The Drama of Social Life: Essays in Post-Modern Social Psychology

393 Pages·2016·2.45 MB·English

by  T. R. Young

First paperback printing 2016.
Copyright © 1990 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New
Jersey.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 89–4594
ISBN: 0–88738–202–9 (hardcover); 978-1-4128-6298-1 (paper)
eBook: 978-1-4128-6344-5
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Young, T. R.
The drama of social life : essays in critical social psychology /
T. R. Young.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0–88738–202–9
1. Social interaction. 2. Social psychology. 3. Microsociology.
4. Drama—Psychological aspects. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Interpersonal Relations. 2. Psychology, Social. HM 251
Y77d]
HM291.Y68 1989
302—dc20
DNLM/DLC
89–4594
CIP
This book is about how drama fits into
the runs of everyday life. It is about
the drama of love, and death, and work,
and sports. Above all it is about religion—
how people fit themselves together in
the drama of life. Linda Bowman fit me
into her life at a time when the drama of
death all but extinguished my spirit. It is
to Linda that I dedicate this book. I regret
to say that Linda loved the theatre more than
she could love me. Still, I owe her much.
T.R.Y.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
A Great University xi
Introduction 1
Part I. The Politics of Social Psychology
Introduction 19
1 Hard Times and Hard Tomatoes 21
2 The Politics of Sociology: Gouldner, Goffman,
and Garfinkel 33
3 The Structure of Democratic Communications 47
Part II. Critical Approaches to Dramaturgy
Introduction 73
4 The Dramaturgical Society: Macroanalysis
with Garth Massey 75
5 Dramaturgical Analysis and Societal Critique
with John welsh 97
Part III. Social Psychology in a New Age
Introduction 123
6 Self and Social Organization in Capitalist Society 125
7 Morality and Mass Society 145
8 Self in Mass Society: Against Zurcher 161
9 Self-Estrangement in Dramaturgical Society 177
Part IV. Politics in the Dramaturgical Society
Introduction 199
10 The Political Economy of Dramaturgy 203
11 Critical Dimensions in Dramaturgical Analysis:
Watergate as Theater 225
Part V. Emancipatory Uses of Dramaturgy
Introduction 279
12 Emancipatory Dimensions in Dramaturgy 281
13 The Sociology of Sport: Structural and Cultural
Approaches 305
14 The Typifications of Christ at Christmas and Easter:
Critical Explorations of Religious Dramaturgy 325
15 Dress, Drama, and Self: The Tee Shirt as Text 349
References & Bibliography 367
Index 375
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my appreciation to Norm Denzin and the Society
for the Study of Symbolic Interaction for permission to reprint “Hard
Times and Hard Tomatoes: Symbolic Interaction Theory in a Mass
Society,” from the Proceedings of the Society for the Study of Symbolic
Interaction. The editors of the New England Sociologist were kind
enough to allow use of “The Typifications of Christ: Political and Social
Uses of the Jesus Symbol,” from its special issue of Religion: The Cutting
Edge. The chapter “The Sociology of Sport” is reprinted with permission
from the editors of Sociological Perspectives. The centerpiece of this
book is “The Dramaturgical Society” coauthored with Garth Massey, an
article published in Qualitative Sociology. Transaction Publishers itself
holds the copyright to the chapter “The Politics of Sociology.” The other
chapters are unpublished but some were circulated in limited edition
by the Red Feather Institute in its Transforming Sociology series.
John Welsh has worked and shaped my thinking on critical dimen-
sions in dramaturgical analysis for the past seven years. He is the author
of a series of articles too long neglected in the discipline. Welsh has
read and critiqued every article I have written in the area as well. Our
ideas and works are too much entwined easily to sort out. To John I
owe much that is in this book.
Garth Massey has been a colleague, friend, and coauthor for almost
fifteen years. His contribution to the essay on the dramaturgical society
is substantial. It is no great tragedy that he turned his attention away
from social psychology in the past ten years; an analysis of the prob-
lems of socialist development is far too important to the twenty-first
century to discount in any calculus of scholarly endeavor. I do miss
his wide-ranging knowledge and the added dimensions he brought to
this work, however.
Much of the work on the structure of self in this collection of essays
was written against Louis Zurcher—yet written for him. Zurcher wrote
his book The Mutable Self in an effort to stimulate discussion and
ix