The Rising Salience of the Absent: An Interactionist Analysis

Abstract

<jats:p>The paper uses examples from rural studies to demonstrate the relevance of symbolic interactionism for unlocking the complexity of contemporary society. It does so by making a case for a nonprescriptive theory-method dialectic. Case examples are drawn upon in support of the argumentation, including early interactionism and ethnographic work in the United Kingdom, and, in the second half of the paper, rural sociology and fieldwork. The main argument presented is that the traditional remit of interactionism should be extended to recognize how absence is increasingly influential. It concludes that interactionism is in tune with other new trajectories in the social sciences that take into consideration co-presence proximity both on and off-line.</jats:p>

Understanding Everyday Life: Generic Social Processes and the Pursuit of Transcontextuality

“…The development of GSPs would be well served by examining the processes of doubt and accompanying absences (Hillyard 2019). Some particularly relevant avenues for pursuing a fuller appreciation of doubt and doubting include: Doubt as an accomplished reality Doubt and nonaction, inaction, and silence Creating reasonable doubt Enacting doubt as an interactional/strategic resource Doubt as a resource in conflict and dominative strategies Recruitment to doubt Establishing and sustain communities of doubt Stigmatizing doubt Doubt and tarnished identities Resisting doubt and unknowing Experiencing doubt as rupture (e.g., becoming an ex‐adherent) Experiencing doubt in the context of the self (e.g., the self in chronic illness) Managing doubt …”

“…See Hillyard (2019) for a discussion of recent considerations of absences and voids in the social world.…”

The Virtue of Patience

“…Hillyard's (2019) paper "The Rising Salience of the Absent: An Interactionist Analysis" offers a helpful commentary on this theme. 8 For a more complete discussion of these themes see Chapter 8 of Grills and Prus' (2019) Management Motifs.…”