Universitatea din Bucureti

Facultatea de Sociologie i Asisten Social

Seminar 12 (6-12 ianuarie 2014)
tefania Matei, Explicaia Sociologic


1


Doing Gender

In "Doing Gender", Candace West and Don Zimmerman argue that gender is an
accomplishment: an emergent feature of social situations that is both an outcome of and a rationale
for the most fundamental division of society (1987; also West and Fenstermaker, 1993:151). Rather
than viewing gender as a role, identity, or individual attribute, gender is a feature of social situations.
It is embedded in and constituted by everyday interaction. We do gender in the actual or virtual
presence of others, even when it seems irrelevant or unrelated to interaction. Casual conversation
(Henley and Freeman, 1989), making dinner (Devault, 1991), working as an engineer (Mcllwee and
Robinson, 1992) or a flight attendant (Hochschild, 1983) are occasions for doing gender at the same
time that they are conversations, meals, and work.
This distinctively sociological view is grounded in ethnomethodology, which "proposes that
the properties of social life which seem objective, factual, and transsituational, are actually managed
accomplishments or achievements of local processes" (Zimmerman, 1978, cited in West and
Fenstermaker, 1993:152). To see "the objective reality of social facts as an ongoing accomplishment,"
ethnomethodologists and other sociologists treat the commonplace and unproblematic as unfamiliar
or "anthropologically strange" (Garfinkel, 1967:vii).
West and Zimmerman show how even the most taken-for-granted aspects of social life (like
the "fact" that there are two, and only two, sexes) are actually the result of socially guided conceptual,
interactional, and micropolitical processes (1987:126). That we describe, explain, rationalize, justify-
account-for ourselves and our actions is central to these processes (Heritage, 1984:136). Further, we
act with an eye toward accountability; that is, we anticipate how our actions may be characterized,
understood or misunderstood, excused, condemned, etc., and act in ways that will minimize the need
for accounting (since accounting holds the possibilities of being misunderstood, discounted, or
contradicted). As a result, we often conform to dominant norms and conceptualizations, including
those related to age and gender, even if we question or reject those norms
i
.
In West and Zimmerman's view, when individuals do gender "right" (i.e., in accordance with
dominant beliefs about women and men, masculinity and femininity), gender becomes invisible. As
we collectively "do it right," dominant assumptions about gender become natural. Indeed, gender
itself is naturalized. Moreover, "If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sustain, reproduce,
and render legitimate the institutional arrangements that are based on sex category.... [Ultimately,] an
understanding of how gender is produced in social situations will afford clarification of the
interactional scaffolding of social structure and the social control processes that sustain it," (West and
Zimmerman, 1987:146-147). West and Zimmerman are, in the end, less interested in the production
of a gendered self than they are in the production of gender itself. They intend for this formulation to
overcome the twin dangers of self-determination and overdetermination by pointing out the
reciprocal relationship between interaction and social structure, between choice, negotiation, and
constraint.

Fragment extras din Laz, C. (1998). Act Your Age. Sociological Forum, 13(1), 85-113.

Universitatea din Bucureti
Facultatea de Sociologie i Asisten Social
Seminar 12 (6-12 ianuarie 2014)
tefania Matei, Explicaia Sociologic


2


Doing Age

West and Zimmerman explain how gender is constituted in and through interaction and how
its accomplishment sustains social organization and social order. Like gender, age is accomplished-not
in the sense of something completed, but in the sense of something "brought to pass" or continually
carried on. In accomplishing age, we create and maintain selves, roles, and identities. But we also
participate in and constitute a larger shared universe in which we impart meaning to age in ways that
influence but transcend us as individuals. In this section, I outline the idea of ageas-accomplished in
relation to the assumptions about age described earlier.
Although age often feels like something we simply are, it feels this way because we enact age in
all interactions. Since we usually act our age in predictable ways-predictable given the particular
context-we make age invisible. We make age seem natural.
Of course, age is not always invisible; occasionally it comes to the forefront of our
consciousness and we must deliberately make sense of age, often in the context of particular events or
milestones (birthdays, anniversaries, deaths of parents), changes in our physical appearance or
physical condition, or social roles and norms (Eisenhandler, 1991; Karp, 1991). David Karp describes
between ages 50 and 60 as "a decade of reminders . . . during which people, more sharply than before,
are made to feel their age.... Contextual events giving rise to distinctive consciousness are correlated
with age, but not determined by age" (1991:67, 69). At these moments, age is momentarily
denaturalized; its meaning cannot be taken for granted.
Feminists in the 1970s referred to moments when gender or sex inequality was foregrounded in
individual consciousness as a "click." "Clicks" are significant because they represent the point at
which one can no longer take existing knowledge, relations, and practices as "givens."
ii

While such reminders may be more frequent and intense at later ages, younger people are not
exempt. During informal conversations over the past several years, colleagues not infrequently share
their "age-click" anecdotes. One colleague (now in her mid-40s) confessed that the first time she
refused to tell someone her "real" (i.e., chronological) age, something clicked; she was forced to
examine what age meant to her personally and to women in general in the context of her social
circles and in the larger society. Another relates the following anecdote. "Fifteen or 20 years ago (that
makes me 30-35) I was sitting on the front step with D- and A , and one of the children came up
asking for a conflict resolution. I was all of a sudden struck by the fact that we were the 'grown ups.' I
was shocked."
Perhaps the click comes from realizing that we are not acting our age or from noticing how
effectively and unconsciously we have been acting our age. Or maybe we realize that we are "ahead
of" or "behind time" (for example, more or less advanced in our careers or family lives in comparison
to other people of the same chronological age or of the same cohort; observe the multiple ways to
measure age). "Clicks" often require us to offer accounts to others or to ourselves, and accountability
is social and interactional. Sociologists can study disruptions of "the normal," like the "clicks"
described above, to explore how normalcy is accomplished, how "the natural" becomes natural.
Conceptualizing age-as-accomplished does not ignore the "fact" of chronology. Rather, it
enables sociologists to examine the process by which chronology is made "factual" and to view the
Universitatea din Bucureti
Facultatea de Sociologie i Asisten Social
Seminar 12 (6-12 ianuarie 2014)
tefania Matei, Explicaia Sociologic


3

consequences of our acting as if chronology were natural. Moreover, viewing age-as-accomplished
does not require rejecting the concepts of age norms or roles. Rather, it enables us to clarify how
norms and roles work in social situations. Norms and roles are resources that individuals draw on in
interaction. They are among the tools we use to act our age; they do not themselves constitute age.
Conceptualizing age-as-accomplished also helps bridge the self-determined/ overdetermined
dichotomy by making explicit the "interactional scaffolding of social structure and the social control
processes that sustain it" (West and Zimmerman, 1987:146-147). The reciprocal relationship between
actors acting and structural factors constraining and enabling action is central. Finally, the idea of
age-as-accomplished radically transforms the notion of age as a problem. If age is accomplished, then
it is not a social problem in the sense of a troublesome condition requiring solution. It is, instead, a
problem in the sense of a situation that presents uncertainty or difficulty that can be managed or
negotiated, at best temporarily resolved, though never permanently eliminated.

Fragment extras din Laz, C. (1998). Act Your Age. Sociological Forum, 13(1), 85-113.



i
Garfinkel has shown that actors are not required to internalize norms as a condition for action. "[A]ll that is required is that
the actors have, and attribute to one another, a reflexive awareness of the normative accountability of their actions,"
(Heritage, 1984:117). Put another way, internalizing norms is neither necessary nor sufficient for action. What is necessary
is that we recognize (and attribute the knowledge to others) that, whether or not we abide by the norms, we may have to
account (offer explanations or excuses) for our behaviors.

ii
Others have discussed similar moments. In relation to gender and sexuality, Denzin describes "epiphanies" or
turning point experiences "which radically alter and shape the meanings persons give to themselves and their
life projects . . . [focusing on epiphanies] seeks those moments of existential crisis when a person's sexuality and
gender identity are forcefully and dramatically called into question. . . . In these epiphanic moments, the gender
order is revealed in ways that are normally not seen" (Denzin 1993:206). I am not concerned here with the
particulars of how age is brought to the forefront of our consciousness or of how we make sense of age once it is
foregrounded. My purpose here is to observe that such clickswhich at least in my circle of acquaintances are
fairly common-reveal the work involved in "doing age."