Table of Contents

Preface
PART I: Introduction
What is Real? - Jodi O′Brien
Reality as a Collective Hunch
Islands of Meaning - Eviatar Zerubavel
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe - Jane Wagner
Researching Social Life
Truth, Objectivity and Agreement - Earl Babbie
Constructivist, Interpretivist Approaches to Human Inquiry - Thomas A. Schwandt
Symbolic InteractSymbolic Interactionism: A Perspective for Understanding Self and Social Interaction ionism: - Jodi O′Brien
PART II - Humans Are Symbol Using Creatures
Shared Meaning is the Foundation of Humanness - Jodi O′Brien
Naming
That Powerful Drop - Langston Hughes
A Clue to the Nature of Man - Ernst Cassirer
Yes, Father-Sister - Oliver Sacks
Language and Socialization
Final Note on a Case of Extreme Isolation - Kingsley Davis
Seeing Voices - Oliver Sacks
Language and Culture
Metaphors We Live By - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
Pills and Power Tools - Susan Bordo
Racism in the English Language - Robert Moore
PART III - Producing Social Order Through Interaction
Meaning is Negotiated through Interaction - Jodi O′Brien
Naming as an Interactional Process
Becoming a Marihuana User - Howard Becker
The Development of Feeling Norms Underlying Romantic Love - Robin Simon, Donna Eder, and Cathy Evans
Projecting the Definition of the Situation
Acknowledgement Rituals - Carl Edward Pate
Embarrassment and the Analysis of Role Requirements - Edward Gross and Gregory P. Stone
The Managed Heart - Arlie Hochschild
Negotiating a Working Consensus
Behavior in Private Places - Joan Emerson
Precarious Situations in a Strip Club - Kari Lerum
Encounters with the Hearing - Paul Higgins
PART IV - Producing Social Selves
From Masks to Selves - Jodi O′Brien
The Self as Process of Interaction
The Self, the I, and the Me - George Herbert Mead
Looking Glass Self - Charles Horton Cooley
Reference Groups as Perspectives - Tamotsu Shibutani
Self Development and Reference Groups
Girls, Media and the Negotiation of Sexuality: A Study of Race, Class and Gender in Adolescent Peer Groups - Meenakshi Gigi Durham
Shades of White - Pamela Perry
A Theory of Genius - Thomas Scheff
Self Presentation in Interaction
Identity Construction and Self-Presentation on Personal Homepages - Charles Cheung
Body Troubles: Women, Workplace and Negotiations of a Disabled Identity - Isabel Dyck
Part V - The Social Construction of Reality
Building and Breaching Reality - Jodi O′Brien
A Theory of Reality
Five Features of Reality - Hugh Mehan and Houston Wood
A Conception of and Experiments with "Trust" as a Condition of Concerted Stable Actions - Harold Garfinkel
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies - Paul Watzlawick
When Belief Creates Reality - Mark Snyder
The Social Construction of the Cultural Status Quo
The Persistence of Gender Inequality in Employment - Cecilia Ridgeway
Status Inequality and Close Relationships - Scott Harris
PART VI - Ambiguity, Complexity and Conflict in Social Interaction
Boundaries and Contradictions - Jodi O′Brien
Contradictions and Conflict in Self-Production
Double Consciousness and the Veil - W. E. B. Du Bois
Wrestling the Angel of Contradiction: Queer Christian Identities - Jodi O′Brien
We are Graceful Swans Who Can Also be Crows - Lubna Chaudry
Contradictions and Change in Cultural Production
Continuity within Change: The Cherokee Indians and the Internet - Ellen Arnold and Darcy C. Plymire
Patients, "Potheads," and Dying to Get High - Wendy Chapkis
Adventures in Desocialization - Inge Bell and Bernard McGrane
Talking Back - bell hooks
Epilogue - Jodi O′Brien

About the Author

Jodi O’Brien is Professor of Sociology and Women and Gender Studies at Seattle University. She is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Gender and Society and co-editor of the “Contemporary Sociological Perspectives” book series. Her books include The Production of Reality, Social Prisms, and Everyday Inequalities. Her courses and research focus on difference, power and discrimination, and religion and sexuality.

Reviews

“The best I have seen in a long time.”
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