Although social class, religion, gender, ethnicity and age are often treated as independent variables (e.g., factors, forces, structures) and invoked as causal explanations for various outcomes, this paper approaches these constructs in more distinctive, humanly-engaged terms. Rather than representing forces that almost mysteriously impose themselves on people, these constructs are to be understood more fundamentally as the products and processes of human group life. We are not denying the linkages of social categories with other aspects of community life but contend that these correlates represent comparatively superficial reflections of the much broader underlying sets of processes that characterize social life. Indeed, we argue that it is these sets of humanly engaged social processes rather than correlational research that constitute the more authentic subject matter of the social sciences.In his engaging text, The Faultline of Consciousness, Maines (2001) makes the claim that interactionist thought has, in various ways and guises, entered into and been absorbed by mainstream sociology. He writes:The old dichotomies that once organized sociological discourse, and especially how sociologists framed their characterizations of sociology, are happily eroding.... Across the board, greater emphasis is placed on agency, on groups actively dealing with situations that confront them, on the limitations of totalizing theories, on historical processes, on the processual character of structures, and on the significance of meaning in sociological description and explanation (Maines 2001, 25).

This paper joins earlier interactionist projects in advocating for an analytical attentiveness to generic social process (GSP). This dynamic form of theorizing is indebted to the thought of Herbert Blumer and the extended phenomenological and pragmatist traditions. Rather centrally, the study of GSPs draws upon the foundational concepts of duration, intersubjectivity, and the self. Such concepts have contributed to some of symbolic interactionism's most enduring, empirically grounded and theoretically robust work. Drawing on a series of ethnographic research projects, this paper offers a research agenda for engaging GSPs transcontextually. Specifically, I argue for extending the study of GSPs through the examination of management in everyday life, the creation of subcultural value, and the social construction of doubt.

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Shaffir (1998:63) writes, “We must learn to reclaim the virtue of patience. When we en­hance the pace of doing research, it is often at the expense of acquiring a deep appreciation of the research problem.” This paper engages Shaffir’s claim by examining the importance of undertaking a patient sociology. What is the virtue to be found in prolonged and sustained work? How does this speak to the relationships found in field research and in the identities that inform our work as researchers and theorists? In contrast to recent trends towards various versions of instant or short-term ethnography (e.g., Pink and Morgan 2013) this paper argues for the merits of “slow” ethnog­raphy by examining the advantages of relational patience, perspectival patience, and the patience required to fully appreciate omissions, rarities, and secrets of the group.