Embarrassment and the Analysis of Role Requirements

Gross, Edward; Stone, Gregory P.

doi:10.1086/223733

Cited by 191 publications

(89 citation statements)

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“…This becomes abundantly clear when our bodies let us down. We stammer in an important meeting or blush when we make a mistake thereby drawing attention to our uncertainty or embarrassment and undermining our role performance (Gross and Stone 1964). One of the important ways in which the bodies of people who are chronically ill affect self and identity is the ways in which they may do this.…”

Section: Biological Contingencies and Human Socialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical sociology, chronic illness and the body

Kelly

Field

1996

Sociology Health & Illness

277

157

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The sociological conceptualisation of chronic illness requires a sociology which indicates the physicality of the body theoretically. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the body might be integrated into sociological accounts ofthe experience of chronic illness in a way that acknowledges biological and social facts. Central to our argument is the connection between bodily aspects of self and identity. Self and identity are core aspects of everyday experience and of the everyday experience of illness. With the onset of illness bodily functioning alters and self-conceptions and identity may also change. The body, which in many social situations is a taken for granted aspect of the person, ceases to be taken for granted once it malfunctions. The bodily basis of chronic illness has to be attended to because it limits or interferes with other physical and social activities. The connection between biological and social facts is explored using the concepts of self and identity.

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Section: Biological Contingencies and Human Socialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical sociology, chronic illness and the body

Kelly

Field

1996

Sociology Health & Illness

277

157

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There is typically a discrepancy between the persona that one wants to enact and that which one fears one has actually communicated (Edelmann, 1987), or between the impressions consciously "given" and those unintentionally "given off" (Goffman, 1959, p. 14). At the situational level, meanwhile, a collective sense of embarrassment emerges when a central assumption of interaction is unexpectedly or unqualifiedly discredited, because one or more actors cannot fulfill their role requirements (Gross & Stone, 1964). This may result from a loss of poise (mistaken identity claims, invasions of private territory, loss of control over the body or material props), an inappropriate identity performance (where the actor's "announcement" of their identity does not match the normative expectations of the audience and their "placement" of her or him) (Stone, 1962), or an inconsistent identity performance, where two or more roles contradict each other (a dominant role may be undermined by an adjunct, reserve, or relic identity from another setting) À all of which create a loss of script and general uncertainty over how to perform (Gross & Stone, 1964).…”

Section: Role Conflict Embarrassment and Dramaturgical Stressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Familiar Strangers: Facework Strategies in Pursuit of Non-Binding Relationships in a Workplace Exercise Group

Rossing¹,

Scott²

2014

Revisiting Symbolic Interaction in Music Studies and New Interpretive Works

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Familiar strangers: facework strategies in pursuit of nonbinding relationships in a workplace exercise group Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Rossing, Hilde and Scott, Susie (2014) Copyright and reuse:Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University.Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available.Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way.

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“…Indeed, -the individual is always in jeopardy because of the adventitious linking of events, the vulnerability of his body, and the need in social situations to maintain the proprieties‖ (Goffman 1967:169); failure leads to embarrassment-a deficit in projecting an acceptable self before others (Goffman 1967;Gross and Stone 1964;Weinberg 1968;Weinberg and Williams 2005). Some of these recollections of olfactory abjection owe to accidental circumstances.…”

Section: Olfactory Stigmamentioning

confidence: 99%

Smell, Odor, and Somatic Work: Sense-Making and Sensory Management

Waskul

Vannini

2008

Soc Psychol Q

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Sensation (noun) is emergent in joint acts of sensing (verb). To sense, in other words, is to make sense, and sense making entails what we call -somatic work.‖ We investigate these dynamics in the context of olfaction, highlighting how olfaction intersects with social, cultural, and moral order-thus compelling reflexive forms of somatic work by which people manage smell (as an act) and odor (as a sign). Our data are drawn from a convenience sample of twenty-three participants who reflected on their olfactory experiences through the use of research journals. We focus on three central dynamics: participants' attribution of meaning to odors, the somatic rules that structure perception, and olfactory facework. The participants in this study attribute meaning to odor through odiferous indexes that intersect with an individual's somatic career; olfactory somatic rules entail disciplined somatic work in relation to the intensity of odor, its context, and moral/aesthetic character; because odor conveys meaning it is part of the ritualized facework of everyday life. Odor is a subtle but significant component of the culturally normative and aesthetic rituals of expressive and impressive everyday life. 1 Flesh and organs bestow the capacity to sense, but they are merely the raw materials by which somatic perception is wrought. The act of perception requires the reflexive faculty to feel or perceive.Central to the very nature of the act (Mead 1938) and to the processes of making sense of the world (Dewey 1934; Peirce 1931) somatic perception is a reflexive expression of sociality-a fundamental basis for a sensuous understanding of the social world (Stoller 1989(Stoller , 1997 and for the -possibility of a discipline of ‗sociosomatics'‖ (Berger and Luckmann 1966:208)-a dynamic in which carnal sensations -become objects to ourselves‖ (Mead 1938:429). Sensations are -both a reaching out to the world and a source of information and an understanding of that world so gathered‖ (Rodaway 1994:5).In this study we explore reflexive dimensions of somatic perception from an eclectic symbolic interactionist approach which views both the perceptive self and the signs of its perception as semiotic processes (Halton 1986;Wiley 1994). We pay attention not only to significant symbols, but also other important and much under-analyzed semiotic resources like indexes (see RochbergHalton 1982). We argue that sensation (noun) is emergent in joint acts of sensing (verb). To sense, in other words, is to make sense, and sense making entails what we call -somatic work.‖ We investigate these dynamics in the context of olfaction, and seek to contribute to sociological literatures on sensual perception¹ (also see Fine 1995) We highlight how olfaction intersects with social, cultural, and moral order thus compelling reflexive forms of somatic work by which people manage smell (as an act) and odor (as signs). We focus on three central dynamics: participants' attribution of meaning to odors, the somatic rules that structure perception, and olf...

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Embarrassment and the Analysis of Role Requirements

Cited by 191 publications

References 0 publications

Medical sociology, chronic illness and the body

Medical sociology, chronic illness and the body

Familiar Strangers: Facework Strategies in Pursuit of Non-Binding Relationships in a Workplace Exercise Group

Smell, Odor, and Somatic Work: Sense-Making and Sensory Management

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