demise of reigning metanarratives. In this work I see a return on David's part to macro-issues of social organization with narrative structure perhaps functioning to a significant degree as a proxy for social structure. As always, however, David does not make this conceptual move unreflectively. In one of his latest published essays, entitled, "Information Pools and Racialized Narrative Structures," (1999) he observes: I suspect that most good social scientists in one way or another deal with these twin facts of human living-interpretive processes and obdurate structures of collective existence. For my immediate purposes, though, they represent the sociological background for my distinction between story and narrative (1999, p. 318). Always the symbolic interactionist, and always the sociologist, David Maines continues his eloquent dance between structure and process, attuned to the traces of narrative structures and the sounds of stories worth hearing.

EPILOGUE Reading David Maines is at all times a chance to be instructed in theoretical pragmatism, applied pragmatism, and critical pragmatism. I would never presume to summarize what he has accomplished as a scholar and to render it in a neat little package. Accordingly, this essay continues some talks I have had with David about his work with narrative and hopefully proposes others. I have always admired his searching intellect and seemingly boundless capacity for inquiry, conversation, and committing ideas to paper. You will find him in places where these activities are respected, and I have always appreciated his efforts to forge links between the disciplines of Sociology and Communication. Dave Maines is a great talker and an even better listener. He is someone who encourages you to think out loud and to take risks. Even so, you'd better have your facts straight and present your arguments convincingly. Inveterate pragmatist that he is, he sees each moment as brimming with possibilities, each being he encounters as a becoming, each conversation as an opening to another world of words. I ' m thankful to know you, David, and to read your work. I wish you the best.

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REFERENCES Bridger, J. C., & Maines, D. R. (1998). Narrative structures and the Catholic Church closings in Detroit. Qualitative Sociology, 21,319-340. Burke, K. (1966). Language as symbolic action: Essays in life, literature, and method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Camic, C. (1992). Reputation and predecessor selection: Parsons and the institutionalists. American Sociological Review, 57, 421--445. Charland, M. (1987). Constitutive rhetoric: The case of the People Quebecois. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73, 133-150. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hertry, J. (1971). Pathways to madness. New York: Vintage Books. Maines, D. R. (1982). In search of mesostructure: Studies of the negotiated order. Urban Life, 11, 267-279. Maines, D. R. (1983). On time, timing, and the life course. Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology, 17, 182-193. Maines, D. R. (1991). The storied nature of health and diabetic self-help groups. In: G. Albrecht and D. R. Maines, (1993a). Cultural narratives and economic inconsistencies in welfare reform. Applied Behavioral Science Review, 1, 173-178. Maines, D. R. (1993b). Narrative's moment and sociology's phenomena: Toward a narrative sociology. The Sociological Quarterly, 34, 17-38. Maines, D. R. (1996). Gender, narrative, and the problematics of role. Michigan Sociological Review, 10, 87-107. Maines, D. R. (1999). Information pools and racialized narrative structures. The Sociological Quarterly, 40, 317-326. Maines, D. R., Bridger, J. C., & Ulmer, J. T. (1996). Mythic facts and Park's pragmatism: On predecessor selection and theorizing in human ecology. The Sociological Quarterly, 37, 521-549. Maines, D., & Palenski, J. (1986). Reconstructive legitimacy in final reports of contract Research. The Sociological Review, 34, 573-589. Maines, D. R., Sugre, N., & Katovich, M. (1983). The sociological import ofG. H. Mead's theory of the past. American Sociological Review, 48, 151- 173. Thomas, W. I., & Znaniecki, E (1918-20). The Polish peasant in Europe and America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wolf, M. (1992). A thrice-told tale: Feminism, postmodernism, and ethnographic responsibility. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

MUSING AND THRASHING AROUND AT THE INTERSECTION OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES David R. Maines About twenty-five years ago, Irwin Deutscher, who was studying sociolinguistics at the time, wrote that it was rather surprising that interactionists paid so little attention to language, given its centrality to their perspective. While it struck me then that Deutscher's observation was entirely correct, perhaps he might be somewhat more pleased with the intervening developments. Indeed, from conversational analysis to cultural studies and the perspectives, like mine, that fall somewhere in between, we see increased interactionist work and focus on the communicative grounding of human group life. Shing-Ling Chen (herself trained in interactionism by Carl Couch) and her colleagues have instituted a most welcome mechanism for furthering inquiry into the common grounds of interactionist sociology and communication studies. Each year at the National Communication Association meetings, a session will be organized that will focus on the work of a single interactionist who also has contributed to the field of communication studies. The rationale for this procedure, as I understand it, is not especially to honor a scholar (although it is certainly honoring), but to use a given body of work as a heuristic. That is, the procedure is a pragmatic one, because panelists have the opportunity to discern connections, themes, tensions, and changes in a corpus

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of work that are less obvious in any single piece of it. And, of course, it is pragmatic because there are so many well-qualified scholars whose work can be examined - Norman Denzin, David Altheide, Peter Hall, Gary Alan Fine, Robert Perinbanayagam, Carolyn Ellis, Tamotsu Shibutani, Irwin Deutscher, David Snow, and Stan Lyman are among the many who immediately come to mind. The importance of these occasions clearly rests in the scholarship that comes out of them and in our improved understandings and knowledge. However, it is, of course, a great and continuing personal compliment to have had my work over the years selected for the inaugural session, which was so ably organized by Shing-Ling and chaired by Art Bochner. Having one's scholarship taken seriously by colleagues is probably as close as we get to an act of grace in intellectual work, and I indeed feel graced by the sincerity and kindness of the four panelists and their essays in this volume. In attempting to form some reasonable and I hope meaningful response to each of those essays, however, it might be useful to begin by briefly describing how I have approached my scholarly work. First, I really do believe G. H. Mead's proposition that people are never quite sure what they are doing. Certainly that has been and continues to be true of me. I tend to thrash around a lot; I always have several issues and projects before me at the same time; I jump from topic to topic; I write sentences and paragraphs in my head while walking from here to there; writing is personal and as I have gotten older I have tried to manage my emotions better when writing; when I write a bit of something I usually have to say it out loud or, if someone is around, to read it to them to see how it sounds, which sometimes is fairly worthless. In all that thrashing around, I have found that I need to "muse," as I call it - to give myself time each day looking out the window or into space to discover what my mind is doing and to sort things out so I can make some sense of them. I suspect this kind of process is common to most scholars. Second, I have never believed that such a thing as a natural interactionist subject matter exists. I refuse to be stereotyped as someone who only studies selves or socialization or small groups and thus to allow myself to be marginalized. Rather, as I think of myself, I am a sociologist first and then an interactionist, and I am an interactionist because it is the best-equipped perspective in its broad expression for studying human group life. So I have purposefully tried to move into areas interactionists have been accused of ignoring -demography, social structure, social organization, and more recently political economy, stratification, and applied sociology. One message I have always given myself as a kind of mantra is that progress is made at the edges of an area rather than at its center.

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Third, I have an abiding respect for scholars who spend their career contributing to one or two substantive areas, but I have had trouble sticking to only a few speciality areas. Years ago I thought I was merely undisciplined and weak-willed, but in musing about my lack of tenacity one day I realized that I just regard specialty areas simply as research sites. Robert Habenstein, my major professor in graduate school, taught me that scholarship ought to be guided by generic problems, which was an idea later emphasized in some of my discussions with Eliot Freidson.The generic problem I seemed to have latched onto is the dialectical relations of freedom and constraint. I think that readers can find expressions of that theme in the fairly wide array of topics I have studied - chronic illness, self-help groups, education, gender, race, urban transportation, friendship, religion, organizations, theory construction, sociology of knowledge, and narrative. While I cannot claim expertise in any of these areas, I can say that learning about them has kept my curiosity alive and has broadened my vision of how much good sociological work really does exist. Finally, and fourth, one of my true character flaws is that I have never liked seeing myself as having been caught up in a fad oi" trend. I suspect this part of me has to do with my Midwestern upbringing and some sort of myth of authenticity fostered in the Midwest. In any case, when I have started work in an area and then have noticed that others are picking up on it, I have a tendency to move onto something else. That has been sort of true of my writing on what some have called "macro-interactionism," a bit more true of my work on the idea of "mesostructure," and I sense it is becoming true of my interests in narrative. Whereas in a sense I never completely drop previous ideas, it is true that they become backgrounded to new interests, such as my cun'ent concerns with urban inequality and critical pragmatism as a form of applied sociology. My faith has been that the underlying generic problem of freedom and constraint confers a measure of consistency to all this hopping around. I will discover how much consistency there is in the book I have just finished called The Faultline of Consciousness (Aldine de Gruyter) in which I will try to tie together my theoretical and empirical work of the past twenty years. I mention these background elements, because they rest just beneath the surface of the four preceding essays. In their own ways, each author has dealt with most of them. Gronbeck clearly sees some of the tensions that run through my work, Rawlins and Hall see the continuities, and Fine privileges agency in a way similar to that found in some of my writing. All these essays can stand on their own, each is a "correct" version, and in each I have learned something worthwhile. Although Fine has an interesting perspective on norms as forms of conduct and is worth working through in more detail, I find little to comment on in his eassay in part because he and I have rather similar general viewpoints

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and in part because he has not directly addressed my work. The other three essays, however, require attention. Gronbeck is correct toward the end of his essay in suggesting a focus on structuration. I have always regarded Giddens' structuration theory as a specification of central principles of pragmatism, especially in his focus on agency and the duality of structures. Giddens, like Cooley, distinguishes dualities (two aspects of the same thing) from dualisms (two different things). My arguments over the years have been with dualisms, but in the process I have never regarded myself as embracing monism, which refers to the doctrine that reality is one unitary, organic whole. Far from it. The mesostructure idea, in my mind, refers to dialectical or at least quasi-dialectical processes in which various realities are mutually constitutive. I started thinking about these ideas in the mid to late 1970s, worked through several studies that eventually became part of the 1985 essay with Joy Charlton, and then after that wrote the 1982 essay in Urban Life. Therefore, it cannot be said that I abandoned the mesostructure idea in 1985, as Gronbeck suggests, because that paper was actually written first but the publication of the volume in which it appeared was delayed for five years. However, I can see how Gronbeck would identify a discontinuity in my rejection of macro phenomena in the mesostructure essays and then arguing that Blumer was a macro-sociologist. I have wondered about that myself. One reason for the apparent disjuncture is that ! used "mesostructure" as an ontological concept, and I used Blumer's "macro" perspective as a rhetorical concept, considering that the common view of Blumer was that he was a "micro" sociologist. Not fair to readers, I guess, but the rhetorical strategy was that by showing Blumer's macro sociology, readers could conclude that the entire interactionist perspective was far more sociologically useful that previously thought. On further reflection, I would argue that Blumer really was a mesostructural analyst insofar as quite largescale processes such as industrialization and racial stratification, in his view, are always worked out in situations (of various scales) that necessarily depended on interpretation. If it is fair to say that Gronbeck begins where I never was (monism) and ends up where I wished to be (structuration), then perhaps it can be said that Bill Rawlins begins where I hoped to be and reveals what else I have been doing. Rawlins digs directly into the various sets of dialectical-like relations in my work: narrative structures and stories, rhetoric and knowledge, myth and economics, activity and structure. He would be someone who would see those issues more clearly, with his Bateson-honed way of looking at things. But he also has detected something of my moral stance, as he calls it. I have not thought explicitly about that matter, but Rawlins is right to say that it has

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something to do with basic honesty, which probably also has to do with my Midwestern upbringing. However, in recognition that he is most likely more correct on that score than he realizes, I think I will drop the topic for now and take it up later after considerable musing. Perhaps because we have substantively mirrored one another so well over the past twenty-odd years, Peter Hall has found a great deal to write about in reviewing my work. As anyone familiar with Hall's work knows, moreover, he has developed the mesostructure idea far beyond what I could have done in what he has called "meso domain" analysis. Like Rawlins, he understands the pragmatist roots and commitments flowing through my work, and if it is true that Rawlins sees what else I have been doing, Hall sees where I am trying to go. He concludes his discussion of policy processes and applied interactionism with the suggestion that we move into the study of institutions. This is exactly one of my current problems, especially in terms of the relations of narrative structures, urban organizations, and economic and cultural institutions. I could not agree more with his suggestions, and to invoke Rawlins again, I think that an honest interactionism would more directly study matters of institutions and especially social stratification. There is no natural ending that I can appropriate and that will convey my appreciation for the work my colleagues have put into this occasion. My appreciation aside, however, the measure of the occasion's value is in the scholarship it mobilizes, and I think that everyone involved has contributed in the faith that such value will be forthcoming. As an ending, and for what it is worth, though, I append a paper I presented at the Speech (now, National) Communication Association in 1993 on the subject of interactionism and communication. The panelists included Norman Denzin, Carolyn Ellis, myself, and someone else, with Art Bochner as chair and Carl Couch as discussant. With minor editing, I reproduce it as I gave it as a statement of my convictions both then and now

"SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES". ANNUAL MEETINGS THE SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION,

OF

MIAMI, AUGUST 19, 1993 I begin with two quotes, written about fifty years apart, by two men who probably never met. Here is the first quote:

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Here is the second quote, which is quite a bit shorter: •.. the central problem of social science, which ostensibly is trying to understand human behavior, is the problem of communication. I wish to use these quotes as textual authority for the two major terms of my title: symbolic interactionism and communication studies. The first quote tells us that reality is a group property, that groups construct their realities through a process of achieving consensus, that consensus involves the validation of symbols, that knowledge is lodged in symbolic structures, and that the entire process is one of symbolic interaction. I am sure that everyone will recognize this point of view as a textbook version of the perspective known as symbolic interactionism. The second quote is a bold claim insofar as it links disciplinary pursuit and by implication its intellectual structure to an ontological claim about human conduct. Communication is central to and necessary for such conduct, the author of this quote tells us, and the scholarly disciplines that purport to study conduct must be organized in such a way that they take the centrality of communication processes into account. With this quote, the terms of my title can be joined, one term lodged in the traditions of pragmatism and the Chicago School of Sociology and the other in the traditions of speech and rhetoric, with both traditions engaging in various dialogues with Enlightenment philosophy. My title is now tidy, and our thinking about issues of common concern can be organized. But our thinking is not organized; the intellectual terrain is not tidied up by my quotes. Rather, these quotes raise questions about the relations between symbolic interactionism and communication studies. The questions should confuse us. While we understand the quotes quite well, we perhaps do not understand the authors and their relation to one another. Let me explain. The second quote - the one that sounds like it came from a communications textbook and was written to legitimize the field of communication studies was actually written by Herbert Blumer on January 5, 1939 in a seven-page, hand-written letter to Robert Park. Two years earlier, of course, Blumer had coined the phrase "symbolic interactionism," but here he was writing to Park about methodological implications stemming from the universal singularity of human communication. My guess is that Blumer did not get this idea from communication scholars, although he certainly could have since the Quarterly Journal of Speech was in volume 24 and Communication Monographs was in

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volume 5 at the time. Rather, he got it from Dewey and Mead - and he got it from his courses with Park, who in the 1920s defined society as communication - "one vast whispering gallery," as he called it in his Presidential Address to the American Sociological Society. Accordingly, we might say with some textual authority that Blumer, Mead, Dewey, and Park have grounded communication studies. Of course, we know that it hasn't quite worked out that way. On the other hand, the first quote - the one expressing the perspective of symbolic interactionism - was not written by Blumer as one might have guessed, but by C. Jack Orr, a rhetorician, in a 1978 issue of Central States Speech Journal. Orr articulates in his article a constmctionist perspective, which is one I endorse and was happy to read, and when I read the quoted passage I looked to his footnotes 4 and 5 to find which articles of Mead, Dewey, Cooley, Blumer, Park, Faris, Shibutani, Couch, Kuhn, Denzin, Strauss or dozens of other interactionists he might be drawing from. But I found no such sources in those footnotes, which surprised me, so I looked in all 79 footnotes in his twelve-page article, thinking that surely I would find some reference to the quite large body of interactionist literature. Still there were no such references to be found in the entire essay. It is as if in his text Orr had discovered symbolic interactionism, and in fact he says in a footnote that he had coined the term "consmctionism," an already-coined term, to distinguish his point of view from Jesse Delia's "constmctivism." Accordingly, we might say with some textual authority that Orr has grounded symbolic interactionism. Of course, we know that it hasn't quite worked out that way either. I ask at this point that you join me in a standard practice of all scholarly activity that I call "let's pretend." Others have called it "all things being equal" or "my assumptions are" or "my metatheoretical orientation is." Nevertheless, let's pretend that these two quotes and their texts represent homogeneous fields. Of course, they aren't, but we can pretend anyway for purposes of envisioning certain things. What these quote tell us is that so long as we don't read one another's journals, then I can speak your words and you can speak mine, and so long as you stay in your university department in your building and I stay in mine then we will never know that we are speaking one another's words and we can position ourselves ecologically and intellectually to reproduce the fiction of discovery and insight. I can write what you wrote but we won't know it. And we can do this long enough, and train enough students to do what we do, that we can even develop some different terms and concepts that mean the same thing. So, even if we would read one another's journals, our experiences would not be unlike reading a foreign language. I am thinking of the time in the summer of 1990 when it took Alan Scult and Michael McGee two hours over

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beer to explain "intertextuality" to me and my finally understanding the concept when I realized it is what sociologists call "legitimation." What all this means, extrapolated to some extreme, is that universities can be lousy places to conduct serious scholarly business. Bureaucratic structures with administratively and economically enforced boundaries and internal divisions are surprisingly effective barriers to scholarly communication. We go along with these arrangements for practical reasons, such as our needing jobs and something to do. We accept the rhetorical phrase "intellectual division of labor" (you study this part of human behavior and I'll study that part) because it's convenient to do so. It makes our work easier by reducing the demands on our memory and IQs, and it gives us a narrower and more homogeneous range of concepts and theories to master and worry about. Sociologists probably are guiltier of this than are scholars in communication studies, but in either case it is a process of structuration that reproduces pluralistic ignorance, wheels being rediscovered, and being rewarded for what Pitirim Sorokin called 'the new discoverer's complex." We become authentically excited by our discoveries and sometimes professionally and materially rewarded even though someone else in some other building, perhaps even decades earlier, already thought our thoughts, said our words, and published our publications. So along comes postmodernism, a grand scheme with some good ideas and some new words that convince some that progress is being made. I think we like postmodernism, at least those who do, for a variety of reasons - partly because it implies movement forward, partly because some have grown tired of old concepts and here are some different ones, partly because disciplines themselves become tired and need something that looks new to justify their intellectual effort. An English professor of mine tells me that cultural studies is a godsend to some English Departments, because it gives them something different to do and creates new markets for building and justifying careers. That cynicism notwithstanding, I think that postmodernism does help in opening spaces for new understanding. However, we must be careful here, because we still have not figured out how to tell the difference between a genuine and productive critique and a new fad. On this point, let me suggest that the theoretical structure of pragmatism contains most of the worthwhile insights that postmodernism has to offer. The core of pragmatism rests on two ideas the interdependency of time and space and the reality of representations. This core can include cyborgs, one of the hot topics of postmodernism, insofar as it was G. H. Mead who distinguished between subsistence and existence, and argued that things such as chimera and round squares are real. Fact and fiction blur in both pragmatism and symbolic interactionism, rationality is relative, myth is consequential, and the obdurate world is composed merely of

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sedimented interpretations. What the postmodernists offer is an attempt to articulate a historic era that is marked by changes in time-space relations mobilized by electronic technology and media. But that technology in and of itself, or assigning primacy to it, is no justification for the common positioning of pragmatism as modernist and this of little utility or currency in late 20th century society. The lesson here, I think, is that we must be careful about logics-in-use that are buried in the excitement of contemporary theorizing. In particular, it is tempting to use our words and agendas as the criteria for evaluating the adequacy of previous theories, not recognizing that the exercise itself fates previous theories as somehow defective in light of the newer ones. Such critiques therefore appear as collective acts of scholarly tautology, which in the case of the postmodernist critique of pragmatism contains the ironic possibility that G. H. Mead's theory of the past might well just describe the entire process in which his formulations are found inadequate by his critics. We must also be careful for other reasons, one of which is that when we write our words we are often writing about what people do. That is a simple and fundamental meaning of empiricism in the study of human conduct, and it is that criterion that must be the final framework for evaluation. And it is this framework that lets me speak of Norman Denzin, my friend and colleague of nearly thirty years. Norman has worked hard and diligently in recent years to articulate a postmodernist synthesis, and he wants us ultimately to be better empiricists on the grounds of his version of late modernist, corporate capitalistic, mediadriven society. Taking him seriously one day in 1990 I was reading one of his articles in which he stated that as we change the channels of our TV sets, with each channel presenting something different than on the previous channel and demanding different cognitive frames for understanding what we are seeing, that we have the experience of disjointed, fractured selves. Media technology and the world of electronic illusion, he argued, is a hegemonic structure that leads to decentered subjects. So I read Norman's sentence and reflected on it. And then I went to my TV set and turned it on and I began switching channels. And as I did so I focused on experiencing my experiences to see if the selves called out by the different programs were fractured and disjointed. I can honestly report that they were not; indeed, there was a great deal of personal continuity throughout the entire process of channel changing. So I called Norman on the phone and told him of my little empirical test and that his proposition did not hold up and that he might want to revise his statements on that score. The method of analytical induction, versions of which Norman advocates, requires the revision. But we must be careful even here, because if we were to generalize my approach to evaluating theoretical claims about

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human conduct then we all might have to join the flat earth society. After all, their central reasons for believing that the earth is flat is that they have never seen water bend and they think that pictures showing the earth as round have been faked. My bet is that Norman thinks the world is round, which doesn't necessarily mean that he thinks water can bend, but that he thinks that satellite photographs of the earth are accurate and authentic representations. And I agree with him that they are, which means that authenticity or inauthenticity is not a property of media technology but instead is in the interpretation, or what old fashioned interactionism called the definition of the situation. If this is the case, then we have a very sticky situation in which some media representations must be defined as authentic in order to argue the point that media representations in general are inauthenfic. Having identified that sticky situation, I must now move on to discuss some other ones. Symbolic interactionism has always been a radical perspective. The genius of the perspective is in its tenacious adherence to species characteristics of human beings. By virtue of having acquired symbols, the perspective maintains, humans are fated to worlds of representations and interpretation. That is its ontological genius. It's conceptual genius is in the proposition that the joint act - people doing things together - is the fundamental unit of analysis. And it is this claim that has gotten interactionism in the most trouble. American scholars seem to like dualisms - subjective/objective, internal/ external, micro/macro, author/reader, text/subject. Sociology has been constructed ideologically and administratively on the proposition that social structures cause human behavior, a dualistic proposition that gives primacy to large, transcending societal arrangements that was justified by influential misreadings of Durkheim and Marx. Symbolic Interactionism was marginalized because it took the opposite view - social structures don't act, bureaucracies don't act, social classes don't act - rather, people act. And so the interactionist proposition was that human action causes social structures. Herbert Blumer, as a case in point, was called a subjectivist and was regarded as barely deserving the name "sociologist" for insisting that the central human process to grasp and understand was the dialectic of situational demands and persons interpreting the situations with which they are faced. He and other interactionists have been critiqued in the sociological literature for insisting that social theories must be grounded in the facts of human communication, that structures and processes are mutually constitutive, and that ambiguity is normal and ubiquitous. In the face of those critiques, however, it seems that the limits of sociology's orthodoxy have been reached. Formula sociology (do a survey, run a statistic, test a hypothesis), while still prevalent, is now rather weary, and the field has

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been gradually moving toward intereactionist principles and is doing so because it never had any other choice. We find indicators of that movement in the numerous awards given for scholarly books, articles, dissertations, and papers by the American Sociological Association. In the past decade, a disproportionate number of those awards have gone to historical analyses, case studies, or ethnographies, some combining those together, with many of them using linguistic, discourse analysis, narrative, cultural analysis, and explicit interactionist theory. There is no doubt at all that sociology is becoming more compatible with communication studies and interpretive perspectives. But there is an irony here, which I will mention as a way of looping back to my earlier points and as a way of concluding. While sociology is becoming more interactionist, the vast majority of sociologists who are caught up in this trend seem rather unaware that they are expressing and advocating interactionist ideas. In the 1980s, sociologists discovered process, action theory, agency, micro-mobilization of macro-structures, and structuration, not realizing for a moment that these are core elements of pragmatism and interactionism that go back nearly a century in American scholarship. They don't know their own field, not because they don't work hard or are insincere, but because they uncritically have accepted sociology's constitutive rhetoric. When sociologists accept the proposition that only social facts cause other social facts and then they discover that interpretive human activity produces social facts, they think they have discovered something new. This kind of situation is not necessarily a novel one nor is it unique to the field of sociology, but it nonetheless is a problem for an enterprise that extols the virtues of cumulative knowledge, One way out of this morass that in one way or another we all are caught up in is to enter the analysis of ongoing human activity as Dewey described it action with no natural beginnings or endings - from the standpoint of the conversation. It is the joint, social, communicative transaction that is real. That is our empirical referent, and it gives rise both to the reality of subjectivity and to transcending social structures. And it is the conversation within which knowledge is defined as knowledge, which means that reflexivity is inherent in human studies, methodological reactivity is inevitable, theory is partly ideological, and that there is no choice for any of us in these matters but to be very aware of those consequences of human symbolic interaction. By doing so, we might have a chance at discovering and perhaps doing something about the disciplinary strictures that we tend to uncritically accept. We can discover that texts do not read authors, for instance, but instead are elements of situations that must be interpreted as people construct lines of conduct. To assert that texts read authors is to promote a constitutive proposition that is as ill-grounded in actual human conduct as sociology's constitutive proposition that only social

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facts cause other social facts. So we need one another - the interactionist and the c o m m u n i c a t i o n scholar - because we are nearly the same person. A n d if we are going to speak one another's words, we at least ought to be aware that we are doing so if for no other reason than understanding better the agendas we are trying to explicate and promote.

IDENTITY, DISPLACEMENT AND MEMORY Dionel Cotanda

ABSTRACT 1 In this article I draw from my life experiences to show how telling an exile's life story reflects a search for identity within one's memory. I also compare and contrast my experiences to the postmodern world of displacement and point to the vital role of interaction in identity formation and maintenance. I posit that there is no self without an other. Indeed, without Other, Being ends. Yo me fuf de Cuba para mantener mi libertad de critica como cubano, no para convertirme en un americano, o en un cubano-americano,un americano con gui6n [I left Cuba to maintain my freedom to dissent as a Cuban, not to become an American or a Cuban-American, a hyphenated American]. When I arrive in Miami, rumors reinforce my belief that I will soon return to Cubal Cuban nationals train in Guatemala. An invasion of Cuba is only months away. Eisenhower will not tolerate Castro's confiscation without compensation of U. S. properties. The air is thick with the fever of war. Sunday, October 9, 1960, is my second long day in the U.S.A. While I proceed to Tampa, Marina, my fiance6, stays with friends in West Palm Beach. Dusk settles as the Greyhound bus slowly moves West on Seventh Ave. We cross Fifteenth, then Fourteenth Street. We are in the heart of Ybor City from where another exile, the Cuban Apostle Jos6 Mart/, sent the signal to start the war of independence against Spain in 1895. As we turn South on Nebraska Ave., the sun sinks in the horizon and casts long shadows. I begin to notice the grimness around me. Dilapidated frame houses appear ready to tilt on

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 65-74. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN" 0-7623-0754-4 65

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DIONEL COTANDA their side and die. Listless black bodies drag their feet as they slowlymoveto nowhere. Or so it seems. Suddenly I realize everythingis strange, different. No one expects me. I do not know anyone. I feel a knot in my stomach. My hands perspire. My body shivers. Is it the strangeness, the loneliness or the memories? Perhaps, it is all of them combined. /,En que me he metido? surge en mi mente [Whatdid I get myselfinto? pops frommy mind]. The magnitude of my decision begins to surface. But I don't know it yet!

Indeed, at the time, I do not realize that identity is brought forth in conversation with others. Even when exiled, alone and in pain, there is no self without an other. We are a dialogue. On April 21, 1961, the fever of war reaches its zenith. The Bay of Pigs' Invasion is on the front page of every newspaper. Radio and television stations blare the news. I am reassured that I will be back in Cuba soon. Then, seventy two hours later, the Bay of Pigs fiasco stuns the Cuban exile community and becomes an embarrassment to President Kennedy. We resent his last minute refusal to provide air cover to the invasion forces. My belief of a short stay becomes questionable. October 1961 marks the beginning of my second long year in the U.S.A. I feel remorse for not participating in the invasion. To drown my guilt, I intensify my involvement with "el Consejo Revolucionario de Cuba", [the Cuban Revolutionary Council] an outspoken revolutionary group of Cuban exiles bent in overthrowing Castro. Through the Spanish radio, I become their Tampa spokesman. During the ensuing year, Castro's overthrow becomes my obsession. On July 12, 1962, our daughter Ileana is born, a ray of hope in our dark life as exiles. As September 1962 rolls around, I hear drums of war, rumors abound. The U.S. Government plans a new attempt to overthrow Castro. The drum beat of Spanish speaking recruiters exhorts Cuban nationals to volunteer for service in the U.S. Army, confirming the rumors I hear. They promise we will be part of an invasion force to free Cuba. I was not part of the forces that landed at the Bay of Pigs, but I know I must be part of this one. When inducted into the Army, I pledge allegiance to the Cuban and U.S. flags. 2 Ironically, the cultural sites they represent will later pull me in different directions. Every recruit is a Cuban. Every instructor is a hyphenated "American". Our basic training takes place in Ft. Knox. For the most part, commissioned and non-commissioned officers are Korean war veterans who communicate to us in Spanish. Their ethnic background is Mexican, Panamanian, and Puerto Rican. They claim we will be in Cuba soon. An invasion of Cuba appears imminent.

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U n e x p e c t e d l y , in late N o v e m b e r the missile crisis c o m e s to an abrupt end. N u c l e a r c o n f r o n t a t i o n over C u b a is avoided b y the r e m o v a l o f Soviet missiles f r o m C u b a a n d K e n n e d y ' s p r o m i s e n o t to invade or allow an i n v a s i o n of Cuba. Regardless of exiles' efforts to the contrary, K e n n e d y ' s n e w " h a n d s o f f ' p o l i c y towards C u b a c o u p l e d with S o v i e t ' s support for the n e w l y s e l f - p r o c l a i m e d M a r x i s t - L e n i n i s t r e g i m e , Castro's p e r m a n e n c y is guaranteed. In D e c e m b e r , h o m e for Christmas, as Ileana, o b l i v i o u s to our drama, p e a c e f u l l y sleeps in her arms, I tell M a r i n a , No vamos a invadir a Cuba. iPrepfirate para estar aqu/largo tiempo! No se cuando veremos a nuestros padres y herman0s, o a el resto de la familia... [We are not going to invade Cuba. Get ready for a long stay! I have no idea when we will see our parents and brothers, or the rest of our family...]. My mind drifts away to mother, father, brother, grandfather, and other relatives and friends whom I may never see again. I begin to realize the magnitude of my decision, but not how it will affect who I am, where I belong. Birthplaces evoke strong m e m o r i e s . For m o s t of us, they are a place of o r i g i n out o f w h i c h a self emerges. As geographical m a r k e r s o f genetic a n d social roots, they give us a sense of b e l o n g i n g . G e o g r a p h i c residence, as a m e t a p h o r for identity, is the d o m i n a n t m e t a p h o r for any traveler. It points to the place w h e r e o u r j o u r n e y starts. To the s o j o u r n e r it represents the place to return to; to the i m m i g r a n t , the e n d o f a j o u r n e y a n d the start o f a n e w one; to an exile, a place in heaven. A place o n e must reach after d o i n g p e n a n c e that will n o t g u a r a n t e e arrival. As an exile, I p h y s i c a l l y i n h a b i t a place to w h i c h I c l a i m legal rights, A m e r i c a , the site o f m y p r e s e n t life, the culture of m y children, who, like all n o n - A n g l o S a x o n first g e n e r a t i o n b o r n A m e r i c a n s , m u s t c o m e to grips with the q u e s t i o n o f w h e r e the self b e l o n g s - parental, birth/host culture, both, neither? October 1970 marks the beginning of my second long decade in the U.S.A. A cool stillness fills the air. After gently breaking free, deep brown reddish maple leaves slowly settle on the open patio. Marina's father and youngest step-brother discuss the latest news received from Cuba. Their efforts to bring Marina's step-mother and oldest step-brother to the U.S.A. have not been successful. Marina, together with my parents and grandfather listen in deep silence. Laughter from our two youngest daughters, Maria and Lourdes, provide a stark background to the solemn conversation. I realize Fall is upon us as I listen to Ileana, Daaddee, unos nifios en el colegio se burlaron de mi y de mi amiga porque esfftbamos hablando en espafiol [Daddy, some kids in school made fun of me and my girl friend because we were talking in Spanish]. My mind races at break away speed. What do I tell her? How do I reinforce her interest in

my language, the vehicle to my culture?

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DIONEL COTANDA Baibee,/,m puedes hablar en inglds [Baby, can you speak in English]? She is puzzled at my question and comments, Daaddee, /,que pregunta es esa? Tu sabes que yo hablo ingl6s [Daddy, what kind of question is that? You know that I speak English]. /,Los nifios que se burlaron de ustedes hablan espafiol [Do the children that made fun of you speak Spanish]? I ask. When she answers "No", I continue, Bueno, d6jame vet. Cuando ellos hablan, hablan en ingl6s y tu entiendes todo lo que ellos dicen. Cuando tu hablas en ingl6s ellos te entienden. Cuando tu hablas en espafiol, ellos no entienden lo que tu dices./,Dime, quien tu crees que es mas inteligente [Now, let me see. When they speak, they speak in English and you understand everything they say. When you speak in English they understand what you say. When you speak in Spanish, they do not understand what you say. Tell me. who do you believe is smarter?]. Suddenly, her face lights up. A big grin appears. My eyes are moist. The memory is forever embedded in my mind.

As an exile, a member of the Cuban colony in the U.S.A., born and raised in Cuba, my first cultural experiences, i.e. my childhood ontology, were within Cuban culture; 3 my later ones were diasporic, different from the ones experienced by native Cubans in Cuba today. In search of identity, I have experienced both cultures, diasporic and American, but I do not inhabit either. Identity is brought forth in conversation with others. My conversations with my parents, who live4 in the U.S.A., provide a bridge to my past and theirs; with my daughters, to my present and theirs. My identity is continually influenced by my cultural inheritance, my C u b a n i d a d . 5 However, I view my identity as a result of politics rather than of inheritance, and I live with a tension between these two sources (Clifford, 1992, p. 116). I know that American culture deeply influences who I am, but I do not inhabit it either. It is not the site I place my self in. Cuba is the site I not only call my own, but the one significant others place me in. Yet, I know the Cuban culture I left is not the one that travels with me. The one I inhabit is a different Cuba. It is more like a habitus, a set of practices and dispositions, parts of which I remember and articulate in specific contexts, the diasporic experience out of Cuban exiles' collective memory. While mental as well as bodily considerations are involved in questions of personal identity, the most important single feature is m e m o r y (Fitzgerald 1993,

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p. 23). The pain an exile feels is a collective pain, one felt by many others. The exile knows the circumstances oppressing community. Injustice becomes the collective self ever present in the exile. Regardless of an exile's personal freedom and economic success, she will not be satisfied until her country enjoys the liberty and justice lacking when she left (Aguilar Leon, 1991, pp. 104-105). This collective memory, which like all memory is always constructive, becomes a crucial element in maintaining an exile's sense of integrity (Clifford, p. 115). It is an early spring morning. The sun gently breaks through the kitchen windows. A burbling sound interrupts the morning silence. Streams of rich black coffee gush to the top of the coffee maker. The top desperately dances to the steam's rhythmic-freedomseeking efforts. Finally freed, the aroma fills my nostrils. As I sip a cup of Cuban coffee, mother mentions the letter from my cousin that arrived the day before. La Habana... LQuehan hecho de nuestro pals t/a? Ustedes los que se fueron hace mas de 30 afios, fueron inteligentes o visionarios, comprendierona tiempo. Se que el exilio es my duro, ya que separarse de su familia, de su tierra y de sus costumbres es triste, que el exilado no es feliz completamente.Pero el que se qued6 aqu/lleno de esperanzas en un mundo mejor, de mejorfas para todos, ha sido todo lo contrario y no tenemos ni siquiera esperanza ni ilusiones... [Havana... Aunt, what has been done to our country? You who left over thirty years ago, were smart or visionaries,timely understood. I know exile is hard, that to separate yourself from your family, your land, and your customs is sad, that an exile is never content. But the one that stayed here full of hope for a better world, betterment for all, has been the complete opposite and we do not have even hopes or dreams...]. Images rush forth, cousin, aunt, uncle, family gatherings, towering Australian pines silent guardians to my youthful pranks, memories forever embedded in my mind. Exile is cultural dislocation and geographical displacement - not only cultural expatriation, but also mental incarceration and isolation from significant others, a public event with private consequences. A return to Cuba requires C u b a n exiles to give up freedom to dissent (PerezStable, 1993, p. 178). Besides, "Cubans have never considered themselves immigrants. We are e x i l e s . . , making a cameo appearance here" (Arregui as quoted by Milani, 1995, p. 5-2). 6 Indeed, to become an immigrant, abandon the exile status, requires Cubans to give up their collective pain - the C u b a n identity, our Cubanismo. 7 To a large n u m b e r of C u b a n exiles, to exercise the i m m i g r a n t ' s option of belonging to neither C u b a n nation, not to Cuba and not to the exile, is even worse (Rieff, 1993, p. 40). As a Cuban exile, I am an outcast in Cuba. Since, I felt incapable to change the situation of oppression I felt in Cuba, I came to the U.S. and changed my situation. I left Cuba to maintain my freedom to dissent as a Cuban, not to be anAmerican or a Cuban-

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American,

a hyphenated A m e r i c a n . 8 M y departure was a futile act of self

definition. The summer of '89 was not dry and hot, but muggy and wet. At least it was for me on this particular morning at the University of South Florida campus. "I am not sure you should register for this class." Is it his small office, crowded with books and papers scattered on the desk and the floor, his mannerism, his beard, his casual attire, his horn rimmed glasses, his condescending voice, or his disconraging remark that makes me feel uncomfortable? Perhaps it is all of them. At the same time I ask him "Why?", I ask myself if it is because of my piercing eyes and inquiring voice, the Cuba I represent, or that I have not applied to the graduate program. "Well, business people and academia do not always get along well", he darts at me without hesitation. My clean shaven face, long-sleeve button down blue shirt, red-checkered tie, and black shining penny loafers appear to be his target. Undaunted, that afternoon I enroll in his class on therapeutic rhetoric. Later, I learned his rhetoric is not therapeutic. We cannot define ourselves to ourselves. Humans are never alone, even if isolated from other humans physical presence (Gergen 1991, p. 242). We are not self-made. W e are a dialogue, a conversation with others even when exiled, alone and in pain. The pain an e m i g r g feels is the fine line that demarcates exile from immigrant. To an exile, the immigrant status suggests disengagement from collective pain, abandonment o f cherished memories, and loss o f identity. It denies the existence o f an "original" cause for displacement, the "original sin" that led to displacement from paradise: resistance to oppressive power, not an act o f liberation but o f frustration. A n immigrant looks for a new life. Implicit is the possibility o f no return and, with it, possible assimilation, definition b y others. A n exile seeks temporary residence and does not expect assimilation. Return is not only expected, but also taken for granted. An exile refuses to be defined by others, expects to return, and, when unable to, in the end cannot prevent being defined through interactions with others in the host country.

The sense o f displacement, the essence o f exile lingers within me. Displaced, an exile remains in limbo, p l a c e - l e s s , a n o m a d restless to return while hunted b y assimilation narratives that attempt to m a k e her stay, the exile's paradox. I realize that I cannot "be taught in A m e r i c a n " and "play and fight and see and hear in A m e r i c a among A m e r i c a n s in A m e r i c a n streets and houses without b e c o m i n g an A m e r i c a n " (Okada 1976, pp. 15-16). But, I also know that I was not born an American. M y geographical markers are in Cuba and, as long as I

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remain a dissenter, they are not accessible to me. 91 must draw m y identity from memory. F r o m this constant tension of displacement and assimilation I must articulate m y own story, m y own identity. Exiles belong to the world o f displacement. Exile is about being place-less, at ease and at home nowhere on earth. Exile draws its strength from "its residence in an imaginative world o f pure feeling" drawn out o f m e m o r y (Rieff, p. 159). Displaced, separated from her geographic residence and significant others, m e m o r y is a site that an exile, an Other, must visit. M e m o r y b e c o m e s the depository o f identity. M e m o r y evoked b y conversations with others about the past and texts and artifacts to which she has access. M e m o r y travels with her, with me. Memory, m y storage of past experiences that I must recall and link together in order to establish a sense of personal continuity (Crites, 1986, p. 159), is where I belong. It is m y cultural past and will be part o f m y future. A past and a future frozen and fused to the present. However, since cultures are not frozen in time, I know there is no cultural return. There is no cultural past waiting for an exile to return to. Space and time collapse. W h a t was there then b e c o m e s what is here now, a cultural now always present, the one that traveled with m e constantly permeated by the one I now geographically inhabit. Exiles work on a different notion of time. They order where the past and the future take precedence over the present. W h a t might have been and might yet be takes precedence over the actual that could not possibly be (Rieff, p. 19). F o r an exile it is an ever changing cultural present - the tension of the past that might have been and the future that might yet be against the actual that could not possibly be but is - deeply e m b e d d e d in her that provides an orientation to inhabit meaning in a world o f might be: a dream where the future is behind and the present we live is the past w e face that cannot be but is. It is a dry spring. The early morning downpour quenches the thirsty ground. As they pounce the kitchen windows, the large rain-drops produce alternating beats, a drum call to a summer not far away. Mother has received another letter from my cousin. La Habana... Yo todavia no he interiorizado que [mi hijo] se me va, y que a lo mejor estar6 afios sin verlos [hijo, hija politica y nieto], pero es pot su bien y su porvenir aqui no hay futuro para nadie, yo quisiera que todos ellos pudieran irse aunque me quede solita, es triste vet tus hijos sin ilusiones ni esperanzas... [Havana... I have not yet internalized that {my son} is going away from me, and that perhaps I will be years without seeing them {son, daughter-in-law-, and grand-son}, but it is for their welt being and their future. There is no future for anyone here, I wish that all of them {the rest of my children}, could leave even if I am left by myself. It is sad to see your children without dreams or hopes...]. My decision to leave Cuba jumps in front of me and peers into my eyes. I cannot help but compare it to the one announced by my cousin, naked facts in front of me: conditions in Cuba have changed; yet, the political situation is the same. Displacement continues.

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C u b a n s i n a b i l i t y to d i s s e n t is n o w w e d d e d to u n m e t e x p e c t a t i o n s , l a c k o f d r e a m s a n d h o p e s , D e p r a v a t i o n f o r c e s C u b a n s to k e e p t h e i r e y e s f i r m l y f o c u s e d o n t h e p r e s e n t , w h i l e C a s t r o , to i m p o s e h i s w o f l d v i e w , c o n t i n u e s to m a s s p r o d u c e i m a g e s o f t h e past. F u t u r e is C u b a ' s b i g g e s t s h o r t a g e (Iyer, 1995, p. 133). A d r e a m f r o m t h e past, t h e C u b a n r e v o l u t i o n is n o w a n i g h t m a r e p e r p e t u a l l y f r o z e n i n t h e p r e s e n t C u b a n s face. D i s p l a c e m e n t c o n t i n u e s i n t o t h e future. Like displacement in our post modem world, being exiled creates a r h e t o r i c a l e x i g e n c y t h a t c a n o n l y b e r e s o l v e d t h r o u g h d i s c o u r s e : w e must n a r r a t e o u r i d e n t i t y i n o r d e r to a t t a c h m e a n i n g to o u r l i v e d e x p e r i e n c e s , w e must tell s t o r i e s to m a k e s e n s e o f t h e w o r l d , w e must c a r r y o n a d i a l o g u e to tell u s w h o w e are, w h e r e w e b e l o n g . October 8, 1994 marks the beginning of my thirty fifth long year in the U.S. Ileana, Maria, and Lourdes, our three daughters, no longer live with us. I am alone at home when the phone rings. The sun has set a couple of hours earlier. To my "Hello", a woman's voice I do not recognize inquires, Dionel Cotanda? My "Yes" is followed by, Congratulations! I am Dr. Pamela Kalbfleisch from the Department of Communication and Mass Media at the University of Wyoming. I call to inform you that your paper was chosen as this year's winner of the Southern States Communication Association's Bostrom Young Scholar's Award. Out of fifty papers received, your paper "The Rhetorics of the Ruler and the Exile" was rated first. She waits for my response, but I am speechless. My hands shake. "Is this a hoax?" I ponder. "Hello, are you there?" she asks. "What did you say is your name?" is all I am able to muster in a meek tone. "Pamela Kalbfleisch, K-A-L-B-F-L-E-I.. ". I am in a daze. If it is a hoax, I am going to flush it out. I ask her to hold on a minute while I reach for pen and paper. She repeats it a couple of times. My hands tremble. I do not write. Unable to make sense of the experience, I scribble. When I say thank you, she hangs up. Alone, in the darkness of the room, tears flow from my eyes as I ponder, Am I the same college student who attended La Universidad de La Habana and left Cuba to maintain the freedom to dissent as a Cuban? Thirty-four long years in the U.S.A., Cuban, exile, U.S. veteran, American daughters, corporate executive, graduate student, Bostrom Young Scholar... Tightness embraces my chest. The irony baffles me. I did not realize that ultimately, whether resistant or compliant, I was always defined through my interactions with others. I have met the Other. The magnitude of my decision becomes clear.

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NOTES 1. I am indebted to Dr. Eric Eisenberg for his insights and comments on exile and the post modern world of displacement, to fellow students Dianna McCarty and Honey Rand for their recommendations, to Dr. Marsha Vanderford for her suggestions, and to Dr. Arthur R Bochner for his continued guidance and support. 2. I wonder if my pledge unconsciously starts a new identification process. Is this the moment hyphenation begins? 3. To Carcia (1996) "Cuban culture in general was highly Americanized" (p. 15). 4. Following an uncomfortable two year existence with a malfunctioningkidney, my father departed during the summer of 1996. Nevertheless, while one may argue that they are one-sided, our conversations continue. 5. Cubanidad refers to the bond of Cuba as a place of birth and identity as a member of the Cuban nation. The term fuses the search of an affirmation of that which is Cuban regardless of ethnic background to a sense of pride, confidence, and duty (Martinez, 1994, p. 38). It combines values, customs, and traditions to a strong sense of a shared Cuban history that emerges from struggles to obtain Cuba's self-determination as a Spanish colony. 6. Colmenero (1985) claims "most Cubans have consistently resisted assimilation" (p. 107). 7. To Arregui (1995) "'Who am I?', 'Where do I belong?', the sense of identity has been and still is a very important determining factor in the art of many young 'American-Cuban, Cuban-American'" artists. Arregui is the curator for the art exhibition "American-Cuban, Cuban-American, thirty five," where five Cuban artists and one first generation U.S. artist explore "theft" Cuban roots and their new"American identity." He claims "the core of their roots is their Cubanismo." Cubanismo is the core of Cuban exiles' roots, "an inner feeling" (Colmenero, p. 6). While Cubanidad refers to the bond of being born in Cuba and identity as a member of the Cuban nation, Cubanismo refers to a particular way of being regardless of birthplace. 8. Prrez Firmat (1994) claims "Cubans have always been hyphenated Americans" (p. 16). 9. Castro "has never deviated from 'L'etat, e'est moi' (I am the state)" and "his enduring conviction, unchallenged by his colleagues, that he alone understands what is good for Cuba" (Szulc 1995, p. 175). Convinced of possessing the truth, Castro does not tolerate dissent (Perez-Stable, p. 178, Short 1993, p. 117). Thus, his regime continues to extract "a heavy price - the denial of personal and political freedoms - " from "old and new Cuban generations" alike (Short, p. 173).

REFERENCES Aguilar Le6n L. (1991). Reflexiones sobre Cuba y sufuturo. Miami, FL: Ediciones UnversaL Arregui, R. (Curator) (1995, April-June).American-Cuban, Cuban-American, thirty five. Belleair, Fl: The Florida Gulf Coast Art Center. Clifford, J. (1992). Travelingcultures.In: L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and R Treichler (Eds.), Cultural Studies (pp. 96-116). New York: Routledge.

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Colmenero, J. A. (1985). Issues and problems of Cuban identity and acculturation. (Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina.) Dissertation Abstracts International 47, 337A. Crites, S. (1986). Storytime: recollecting the past and projecting the future. In: T. R. Sarbin (Ed.), Narrative psychology: the storied nature of human conduct (pp. 152-173) New York: Praeger. Fitzgerald, T. K. (1993). Metaphors of identity: a culture-communication dialogue. Albany: State University of New York Press. Garcfa, M. C. (1996). Havana USA: Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida 1959-1994. Berkeley: University of California. Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self." dilemnuts of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books. Iyer, P. (1995). Cuba and the night. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc. Martnez, J. A. (1994). Cuban art & national identity: The vanguardia painters, 1927-1950. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Milani, J. (1995, May 5). Art of Cuba from America: a half- dozen young artists explore their Cuban roots through their work. The Tampa Tribune. pp. 5-1, 5-2. Okada, J. (1976). No-no boy : a novel by John Okada. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ptrez Firmat, G. (1994). Life on the hyphen: The Cuban-American way. Austin: University of Texas Press. Perez-Stable, M. (1993). The Cuban revolution: origins, course, and legacy. New York: Oxford University. Rieff, D. (1993). The exile: Cuba in the heart of Miami. New York: Simon & Schuster. Short, M. I. (1993). Law and religion in Marxist Cuba: a human rights inquiry. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Szulc, T. (1995). Fidelismo: the unfulfilled ideology. In: Irving Louis Horowitz (Ed.), Cuban Communism 1959-1995 (pp. 173-184). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"THE SID CARTWRIGHT INCIDENT A N D MORE": A N AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE' S INTERPRETIVE NARRATIVE OF INTERRACIAL ENCOUNTERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Reuben A. Buford May ABSTRACT In this narrative I capture part of my first year experience in the doctoral sociology program at theUniversity of Chicago. I analyze entries from my U of C journal, recorded during the 1992-93 academic year, paying special attention to discussions regarding race and interracial interactions. I focus on "The Sid Cartwright Incident" - a negative encounter with a white professor - to elucidate ways in which race penetrated my everyday existence and pressed me to define sometimes ambiguous interracial interactions as unpleasant racial encounters. I reveal the complex and contradictory ways that my past experiences with racism and discrimination may have distorted my thinking about interracial encounters and at the same time invigorated my determination to move beyond those encounters. I conclude with a discussion of the cumulative impact of negative interracial encounters on African Americans.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 75-100. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4 75

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I was 11 years old when in 1976, upon the urging of one of my teachers, I began writing a daily journal. At first my journal was part of a weekly assignment. Ms. Levish, 1 in her Swedish accent, explained to me that she wanted me to write down my daily observations and give her my journal to read. She emphasized one rule for writing in my journal: avoid the constraints of formal writing. I happily accepted her invitation and began jotting down two or three notes each day. Regrettably, Ms. Levish and I were unable to establish a lasting relationship because I felt I "couldn't learn" in a Montessori school where the students, mostly white, readily disregarded normative conventions of learning, selfexpression, and creativity. My world of low income lifestyle, "peachtree" switch discipline, and black identity had never been like their world of middle class leisure, leniency, and white identity. I begged my mother to return me to a familiar school setting. After six months of "learning through exploration" my mother agreed with me and returned me to the local Catholic school, an environment of discipline I could recognize. Ms. Levish's final encouragement, however, to keep writing stayed with me. Over the years my journal became not only a place to jot down my deepest thoughts and feelings, but also a place to record the personal experiences of those with whom my life intersected. Because my life had overlapped with so many others, I had determined long ago that my journal would not be a public document. In 1992 I was accepted to the Ph.D., Sociology program at the University of Chicago. This was quite an accomplishment coming from where I had come. I wanted friends and family close to me to share in this experience. In particular, I wanted my good friend Ben, whom I felt was largely responsible for my intellectual development, to see the University through my eyes. I had met Ben, an "old white man," when I was sixteen; he was 50 years old at that time. My mother, brother, and I had recently moved to Hyde Park from the "low end" and I had taken a job as a paper boy. One morning while I was delivering newspapers, Ben and his dog Ebony stopped me to say hello. Although I regarded Ben with suspicion, I took kindly to his pleasant and seemingly sincere greeting. When I returned home that morning I told my mother, "If I should disappear while I'm delivering papers, I just want you to know that I met this strange old white man and you might want to go looking for him." My mother and I laughed. From that morning on I would see Ben almost every morning as I delivered newspapers and we would stop and talk about school, sports, my personal aspirations and his interest in reading. Even

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after I graduated from high school and left for college Ben stayed in touch. In the ten years that followed he became a close friend and mentor. When I was accepted to the University I wanted to honor Ben for his past help in challenging me to grow intellectually. He had been like a father to me. I knew Ben was an avid reader and I thought he would enjoy reading about my personal experience at the University. His support, our friendship, and my interest in sharing my experience were the impetuses for creating my "U of C" journal. My U of C journal was distinct from my personal journal. In it, I wrote about my experiences at the University rather than about my friends' and family's crises which I documented in my personal journal. Although the U of C journal was written for public view (Ben's eyes), it remained a bearing of my soul because of my close relationship with Ben. In sum, my U of C journal was an exercise in "talking" to a close friend about my life at the University. What follows is a "guided tour" through the first year of my U of C journal. It is a narrative that places my experience at the University of Chicago squarely on the shoulders of my feelings regarding race and racism. The sociological contribution of this narrative is that it elucidates how race penetrated my everyday existence and pressed me to define sometimes ambiguous interracial interactions as unpleasant racial encounters. It reveals the complex and contradictory ways that my past experiences with racism and discrimination may have distorted my thinking about interracial encounters and yet invigorated my determination to move beyond those encounters. Finally, it presents the subtleties of what Feagin et al. (1996) have identified as the "cumulative impact" of antiblack discrimination. According to Feagin et al. (1996), present day incidents of discrimination have a cumulative impact on African Americans because these incidents are shared by the victim among family and friends and are "laden with individual and group memories of centuries of racial oppression" (p. 23). Similarly, I suggest elsewhere (May, 2000), that African Americans, "through narratives about their past negative experiences with whites, develop a collective memory of racism and discrimination that is broadened with each additional story told" (202). This collective memory gives a "compounding effect" to the negative interracial experiences discussed among African Americans. Accordingly, the current narrative considers the influence that my family and friends' past negative interracial experiences may have had on my perception of race and racism at the University of Chicago. My U of C journal was written in the spirit of Ms. Levish's original requirement that my writing be free of conventional writing constraints. Consistent with this approach, the journal entries I present below remain largely unchanged with the exception of pseudonyms and spelling corrections.

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I decided against more substantive editing because I wanted to present my thoughts as I was trying to convey them in 1992. While scholarship and good grammar are lacking in my U of C journal entries, I believe they effectively capture the social dynamics of my racial identity and my relationship to the University community.

NARRATIVE In the beginning... In the fall quarter of 1992 the Sociology department at the University of Chicago (a.k.a "Chicago") enrolled one of its "largest graduate cohorts in modern experience" (Abbott, 2000). Of this diverse group of 42 students there were 9 African Americans, probably the largest group of African Americans to attend the graduate sociology program in any one year. 2 Long before I knew the demographics of my cohort I had begun to think about my future at Chicago. In addition to having the usual angst that one might get about meeting the academic challenges at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, I was also anxious about issues of race and racism. I had attended many schools in the past and in each whites had reminded me of my race in ways that devalued that part of me. Whether it was students' racially charged graffiti on school walls, teachers' condescending remarks about African Americans intellectual ability, or principals' uneven punishment of black and white students, I was always aware of my race. A few days before beginning the Ph.D. program I contemplated my strategy for handling the racism that I expected to confront. t told my mother that I had decided to take the posture of ignoringracism. This is because it takes too much energy to try and diffuse it. If people criticize me withoutjustification, then I will take this criticism as an attack on my race whichI am helpless to defend against because the attacker has this conceptionof people of color and will not readily change it. So instead of me trying to changehis thoughts about black people in general, I ignore the racial attacks by not taking them personally. My mothersaid, "I'm saying,fuck that. People who attack you for race reasons have a problem and its their problem. Keep movingon." In my 26 years of living, my experiences with racism and discrimination and those of my friends and family bad compounded in my memory to give me a sense that racial conflict was inevitable. In my thinking, every African American in their fight mind should be prepared for imminent racism. I could not walk through life oblivious to the ramifications of being black. I could not deny all of the references to "my people" as inferior. I had to be prepared to confront challenges without losing my only opportunity to grab some of the

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intellectual and material goods offered to so few. M y mother, having had many of her own negative interracial encounters, encouraged me to keep moving on if I should be confronted with such race-based challenges. With these thoughts, I began m y mental preparation for the confrontations ahead. During m y time at Chicago I would continue to reflect upon the centrality of race for how I viewed the world and how others viewed me. Beyond my concern about imminent racism I was worried about impending feelings of social isolation. Not the kind of social isolation that graduate students expect when beginning doctoral studies, but the kind of social isolation associated with being one of a few African Americans in a graduate program. A day before the sociology orientation I pondered m y social life. As I sat in the U of C cafeteria by myself I began to think of how lonely and isolated it is for a black man in a sea of white. I looked around and saw only one other black in the cafeteria. She was with a group of students. I remember growing up and going to restaurants frequented by whites and discovering that I would be the only black in there except for the hired help. Not at the U of C. The hired help is now populated by Latino workers. I am not worried about isolation, because much of my life has been in isolation. I have become accustomed to finding strength in myself. With these feelings of impending isolation, I attended the sociology department orientation. As part of the orientation the other first year students and I attended a retreat. The retreat was an opportunity for us to talk to faculty and meet one another. I was excited to discover that there were eight other first year African American students. I felt that one advantage to having such a large cohort of African Americans was that I was unlikely to be the voice of the "African American community." Perhaps whites would now be less likely to turn to me and ask, "So what do blacks think?" And I would not have to respond to myself, " H o w the hell do I know, I ' m just speaking for Reuben." Now I could be an individual and so could the other African Americans. Despite our individuality, however, I felt confident that the other African Americans in m y cohort had experienced race in a way that the white students could not. Thus, this large African American cohort would allow me to develop both a sense of individual identity and group identity. The retreat was enjoyable and informative. In addition to meeting new students and faculty, it was also an opportunity for me to re-establish contact with Professor Cartwright, w h o m I had met on a previous visit to the University. Professor Cartwright would prove to be an early supporter of m y efforts at Chicago but I would later view him as I had viewed so many other whites. He would become, to me, just another white protagonist in the many racial dramas that had unfolded in my life.

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R E U B E N A. B U F O R D MAY We spent time at the retreat talking in groups. The focus group discussed, preliminary examinations, research assistantships, first year courses, and financial matters. I had been to visit all of my other groups that had been assigned. I finally came to my last group which was financial matters. By this time the groups had dispersed somewhat and I had the opportunity to sit with three professors and two other students. Drs. Turner, Cartwright, and Dillis. I openly explained to the three of them that I had received a University Trustee Fellowship and that I had received a student loan. I also stated that I did not estimate that my funds would last me until I got to the end of the first term. Both Prof. Turner and Cartwright were quite concerned. I reminded Cartwright that I had mentioned my financial condition to him during my summer visit. I told him that I was afraid that I would not be receiving enough financial support. He told me to talk to him on Monday. Then the others left the group so that they could get ready for lunch. Cartwright asked me to remain seated and he discussed with me the opportunity to have a job that did not require much work because he realized that I was trying to lay a good academic base. He seemed very sincere. I told him that I would appreciate anything that he would be able to do and that I felt that I should at least have a fair shot at producing the kind of quality work that other students would have a chance to produce. He said, "It is difficult to concentrate when you have to deal with such distracting issues, and we would not want to lose you." For whatever its worth, he sounded sincere. Whether he is motivated to keep me in because they need me as a black or whether he is genuinely concerned about his students, it really doesn't matter to me because I believe that he will be supportive.

W h y w a s P r o f e s s o r C a r t w r i g h t so c o n c e r n e d a b o u t m e ? D i d h e t r e a t o t h e r s t u d e n t s i n this w a y ? W h a t d i d h e h a v e to g a i n ? T h e s e q u e s t i o n s w e r e f i r m l y entrenched in my mind. Somehow I had mistakenly bought into the notion that African Americans were needed (Perhaps my feelings resulted from the national dialogue around affirmative action and the need for minority r e p r e s e n t a t i o n at c o l l e g e s a n d u n i v e r s i t i e s . ) . N o t n e e d e d i n a s i n c e r e w a y b u t n e e d e d like " t o k e n s . " I l e a r n e d , h o w e v e r , t h a t a l t h o u g h s t u d e n t s w e r e i m p o r t a n t resources for professors, no specific student was needed. He or she was not essential for their work on research projects, for their assistance in the c l a s s r o o m , o r f o r t h e i r c o n t r i b u t i o n s to t h e i n t e l l e c t u a l c o m m u n i t y . O v e r t h e f o u r y e a r s I s p e n t at C h i c a g o t h i s t r u t h b e c a m e e v i d e n t as r a c i a l l y a n d ethnically diverse members of my cohort became academic, financial, and personal casualties. Once they were gone, few of us missed their specific contributions. A f t e r t h e r e t r e a t I w a s d e t e r m i n e d to find a w a y to m a n a g e m y f i n a n c i a l s i t u a t i o n so t h a t I w o u l d h a v e t h e b e s t c h a n c e o f s u c c e s s at t h e U n i v e r s i t y . I h a d little t i m e to c o n s i d e r t h e n a t u r e o f t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p I w a s to e n t e r w i t h P r o f e s s o r C a r t w r i g h t a n d t h i s m a d e m e a little u n e a s y . Still, m y f i n a n c i a l n e e d s w e r e i m m e d i a t e s o I c o n t a c t e d h i m t h e f o l l o w i n g day. I was to contact Dr. Cartwright today. I finally caught up with him in the afternoon. He told me that they had two things in the working for me. The first he said he was working on and the second one he was really excited about. The first was the possibility of the University

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providing me with a stipend to add to my funds that I was presently receiving. He told me that more people had to review my file before they could make a judgment on my award. The second thing that he had for me was a research assistant position on his research team. He was so excited because he had just got a big grant. He told me that the work would really be undemanding and that all parties could benefit. I got the sense that they both created this job for me and that they will also be supportive of my study. He assured me that they did need the help and that we all had an interest in the research. I thanked him and told him that I would be in on Monday to start my first day of work. The funny thing about Dr. Cartwright is that he hasn't once shaken my hand. I find that strange. I have never been forward enough to force this issue with him. I bet one damn thing is for sure. If Siddy boy shakes my band it will be damn sincere. A l t h o u g h I w a s r e l i e v e d to h a v e a d d r e s s e d m y f i n a n c i a l c o n c e r n s , C a r t w r i g h t ' s behavior b o t h e r e d me. I had met Professor Cartwright on three separate o c c a s i o n s a n d his f a i l u r e to s h a k e m y h a n d at a n y t i m e s t a y e d w i t h me. I h a d a l w a y s b e e n t a u g h t that a h a n d s h a k e w a s a g e s t u r e o f m u t u a l r e s p e c t . M y c o l l e g e b a s k e t b a l l c o a c h e s p e c i a l l y e m p h a s i z e d this g e s t u r e . W h e t h e r y o u d e f e a t e d y o u r o p p o n e n t or w e r e d e f e a t e d b y t h e m , it w a s t h e r e s p o n s i b i l i t y o f all i n v o l v e d to s h o w r e s p e c t t h r o u g h a h a n d s h a k e . I w a s u n a w a r e , at that t i m e , t h a t I w o u l d take C a r t w r i g h t ' s v i o l a t i o n o f this c o d e o f d e c e n c y as e v i d e n c e t h a t h e w a s racist. In t h e s e v e r a l w e e k s that p a s s e d s i n c e I b e g a n m y first a c a d e m i c q u a r t e r at the U n i v e r s i t y I h a d f o u n d t h e c l a s s e s b o t h c h a l l e n g i n g a n d i n t e r e s t i n g a n d m y professors encouraging and supportive. M y library research for Professor C a r t w r i g h t w a s also g o i n g w e l l a n d h e c o n t i n u e d to p r a i s e a n d e n c o u r a g e m e . Dr. Cartwright called back down for me and I went up to see him. We sat down and he told me that he had gone through my material and suggest that I go and copy these articles that he marked. He said that I had found some interesting things and that I was on the mark. He asked me how classes were going. I said "Fine. I hand in a mid-term tomorrow and received one today." I told him that I would have copies of the articles for him on Friday. He said, °'Don't let this interfere with your work." I said, "I know. I hesitated when I first called you on Monday to tell you that I would not be in, but I concluded that my class was more important and you had told me to concentrate on it, so I called you." He said. "When it comes to your class work and this work, this is always secondary. You could always do this over Christmas break" He then winked at me and smiled. I smiled back and said, "You don't have to worry I am going to put my school work first." As I got my things together to leave he said, "I will see you Reuben, thanks a lot." I said, "Alright Sid I'll see you Friday." I realized that I had called him by his first name. I must have felt very comfortable with him because I relaxed and became personal. I realized that I might have offended him and turned to him and said, "I hope it is not inappropriate to call you Sid." He said, "Oh no." I said, "I had this same thing come up with Dr. Rossman who told me to call her Carrie. I didn't feel comfortable because Dr. Babcock made it clear that students should call him Dr. Babcock." Sid said, "Don't worry about it. We will let things happen naturally." I left.

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REUBEN A. BUFORD MAY I felt good about the whole thing because I had done good research, I had become comfortable with Dr. Cartwright, and he was very supportiveof my studies. This makes it all a lot easier to study and complete assignments.

Although other students called Professor Cartwright, Sid, for me to do so felt counter-intuitive to what I had been taught all m y life. I remembered how m y mother had emphasized that in formal relationships, especially with whites, you keep things formal. Her thinking on this was affected by how she had viewed her own father's experiences. She used to tell m y brother and me, " W h e n we went back down south to visit, m y daddy had to plan trips so that we would only have to stop for gas. M y mother would even carry old m a y o n n a i s e jars so we could pee in them in the car if we had to go to the toilet. It just w a s n ' t safe for us to stop because we might be attacked by whites. Whenever we would travel from Chicago to Memphis my daddy would get pulled over by a white police officer. He used to say, "Yes sir officer and no sir officer," and stare down while they called him boy. Even the whites that m y father knew and thought he could trust he called Mr. so and so. He tried to keep his distance because once you get friendly you make yourself vulnerable." W h e n m y mother used to tell us this story, m y brother and I understood the sentiment she was trying to convey. Beyond providing us with details of the dangerous conditions under which African Americans traveled to visit family, she also wanted us to understand that if we kept our social distance from whites we would be able to better negotiate interracial encounters. As the first academic quarter progressed I, like most of the other students in m y cohort, began to feel "strained and drained." Most of us felt like we had more books to read and more papers to write than we had time to finish. Still, there were little reminders that I was unlike the other students. For instance, I had the following experience when I went to eat lunch and meet m y fianc6e at the often crowded Reynolds Club - a University cafeteria open to the public. This experience remained with me throughout the day. I was having lunch by myself and waiting for Marie to come. I sat watching the door. This older white woman came to my table, did not speak, did not acknowledge my presence in anyway, and then sat down directly in line of my vision facing the door. I passively leaned over the table and said to her politely, "Excuse me. Do you mind moving a little to the left so that I can watch the door, I am looking for someone." She immediately stood up, gathered her things and said, "That is just fine. I was thinking of moving out to the other side anyway" She moved determinedly to another table. I got pissed because I couldn't understand what was going on. I guess its because I figured she was upset because she had to sit next to me anyway. I don't think I am reading too much into to this because her actions were far greater than anything I could attempt to write. After being victimized for so many years by blatant and subtle racism, you learn to understand when it occurs and when it doesn't.

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This w o m a n ' s behavior was confusing to me. I had used deference and politeness but had gotten an unexpected response. Perhaps if I could have asked her, " W h a t ' s up with that behavior?" she might have told me she was upset that the cafeteria was crowded, or she misunderstood m y request, or she was on psychotropic drugs that made her respond brashly to strangers. Since we were previously unacquainted I knew she was not responding to one of m y personality flaws. I was unable to know her motive but I felt it was something about me that brought her response. I was left concluding that she had an unfavorable feeling about African Americans. Even in writing this in m y journal, I was concerned that I was "reading too much" into the encounter. After all, I had been taught as a matter of survival that I should be cautious about whites' intentions but not paranoid. Although these occurrences were happening in the larger university c o m m u n i t y there were few such irritating experiences within my department. The professors continued to encourage me, especially Professor Cartwright. I went and talked to Dr. Cartwright today about my work for him. He told me to see if I could dig up some more articles and then come by and see him on Monday. He then said, "How is everything else going." I said, "Pretty good except for Mid-terms/' [He gave me a look of anticipation] I said, "They went okay, but I didn't do as well as I expected. You could tell that I have been out of school for a while and now all I am U~gingto do is to shape things up so I can do well on finals." He looked at me and smiled and said, "You'll do it." If that wasn't encouragementthen I don't know what is. I had two pleasant surprises today and both from professors that were supportive.Thank goodness that Dr.Cortez was not the only professor that I came to see when I came to visit. I had gotten the feeling that this place was not for a black man. But again, professors have made the effort to extend the same encouragement to blacks as to other students, and the more impressive thing is that they don't seem to be straining to do it. I didn't say all professors, and I didn't say all the time. One of the reasons that I "had gotten the feeling that this place was not for a black man" was because Professor Louise Cortez had treated me poorly during m y initial visit. I had met with her during m y prospective's visit - all admitted students were encouraged to take this visit before enrolling in the sociology program. I had called and scheduled an appointment with Professor Cortez because I was interested in her research. W h e n I arrived for m y appointment, Professor Cortez kept m e waiting 20 minutes; ten of which she spent standing before me in the reception area discussing informal matters with a graduate student. She then invited me back to her office. As I sat down in the chair across from her she picked up the telephone, dialed a number, and began talking. W h e n she finished her phone call she said, "Okay, now what are you here for?" I then explained to her that I would be enrolling in the Fall quarter and that I was interested in her work. She briefly described to me, in a condescending

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manner, her research. When she finished I asked her if she knew of ways that incoming students could secure additional funding for graduate studies. She snapped, "You don't have funding? You shouldn't come here if you don't have funding. You should go and get a job until you can get funding." I was shocked. It wasn't so much what she said but the way she said it. After her remarks I thanked her for her time and departed. I felt disrespected because of the disregard she showed for my time. This was especially upsetting because Professor Cortez was both a woman and a member of an ethnic group that had seen its share of discrimination. I asked myself, "Weren't we all in this together? Didn't she understand what it felt like to be treated as if one's major life concerns were insignificant to the rest of the (white) world?" Her remarks had resurrected, in my memory, an experience my mother had when she tried to enroll in one of Chicago's community colleges in the late 60s. At that time, my mother was a single parent and my brother and I were preschoolers. Through the course of registration the white male administrator assisting her discovered she was a single parent and he said, "Lady what are you trying to do? Why are you trying to go to school? You need to go and get on public aid or work or something and take care of your kids." My mother, not easily discouraged, continued on and completed school. Although I was initially disheartened by Professor Cortez's remarks to me and her treatment of me, I determined that I would continue on to achieve my goals. Fortunately, I received what seemed to be a great deal of support and encouragement from other faculty. Perhaps it was Professor Cortez's initial rude treatment of me that later gave me an appreciation for the kindness of the other professors. As the quarter moved on I began to interact with students and faculty in social settings that I had initially determined off limits. One such place was in the gymnasium playing basketball. I had always felt that the basketball court was the one place that I was the real Reuben. I was verbally and physically aggressive, manipulative, intelligent and confident. All of these characteristics I felt could be intimidating and unwelcomed in my new setting. Still, at the urging of Cecil and Louis, both advanced African American sociology students, I joined the 7:00 am, Henry Crown fieldhouse basketball crew. This informal group of players consisted mostly of white faculty (none from sociology) and graduate students. Chancellor Stocks, a renowned anthropologist in his late 50s, had started the "group" in the early 1980s. It had grown to about 15 players ranging in age from their early 20s to late 60s. The players came together each morning to exercise and relax from the rigors of academia. These men were hardly the type of players that I thought would welcome my

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schoolyard style of play, a style I had grown up playing on the city's outdoor courts with my brother Trey and best friend Vincent. I played basketball with the Anthropology and Sociology departments this morning (7:15 am). I was easy on them because part of my playing at the University is related to peoples' perception of me as a person. I am sure that they would not understand the aggressive nature that I exhibit when I am playing with Vincent and Trey at UIC, I was enthusiastic but I did not verbally assault any other player nor did I physically clash with them in mortal combat to show the strength that me and my regular playing partners do, There was one player that tried to raise my competition level by playing solid defense, Instead of letting him have all the shit in the world I relaxed and enjoyed the fact that many of the people playing were playing for the exercise. I know that I will continue to play with Trey and Vincent as much as possible. I will get a chance to get away from the white world of U of C and relax with some down home hooping.

On the Henry Crown fieldhouse basketball court I tried to convey an unassertive personality. I thought that if I exposed the mentality I had when I played with my African American friends, then my faculty and student associates might view me as an outsider. They might also misconstrue my aggressive behavior as violent and in turn come to fear me in much the same way as they appeared to fear many of the anonymous African American men they passed on the streets of Hyde Park. These men, although only a minority of African American men who moved in and around Hyde Park, hailed from the low income neighborhoods surrounding the University. Their presence generated fear among the students and faculty. I had learned early that whites's perceived threat of black male criminality was so prevalent in Hyde Park that many residents practiced avoidance techniques when they encountered African American males. In fact, two of my professors from the Sociology department consistently failed to greet me as I passed them in the department hallway. ! felt their behavior was largely due to the fact that they had become so unaccustomed to having black men in their social space. When passing me in the hallway they saw me as a black man, immediately identified me as a stranger, and then did little further to modify their impression of me as we walked closer toward one another. Since these two professors avoided eye contact with me they could not distinguish me as someone they knew. Although I wore a coat and tie to class to demonstrate I belonged to the "intellectual community," I still felt regarded as an outsider. It was only after I greeted these professors by name that they then acknowledged me with "Oh hi Reuben." I was confused. I wondered whether they were practicing avoidance techniques that some professors use to avoid students in general. However, in witnessing these same professors interact with white students as they passed them, I concluded that I had been ignored because I was an African American male--in this context a perceived threat.

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M y perception of this posture toward black males had a profound affect on me. I soon realized that the c o m m u n i t y ' s fear of African American males had supplanted m y own confidence - a confidence I had all the while growing up - in safely sharing social space with anonymous African American males. The tricks that such an environment plays on the m i n d can have profound consequences for how one behaves. I was constantly aware of m y blackness as a "bad thing." I should have mentioned attending the U of C has changed my relation with Black males that I see walking down the street. Whites have been so preoccupied with the black male as criminal they have undermined my own security about sharing the same space with brothers. Every now and then I have to check my feelings and remember that the U of C is a wonderful place to study but is also a great bundle of fear. I had come to this conclusion by observing that the university administration posted criminal activity notices in c o m m o n areas throughout its buildings. In reading these notices I would become especially aware of m y race and gender. Standing in the corridor of the Regenstein Library I once read, "A S T U D E N T WAS R O B B E D AT G U N P O I N T . . . T H E A S S A I L A N T WAS . . . A B L A C K MALE." They were talking about someone who could look like me. As a University of Chicago student I could now understand why the neighborhood police in Hyde Park had stopped me so often when I was growing up. They had interrogated me with questions like,"What are you doing around here? What are you looking for?" With m y insight as a Chicago student, all of these questions seemed like the right ones to have asked an intruder. Still, m y newfound understanding did little to wipe away the feelings of anxiety and humiliation I remembered having each time I was stopped by the police. In fact, one particular incident continues to generate negative feelings. One early morning, when I was 16 years old, I was on m y way to school but was stopped by two police officers. "Where are you going," one officer asked. "I'm going to school early to eat breakfast," I responded. "Did you know you fit the description of a rapist seen here yesterday?" he asked. "No," I said as I became anxious. "Let me have your I.D.," the officer said, "We're going to write a contact card out on you. We'll keep the card on you for 30 days and if something happens we'll have to come and get you." I compiled with their request for my identificationcard. They returned the card to me and I walked away. As I left I felt humiliated and insecure. When I arrived at school later that morning I telephoned my mother upset and explained that I had been stopped by the police and they had written a contact card on me. My mother was incensed. She asked me for the squad car number which she had directed me and my brother to note whenever we were randomly stopped by police. I remembered the squad car number and gave it to her. That afternoon when I returned home from school I opened the door and there sat the

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two officers that had stopped me in the park. My mother had called the district police office and demanded that the officers destroy the contact card because she did not want the police to have any further reason to harass me. The two officers apologized but also explained that they were doing their job. This was one of several encounters with the police in which I had done nothing but still I was stopped, frisked, harassed, or threatened. M a n y years later, as a U o f C student, the f e e l i n g s o f a n x i e t y I had as a y o u n g m a n f r o m i n c i d e n t s o f racial profiling like this w o u l d r e - e m e r g e as p o l i c e squad cars p a s s e d m e on the street. D e s p i t e t h e s e o c c u r r e n c e s in the c o m m u n i t y I c o n t i n u e d to feel c o m f o r t a b l e w i t h the faculty and students in m y department. I b e g a n to l o o s e n the p r o t e c t i v e shell I u s e d to insulate m y s e l f f r o m i m m i n e n t racism. I was n o w w i l l i n g to share p e r s o n a l f e e l i n g s about m y life at the University, a l t h o u g h I r e m a i n e d s u s p i c i o u s o f w h i t e p r o f e s s o r s and colleagues. I talked with Dr. Cartwright briefly about my research for him. I then said,"I have a little personal aside. When I first got here I thought it would be difficult to become readjusted to going to school but the professors have been really supportive. That is of course including you." He said, "I am glad things are working out for you." [I later told my mother about this exchange, and she said that it was good that I let them know when they are doing good, because it doesn't take much for them to flick up and when they fuek up they fuck up bad. I am in agreement with this line of thinking. It's almost like encouraging children to do good. You always have to tell them they have done good so that they think less about doing bad, and you know when they finally do bad, they really do bad.] A s the first quarter c a m e to a c l o s e I was yet to c o n f r o n t r a c i s m - i m p l i c i t suggestions, or e x p l i c i t statements that A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s w e r e s o m e h o w i n t e l l e c t u a l l y i n f e r i o r than w h i t e s b e c a u s e o f their race. Perhaps I had a v o i d e d t h e s e c h a l l e n g e s , like s o m e o f the o t h e r A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s in m y cohort, b e c a u s e I had a v o i d e d i n t e r a c t i n g w i t h w h i t e students and faculty a r o u n d issues o f race. F o r instance, S S R ( S o c i e t y for S o c i a l R e s e a r c h ) , a student o r g a n i z a t i o n , was p u s h i n g an initiative for the r e c r u i t m e n t o f black, Latino, and A s i a n faculty. G l e n i c e , an a d v a n c e d s o c i o l o g y student o f F r e n c h - C h i n e s e h e r i t a g e asked m e w h y the A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n students did not participate in the d e p a r t m e n t organization. I had a conversation with the TA Glenice. She asked me why weren't any blacks getting involved with the SSR (sociology graduate organization). I told her that there is a lot of mystery around how some of the blacks got to come to U of C and we are always working to counter negative images around the issues of Affirmative Action. She encouraged me or someone else to get involved because the SSR helps make decisions on faculty hiring and other related department things. In s p e a k i n g w i t h G l e n i c e I t o o k on the i n f a m o u s r o l e o f the s p o k e s p e r s o n for the " A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n c o m m u n i t y . " I p r e s e n t e d m y p e r s o n a l f e e l i n g s as a definitive s t a t e m e n t a b o u t A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s ' c o n c e r n w i t h affirmative action.

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My statements were based on my own feelings of insecurity about my academic ability. I had heard enough questions about affirmative action, diversity, racial quotas, and leveling the playing field from whites to raise doubt in me about the ability of both myself and the other African Americans in my cohort. The truth is my African American colleagues were indeed among "the best and brightest." Many had attended Ivy league colleges and universities and graduated with honors. Some had even won national fellowships to support their graduate studies. They had been tested and proven. I, on the other hand, had not. I had attended the "moderately competitive," Aurora University, fifty miles from Chicago. I had gone on to receive my M.A. from DePaul University, a "competitive" university in Chicago. Although I had done well, I was aware of the status differences between my local education and the elite education of my black colleagues. While my African American colleagues might have failed to share my insecurity, they did seem "over" attentive to their work. On more than one occasion I had observed that the black students were more focused on their academic responsibilities, while the white students seemed to be focused on "getting together" socially. We even attended study sessions that few whites attended. I attended a study session for m y Theory course. This study group is not required and is led by a second year student who is a TA for Dr. Schleg. I enjoyed it. I discussed quite a bit, I found the exchange very helpful in terms of getting the Marx theory down. When I had first entered the study room, two African American students that I knew laughed at me. I was probably 2 minutes late. I wondered why they laughed. After the session I walked up to Tashonda and Channelle and asked why they had laughed at me. They told me that they had made the observation that the only people that attended the study group were minorities (Minority, in this context is used to mean African American, Latino, Native American (of whom I know none), and Asians.). 1 recalled that was true for the most part. There was only one white student. As we walked to m y apartment they asked me why did I think only minorities attended the session. I said that I didn't know. The following hypotheses were discussed by us: • That the other students were confident in their academic background. • That we were the only people that did not grasp the concepts and felt we needed the study (I found that not to be the case. It seemed to me that most of us had grasped the concepts and were able to apply Marx theory to very immediate things, as well as stretch his theory as far as it could go. I was surprised at the number of students who had grasped Marx. I guess I doubted our ability as a group). • That other non-minority students would attend the session as the course progressed.

It was in study sessions like these that I became aware of the individual and collective intellectual ability of my colleagues. While at that time I could began to appreciate our ability, I still had the sense that we were focused on succeeding because we wanted to represent ourselves well as African

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Americans. Fortunately, none of us suffered from "John Henryism" - the belief that as African Americans we must outwork whites in our every undertaking (Brooks, 1990). Such a belief can create mental and physical stresses - like depression and hypertension - that ultimately detract from one's ability to achieve. We were focused; but, not to death. W h e n m y first academic quarter at Chicago ended I felt more confident than I had when I started. I had survived m y classes and I had been c o m m e n d e d for the work I had been doing for Professor Cartwright. I felt comfortable around m y colleagues and I felt like m y department appreciated m y contribution to the learning environment. Still, I had yet to free the notion of i m m i n e n t racism from m y mind. I remained cautious because in the past I had tried to build m e a n i n g f u l relationships with whites but felt that most of m y attempts had been thwarted by whites's reservations about building friendships with African Americans.

"The Cartwright Incident" In m y second academic quarter I complicated m y relationship with Professor Cartwright by taking a class with him. He had been building his perception of me on the basis of the work I had done on his research project. Now he would have the opportunity to observe me in class and read my written work. I looked forward to this new relationship as an opportunity for me to get to know Professor Cartwright better and to further impress him. I have been busy working on my draft for Dr. Cartwright that I promised him by Friday. I have been working hard on it even though I know that it is a draft. I want Dr. Cartwright to be impressed with my work enough that he will consider me a good student to invest his time in. I hope that he can appreciate the fact that this is a draft. He seems real receptive. I will also be attaching a note to the front of the draft that gives him full privilege to edit as he sees fit. After I gave the first draft of m y paper to Professor Cartwright he read it and returned it to me with very few comments. I worked the final three weeks of the quarter on the paper and gave him the final draft. I thought I had done a good j o b but was unsure about m y revisions. Professor Cartwright read, graded, and returned the final draft to me. It was at this point that m y life at the University and m y relationship with Sid Cartwright was transformed by the pressures of graduate school and the underlying but constant themes of race I perceived. I got my paper back from Dr. Sid Cartwright. It was disappointing. I received a B - . It wasn't so bad that I got the B - , because I thought the paper needed a lot more work. I was surprised because when I received the paper there were extensive remarks written on every page. This is not bad in the sense that it showed that the two professors and t.a. spent

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R E U B E N A. B U F O R D MAY time reading and critiqing the paper. Furthermore, I agree with all of the remarks written. You might say to me, well you should be lucky that you got a B - if it was as bad as you say. Well, I was disappointed with Mr. Cartwright. I had given him a draft of my paper three weeks prior to the end of the term. He read the draft and wrote only one comment that said, "This is a good descriptive essay but needs to be much more analytic?' [We met and discussed it.] Well I made some adjustments taking into consideration his comments, but for the most part the paper's first section was unchanged. On the final draft he wrote, "This, 1 am afraid, does not move far from the prior version. Though it is expanded and is better written. Let's talk the paper over." Given that Mr. Cartwright did not take the opportunity to put me on the right path after reviewing my first draft, I am pissed. He was aware of the content of my paper. He could have offered more concrete written suggestions as opposed to dropping titles of books and authors. [I should have paid attention to his hidden signals which were that he had a set of authors which he felt were important to what I was writing. Unfortunately I did not agree that the authors applied after perusing their works.]

P r o f e s s o r C a r t w r i g h t ' s w r i t t e n c o m m e n t s to m e w e r e m u c h like t h o s e a n y g r a d u a t e s t u d e n t m i g h t h a v e r e c e i v e d at s o m e p o i n t i n t h e i r career. H i s w i l l i n g n e s s to " t a l k t h e p a p e r over," m i g h t a l s o h a v e b e e n c o n s i s t e n t w i t h w h a t a r e a s o n a b l e s t u d e n t s h o u l d e x p e c t . Yet, I i n t e r p r e t e d C a r t w r i g h t ' s c r i t i c i s m o f my paper with a degree of mistrust. Why would he give me extensive c o m m e n t s o n t h e final d r a f t w h e n I c o u l d h a v e u s e d t h e m o n t h e first d r a f t ? D i d n ' t h e s u p p o r t m y e f f o r t s ? W o u l d he, i f I w e r e a w h i t e s t u d e n t , h a v e g i v e n me better initial feedback? The feelings of past racism and discrimination b e g a n to b o i l i n m y b o d y a n d C a r t w r i g h t r e p r e s e n t e d t h e o b j e c t a g a i n s t w h i c h I s h o u l d rail. I felt t h a t m y " p e r s o n a l " r e l a t i o n s h i p w i t h P r o f e s s o r C a r t w r i g h t warranted that he give me more direction than he had given. I was confused and n e e d e d a n s w e r s to m y q u e s t i o n s . F o r a n s w e r s , I t u r n e d to p e o p l e w h o c o u l d r e l a t e to m y i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f t h e r a c i a l u n d e r t o n e s o f m y e x p e r i e n c e . I a s k e d L o u i s , a n o l d e r A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n s o c i o l o g y s t u d e n t , f o r a n s w e r s . To m y s u r p r i s e , L o u i s r e s p o n d e d to m y s i t u a t i o n b y f o c u s i n g o n l y o n t h e b r o a d e r e x p e r i e n c e o f g r a d u a t e s o c i o l o g y s t u d e n t s at t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f C h i c a g o . I talked to Louis Stewart yesterday. I told him about what happened with Sid Cartwright. He gave me some words of insight. First he asked me how important was Cartwright to what I had planned to do in the future. He suggested that I talk with Cartwright about my paper and find out how invested he is in my development. This would help me to determine how I would relate to him in the future. Louis also told me not to be afraid to work on Cartwright's project just for money purposes as opposed to getting involved. He also suggested that we talk with one another about my papers before I write them because he had noticed from my previous comments that people tend to say that I am not analytic enough and that I need to invest more time in that. He said that many students here are unable to elevate their thoughts from the descriptive like thoughts to a theoretical thinking and this is what sets students apart here at the university. Louis told me to be patient because relationships with professors have to grow. He also said that professors basically don't respond to you until you have proven in some way that you merit the attention that they give you. .

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It seemed that Louis and I viewed the world through two distinctly different lenses. He viewed the world through the eyes of a student familiar with the process of graduate education while I viewed the world through the eyes of a young man who had been challenged consistently by whites's racist attitudes. Still, Louis's response immediately challenged m y confidence. Was I one of those students that could not move from "descriptive-like thought to theoretical thinking?" I had no immediate answer. All the time I had worked for Professor Cartwright it seemed we were building a personal relationship. I took our relationship to be a positive indication that I belonged at Chicago and that I had done work to merit his attention. Given our relationship I was sure that he would give me the necessary guidance to be successful both in the department and in his class. However, after I received m y paper I reasoned that since he had failed to give me the kind of feedback necessary to substantially improve a paper, then how could I trust him to help guide me successfully through the program. Perhaps my distrust of Cartwright was heightened by the fact that m y mother, who had been pursuing her doctorate at a state university, was mistreated by her advisor. Her advisor, also a white male, had built a positive working relationship with m y mother. W h e n he accepted an appointment at another university he took m y mother's research data with him and published research from them. In so doing he effectively set my mother's progress toward her doctorate degree back 4 years. She ultimately became engaged in a 12 year struggle that traveled an academic path lined with discrimination. She finally received her Ed.D. in 1995, one year before I completed the Sociology program at the University of Chicago. M y new mistrust of Professor Cartwright mixed with other interracial experiences and began to press down on me. In my third academic quarter, I began taking a class on race with Professor Johnson, an African American professor who had been at the University for many years. Although he was in another department many of the African American sociology students took his course because it was an opportunity to be taught by an African American at Chicago. One day in class m y feelings - generated by m y cumulative life experience and m y immediate experience with race at the U of C - began to boil as white students in m y class discussed Afrocentric education. Today in Mr. Johnson's race class I got upset because the white students don't seem to understand what it means to be black. The more time I spend here the more I realize that they have no real concept of what it is to be black. I decided that I had enough and stood up and excused myself from the classroom before I said something that might be potentially damaging to my career. I told Saul what was up with me after class. He said that he thought that is why I left the class. As I left Professor Johnson (black) started talking about the fact that blacks had provided free labor to this country for over 400 years. This

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R E U B E N A. B U F O R D MAY line resonated in my head as I left the class. Saul agreed with me that whites don't really understand. I could have killed every white person in the class for making broad generalizations about what was wrong with "Afrocentric education". They don't know that every day of our life we are confronted with Eurocentric concepts. Nowhere in our readings do we see ourselves. We can't find a black man. Damn. Enough is Enough.

T h e frustration o f b e i n g s u b m e r g e d in w h i t e n e s s was m a n i f e s t i n g itself in a desire to " s p e a k out." Fortunately, I h a d Saul, a n o t h e r A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n student w i t h w h o m I c o u l d talk. Talking to h i m was a m e a n s o f v e n t i n g m y frustration. R a t h e r than e x p o s i n g m y " t r u e " f e e l i n g s to w h i t e s I c o u l d share m y f e e l i n g s w i t h h i m w i t h o u t losing a v a l u a b l e o p p o r t u n i t y at C h i c a g o . Saul c o u l d u n d e r s t a n d m y frustration w i t h w h i t e students w h o t o o k for granted that w h a t t h e y h a d l e a r n e d and the w a y they had l e a r n e d it was the w a y to learn it. A f t e r talking w i t h S a u l I n e e d e d yet m o r e r e l i e f and so I w e n t to v i s i t m y mother. S h e had l i s t e n e d to m e in the past and always s e e m e d to k n o w the right thing to say or do. I t h o u g h t h e r w i s d o m d e r i v e d f r o m h e r o w n e d u c a t i o n a l e x p e r i e n c e w o u l d be i n v a l u a b l e to me, at this, m y greatest t i m e o f frustration. I went by my mother's and she asked me what was wrong and I said that I had a bad class. She took that opportunity to share with me how she has had to deal with her experience at State U. She then discussed dealing with Sid Cartwright in particular. She said that the job of a white professor is to break you down. You have to learn to use their terms in their interest. She said that even my research will be for their own use and that I can forget saying how I really feel about things. It is something that I have to do in order to get through the program. She said that Cartwright along with everyone else is going to make me eat crow etc. She suggested that I do not let people know who I really am. I agreed that she had a very important point. My talk with her was strengthening and I felt good that I could turn to both her and Saul and say, "you know, this shit is some bullshit." [My mother reminded me also that white people in general do not act in the interest of blacks as individuals. She then asked me did I realize how many whites that we knew as a family that cared about us. I said Lily and Ben Stetson. She then said, "How many whites have you lived around all your life?" I said, "A lot." She said, "That should tell you something. You won't find that many white people who have your interest in mind?' M y m o t h e r had i n t e r t w i n e d e l e m e n t s o f the g e n e r a l g r a d u a t e s c h o o l p r o c e s s w i t h issues o f r a c e in a w a y that p r o v i d e d an a c c e p t a b l e p e r s p e c t i v e about w h a t I was e x p e r i e n c i n g . First, I was r e m i n d e d that g r a d u a t e students h a v e to learn to use the l a n g u a g e o f their profession, although, certain c o n c e p t s and theories w i t h i n the field w o u l d r e c e i v e v a r y i n g levels o f e m p h a s i s d e p e n d e n t u p o n the interests o f particular professors. S e c o n d , I r e a l i z e d that m o s t students w o u l d h a v e to " e a t c r o w " or " j u m p t h r o u g h h o o p s . " T h i s p r o c e s s o f l e a r n i n g as a s u b o r d i n a t e was part and p a r c e l o f the g r a d u a t e e x p e r i e n c e . Finally, I was r e m i n d e d that A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n students should e x p e c t to c o n f r o n t intensified

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levels of "crow eating" and "hoop j u m p i n g " because their situation is exacerbated by race. Given this, I should further understand that African American students should rarely share personal thoughts and feelings with their white professors, especially regarding issues of race. This notion was consistent with advice given by an older African American graduate student during a pre-orientation social for minority students. He said, "I d o n ' t sit in public and discuss m y personal politics. I would suggest that you all avoid doing this too. This place is very conservative and people might use your politics to hinder your progress." Over the next few weeks I thoughtfully considered m y family and friends' suggestions for handling the Cartwright incident. Louis and m y mother, in particular, had both suggested concrete ways I might view m y situation. Largely on their encouragement, I now felt I was prepared to meet with Cartwright regarding my paper. Yet, even with m y restored confidence I was illprepared for what he had to say. I got slammed a real nice one today. I went to talk to Dr. Cartwright about the paper from last term. He starts by saying that he was really disappointed with my work. I could feel the tension coming but I was unaware of where he was about to turn next. I told him that the comments on the paper were very good, and had I gotten comments on my first draft then I would have changed the paper more. His response was, "If you need comments on your paper at this stage in your academic career, then that does not give a good prognosis for your future here." I told him that while I could have been helped by the comments, I thought my paper was quite ambitious and that I was supposed to be being trained to think more critically and analytically. He then told me that he looked at my grades and they are about B, B - and that maybe I should think about my future and whether I should continue. I then told him that I have had to work, that I have been out of school for sometime and that I was making an adjustment. I let him know that I was not making excuses for my performance. I then told him that I know I want to be at the U of C, I know that I want to be a good student, and I know that I want to graduate a top scholar and I am willing to work at it. He indicated that because of my grades it would be difficult for me to obtain funding. I explained that I desire to achieve here and that I am willing to do whatever I have to in order to achieve. My fear of i m m i n e n t racism had been supplanted by the feeling that I had just been a victim of racism. I had interpreted m y ambiguous interaction with Cartwright within the context of so m a n y other negative experiences in which whites had mistreated me. It mattered little what Cartwright's true motives were. I felt as though in one fatal swoop the m a n w h o m I trusted, who encouraged me, and w h o m I looked forward to working with had become a white m a n trying to eradicate me from the sacred world of Chicago. With each word out of his mouth it seemed he was shouting, "Black m a n you d o n ' t belong." I thought that he used all the evidence he had available to make this assertion, including violating another level of m y trust by reviewing all of m y

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grades. It was clear to me at this point that racism was alive and well and it was in the form of Sid Cartwright. W h y had I not paid attention before? I had observed that Cartwright never shook m y hand; that the university c o m m u n i t y maintained fear and avoidance of me as a black male; and that white students and professors had dismissed intellectual ideas of African Americans during class. Yet, I failed to take seriously the possibility of their betrayal. Because of the c o m p o u n d i n g effect of racism and discrimination this one incident flew in the face of the collective benefits that Cartwright had provided me. Cartwright's words cut to the core of m y spirit. I was disheartened. I needed to talk with someone who could see the totality of the situation. I turned to Ben, m y "old white" friend who had helped me ponder, so m a n y times before, tough personal circumstances. Since Ben had been reading m y U of C j o u r n a l he was well suited to help me consider m y current situation. I went and talked to Ben Stetson, my spiritual father. Ben asked me a couple of questions concerning what I thought about Cartwright and school. Did I think we had ntis-perceived Cartwright? Did I understandthe way that other students wrote? Could I learn how to write as they do? I told Ben that I knew the difference between an A paper and a B - paper. I told him that I also thought that we had not misjudged Cartwright. It was more a case of he was not on the admission committee and he did not know me as a student and had a set way of thinking about me as a student. When I took his class he found that I was different than he had thought and this was a shock to him. Consequently,Cartwright was responding to his new-foundperception of me. I told Ben that I could in fact write as the other students had done. We both agreed that I had relied on my past experiences to dictate the way that I write. I have thought about the task ahead and my conversationwith Cartwright. I realize that my approach to this whole thing is going to have to be a full fledged attempt. Can I use my motivationand intelligence to move on in this program? We will see, We will see. After talking m y situation over with Ben I concluded that Cartwright had failed to appreciate my experience and potential intellectual contributions. Instead I believed he expected me, in his own elitist thinking, to be a carbon copy of "the best and the brightest." I felt he considered me a m e m b e r of a large cohort that included African Americans who had established themselves at "the best" schools. Because I entered the university with such a reputable group of colleagues I had to uphold their excellence and in Cartwright's eyes I had failed.

A NewAttitude M y talk with Ben had restored m y confidence in much the same way as had m y talk with Louis and m y mother. A few days after the Cartwright incident I began to develop the kind of attitude that I would carry during the remaining time I attended Chicago.

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I guess the appropriate way to end this entry is to say that solo bullshit [Cartwright's bull] will not stop me from the task at hand. Furthermoreit seems that I have support from others in the department. I wonder what bit Cartwright in his ass that he would talk to me in such a way?... Well as great a thought as it might be to make him disappear, it is not possible. The best option of the remaining options is to say, "FUCK CARTWRIGHT'. My new attitude toward Cartwright felt comfortable. I had now taken the role of the aggressor in much the same way that I had on the basketball court. I felt that I was in control of m y destiny at the University. I no longer needed Cartwright's assistance and I was determined to prevent him from "screwing me." As I began to adjust m y attitude, I also began sharing m y Cartwright story with those first year students to w h o m I felt close. I shared my story with m a n y of the African American students. One student, Rhena, made a particularly insightful statement regarding Cartwright. She said, "I c a n ' t believe that he would tell you that if you needed comments on your paper at this point in your career then you w o u l d n ' t do well here at the University. That d o e s n ' t make sense. He has m a n y people look at his own papers before he finally submits them for publication." It was sobering insights like this that helped me to move forward. Beyond several of the African American students in m y cohort, I also felt close to William Kettrick, a white male. I had met William at the beginning of the school year and we developed closer ties through our participation in the 7:00 am basketball games. William was open, compassionate, and had a sense of h u m o r equal to m y own. He was also very good at statistics and became m y study partner. W i l l i a m reminded me of a younger version of m y friend Ben, a person w h o m I could trust. I was in the library this morning mad William Kettrick asked me how my weekend was. I told him I had a nice one except for when I thought about last week. He did not pry but he asked what was up. I told him about the Cartwrightincident. He seemed to be disturbed by the whole account of events. He really tripped me out. Even though he responded in the way I expected he would. He asked me was I upset because he was. He kept saying that it was just too bad that I had to deal with this. He suggested that I stay away from Sid Cartwright [For a long time William and I talked about the incident but I did not let him know who the perpetrator was. William had told me to stay away from Cartwright before he knew that I was speaking of him]. Though I have been confused and used up before, I don't mind taking small risk on people. [This is the only way that I can justify sharing such personal information with William who is an unproven white boy who could conceivablybe partial to Cartwright's issues.l M y feelings toward W i l l i a m reflected both m y trust in h i m as an individual and the fear of trusting whites in general. Perhaps the power differential between W i l l i a m and Cartwright contributed to m y ability to risk sharing the story with William. It was easy to tell William how I felt because he could do little to

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damage my career. On the other hand, Cartwright was in a position to destroy my career if he had become aware that I had taken the "fuck you" attitude. Although I remained reliant upon Cartwright for employment, I began to distance myself from him. I was confident that I could only be "safe" if I terminated all ties to Cartwright and his project. My financial situation, however, required that I continued to work for him until other opportunities became available. Finally, I landed a job as a research assistant on another project and I made a clean break from Cartwright. On Monday I saw professor Cartwright in his office. I knocked on his door and said, "Excuse me Dr. Cartwright do you have a minute? I just wanted to tell you that I will be leaving your project in June. I wanted to thank you for the support that you have given me this first year. I really appreciated the opportunity." He said that everything was ok and that he was glad that he could help. He then asked me where I would be working and I said that I would be working with Thompson on a project and that the work is more closely related to m y main area of interest. Cartwright said, "Great. That is right in the direction that you want to go." I thought'that he was as happy to be rid of me as I was to be rid of him.

In terminating my relationship with Cartwright, I held my feelings about the incident in check. Perhaps he also had feelings he too held in check. While I restrained my feelings in order to survive; he may well have restrained his as a matter of civility.

My Redemption I finished the final quarter of my first year in good spirits. My grades had improved and I was now working with Jonathan Thompson, a preeminent scholar of studies on urban life, race relations, and poverty. Thompson, an African American, had established a research center. As I joined one of the center's research teams I felt a sense of comfort. Still, ! knew that before I could become ensconced in my new environment I had one more obstacle to clear. I would have to pass the infamous preliminary examination if I wanted to move beyond the Cartwright incident and remain at Chicago. The preliminary examination was a six-hour essay examination that all students were required to take before the start of their second year. The exam covered literature in eight subfields of sociology. We were given the entire summer to prepare but the readings were so numerous that few students, in the past, had completed them all. The department faculty urged us to form study groups of four or five students instead of attempting to read all of the text on our own. In these study groups individuals were assigned particular readings and were to provide written summaries of those readings to their group. After a summer of preparation the examination was taken and then graded

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a n o n y m o u s l y b y t h e faculty. T h e p r e l i m i n a r y e x a m i n a t i o n w a s o f p a r t i c u l a r i m p o r t a n c e to b o t h t h e f a c u l t y a n d s t u d e n t s . It w a s u s e d to d e t e r m i n e i f t h e s t u d e n t s h o u l d c o n t i n u e i n t h e d o c t o r a l p r o g r a m , t a k e a m a s t e r s d e g r e e , or b e immediately expelled. ! spent the summer preparing for the examination and working on T h o m p s o n ' s p r o j e c t . M y s t u d y g r o u p c o n s i s t e d o f Saul, C a t r i c e , W i n s t o n - all African Americans - and William Kettrick the lone white student. Since I had b e e n t h e o n l y A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n i n so m a n y s o c i a l s e t t i n g s b e f o r e I w a s s e n s i t i v e to t h e f a c t t h a t W i l l i a m w a s in t h e m i n o r i t y . W h e n w e w e r e f o r m i n g t h e g r o u p I a s k e d h o w h e w o u l d f e e l b e i n g t h e o n l y w h i t e s t u d e n t a n d h e said, " I w a n t to w o r k w i t h p e o p l e t h a t h a v e t h e s a m e a p p r o a c h I do. I k n o w h o w y o u a r e g o i n g to a t t a c k t h e w o r k . " W i l l i a m a n d I m a d e a c o m m i t m e n t to s p e n d e x t r a t i m e d i s c u s s i n g a n d r e v i e w i n g t h e r e a d i n g s . W e b o t h felt this a p p r o a c h w a s t h e b e s t f o r l e a r n i n g to i n t e g r a t e t h e i n f o r m a t i o n . I w a s e s p e c i a l l y c o m m i t t e d because I knew that the only redemption I could get from my experience with C a r t w r i g h t w a s to b e s u c c e s s f u l in s p i t e o f h i m . I n t h e fall I t o o k t h e e x a m i n a t i o n a n d it w a s g r a d e d . I really have been unable to get going in my journal because my new fmnily life and my new school year has just put me in a tight situation. I will begin now to make that special effort to write in my journal again. What better way to start than with the preliminary examination. I had been in the Sociology office at 10:00 am when Karen the office secretary told me candidly that the meeting for the professors to make decisions about the preliminary examination would take place at 11:30 am and that the grades should be out at 3:00 pm. I told her I had a meeting and that I would not be able to come to pick up my grade. I then had lunch with William Kettrick and Ben Stetson. This was their first meeting and they seemed to be comfortable with each other. After Ben left, William and I sat and talked for a good long while. I had to leave at 2:30 pm so that I could go over to the research project meeting and get prepared. On my way to the center I stopped by the sociology office but the grades were not yet ready. As I was leaving out of the building I saw Professor Cartwright. He stopped me and asked had I picked up my letter and my preliminary exam grade yet. I told him that I had not. He said they are ready. He then said, "Reuben congratulations you passed. You were solid on all sections. I was really impressed. I know I was concerned about you earlier, but you did just fine on the exam." I said, thank you and I think that at the beginning of the year I had to make adjustments since I had not been in school in such a long time. [I was trying to tell him that I had it all along.] I went back upstairs to the sociology office and got my letter then I went to the meeting and chilled. After the meeting I went to talk to Deitrns, Professor Thompson's secretary. Professor Thompson was in a meeting with Raymond Taylor the other project coordinator. When Thompson came out and saw me standing there talking to Deitrus he said, "Congratulations, on the prelim you did really well." [Both his response and Cartwright's response indicated to me that I had done very well and that there may have been the possibility that I was one of the students considered for honors.] He then told me that they had also decided to accept my Masters paper. [How much good news could one get in a

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CLOSING THOUGHTS In m y experience at the University o f Chicago I encountered challenges to m y self-confidence, dedication, and intellectual ability that were generic experiences for most graduate students. Indeed, the pressure o f academics seemed to be manifesting its weight on all o f the first year students in a personalized manner. S o m e students interpreted their personal challenges as a sign that they had m a d e the wrong career choice, as evidence of the University's reputation as an intense learning environment, or as an indication o f their own academic weaknesses. I, on the other hand, viewed similar challenges as both related to m y individual weaknesses and to racism and discrimination. W h y did I view these experiences in terms o f race? I offer two explanations. First, m y perceptions were influenced b y the cumulative impact o f antiblack discrimination toward African Americans. Second, the ongoing nature o f racist and discriminatory acts against African A m e r i c a n s reinforced m y past negative interracial encounters. The cumulative impact o f antiblack discrimination has a profound effect on the w a y that many African Americans view the world around them. A c c o r d i n g to Feagin (1991): Particular instances of discrimination may seem minor to outside white observers when considered in isolation. But when blatant acts of avoidance, verbal harassment, and physical attack combine with subtle and covert slights, and these accumulate over months, years, and lifetimes, the impact on a black person is far more than the sum of the individual instances (p. 115). Not only do such individual experiences m a g n i f y racism and discrimination over time for one African American, but they also increase the effects of racism and discrimination felt among other African Americans with w h o m the victim shares these accounts. F o r instance, central to m y interpretation o f the Sid Cartwright Incident and other interracial experiences at Chicago was the cumulative impact o f m y mother's own experiences with racism and discrimination. As she shared her narratives with m e they b e c a m e "a part of,, m y racial narrative "repertoire to be called upon in later interactions as further p r o o f of the pervasiveness o f racism and discrimination" (May, 2000, 207). These stories were grounded not only in her experience but in that o f her

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parents, family and friends as well as in the historical experiences of African Americans in general. In short, my own perceptions of racism and discrimination were the progeny of the racial oppression, subordination, and violence suffered by African Americans who proceeded me. My recollection of their experiences worked to heighten my own sense of racism and discrimination. This narrative might suggest that a heightened sense of racism and discrimination directs African Americans to erroneously interpret ambiguous interracial interactions as negative. However, the continued racial profiling of black males by police, inferior service provided to black patrons in white owned restaurants and hotels, employment discrimination by corporations with white leadership, bombings of black churches and violent attacks against African Americans by white individuals and hate groups help to justify any marginal misinterpretation regarding the persistence of racism and discrimination. In fact, if African Americans are to survive the personal challenges posed to them by some whites and maintain their sanity, then they must utilize these interpretations to understand that many of the challenges they confront may be based on their African American group identity rather than their own individual characteristics. Finally, in many ways it was irrelevant as to whether Sid Cartwright had intended to be racist in his actions toward me. The prominence of racism and discrimination in my everyday life compelled me to sort through my experience with Sid using race as a tool for interpretation. In fact, for many African Americans, racism and discrimination forces them to spend more mental and emotional energy than do whites in trying to understand their negative interracial encounters. African Americans evaluate their immediate encounter alongside a host of past interracial experiences in an effort to place that encounter within the context of their broader understanding of race and act accordingly. The very fact that African Americans are challenged to evaluate each situation in this way gives racism and discrimination a real effect. Thus, it is likely that the legacy of past racism and discrimination combined with its current forms will continue to reach out and snatch the mental fi'eedom of African Americans for generations to come.

NOTES 1. All names of people are pseudonyms. 2. At the time this article was prepared Linnea Martin, administrative assistant to the sociology department at the University of Chicago, could not confirm that the 1992 cohort had the largest number of African Americans. In response to my query she

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explained that I was "probably correct" but that the student database was only three years old in 2000 and there was no data on students's racial or ethnic identity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank G w e n d o l y n May-Barlow, Kenneth Watson, M a r y PattilloMcCoy, and Lyndel H o l m e s - M a y for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter. I would also like to thank N o r m a n K. Denzin for his continued support. Send c o m m e n t s to Reuben A. Buford May, Department o f Sociology, University o f Georgia, B a l d w i n Hall 117, Athens, G A 30602-1611 or email: c m s r m a y @ arches.uga.edu

REFERENCES Abbott, A. (2000). Personal communication, May 16th. Brooks, R. L. (1990). Rethinking the American race problem. Berkeley: University of California Press. Feagin, J. (1991). The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places. American Sociological Review, 56(1), 101-116. Feagin, J., Vera, H., & Imani, N. (1996). The agony of education: Black students at white colleges and universities. New York: Routledge. May, R. A. B. (2000). Race Talk and Local Collective Memory among African American Men in a Neighborhood Tavern. Qualitative Sociology, 23(2), 201-214.

IDENTITY, TV AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE Joy Pierce INTRODUCTION Natalie was always asking about my education plans. "I'd like to do something other than secretarial work, but I haven't decided what," she once told me. I explained to Natalie that my goal was to conduct research and teach. "Well, before you become a professor, Stuart wants you to teach another computer class," Natalie replied. "Sorry, I can't I have to prepare for my thesis defense, so I ' m gonna be pretty busy," I said. Natalie looked at me, as if a light bulb had just turned on in her head and said, "I know what it is about you - even though you don't have an accent, I guess it's because you're from the South - you lose the -ing on your words." I was quite surprised by her comment, and was even more taken aback that it appeared she really put some thought into discovering what she thought were my deficiencies. Why does Natalie think my speech and use of language is related to the South? She doesn't even really know me. Natalie was doing what so many other people throughout my life had done look at me, learn a few things about me, and then connect the links based on that information and other outside sources, such as television. My hands began to tremble, and my head was spinning. Where did I lose myself? Why is this woman getting to me after all these years of believing I had found my place in the w o r l d . . , and no one could shake me from it? Instead of having my usual talk with God during my one-hour commute home from work, I reflected on my life to make sense of the day. How could I let a person who I barely know upset me so much? Her opinion of me isn't even that

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important. I ' m not trying to win her approval or make her my best friend. What do I care what she thinks of me. Why do I feel like I ' m twelve again? Carol Rambo Ronai uses the metaphor of drawing to invoke lived experience in her essay, "The Next Night Saus Rature: Wrestling With Derrida's Mimesis." A "layered account" of lived experience is much like drawing: there are solid lines, then other lines and sketches are drawn in, and some are erased according to relative lines. According to Ronai, "Writing in layers reflects the structure of consciousness. As each layer of text is superimposed on others, each layer contributes to the understanding to the other layers as well as to the overall picture of social life that text conveys (Ronai, 1999)." "Identity, TV and Cultural Critique" is an autoethnographic text that unfolds from memory and reflection, and shifts back and forth between past and present.

August 1978: Pre-teen "You're a civilian now," my uncle said. We were Navy dependants, but my father's untimely death meant we had to leave our home on the Navy base in Illinois, and live in civilian housing. We would live with my grandmother, on a dirt road in rural Charleston, South Carolina until my mother could find somewhere else for us to live. I would share a room with my twin aunts, who are nine months my junior, and my brothers would room with my uncle. Glasses became my new permanent accessory that year, and I was going to debut them at my new school. "Gahahaah lee, gahahahaa lee," Kevin said. My brother practiced the phrase over and over. He heard it on the television show "Gomer Pyle." We had to learn to talk like Southerners if we were going to live in the South. My mother reminded us to say yes m a ' a m and yes sir when speaking to elders, "otherwise they will think you don't have any manners," she said. I hated South Carolina. The mosquitoes were the size of small birds, and it was always so hot. I knew I was not going to enjoy it there, but I would do my best to fit in. "How long is it going to take us to get to Charleston, Uncle Arthur. Where's the map?" And that's another thing Joy," my mother interrupted, "don't ask grown people questions. You should be seen and not heard." I could not find a dictionary, encyclopedia, or atlas to answer my countless questions during the five-day journey. I lost my assumed permission to ask questions. My head was about to explode. I couldn't let go of my questions, thoughts and ideas. I stared out the window of our mini mobile home for more than three days. The journey South was a long one, so I developed a one-person question

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and answer game: I asked the questions, then I answered them. My father and I played question and answer games. I would watch hours of television, and each time there was something said that I did not understand I would run outside to where daddy was working on his car and ask a question. "I know the answer, but you should go look it up," he would say. If I did not know where to begin, he would give me hints on how to start my search. I felt like a detective. On road trips, I would lean between the front seats from the back seat and ask, "where are we?" He would hand me the map, tell me to look at the upcoming road sign, and tell him the name of the next town or state that we would approach. Detective work was so much fun. "I can't wait for school to start," I told my Aunt. "Did you know I used to tutor English to Philippine students at my old school?" I was hoping I could tutor again. I needed to practice my Tagalong. My aunt Carmen just looked at me. "Why do they call it middle school here? They called it Junior High School in Great Lakes." This time Carmen looked at me as if I was speaking a different language. Collette, her twin sister interrupted. "I don't think you're gonna be speaking any foreign languages around here." The teacher introduced me as a student from the North. She then gave me the required books for sixth grade English. I sat through the class completely bored because I had already read all of the stories. "You've read all these honey?" she asked. "Well, you can go to recess every day during English this year." At first I thought going to recess early would be fun, however, I found myself sitting on the trailer-turned-classroom stairs looking out onto an empty playground with no equipment. Another problem with early recess was that I had to be quiet. Classes were in session. I usually sat on the steps and attempted to work through my math homework. Homework assignments were usually completed in front of the television at home. Although some assignments in other classes were new to me, they were simple. School was boring. The school did not offer accelerated classes, nor did anyone mention more challenging academic opportunities offered at nearby schools. I don't think I told my mother about my extended recess. She never asked about school, and I never talked to her about my school activities. Morn was always busy looking for a new house. "I looked at another house today. This one had a nice-sized family room, but it didn't have a yard," she said. Morn was always talking to me about her problems, and other things most people would talk to their closest friend about. I had to be a grown-up quickly. She needed someone to listen to her. I didn't talk, I just listened.

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"I think I ' m going to change realtors. This one keeps showing me houses in black neighborhoods in bad school districts." "That sounds good morn." "Things are really different here. It's hard to find a mixed neighborhood." "Um hum." Who cares? That's what I really wanted to say. I didn't understand half of what she was talking about - school districts, taxes, and mortgage. I just wanted her to stop talking so I could watch "The Addams Family" How come Kevin didn't have to pay attention when she talked about family business stuff? It just wasn't fair. "Joy, don't sit so close to the television• "Kevin, how are you doing in Math?" "Good mom." "Let me see your homework• Looks to me like you need to do some more problems. Go back in the kitchen and hit the books." Thank goodness she is finally leaving me alone• I can watch TV in peace, I thought• I lost my study habits in the sixth grade. The students in Charleston did not accept me like classmates had in various military base schools. My black classmates told me that I sounded like a white person and probably liked "American Bandstand." One white classmate, whom I spoke to frequently in class once told me that I didn't act like the people on "Good Times•" But, she said, " I ' m sorry you're black, because if you weren't we could play together at my house•" I was so confused. Why couldn't I play at her house? What did color have to do with anything? I wasn't sorry that I was black. The truth was, I did watch "American Bandstand" and "Soul Train•" I could do the Hustle, and knew all the words to every Shaun Cassidy song on the radio .. but that wasn't good enough for my classmates• My grand brainstorm to solve 'the problem' involved studying television programs to understand how I should act to fit in. I ' m not sure how many twelve-year-olds were faced with such a dilemma, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. •

Gary Soto (1985) used television in a somewhat different manner. His essay called "Looking for Work" tells of how he wanted his family to transform into something other than the working-class, bean-eating, Kool-Aid drinking family they were. The nine-year-old Soto wished for an uncomplicated lifestyle like the family portrayed on "Father Knows Best." This fantasy family of the 1950s indicated what a middle-class family lived like: well-dressed dinner table; polite, well-groomed family members; and civil conversation. He also fantasized about the exotic foods eaten by a Polynesian tribe he'd seen on television. It seemed that television was a form of escapism from the realities

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of his poor, Mexican life. While Soto wishes to have turtle soup like the natives, his real goal is to improve the way his family looks so that they can get along better in life. He informs his sister, that if they improved themselves, white people will like them more, or even invite them to their homes or front yard. Unlike Soto, I used television to become more ethnic, not remove myself from my culture. Given my new surroundings at the time: an all-black rural area, I wanted to blend into the crowd, not stand out. I hoped my black classmates would invite me to play with them. Since I could not play at my white classmate's house, there was no point in trying to become more like her. I could change my behavior, but not my color. The 1970s was a good time to try to do such a thing, since this was the television era of blaxploitation, bell hooks (1990) writes of how blacks were portrayed in the 1950s and 60s, and how the screen became a place of confrontation and encounter. It is from this collective critical black gaze into the resistance to overt racist discrimination that barriers were broken in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. She notes that white media people realized that despite racism, white viewers would not only accept black images in television and film, but would be captivated by them. Natalie and I often talked about entertainment. Two of her favorite topics were film and music. Out of the blue one day, Natalie asked, "Was Soul Food a good movie ?" "Yes, I really enjoyed it." "It looks like a good movie." "You should see it, it's not just a black thing you know: The movie is a story about family . . . it could be about anyone's family." Ok I thought, she's beginning to piss me off. Maybe that was enough to make her realize she sounds like an idiot, and she'll leave my desk. Instead, she changes the subject. " I'm learning the violin part for 'Planets," she says "Oh, that's a really hard piece,'" I told her. "Oh, you know it?" Natalie replied. "Yes, I used to play the viola." When I mentioned that I studied ballet for 23 years, she couldn't believe it. "Really, but do you like hip hop dancing too ? Sometimes when I'm flipping through the channels, I see those people on BET or M T V doing all those neat moves. I couldn't do that stuff," she said. "I can't do some of that either," I told her. "I'd really like to take ballroom dancing lessons." Ok, now she's really pissing me off. She looks a little uneasy as she leaves my desk - good!

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I had always been a television junkie, but not having any friends for the first time in my life forced me to make television my one true friend. At twelve, I thought I could simply do what everyone else around me was doing. Play the roles in real life that people on television played. These images were going to help me make friends. My weekly regimen for identity reformation included two television shows popular with my black community in the 1970s: "Sanford and Son" and "Good Times." On Tuesday nights I watched "Sanford and Son." A black widower and his son owned a salvage yard and lived on the same property. The audience laughed when Fred Sanford told his sister-in-law he was going to give her a knuckle sandwich, or when his sister-in-law replied: "Watch it sucka." I once told my brother he was talking too loud. He said "watch it sucka" and started laughing. "No you watch it. On second thought, you won't. No TV for a week Kevin," my mother said. "I will not tolerate that kind of language. Many black women portrayed on television during the 1970s fit into one of the four traditional images outlined by K. Sue Jewell (1993): mammy, Aunt Jemima, the bad-black-girl, or Sapphire. The situation comedy of the 1970s became the vehicle to showcase mammy and Sapphire images; the leading black female character would issue verbal put-downs in her relationship with the leading male character. Sanford's sister-in-law is a classic example of this stereotype. Aunt Jemima was seen less during this time, and the bad-black-girl (Jezebel) image was still quite popular. I certainly was not interested in mimicking any of the stereotyped images described by Jewell. In fact, my mother worked very hard to see that I not only rejected such stereotypes, but that I did not even engage in watching that type of behavior on television. She said it would be impossible for me to reach a respectable standing in life if I behaved in any manner unbefitting of a true lady. My mother defined the perimeters. We were not allowed to raise our voices, or speak what my mother termed improper English. Today, I believe it is known as black vernacular, or Ebonics. These identifying terms are ironic, since there are white suburban and innercity white teens speaking in the same manner. During an interview on CSPAN in 1995, bell hooks mentions that whites often view successful or educated blacks as race neutral. Oftentimes, one of the indicators for fitting this description is the way in which the black person speaks. It's really unfair that blacks, or any other minority group in this country are judged by different standards from whites. A suburban white teen can do all the stereotypical 'hood' things in the street: wear baggy pants, listen to rap music,

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speak in the black vernacular and still get a great job after college, yet this is not true of blacks or Latina/os. I have black friends who code-switch (speak one way at work, and another at home) in order to succeed in the business world. The most shocking experience of all was when I went to purchase a car from an old high school friend. "I'm here to see Tyrone Green please." The receptionist at the car dealership looked a little lost. "We don't have a Tyrone Green here. We have a Doug Green." "Oh, well I know his name is Tyrone. There he is, right there." Tyrone walked over and said hello. I thought maybe the receptionist was new and didn't know what she was talking about. I told Tyrone about it. "I go by Doug here. That's my middle name" "Why did you decide to change your name," I asked. "They thought Tyrone was too ethnic, I would sell better with my middle name." What a crock of shit, I thought. Ok, so I gave code-switching a try, but it was too much work. Wednesday nights were reserved for yet another comedy, "Good Times." This comedy show about a black family in Chicago provided me with lessons stressed in the theme song: "Keepin' yo head above water, makin' a way when you can . . . temporary layoffs . . . good times." JJ, the lead character was always unemployed, and his smart, attractive sister consistently had boyfriend problems. The show illustrated life in a tenement, delinquency, poor verbal skills, and catchwords such as DY-NO-MITE! I felt guilty after watching "Good Times" because I could not identify with the characters or their struggles. My life was filled with Girl Scouts, ballet lessons, and charm school.

August 1982: The Teenage Years Modeling jobs soon followed charm school, and beauty contests coincided with the modeling jobs. My mother was quite proud that I was a part of what she called the glamorous life, but baffled that it didn't follow me off the runway. By the time I reached high school, I had gotten used to being lovingly called Annie Oakley on days I wore my cowboy boots. I enjoyed dressing according to my mood, and didn't think much about adhering to the restrictions of the latest fashions. "Ok Joy, you can wear jeans to school this year since you made the cheerleading squad. I don't understand why you won't wear the kind of clothes you model, at least put on some lipstick," my mother said.

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"Mom, modeling is a j o b . . , it's not me," I replied. "Well, at least do me a favor and don't wear those tennis shoes to the mall, you never know who you'll run into," she retorted. Television studying did not stop in high school. "Charlie's Angels" was one of my favorite shows because the three woman detectives were smart and tough. They wore nice clothes too; but how do you run and karate kick people in high heel shoes? My last year in high school, a program called "The Cosby Show" aired. Alas ! I thought, a show with black people who are not acting silly or degrading - even the female characters are intelligent. This comedy featured the Huxtables: a doctor and his lawyer wife, and their five children. Many black students in my high school aspired to reach the status had by the Huxtables. We moved to a subdivision where we were the only blacks in the neighborhood. Most families were retired military officers, or transplants from Midwestern or Northern states. The school district was one of the best in the city of Charleston. Many students in my high school attended four-year colleges upon graduation. My mother and I had not discussed college, so I wasn't sure how to go about the process. By the time I went to the guidance counselor to ask for help, the admissions deadline was near. "I want to go to USC," I told the counselor. "Ok, have you taken the SAT?" "Yes." The counselor looked a little frazzled, but I wasn't sure why. It turned out, all the recruiters had visited the school two months earlier, and only students in the Advanced Placement classes, and Honor Roll society had gotten appointments. She liked me, and felt bad that I missed the opportunity to meet with the recruiter. "Well, it's a little late. Don't worry Joy, I'll make a few phone calls." She signed me up to attend a city-wide college recruitment workshop intended for juniors the following week. I told a friend that I was going to a workshop to get into college. Sharon said, "I went to that one last year." She informed me that she was visiting Washington, DC with her mother to look at the campus in two weeks. I slowly realized all my friends were prepared for college. They had older siblings and parents who were either college-educated, or hell-bent on sending their children to college. They were all g o i n g . . , with their parents' blessings. When my classmates and I attended a college recruitment workshop at the Guillard City Auditorium, I asked them what their career plans were. "I want to be a doctor like Cliff Huxtable," said my classmate Juan. Another student from a nearby private high school leaned over me and whispered to him, "that's nice but remember, it's just T V . . . it's not real." "I want to major in journalism," I told Juan.

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"Oh that's nice, you'll be on TV and become famous," he said. "A talking head? No, I want to be a writer," I replied. "Uhhoh .." said Juan. My mother chimed in later that day about my career plans. "Honey, don't you want to stay here and get married? Once again I was going to disappoint my mother. "I don't even know if I ever want to marry, Morn. I ' m going to move when I graduate, and do some traveling," I told her. "I do not want to have to rely on a man for anything." According to my mother, the usual routine was to finish high school, maybe go to the local technical college for two years - if you didn't have a boyfriend who wanted to marry you straight out of high school - then you got married after technical college. Since I did not date in high school, I was definitely headed toward the educational path. This was not by accident, but by design. I will never forget how lost my mother was when my father died. She had three children, ages twelve, eleven and five to raise, and she hadn't worked in over a decade. "Women my age depend on the man to take care of the business; my job is to take care of the children," she once told me. Her voice was trembling, and she was on the verge of tears. I felt bad for her. I could tell she didn't know what to do. I never wanted to be that lost if something happened to the man in my life. I thought she would be happy that I wanted to be independent. Morn and I argued a lot. I thought maybe it was teenage stuff, but I began to realize it was much more serious. I could do nothing right. After a while, ! just gave up. "Joy, your mouth is always going to get you into trouble," she used to say. I always knew that it wasn't a good idea to give my opinion, or go against the opinions of the majority, but I just couldn't help myself. I felt so strongly about going away to school, that I talked myself into complete independence. My mother refused to pay for any portion of my schooling unless I attended the local technical college, in which case she would not only support me, but I could also have the car of my choice. "They don't make a car that would keep me here," I told her. "If you want help from me, you'll do what I tell you to do," she responded. Two weeks later, I walked into the den and thought I had entered an electronics store. On the left was a huge big screen television, next to it was an entertainment center with a double video cassette recorder and a video camera. "You see that TV and VCR? That's your tuition money," my mother said. "We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the freshman class at the University of South Carolina..." I read the letter dozens of times.

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So what that I was conditionally accepted . . . I was leaving Charleston . . . leaving home. My maternal grandmother co-signed on a car loan for me, and my paternal grandmother gave me the down payment on my dorm room, and I agreed to pay the university in monthly installments throughout the year for the remainder. And with that, I drove to the University of South Carolina alone, worked two jobs, and happily put myself through school. Ok, so I feel a little like a student with a learning disability. I was required to take certain core courses with specific instructors. The courses interfered with the journalism program, for which I would have to apply after my second year. I was being watched like a hawk in this 'special' program. The USC administrator told me the federally funded program was part of a larger program known as TRIOS. The Opportunity Scholars Program was designed for in-state students with high grade point averages and low SAT scores. I hated standardized tests. Actually, I disliked all tests that required a number two pencil and a bubble sheet. Just looking at a bubble sheet makes my stomach hurt; my mouth begins to water, and before long I ' m looking for the nearest restroom. This program was going to help me through my first year of college. I developed a special bond with the instructors and students, and relearned study skills I had lost in middle school. Many of the students I met my freshman year dropped out by my sophomore year. I realized very quickly how lucky I was to be a part of such a special program. "I was sitting where you are six years ago. Thinking about how the required math classes interfered with the Spanish classes I really wanted to take. The instructors seemed a little tough on me. I even thought that Professor Strickland didn't like me. Now I ' m very grateful to her and the TRIOS Program. And don't worry, you can get out in four y e a r s . . . I did. Just listen to the instructors, take advantage of the financial aid and tutoring resources, and plan ahead." This was the opening to a speech I gave as part of my commitment as an Opportunity Scholars mentor and board member after graduation.

August 1984: Young Adulthood There were mountains of bills during my freshman year. I had no idea how expensive college was. The only thing that motivated me through the tough times was that I was finally working toward something that I wanted. For the first time since elementary school, I felt free. No more criticisms from morn, no more snide remarks from schoolmates, no more dirty looks from the older people in the mall that didn't like how I dressed. "Joy, are you eating pork and beans and rice again?"

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My roommate, who's father was USC's athletic director, was always observing my actions. "Yep," I said. My stomach was in knots. I was hungry, and I was trying to pay bills when I didn't have the money. How was I going to pay for the repairs needed on my car? I can't go another semester without books. I could do so much better in class if I owned the books. At least I have sufficient health care. Two weeks after paying tuition, I ' m laying in a hospital bed. The doctors finally diagnosed a problem I had had since high school - endometriosis. Morn said I was being a baby when I cried out from stomach pains. So, I suffered until I sought help on my own. For the first time, I really resented her. How could she sit there and let me suffer like that? Maybe she didn't know any better. Her only advice was to not pay attention to the Tampax commercials. "Those things aren't good for you. If you want to know pain, use those," she used to say. "Crying isn't going to do you any good." My head was spinning. There were so many emotions going on at once. Ok, so now I ' m furious. I ' m told I probably won't have children because the disease wasn't caught in time. Is that her fault, or my fault? Screw this, it's time I really take control of my life. From now on, I don't give a shit what others think of me or what I do. I ' m going to live my life the way I want. My freshman year in college, I was finally able to free myself from the guilt of not adhering to the perceptions of others, and thought I was truly independent and free. I was thriving in school, and my life was my own. Boy, was I naive.

August 1996: Thirty-something My new attitude worked straight through the 9 0 s . . . until I met Natalie. Natalie relied on television portrayals to attempt to define me. She once told me, " I ' m embarrassed to admit it, but my favorite television show is the nighttime soap opera "Savannah." This drama was set in Savannah, Georgia and was "really funny because it was filled with Southern vernacular and behavior." I never had the chance to ask Natalie to explain what she meant by Southern behavior. Natalie was born in Korea. Her parents moved to Los Angeles when she was only three, and she is now an American citizen. Her weakness was cheese. She said it was unusual that she would like cheese, since it is not a common food among Koreans. I didn't find it strange at all that she would like cheese. Many varieties of cheeses are made in California, which is where she has lived most of her life.

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"Speaking of food, what's a grit? I remember Flo from the show "Alice" used to always say "Kiss My Grits," Natalie said. She really knew how to get me going. Here she was telling me how she liked something unKorean, and in the same breath, assuming that I knew the history and makeup of grits. These kinds of questions and assumptions were a daily thing with Natalie. I tried to not only answer her questions, but tactfully educate her as well. I told her that I didn't particularly like grits, but they were made from corn. I also reminded her that I did not live in the South all my life, and thus grew up the first part of my life eating Western and Mid-Western cuisine. I was practicing my Spanish with a friend recently. I told her in Spanish of Natalie's comment, and why I was so irritated that she associated my speech with the South. "All of a sudden, I felt a need to defend my home state, but I didn't know how to respond to Natalie." My Mexican-American friend responded in English, "You should have told her, I don't cut off my -ings: fuckiNG bitch." Rosa continued, "See, I'm much older than you, I've had thirty years of practice defending, not apologizing for my uniqueness." ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following people for their help and support: Norman Denzin, Carolyn Ellis, Diem-My Bui, Dalia Rodriguez and the anonymous reviewers f o r Studies in Symbolic Interaction. A portion of this chapter was presented at the Couch-Stone Symposium in Las Vegas, February 1998.

REFERENCES hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston,MA: South End Press. Jewell, K. J, (1993).From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond: CulturalImages and the Shaping of US Social Policy. New York:Routledge. Ronai, C. R. (1999). The Next Night Sous Rature:WrestlingWith Derrida's Mimesis. Qualitative Inquiry, 5, 114-129. Soto, G. (1985). Living Up the Street. San Francisco: StrawberryHill Press.

BIRACIAL LIVED EXPERIENCE: FROM ENCAPSULATED TO CONSTRUCTIVE SELF Monica Hardesty ABSTRACT This chapter presents an interpretive study of the biracial experience in contemporary America. Twenty adolescents and young adults, who have one Black parent and one White parent, participated in life history interviews exploring their lifelong racial experiences and the creative nature of self The cultural isolation of living betwixt and between racial categories initiates an existential journey of self-reflection and identity adjustment. Several themes in their lives are repeated: the experience of oneself as something other than an assigned racial identity, a tension between internally perceived and externally imposed definitions of self the desire to be authentic in one's self definitions, and the will to create one's own racial identity. To resolve the dilemmas of race, the biracial individual moves from an encapsulated to a constructive self The biracial experience of negating conventional racial formations offers the possibility of a more universal meaning of race.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24, pages 113-143. Copyright © 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 0-7623-0754-4

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INTRODUCTION Contemporary biracial Americans live in an era of contradictory racial constraints over which they have little control. The fact that there are no longer legal constraints on racial identity choice does not mean that individuals are completely "free" to choose. The rule of hypodescent, a rule that defines any one who is part Black as Black, has endured for centuries in the United States and continues to this day (Harris, 1964; Waters, 1991). On the other hand, our rules of kinship tell us that we should determine our descent by both maternal and paternal lines and that all our ancestors count equally (Waters, 1990). For those with both Black and White heritages, these two ideologies act as conflicting constraints on racial choices. Nevertheless, young Black-White Americans are making new choices about how they will be defined. Not only subjects of history, they are also its agents. Among them, those who came of age after the Civil Rights Movement are much more likely to identify themselves as biracial than only Black (Korgen, 1998). Despite self-assertions of new identity forms, they confront a conundrum of choice that penetrates all levels of experience. Dilemmas of freedom and selfhood, fundamental problems of human existence, pervade the contemporary biracial experience and lead them on an existential journey for meaning. The predicament is exacerbated by society's ignorance of the biracial experience and indifference to human agency in determining racial status, especially among social science experts (Lemert, 1997). Even though the United States has become increasingly non-White and racially mixed (Fernandez, 1992; Root, 1996), the standards in social science to describe and impute racial identity are still shaped by a normative standard of monoraciat meanings and experiences (Hardesty, 2000). 1 Despite a wealth of multiracial experience to the contrary, race is generally defined in unambiguous, inflexible and static terms. 2 Any introductory text typifies race as a nominal construct and describes an individual's race as a singular status determined involuntarily at birth by society to locate every individual in every social encounter into the social hierarchy. At best, this typification of race represents a monoracial, not a universal, experience; it is totally inconsistent with the contemporary multiracial experience in America in that it ignores persons with multiple racial identities. This conceptualization of race diverts our gaze from human agency and social actors co-creating the meanings of race in our society. It ignores how race is situationally conditioned and created (Douglass & Lyman, 1976; Lyman & Douglass, 1973). When the social construction of race has been addressed, we tend to concentrate on the macro forces, namely on the actions of the majority, the

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"hegemonic elites," in shaping our racial consciousness - the categories, meanings and identity forms (Lee, 1993; Omi & Winant, 1994; Kivisto, 1995). The agency of subordinate groups in the cultural creation and reproduction of race is downplayed. Our current frames of analysis largely ignore the existence of a different racial order from the point of view of biracial actors. The monoracial identity development model we have relied upon is inadequate to explain multiracial groups in this country) When we dismiss the experiences and choices of persons of mixed-race descent as irrelevant to our general understanding of race, we prematurely foreclose understanding of how individuals make use of race as a s t r a t e g y in defining themselves and in working through their life circumstances. 4 This study seeks to remedy our narrowness of vision by employing an interpretive approach, an approach that sees humans as partially free, morally responsible, meaning-creating creatures (Lyman & Scott, 1970). Not even the least privileged among us are entirely powerless over the messages about self. Rather than an "ascribed status," race is examined as an identity process, individually and collectively experienced. The study directs attention to the phenomenon of race as it is experienced and expressed by a sentient being in the life process of identity work. In refusing to "theorize away the lived morality of the self" (Holstein & Guhrium, 2000, p. 231), I explore how biracial persons experience and express themselves in today's society and how the relationship of self to society is essentially confrontational (Fontana, 1984). This chapter examines how biracial persons claim one or more racial identifications that become seamless parts of their racial self. In this view, one's racial self is a dynamic, open-ended, interpretive and discursive project. A continual and deliberate practice of self-experiencing, self-examination, and self-expression underlies racial identity. One achieves a racial identity in any social encounter by locating oneself in our racial arena through expressive and instrumental acts. Through this interaction, the racial self becomes known, to both self and others. Like all identity claims, the discursive practice of constructing a racial identity happens through a process of d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n - making claims about one's racial uniqueness or separateness from others, and a process of i d e n t i f i c a t i o n - making claims of affiliation or membership in a particular racial group. 5 A racial identity claim requires an articulation of the local and cultural meanings of "race," such as the use of genealogy, fashion, dialect, gestures, tastes or attitudes, that others in the social situation can recognize and confirm with the particular racial claim being made.

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My interpretive and processual study of race makes use of idiographic methodology to develop constructs that reflect the unique racial history of the individual (Helms, 1994). In such an approach, every individual is more than just an individual. They are a singular instance of more universal social experiences and processes (Denzin, 1989b). In studying the biographical, one comes to understand the underlying social and historical patterns in society as a whole. Borrowing other people's experiences and reflections, we come to understand the deeper meaning of all human experience (van Manen, 1990). The experiences of mixed race persons are not only useful for building models of race, but "are quite possibly our first glimpse of a new race" (Motoyoshi, 1990, p. 89) and an answer to the broader question of "what does it mean to have a race?" Any sociology of human experience must take as its topic the marginality of self (Lyman, 1990). The "marginal man," as one "condemned" to sit between two cultures remaining a stranger in both (Park, 1928), has been a favorite topic and the biracial person its quintessential example (Hall, 1992; Williams, 1992). Many have cast the marginal experience in negative terms. A marginal person has been described as "poised in psychological uncertainty between two or more social worlds; reflecting his soul the discords and harmonies, repulsions and attractions of these worlds, one of which is often dominant over the other; . . . and where exclusion removes the individual from a system of group relations" (Stonequist, 1937, p. 8). Marginal persons are said to face emotional battles: feelings of powerlessness, isolation, anxiety, insecurity, ambivalence, self-consciousness, meaninglessness and self-doubt (Park, 1928; Stonequist, 1935; Goldberg, 1941; Dean, 1961; Shibutani, 1961). An individual who occupies the two distinct (as historically defined) racial categories of Black and White dwells among and between, not just different, but antagonistic, social worlds. Since self is social in origin, their peripheral social existence bestows an ongoing interrogation of self in relation to other. On the one hand, one experiences a complex self that is composed of assorted identifications, which are not culturally integrated. On the other hand, not fitting into a singular racial identity, one experiences an uneasy, illegitimate self, incongruent with other's histories. Locating the "real me" becomes the central quandary of experience.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY To grasp the biracial experience in contemporary America, one must bear in mind the viewpoint of biracial persons and to hear their experiences and interpretations. It requires a focus on what is problematic and on the stories of

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"experiences that radically alter and shape the meanings" persons give to their troubles (Denzin, 1989b, p. 14-15). By investigating life's trouble spots, the turning points in biography and our larger history, as well as the sources of freedom and constraint, can be learned (Mills, 1959). The analytic aim of an interpretive project is to ascertain essential aspects of life stories and to transform the participants' descriptions into a more general and universalistic expression. The analyst "mines meaning" from experiential accounts to "give shape to the shapeless" (van Manen, 1990, pp. 86 and 88) and arranges the experiences into a grander theoretical narrative (Maines, 1993). To conduct an interpretive study of biraciality specifically, one must locate biracial individuals, convince them to share their experiences, record thick descriptions as accurately as possible, and provide a framework that makes sense of a diverse set of experiences. Life History Interview Method My particular strategy for gathering narratives of lived experience is the life history method. Life histories are rich accounts that supply multiple levels of experience and being in the world. While the life history is the overarching story, there are stories within the life story. They are stories of a complex and multifaceted self. Personal life stories temporally shift with images of past, present and future selves. They phenomenologically shift with selves at different levels of self-understanding, including unaware, doubting, exploratory, confrontational and strategic selves. Life stories also reveal a social rhythm between self and other, from solidarity to anomie, of identification with and opposition to others. And they unveil an emotionality of experience, from moments of rapture to angst. In life stories, the narrator addresses existentially meaningful experiences and the problems embedded in these interactions with others (Denzin, 1989b). Accounts of interaction and the rational thoughts, deeply felt emotions and meaningful cultural elements that accompany them are laid bare. My storytellers, young biracial men and women, tell how they give meaning to their lives, how they make their own history, and how they respond to the social conditions and the history handed down to them. Through a series of probing questions about one's life experiences and the meanings of those experiences, I initiated of a storytelling episode. I utilized a progressive-regressive method of asking questions (Denzin, 1989a). First, I worked backward in time and began the interview with questions about their family histories and the conditions of their birth. From the context of their origin, we moved forward in time, from their earliest recollections of race, to

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their early family and school experiences, onto dilemmas in adolescence and young adulthood and into the present. To facilitate the "narrative moment," I provided a narrative of self that would immerse my personal story within the problematic situation alongside their story (van Manen, 1990). At the start of the interview, I disclosed that I was a single, White mother of a young biracial boy. I indicated I had personally experienced people's sensitivities to issues of race and race mixing. I told them I wanted to know more about the biracial life, about what to expect for my child and how best to raise him. I took the role of newcomer, as someone seeking to become a knowledgeable member of the community (Denzin, 1989b, p. 81). By meshing our personal stories and by placing our goals beside one another, I situated myself inside their life world. My hope was to put them at ease and give them a reason to tell me their story.6

Description of the Study Participants In order to study the phenomenon of biraciality in America, all of my study participants were American born; although a few had a West Indian parent or grandparent. To be included in the study, each participant had to be a descendant of one self-identified Black parent and one self-identified White parent. All of the participants were born after the Civil Rights Movement. To minimize the effect of cultural variation, only non-Hispanic Americans were chosen. 7 Twenty adolescents and young adults, 13-32 years of age, participated in two-hour face-to-face interviews. Eight of them were high school students, ten were college students and two were college-educated professionals. An equal number of males and females were interviewed. Owing to a proximity to the researcher, all o f the participants had spent some of their lives in the Northeast. Nevertheless, they grew up in diverse environments such as rural areas of Maine, New Hampshire and Texas; the large metropolises of New York City, Boston, Miami and San Francisco; and mid-sized towns in Connecticut and Wisconsin. Most had lived in both integrated and segregated neighborhoods.

Sampling Design The preliminary identification of who had a mixed-racial heritage was an important first step in gathering my sample. Biracial individuals are often racially ambiguous in their appearance and information about parents' racial heritage is not readily available to a social researcher. Therefore, I relied on first-hand or second-hand knowledge about a prospective participant's racial

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heritage. I personally knew a few of the participants and their racial background through contact in college classes or in the local community. These individuals were invited to participate in my study. Then, previous study participants helped to recruit future participants through referrals, a technique known as snowball sampling. At the end of each interview, participants were asked if they would feel comfortable enough to provide names of other individuals who they knew had a Black parent and a White parent. Most of them identified at least one other biracial person. These individuals were then contacted for an interview. For individuals who were under the age of eighteen, at least one parent also gave permission for the interview. After assurances of confidentiality, tape-recorded interviews took place in the homes of interested individuals. The recordings were transcribed and qualitatively analyzed to identify the essential themes of experience.

RESEARCH FINDINGS: FROM ENCAPSULATED TO CONSTRUCTIVE S E L F Mid-way through the collection of interviews I encountered, but would not recognize until much later, an important aspect of the biracial experience; namely that biraciality is a self-in-process. For one thirteen-year-old boy, the interview itself reshaped his understanding of self. His mother called me the day after the interview to report the remarkable effect of the interview on her son. She described how he was transformed, "had become a new and more confident person." She reported that the interview was very therapeutic and thanked me for my help in her son's adjustment and maturation. I recall an awkward response on my part, saying something like it wasn't my intent for the interview to have a therapeutic effect, but was glad it helped. Later I realized what his mother was telling me: the interview summoned an existential selfrevelation (Denzin, 1989a; 1989b). His self was in process of becoming something wholly new. His story was the story of all my participants - a story of self-in-process. While there is considerable variation in the events, interpretations and chosen identities among my study participants, when taken as a whole, a similar existential identity process became evident. Rather than accept traditional knowledge handed down from authorities, biracial individuals construct their self-knowledge from experience and the ever-changing contexts of those experiences. The life stories of young biracial Americans repeat several experiential themes: the experience of oneself as something other than an assigned racial identity, a tension between internally perceived and externally

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i m p o s e d definitions o f self, the desire to be authentic in o n e ' s s e l f definitions, and the will to create o n e ' s o w n racial identity.

The Existential Dilemma of Race In t h e s e tales o f soul searching, a dialectical p r o c e s s b e c o m e s v i s i b l e ( B r o w n , 1998). T h e y m o v e b a c k and forth b e t w e e n the s u b j e c t i v i t y o f s e l f and " the r a c e s " as e x t e r n a l i z e d and o b j e c t i f i e d in c o n t e m p o r a r y social thought. S e l f resides s o m e w h e r e b e t w e e n their internal e x p e r i e n c e s and historical and cultural m e a n i n g s o f race. T h o u g h c o n s t r a i n e d by o t h e r s ' definitions, the b i r a c i a l i n d i v i d u a l d o e s not r e l i n q u i s h his or h e r i n n e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g and f r e e d o m o f s e l f - d e t e r m i n a t i o n . A n d w h i l e all h u m a n e x p e r i e n c e is dialectic, the b i r a c i a l p e r s o n e x p e r i e n c e s an incessant t e n s i o n b e t w e e n internal and external definitions o f self. T h e dialectic o f s e l f - e x p e r i e n c e raises q u e s t i o n s o f authenticity. 8 D e n y i n g o n e ' s p a r e n t a g e and a r r a n g i n g o n e s e l f to fit the identity labels o f others can be e x p e r i e n c e d as inauthentic ( L y m a n & D o u g l a s s , 1973). I identify myself as an African American, but at the same time I uphold and I honor my father's history because I realize he is a part of me. He is a very important part of me. I am not denying him. But given society today, people are going to look at you and they are going to put you into a category. You have to have enough strength of self and enough pride to say, "Hey you might classify me as African American, and I am a very good one, but I also have a father who is Caucasian" (18 year old female). O n the o t h e r hand, d e f y i n g o t h e r s ' identity labels can l e a d to charges o f b e i n g inauthentic. B i r a c i a l individuals w h o do not fully e m b r a c e the B l a c k identity and fail to c o n f o r m to s o c i e t y ' s definitions are often l a b e l e d as "deniers," "passers," " s e l f - h a t e r s " or e v e n " r a c e traitors." I: Was there a time in your life when you were more argumentative or more assertive about defining yourself? R: I remember in high school I used to get into arguments all the t i m e . . . I bad a lot of Black students saying, "you are trying to be White." And 1 often told them, "if it means that I am trying to be White to work hard or if I am denying something, then I guess that is what I am doing because I am going to do something with my life and I am going to go somewhere" (19 year old female). To further c o m p l i c a t e the matter, e v e n w h e n one e m b r a c e s a B l a c k identity, biracial p e r s o n s are put to n u m e r o u s "racial litmus tests" u s e d b y g r o u p m e m b e r s to sort the authentic f r o m the f a k e (Korgen, 1998). 9 I: Have you ever felt that you had to prove your blackness? R: All my life. I think it's mostly with Black women not so much with Black men . . . When I was dating my college sweetheart he brought me home. His mother thought I was

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a little White girl that didn't have any Black culture. I don't know if it was the way that I was speaking or what. I remembershe cookedsome greens and she said, "well I won't give you these collard greens because I know you don't eat them" And collard greens are my favorite food and I told her, "hand over the bowl" and I put some greens on my plate and said, "can I have some hot sauce on top of it." And she laughed. I passed the test. But that happens all the time (26 year old female). The charges and feelings of "bad faith" (Sartre, 1956) in the lives of young biracial Americans present difficult existential choices. By the very fact of their marginality, they are never fully realized or understood as participants in social life. This marginality gives vitality to their lived experience. It becomes a "knot in the web of experiences around which certain experiences are spun and lived through" (van Manen, 1990, p. 90). "Good faith," on their part, requires that they recognize their own freedom, even if it is limited by social circumstances (Zack, 1996). To overcome bad faith, life becomes an ever-open project of self - of honoring one's subjective experience over the ascribed identity and of making choices despite constraints. The existential search for recognition and struggle for self-determination offers the possibility of eventual emancipatory self-realization (Lyman, 1990). The struggle to resolve the dialectic is rooted in the dual process selfdefinition and self-feeling. Emotionality is everywhere in the project of becoming one's authentic self (Douglas & Johnson, 1977; Fontana, 1984; Denzin, 1989b). It is present in the mood of the narrative and in the descriptions of past emotions, remembered and relived in the telling of the story. It is present in the discovery of being forced into an outdated identity category. It is present in failed attempts to assert oneself and the capitulation to societal norms. It is present in the small validations of a chosen self. Anguish is part and parcel to the biracial experience; nevertheless these feelings do not wholly define it. At some point along the journey, the marginality that has defined their past life no longer defines their future life. The biracial experience reveals how in embracing (or confronting) marginality and working though it, one becomes less trapped in it. Eventually, uneasy feelings give way to the exhilarating, breakaway feelings of the "chosen self." Bennett (1993) depicts two responses to marginality and explains that marginality does not necessitate negative experiences. She defines the two forms according to a marginal person's experiences within an oppressive culture. Encapsulated marginals are "trapped" by their marginality. Being "buffeted by their conflicting loyalties," they feel disintegrated and inauthentic as if engaging in role-playing (p. 113). The person can incorporate two worldviews, but has difficulty controlling shifts between them. Though highly self-conscious, they are less strategic in their presentations of self.

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Constructive marginals, on the other hand, embrace their marginality and thrive in their ambiguous status. When one consciously adopts the "other" identity, it shifts from a negative to a positive experience. Being a constructive marginal "requires the person to make a commitment to a value system honed from many contexts and to an identity actively affirmed and based solidly on self as a 'choice m a k e r ' " (Bennett, 1993, p. 119). Constructive marginals see knowledge o f self as constructed from context and experience, not from "truth" as given by authorities or custom. They recognize the social advantages of marginality and master the skills of identity management. They feel more authentic, more alive. In seeking an other reference group, many interracial individuals are seeking to resist, challenge, and/or transcend society's notions of the legitimacy of personal identity and community. The fact that the group they have chosen is neither recognized by society nor geographically locatable does not matter to them. In fact, such lack of recognition may serve to heighten the sense of positive alterity that interracial individuals experience by such identification. They have created and named the group, and they can locate it (and their place in it) when others cannot. Having access to a community to which others fail to see the entrance can be an exciting and liberating experience (Weisman, 1996, p. 158). Participants in m y study experienced both forms of marginality, but not as two discrete responses to marginality. Rather they occur as turning points within the larger self-in-process experience. They are existential exigencies in time; first one experiences being trapped by race, then freed from it and formed anew. In an upcoming section, I will describe this journey from encapsulated to constructive self, but first I must explain the time prior to encapsulation.

The Pre-encapsulated Self" A Colorblind Childhood The notion of races and its implication for self-definition is learned through interaction with others in the child's life. All of m y study participants remember a time free from the divisions of race, color and self; they remember a more innocent time of being faceless. At ages three, four and five, they exist in a colorblind world, unaware of how racial categories might apply to themselves and others. They express contentment with life prior to their racial awakening and recall uncomplicated interactions and simple questions. R: I grew up very colorblind. I d i d n ' t k n o w that there were races in the world. So I was about five or six, I asked m y mother "if I a m B l a c k and White, w h y a m I not gray?" I saw things in colors, not in races. I d i d n ' t understand. I: How did you see your race at five or six? R: I really didn't. I was just me. I: R a c e l e s s ? R: Yeah, I was me. I was a person. I k n e w that persons were B l a c k and that persons were White. But I d i d n ' t m e a n anything to m e (20 year old female).

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Their colorblind childhood is not much different from other young children who do not perceive races of people until four or five years of age (Holmes, 1995). Colorblindness does not last for any child in America. By the time school age approaches, children learn the categories of race and to apply them to one another and the adults in their lives. Biracial children learn to label people racially too. Initially they experience our racial categories as meaningless, illogical or arbitrary. They just d o n ' t make much sense to them. Reddy (1994) relates her three-year old son's efforts to understand both race and gender simultaneously. Her son observes that he and his Black father both have penises, and his White mother does not. Attributing the difference to race rather than gender, he asks, "Why do White people have vaginas?" Such questions reflect the child's efforts to make sense of the world and their place in it through language. It is not a task accomplished all at once. Usually they acquire the ability to categorize others before being able to regard self as a racial object. W h e n they begin to make racial assignments, they learn that a person can be one and only one race - an anti-assimilation rule dictates Black or White. Given a dichotomous m e a n i n g system, self-understanding is necessarily more difficult. With this n a m i n g task at hand, the biracial child first encounters the dictate of racial choice - the child must be one or the other, not both. Even at an early age, it troubles those who know themselves to be from one Black and one White parent when they learn a choice must be made. For example, My mother's sister, she's Black, and she used to say to me, "You're going to have to decide what you are, if you're going to be Black or White." I remember Christmas with her, like if I wanted the black Baby That Away, or a white Baby That Away. She would call up to ask, and I would say, "Okay, I want the black one." And then I would call up, "No, no, I want the white one" (22 year old female quoted in Funderburg, 1994, p. 24). To simplify matters, others frequently make these racial choices for children. In childhood, most of m y study participants recall a time when they were placed into the pre-defined category of Black. R: When I was around three or four, it was: Daddy is pink, Mommy is brown, and I am tan. I: But you didn't grow up to be a tan person. R: No.

I: So you soon learned that it was a race. R: You learn when you get older. I: Do you remember what you considered yourself to be when you started first grade? R: Tan. I: How about when you were twelve or thirteen? R: I knew I was Black (18 year old female).

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For younger children, who are accustomed to parents and other authority figures making choices for them, the assignment of racial identity may not be particularly perturbing. Identity forcing and racial overtones are not always apparent to a young individual, even though they operate in one's life (Thompson & Carter, 1997), especially if the child is still under familial influence. One young female, at the time of the interview, possessed an early form of racial awareness; that is, she recognized "races" of people, could distinguish the racial makeup o f various family members, and self-identified as "biracial" as her parents had encouraged her to do. Nevertheless, she also stated she never experienced problems with being biracial because her family taught her "not to think about color so much" and claimed "race has never been a big part of m y life" She does not, as do other adolescents in m y study, express a strong dissonance between being Black and White, communicate the feeling of being shut into an ascribed identity, or voice a desire for control over racial definitions of self. She resides in the childhood realm of the pre-encapsulated self. While, for the most part, unaware of any problematic with being biracial, in one part o f the interview, she glimpses the reality o f multiple racial identities in her life, and how this might be judged negatively. R: School is my life. I don't do a lot of things outside school. The way I live my life in school, it's not like I'm trying to forget that I am half White and half Black. This is hard to explain because I've been thinking about this lately. If I think about it, it seems that I'm living my life like I'm just Black, when I'm in school. I: Within your home it is different? R: Yeah. But it's not like it is changing all the way. When I come home I remember that I am both races. And it isn't anything bad or good, but it's just different (15 year old female). In becoming aware of the identity shift, she is reaching the end of her colorblind childhood.

The Encapsulated Self It is not until the child enters the wider realm of peer groups, and sometimes not until they move out of their parents' home during the college years, that identity dilemmas, especially racial ones, become apparent and acted upon (Espiritu, 1994). In adolescence, youngsters shift their relations with the adult world. Because adults control everything else about their lives, teenagers vigilantly guard their sense of self (Gaines, 1991). They actively strive to create and control a sense of self, separate from adult definitions and meanings. For biracial adolescents, racial identity becomes an important subject matter. The experience of being encapsulated as a racial type emerges in late childhood and

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early adolescence when the adult-child relations begin to shift and identity d i l e m m a s surface. W h e n biracial adolescents recognize and revolt against the choices that have been m a d e for them, they m o v e from a colorblind to an encapsulated self. The pressure to avow an externally i m p o s e d identity, rather than given the f r e e d o m to express an internally defined one, is c o m m o n for nonwhites (Cupach & Imahori, 1993), and b e c o m e s increasingly problematic for adolescents. This pressure is now less likely to c o m e from parents or other close family members. Korgen (1998) found contemporary biracial children are given much m o r e f r e e d o m to choose their racial identity within their family sphere. In m y study, some family m e m b e r s invest their children with a Black identity and some do not. Like Korgen, I found most contemporary parents of biracial children do not assign their child a singular Black identity. But as the child's sphere of interaction widens b e y o n d the family, m y study participants experience being defined b y others and feel it as something i m p o s e d upon them. M a n y participants recall from childhood onward into the present attempts b y others to assign to them a Black identity. My mother always told me "If you are ever asked just tell people that you are Black because your mother is Black." She didn't say it in a harsh way, "I'm Black, so you are going to be Black too." I think she did it more or less to protect me and for me to have some kind of identity (20 year old female). Regardless o f whether family m e m b e r s do or do not offer racial definitions for their child, the youngsters discover others would. As children enter school and c o m m u n i t y life, they enter a world o f contradictory demands and increased pressure to choose. M e s s a g e s about race c o m e from m a n y new sources and act to i m p o s e a racial identity on them. They find friends, teachers, distant family members, strangers and the m e d i a often advocate a singular racial identity, usually Black. As with other aspects of identity, racial identity seems to follow the same course of development; n a m e l y parents and adult figures are early influences, while peers and cohorts b e c o m e influences in adolescent years (Erikson, 1968; Helms, 1990). A s one grows older, friends play a larger role in one's racial identification. In middle school I was still mulatto. I hung out with pretty much all Black kids. They were all like, "You need to choose. You need to do this for your own good, so you are not confused. You need to choose just one. And you are not White. People don't look at you as being White. So you are Black. Look at your skin. You are Black" They were trying to do it for me . . . . Females do it more so than the guys (do) (20 year old female).

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Yet not everyone places them in the same identity category. One may be viewed as biracial by parents and viewed as Black by friends and teachers. Biracial individuals must learn to navigate the contradictory identity assignments. 1° A n existential crisis develops over these externally imposed definitions of self. As one is forced into or out of a particular racial grouping, one can feel trapped. The intensity of the feeling of entrapment varies greatly by whether one can ignore or cannot afford to ignore the placement of oneself in a particular status (Strauss, 1959). Children have a hard time ignoring and overcoming the identity when it is their superiors, such as teachers, who are imposing it. For m a n y of m y participants, elementary and middle schoolteachers who impose a Black identity are the first to be resented and "taken on." For example, one young w o m a n tells of a teacher who erases her choice of race on a school form and a confrontation over the right of self-determination follows. I: When you fill out a form, what race do you put? R: When I was in elementary school, I always put both. The teachers said, "you can only put one." But I would check Black and White. I remember in fourth grade, I had a teacher who tried to erase my paper and put Black. And I said, "I'm not Black." I: Whiteor Black teacher? R: It was a White teacher. And so she tried to erase it. I walked my paper down to the principal's office and I handed it in myself. I said, "I don't want this changed." I: Does it matter what you put? R: To me, not really. To other people, it seems like it matters. I: But it mattered in fourth grade. What really mattered there? R: Because she was trying to erase what I was. I: You wanted to make a choice? R: Yeah. She was trying to erase my choice and I thought I had enoughfreedom to make that choice. I didn't see anything wrong with that. It wasn't going to hurt anybody (20 year old female). She, like m a n y others, asserts herself into the process of social definition and rejects the identity labels of others. The forced identity is experienced intellectually as inaccurate, incomplete or overly simplistic. Wanting to be faithful to both lines of ancestry and to accurately reflect her sense of self, she tests the possibility of self-naming. Her challenge to the imposed self, like m a n y others, typically creates and escalates social tension; little wars erupt in interactions with principals, teachers and friends. Being encapsulated is experienced as a series of traps - being trapped in others' definitions of self, being trapped in negative emotions and being trapped in the dichotomies of race. Another young student refuses to fill out the race question on a form and a similar drama unfolds. R: I went through a questioning stage. It was sixth grade. It was another test I had to fill out. And for some reason I just felt different about just putting Black. I felt like checking

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the other box, but I didn't. I didn't put anything. So when I turned it in, the teacher said, "you have to fill this out" and I refused. And she said, "why?" "Well, both my parents are from different races." I said, "My morn is Black and my dad is White and I don't feel like checking either one." I: So you didn't check anything? R: Not then. I eventually ended up checking Black a couple days later. I: What happened? R: They called my parents. My father told me that I had to. He told me something like I wouldn't get to the next grade or something like that. And when I did it, I was all upset for a long while (21 year old male). Like the b i b l i c a l D a v i d w h o m e t Goliath, a sixth grader battles his oppressors with o n l y the "fact" o f his biracial existence. Here is a child d a r i n g to create a n e w self. E x h i l a r a t e d to have successfully c h a l l e n g e d his teacher, he is distraught to capitulate to his father's d e m a n d s . In this story, as in m a n y others, children a n d y o u n g adolescents, t h o u g h they diligently try, are u n a b l e to successfully appropriate alternative racial identities. W h i l e the battle is lost, a war o n s o c i e t y ' s racial dictates has irreversibly b e g u n .

Challenging the Encapsulated Self In later childhood, refuting an e n c a p s u l a t e d self b e g i n s with small tests of racial definitions and b o u n d a r i e s . In the b e g i n n i n g , these e x p e r i m e n t s have m i n i m a l success. Later, they b e c o m e m o r e significant as small victories are won. I n this c h a l l e n g i n g phase, o n e is m o r e self-aware, yet o n l y partly c o n s c i o u s o f what o n e is b e c o m i n g . K n o w l e d g e of self at this stage typically involves a s i m p l e f o r m o f k n o w i n g what o n e is not, rather than the k n o w l e d g e o f what o n e is. Biracials w h o c h a l l e n g e e n c a p s u l a t i o n m i g h t r e c o g n i z e past selves that exist "no longer," b u t do not fully c o n c e i v e the selves they are " n o t yet" (Sartre, 1956). In i m a g i n i n g what o n e is not, the biracial i n d i v i d u a l a c c o m p l i s h e s an i n t e r m e d i a r y sense o f self. Sometimes it's not easy to move between the races. I can move between them, but I wish I didn't have to. I wish it were just the human race (16 year old male). A s o n e rejects a s i n g u l a r B l a c k identity, o n e c a n m o v e toward alternate identity forms ( R o c k q u e m o r e , 1998). 21A t the t i m e of the interview, m y participants had various stances o n their racial identity. S o m e c o n s t r u c t of b o r d e r stance - a k n o w l e d g e o f self between races. I see myself as a mixture of both my parents. I don't have a problem with what I view myself as. I am proud to be mixed, a mixture of Black and White. I am half Black and half White. I never really thought I was one particular race. When someone would ask me, "What is your race?" I'd look at them funny. I don't see myself as having one race (13 year old male).

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Others c o n s t r u c t a t r a n s c e n d e n t a l stance - a k n o w l e d g e o f s e l f

beyondraces.

I am in a position where I hold no allegiance to either community (Black or White). So really I can know people as people. Not people as Black people. Not people as White people. I can play in a cynical kind of way. Because I can see people who have a disagreement and I can hold both of them in contempt. Being biracial you have a better perspective because you look at both sides of the situation. You don't assume anything because chances are you have already been generally assumed about, and you don't want to make the same mistake (19 year old male). O f t e n others do not validate their alternate identities and o n e capitulates b a c k into an e n c a p s u l a t e d status. In the early p e r i o d s o f identity choice, v a c i l l a t i o n b e t w e e n an e n c a p s u l a t e d and a c o n s t r u c t i v e s e l f is not u n c o m m o n . T h e p r o c e s s o f biracial i d e n t i t y d e v e l o p m e n t is not linear. I2 P e r s o n s often return to or m a k e use o f f o r m e r racial selves. T h e r e is i n d e t e r m i n a c y in the p r o c e s s and no o n e final identity o u t c o m e is prevalent. Instead a p e r s o n e x p e r i e n c e s several racial identities s i m u l t a n e o u s l y and e x p r e s s e s different racial identities in d i f f e r e n t social encounters. Just as o n e m a y h a v e different p u b l i c and private racial identities ( B u x e n b a u m 1996); o n e m a y also return in s o m e settings to an e x c l u s i v e l y B l a c k identity after b e c o m i n g biracial. C o n t e s t for c o n t r o l is a feature o f all identity n e g o t i a t i o n s and the identity w o r k o f b i r a c i a l is no e x c e p t i o n . W h i l e m a r g i n a l l y successful, a d o l e s c e n t s o f all sorts f r e q u e n t l y c h a l l e n g e parental and o t h e r authority figures. D e s p i t e the p o s s i b l e and actual failures o f identity work, m y participants e n j o y c h a l l e n g i n g t h o s e p e r c e i v e d as m o r e p o w e r f u l . R: In junior high, I remember we were taking a Connecticut Mastery Test and they ask you what your race was. They didn't have other on there. I looked at the teacher and I said, "well, they don't have other. They have Black and they have White." And that's the first time I started becoming aware of being half-White and half-Black. I said, "well my mother always told me to check off Black. But because my father is White, I'm White too." And she sent me out in the hallway. I: Why did she have to take you in the hallway? R: She took me in the hallway, she said, "check what you want to check. But if your mother says check Black, then maybe you should do it. If you want to check both, I don't know what's going to happen." So I checked both. I gave both my parents credit (20 year old female). T h e s e social e x p e r i m e n t s that d e f y the rule o f h y p o d e s c e n t and h o n o r dual a n c e s t r y are m e m o r a b l e ; they r e m i n i s c e the early taste o f f r e e d o m and sense o f adventure. A t first their identity c l a i m s are tried on authority figures in school, then strangers. T h e y m a y start w i t h a s i m p l e refusal to a n s w e r the s t r a n g e r ' s u b i q u i t o u s question, " w h a t are y o u ? " Sometimes I get ticked off at people that want to know and it's none of their fucking business. When I was younger I wanted to explain that I'm biracial and my mom's White.

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So that it would be easier for them. Now I don't give a fuck. I don't want to tell them. I don't have to legitimize myself in that way to them. I resent that. It's not something you can explain in a sentence (26 year old female). The social assignment of a racial identity does not end when one reaches adulthood. It continues throughout their life. The little battles o f childhood build into b i g g e r battles, usually in adolescence. They move onto reject outright others' racial assignments and definitions. F r o m challenging teachers and strangers, they m o v e onto challenge m o r e intimate others. Peers' identity assignments seem to be the last ones challenged, usually in the college years. At eighteen, my freshman year in college, I decided that it was easier to identify as Black than biracial. Not because of what White folks thought, but because of the animosity that Black people had for biracial people. Black people have always been very vocal; "Yon are Black." They want to claim you. Now, I don't accept that. I don't accept anyone, Black or White, telling me what I am. They haven't walked in my shoes. I am bicultural. I am comfortable... The tragic mulatto I am not! (26 year old female). Over time, the conviction of choice b e c o m e s stronger. The acquisition of a deeper k n o w l e d g e o f self and o f greater interpersonal skill increases the ease o f defining oneself. These identity contests, while fun, increase social tension. F o r one, they challenge others' definitions o f racial reality. For identity w o r k to be successful, one must eventually get others to adopt one's perspective and alter the other's racial views.

The Exhilaration of Identity Choice The search for self is a search for a broader and more meaningful self and existence. Racial identity is not something "in the past to be discovered, but in the future to be constructed;" it is in the process o f b e c o m i n g (Hall, 1995, p. 14). W h a t e v e r particular identity is created, whether Black, biracial or raceless, one experiences self as the choice-maker. Growing up and becoming an adult, I choose things on my own. Right now, I consider myself a biracial person. I used to consider myself Black because my mother is totally Black. She told me to call myself Black. And that's what I would tell people, "I'm Black. My father is White, but I am Black." Now I'm in college and I said I'm going to go with biracial (20 year old female), The process of moving from an encapsulated to a constructive self m a y be gradual or abrupt, but they are always unplanned or emergent passages. One male describes an evolution over a six-year period, between fourth and tenth grade, when he encounters a crisis o f racial meaning. His peers m a k e fun of his "other" status. Without a legitimate racial identity, he feels in danger of having no identity at all. Eventually, he chooses to be Black.

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R: I always knew m y dad was Black and m y morn was White, but it didn't hit me until later. I understood it more and more as I grew up. I: Did something happen that gave you this insight? R: Oh, there were things. In elementary school days, the kids treated me different. The older kids used to say "how now brown cow" and I didn't understand it was a racial reference. It was fourth grade and I didn't get it. It didn't connect because I didn't really understand how different I was. When I was older I understood. 1 could really see the difference. It was mainly switching schools in tenth grade and talking to more Black and minority kids, and not just White kids. I felt that I needed to make a decision about what I was going to be. Whether I was going to be Black or I was going to be other. I feel in no way am I an other. So I ' m Black. (18 year old male).

According to Stonequist (1935), the turmoil arises from a double looking glass self. With the marginal person it is as if he were placed simultaneously between two looking glasses, each representing a different image of himself. The clash in image cannot help but make the i n d i v i d u a l . . , conscious of the process - conscious of the two mirrors a n d . . , the two clashing images (p. 7).

In early stage of self-understanding, the mirror with two frames of reference is conflict-ridden. The conflict is further aggravated by the dictate of choice. In the early process of becoming self, one is overwhelmed in a dialectic of opposing forces. Yet, my study participants move beyond the clashing images and prescribed choice. In the constructive stage, the biracial individual experiences new forms of self-awareness. One moves beyond trapped marginality into arenas of self as choice-maker. They incorporate a dual mindset, thinking at the center and the margins. An entirely new knowledge emerges in which one simultaneously both sees and doesn't see Black and White frames of reference (Brown, 1998). With two reference groups, they develop multiple and alternating perspectives on self: being Black, being Not Black, being White, being Not White, being Biracial and being no race at all. Refusing to dissect the self into a singular identity, a new seamless self emerges. I am both White identified and Black identified . . . . I do not experience the two as sprit, but as fluid, seamless parts of who I am . . . . I struggle to find words that do not compartmentalize, words that do not divide (30 year old female quoted in Williams 1999, p. 34). It's me. I feel like I can't segment m y body. I can't segment m y heart; it's knit together (31 year old female quoted in Brown 1998, p. 136).

When one is known differently than before, when a mixed-race person develops his or her own meaning regarding the "cultural problematic" of miscegenation and moves to a new level of self-knowledge, the self is transformed (Denzin, 1987a, 1987b).

Biracial Lived Experience

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In the discovery of a form of knowledge unknown to others, constructive biracials become social critics. The social critic "see(s) things about his culture and his times that other persons are unable to see" (Denzin, 1987b, p. 190). They acquire a mindset that monoracials cannot or will not understand. Having the ability to hold opposing thoughts simultaneously, they regard themselves as possessing a higher intellect. They embellish this "oppositional world view" as it aids their struggle to overcome and strengthens sense of self (Hooks, 1984, preface). The act of affirming an alternate identity gives life and credibility to a new self. When opposition is maintained and one no longer finds meaning in others' definitions, self transcends an empty reality. One becomes "processual, (able to stand) outside itself objectively, but subjectively aware of its own relationship with the world" (Denzin 1987a, p. 199). Transcending releases feelings of exurbuance and empowerment to have their definitions of self and reality acknowledged by others, if even provisionally. Transcending others' definitions of self occurs on two levels. One not only denies the prescribed identity choice, but also chal