(eBook PDF) Inside Social Life:

Readings in Sociological Psychology

and Microsociology 8th Edition
Go to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-inside-social-life-readings-in-sociological-
psychology-and-microsociology-8th-edition/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Sociological Theory in the Classical Era: Text and

Readings 3rd Edition (eBook PDF)

http://ebooksecure.com/product/sociological-theory-in-the-
classical-era-text-and-readings-3rd-edition-ebook-pdf/

(eBook PDF) Social Stratification: Class, Race, and

Gender in Sociological Perspective 4th Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-social-stratification-
class-race-and-gender-in-sociological-perspective-4th-edition/

(eBook PDF) Contemporary Social and Sociological

Theory: Visualizing Social Worlds 3rd Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-contemporary-social-and-
sociological-theory-visualizing-social-worlds-3rd-edition-2/

(eBook PDF) Contemporary Social and Sociological

Theory: Visualizing Social Worlds 3rd Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-contemporary-social-and-
sociological-theory-visualizing-social-worlds-3rd-edition/
(eBook PDF) Social Psychology: The Science of Everyday
Life 2nd Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-social-psychology-the-
science-of-everyday-life-2nd-edition/

(eBook PDF) Annotated Readings in the History of Modern

Psychology

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-annotated-readings-in-
the-history-of-modern-psychology/

Social Psychology 8th Edition David G. Myers - eBook

PDF

https://ebooksecure.com/download/social-psychology-ebook-pdf/

Psychology in Your Life 3rd Edition (eBook PDF)

http://ebooksecure.com/product/psychology-in-your-life-3rd-
edition-ebook-pdf/

(eBook PDF) Psychology in Everyday Life 3rd Edition

http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-psychology-in-everyday-
life-3rd-edition/
 Contents vii

23. T he Presentation of Self in Blumer’s general discussion of relationships

Virtual Spaces 237
Simon Gottschalk
An examination of how people construct and
present selves in the online world known as
Second Life.
Part VI: The Organization of Social
Interaction
Introduction 249
24. Face-Work and Interaction
­R ituals 253
Erving Goffman
Goffman explains that individuals engage in
ritual patterns of interaction so as not to
tarnish their own or others’ social reputations.
25. T he Interaction Order of Public
Bathrooms 264
Spencer E. Cahill
An examination of routine behavior in public
bathrooms that illustrates many of the
dramatic and ritual elements of everyday
interaction.
26. Working “the Code” in the Inner
City 275
Nikki Jones
An examination of how “the code of the
street” shapes the interactions and self-
conceptions of young women in urban
neighborhoods.
*27. Making Firefighters
­D eployable 286
Matthew Desmond
Desmond examines how the Forest Service
organizes training for firefighters to ensure
they engage in the risky behavior of firefighting,
even in the face of the death of coworkers.
Part VII: The Construction of Social
Boundaries and Structures
Introduction 299
28. Society in Action 303
Herbert Blumer
among social structures, interactions, and
definitions is a classic statement of the
sociological perspective he named as
symbolic interactionism.
*29. Autism Spectrum Disorder and the
DSM-5 309
Kristin Barker and Tasha R. Galardi
Barker and Galardi show how laypeople made
claims to ASD diagnoses during the
controversial development of the DSM-5, the
fifth edition of the manual used to diagnose
mental illness.
*30. Disciplined Preferences:
­E xplaining the (Re)Production
of Latino Endogamy 323
Jessica Vasquez-Tokos
Analysis of how Latinos’ romantic preferences
for partners who are like them results from
family, peer, and community influence.
31. P rotecting the Routine from
Chaos 337
Daniel Chambliss
This study illustrates the strategies nurses use
to preserve a sense of order in the face of the
disruptive and chaotic events that can take
place in a hospital.
Part VIII: Reproducing and Resisting
Inequalities
Introduction 347
32. Salvaging Decency 351
Margarethe Kusenbach
An illustration of the strategies mobile home
residents employ to counteract stigma and
how these strategies reproduce the stereotypes
that others use to demean them.
33. P rofessional Emotional Labor as a
Racial Project 363
Carissa Froyum
An analysis of a youth service agency in which
white administrators and volunteers expected
and policed “professionalism” among black

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd vii 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 viii CONTENTS
youth workers in ways that reinforced racial
hierarchy.
34. E scaping Symbolic Entrapment,
Maintaining Social Identities 375
Shane Sharp
Sharp demonstrates how conservative
Christian women who were abused by their
husbands develop vocabularies of their
motives that allow them to divorce yet retain
their conservative Christian identity.
*35. Wrangling Tips:
Entrepreneurial Manipulation
in Fast-Food Delivery 386
Alex I. Thompson
This study examines how fast-food delivery
workers shape delivery interactions to
maximize tips, even though rules of etiquette
favor the customer.
Part IX: The Politics of Social Reality
Introduction 401
36. T he Moral Career of the Mental
Patient 405
Erving Goffman
Goffman takes the perspective of mental
patients in this classic study of their lives
before and after hospitalization.
cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd viii
37. B eing Middle Eastern American in
the Context of the War on
­T error 414
Amir Marvasti
Marvasti draws on in-depth interviews and
his personal experiences to demonstrate how
Middle Eastern Americans experience and
manage stigma in post-9/11 America.
*38. A ltruistic Agencies and
­C ompassionate Consumers: Moral
Framing of Transnational
­S urrogacy 429
Sharmila Rudrappa and Caitlyn Collins
This study uses interviews with infertility
specialists, intended parents, and Indian
surrogate mothers to show how moral frames
which cast transnational surrogacy as
empowering for women and furthering
reproductive rights fail to change surrogate
women’s economic circumstances.
*39. T he Politics of Sorrow and
­I dentity in the Aftermath of
Murder 443
Daniel D. Martin
Martin examines how various parties,
particularly parents of murdered children,
negotiate the reality of a homicide, the emotions
it evokes, and the identity of the victims.
05/19/17 12:28 PM
 INTRODUCTION

S ociology examines a broad and diverse range of topics. Sociologists study every-
thing from the operation of the global social system to how people manage emo-
tions and identities in their everyday interactions. Given this topical range, many
sociologists draw a distinction between macrosociology, or the study of broad patterns
of social life, and microsociology.
Macrosociological studies provide a kind of aerial view of social life. They enable
us to identify the distinguishing features of the social landscape. Yet, to understand the
actual social processes responsible for such patterns of social life, we need to get closer
to the ground—to the actual places where everyday social life is lived.
The study of everyday social processes and interactions falls within the purview of
microsociology. Microsociology focuses on the daily details of how people create and
sustain the social worlds they inhabit. These social worlds include preschools, class-
rooms, neighborhoods, hospitals, street corners, and social media sites. Microsociolo-
gists go to such places to observe and sometimes participate in the activities that occur
there so that they can identify the social patterns that characterize them. Microsociolo-
gists also interview participants in depth to learn about the meanings that guide their
conduct. Some even examine conversations in detail to investigate how particular
social identities and situations are talked into being. In doing so, microsociologists
strive to understand the processes that serve to produce and reproduce the social rela-
tionships, organizations, and systems that macrosociology studies in the abstract.
Many sociologists do not stop there but also look inside the hearts and minds of
individuals who inhabit different social worlds. They examine relationships between
people’s social and subjective experience—their thoughts, feelings, and private views of
themselves. Sociologists share this field of study with psychologists, and it is common-
ly referred to as social psychology. However, sociologists and psychologists generally
approach the study of interrelations between social life and individuals’ inner lives
from different directions. Psychologists tend to look for the operation of universal prin-
ciples of human psychology in social life, while sociologists consider the social vari-
ability of subjective experience to be more significant and informative. This difference
in emphasis has led to the cumbersome expressions sociological social psychology and
psychological social psychology. But there is a more economical way of distinguishing
between these two approaches. Psychologists can retain the title of social psychology if
sociologists claim the title of sociological psychology as their own. This latter expression
clearly refers to a psychology based on a distinctively sociological understanding of the
human condition in all of its varied forms.

ix

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd ix 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 x INTRODUCTION

The concerns of microsociology and sociological psychology are not unrelated to

those of macrosociology. Both types of study are essential for a comprehensive under-
standing of human social life. Although we, as individuals and groups, produce and
reproduce the social worlds that we inhabit, we do not do so under conditions of our
own choosing. Recurring patterns of interaction result in relatively stable features or
structures of social life. For example, we routinely place one another into different gen-
der, ethnic, age, and other categories, treating one another differently based on such
identifications. Organized patterns of social life result in unequal distributions of
resources and power among us. These distributions influence where we live and with
whom we are likely to interact. Such social divisions and hierarchies or social structures
influence interaction in ways that tend to lead to their perpetuation. As previously sug-
gested, microsciology examines how we interactionally produce and reproduce the
social divisions, organizations, institutions, and systems that macrosociology studies in
the abstract. Microsociology and sociological psychology also address how social
structures influence our social lives and subjective experiences differently. They thereby
complement macrosociology and bring alive the study of human social life.
The readings collected in this volume provide an introduction to sociological psy-
chology and microsociology. College students are often introduced to these fields of
study in courses with titles such as Social Psychology or The Individual and Society.
This volume is intended for them and for other readers who are interested in the inner
workings of social life and how each of us influences and is influenced by it. The volume
includes both statements of theoretical positions and empirical studies that draw and
elaborate upon those positions.
Some of the selections included herein are classics of sociological psychology and
microsociology. Others are more recent and have yet to weather the test of time. The
combination of classic and more current readings is intended to give readers a sense of
the intellectual roots of sociological psychology and microsociology, as well as their
continuing vitality. The selections can be read in any order, although we have tired to
arrange them so that they build on the ideas and empirical findings that have preceded
each. In whatever order the articles may be read, our hope is that they convey an appre-
ciation of the intricate artfulness of daily social action and the fascinating variety of
human social experience.

new to this edition

This Eighth Edition of Inside Social Life updates the previous edition by creating tighter
coherence within each of the nine parts, examining some of the critical issues of our day,
and expanding the book’s topical reach. We thought it especially important to address
globalization and ethnicity, as well as the reality that we spend an increasing portion of
our lives interacting through technology. We have included thirteen new selections that
have not been used in previous editions. These selections address such topics as:
• H ow we socially construct reality.
• The emergence of closure as an important emotion, and the expectations for feeling
and expression which accompany it.

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd x 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 Introduction xi

• Th
 e socialization of black men to be “respectable” by controlling their emotions with-
in a white-dominated space.
• How students negotiate taking ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) med-
ication in order to perform academically while maintaining feelings of authenticity.
• The training of firefighters to ensure they fight fires according to organizationally pro-
duced guidelines, even in the face of death of other firefighters.
• The negotiation of new criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder in online discussions.
• How families and communities ensure their Latino children marry other Latinos.
• The framing of international surrogacy to cast it as empowering and liberating to
Western families.
• How families cope with the murder of a loved one.
Additionally, we brought back three pieces from an earlier edition: one on neural
plasticity, one on negotiating the self in rapidly changing contemporary life, and a clas-
sic piece on “identity talk” among homeless people. These pieces rounded out each part
they are in when paired with our new selections.
Finally, we have updated three other features from the previous edition: introduc-
tions to each of the book’s nine parts, introductions to the selections, and study ques-
tions. The introductions to each book part identify the core themes, concepts, and
insights that characterize the group of selections. They tie the readings in the section
together in an easy-to-digest format for students, and they allow instructors to use the
book as a stand-alone text for class. The introduction to the selections contextualize
each reading so that students can identify key sociological psychology themes and con-
cepts and integrate the readings across the book with each other. The reflective ques-
tions help students identify the key ideas addressed in specific readings and think about
how these ideas could be applied to understand other arenas of social life. Reflective
questions also allude back to concepts raised in the introduction for each reading so
that students encounter key concepts in three different ways (summarized in the intro-
duction, demonstrated in the reading, and interrogated in the reflective questions).
This volume is possible because of the support of many others. We were greatly
aided in this revision by the comments and evaluations shared by colleagues and by
instructors who have used previous editions. We are most grateful to David Trouille,
James Madison University; Kathleen Grove, Palomar College; Gary L. Grizzle, Barry
University; Patrick Archer, St. Ambrose University; Gary T. Deimling, Case Western
Reserve University; Liza L. Kuecker, Western New Mexico University; Linda LiskaBel-
grave, University of Miami; Denise Bullock, Indiana University; 2 anonymous review-
ers for their thoughtful and constructive comments on the Seventh Edition. We would
also like to thank Vicki Kessler, Adam Roise, Donilee Loseke, and Sherith Pankratz for
the support and encouragement they have provided in completing the current edition
of this volume. In this edition, we have again tried to emulate the passion, curiosity, and
insight that characterized the work of Spencer Cahill, who died in 2006. We have also
tried to be guided by Spencer’s uniquely perceptive sociological eye.

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd xi 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 USES OF THE SELECTIONS

Inside Social Life can be used effectively as a single assigned text. However, for instructors
who wish to use this anthology to supplement another text, the following chart may be
helpful. It groups the chapters in this volume by topics conventionally used to organize
courses in social psychology and microsociology. Primary and secondary emphases
are listed separately. (Parentheses indicate an alternative primary use for a chapter.)

Topic Primary Emphasis Secondary Emphasis

Cognition and Perception
Emotions
Bodies and Embodiment
Self and Identity
Socialization
Social Interaction
Power, Inequality, and
Social Reproduction
Culture
Social Structures and
Institutions
Gender and Sexuality
Race, Ethnicity, and Class
Deviance and Social
Control
Social Problems
Social Change
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (14) 7, 12, 16, 23
7, 8, 9, 10, (31), (33) 14, 30, 36, 38
11, 12, 13, 14, (6) 9, 10, 23, 25, 38
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 11, 13, 27, 32, 36, 39
24, (14), (27), (30), (34), (37)
1, 4, 10, 11, 27 15, 16, 20, 30, 33, 35
19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, (1), (9), 11, 17, 29, 33, 37
(10), (30), (35)
10, 11, 17, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 12, 14, 20, 29, 36, 37
(30), (39)
1, 4, 26, (7), (8), (13), (18), (21), 14, 17, 20, 23, 24, 31, 30,
(25), (27), (38) 33, 34, 35, 37
30, 31, 29, 30, (33) 10, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26,
29, 30, 34, 36, 39
9, 11, 12, 20, 38 35, 39
10, 17, 22, 26, 30, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39 13
36, 37, (10), (26), (29) 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 25, 30
10, 17, 22, 26, 28, 29, 34, 36, 37, 8, 14, 20, 30, 32, 33
38, 39
18, 29, (2), (34) 23, 31, 37, 38

xii

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd xii 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 A BO U T TH E C O NTR I B U TO R S

Patricia Adler is Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of Colorado. She is

the author of Wheeling and Dealing (1985) and coauthor (with Peter Adler) of Paradise
Laborers (2004), The Tender Cut (2011), and Drugs and the American Dream (2012, also
with Patrick K. O’Brien).

Peter Adler is Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of Denver. He is the

coauthor (with Patricia Adler) of Backboards and Blackboards (1991), Paradise Labor-
ers (2004), The Tender Cut (2011), and Drugs and the American Dream (2012, also with
Patrick K. O’Brien).

Leon Anderson is Professor and Department Head of sociology at Utah State University.
He is known for his work on analytic autoethnography, deviance, and identity work among
the homeless. He is co-author of Down on Their Luck (1993) and Deviance (expected 2017).

Kristin Barker is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. Her
work in medical sociology on the social construction of illness and healing appears in
numerous journals. She is also the author of The Fibromyalgia Story (2005).

Nancy Berns is Professor of Sociology at Drake University. Her book Closure (2011) ex-
amines the social construction and cultural appropriation of closure. Her work also ap-
pears in several journals, and she is the author of Framing the Victim (2004).

Susan Blackmore is a freelance writer and Visiting Professor at the University of Plym-
outh. She is the author of Dying to Live (1993), In Search of Light (1996), and Zen and
the Art of Consciousness (2011).

Herbert Blumer (1900–1987) was a prominent advocate for the sociological perspective
of symbolic interactionism and Professor of sociology at the University of California,
Berkeley, before his death. Among his many articles and books, the most widely read is
Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969).

Spencer E. Cahill (1949–2006) was Professor of sociology at the University of South

Florida and editor of the first five editions of this volume. He was also the author of
Children and Society (2006) and co-editor of The Praeger Handbook of American High
Schools (2006). In addition to publishing these books and dozens of journal articles,
Dr. Cahill served as editor of Social Psychology Quarterly, as co-editor of the Journal
of Contemporary Ethnography, and as a leader in the Society for the Study of Symbolic
­Interaction.

xiii

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd xiii 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 xiv ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Daniel Chambliss is Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology at

­Hamilton College in New York. He is the author of Beyond Caring: Hospitals, Nurses
and the ­Social Organization of Ethics (1996), which won the Eliot Freidson Prize in 1998
for the best book in medical sociology from the American Sociological Association. He
is also the author of Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers (1988) and coauthor
of How College Works (2014).

Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929), an economist turned sociologist, had a long teach-
ing career at the University of Michigan. His major works are Human Nature and Social
Order (1902), Social Organization (1909), and Social Process (1919).

Vichet Chhuon is an Associate Professor of culture and teaching and Asian American Studies
at the University of Minnesota. His work on educating immigrants and marginalized ­students
appears in Youth and Society, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, and Adolescence.

Caitlyn Collins is an Assistant Professor of sociology at Washington University in St.

Louis. Her cross-national research on gender inequality in workplaces and families ap-
pears in Gender & Society and The Journal of Divorce and Remarriage.

Leigh Cuttino [Doorley] has a BA in sociology and anthropology from Colgate Uni-
versity and an MBA from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business
School. She currently lives and works in London.

Matthew Desmond is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and
­Codirector of the Justice and Poverty Project at Harvard University. He is the author of
On the Fireline (2007) and Evicted (2016) and coauthor of Race in American (2015) and
The Racial Order (2015).

Carissa Froyum is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Northern Iowa.

Her work examining the reproduction of inequalities through emotion and identity
work appears in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Qualitative Sociology, Sexualities, and Cul-
ture, Health & Sexuality. She is coeditor of Creating and Contesting Inequalities (2016)
and the forthcoming Handbook on the Sociology of Gender. She is former deputy editor
of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Patricia Gagné is Professor of sociology and Director of Graduate Studies at the Uni-
versity of Louisville. She is author of Battered Women’s Justice (1998) and coauthor of
Social Problems (2001).

Tasha R. Galardi is a PhD candidate in Human Development and Family Sciences at

Oregon State University. Her research examines the intersection between medicaliza-
tion and deviance, as well as broader consequences of criminal justice interventions.

Kenneth J. Gergen is Senior Research Professor of psychology at Swarthmore College.

He is the author of several books, including The Saturated Self (1991), An Invitation to
Social Construction (1999), Relational Being, Beyond Self and Community (2009), and
Playing with Purpose (2012, coauthored).

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd xiv 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 About the Contributors xv

Simon Gottschalk is Professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the
coauthor of Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society (2009) and The Senses in Self, Society,
and Culture. (2013). He also served as the editor of Symbolic Interaction from 2003-2007.

Erving Goffman (1922-1982) was the Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology

and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and president of the American So-
ciological Association at the time of his death. His many highly influential books in-
clude The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Asylums (1961), Relations in Public
(1971), and Frame Analysis (1974).

David Grazian is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

He is the author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs
(2003), On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife (2008), Mix It Up: Popular Culture,
Mass Media, and Society (2010), and American Zoo: A Sociological Safari (2015).

Jaber Gubrium is Professor of sociology at University of Missouri. He is author of Oldtim-

ers and Alzheimer’s (1986) and Speaking of Life (1993) and coeditor of Varieties of Narra-
tive Analysis (2012). He is the founding and current editor of the Journal of Aging Studies.

Gerald Handel is Professor Emeritus of sociology at the Graduate Center at the City
University of New York. He is coauthor of Family Worlds (1959) and author of The Psy-
chosocial Interior of the Family (1967), and Making a Life in Yorkville (2000).

Adia Harvey Wingfield is Professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis.

She She studies the experiences of minority workers in white workplaces. She is author
of No More Invisible Men (2013) and articles in Gender & Society, Qualitative Sociology,
and Social Problems.

Arlie Hochshild is Professor Emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berke-

ley. She is author of The Second Shift (1989), The Time Bind (1997), The Commercializa-
tion of Intimate Life (2003), and Strangers in Their Own Land (2016).

James Holstein is Professor of sociology at Marquette University. He is coauthor of The

Self We Live By (2000), Analyzing Narrative Reality (2009), and Is There Life After Foot-
ball (2015).

Cynthia Hudley is Professor Emerita of education at University of California, Santa

Barbara. She is author of You Did That on Purpose (2008) and coauthor of Academic
Motivation and the Culture of Schooling (2008).

Brandon Jackson is Assistant Professor of sociology at the University of Arkansas. His

research appears in Social Currents, Symbolic Interaction, and Sociological Inquiry.

Nikki Jones is an Associate Professor of African American studies at the University of

California, Berkeley. She is the author of Between Good and Ghetto: African American
Girls and Inner-City Violence (2010). She is also a co-editor of Fighting for Girls: New
Perspectives on Gender and Violence (2010) and Sociologists Backstage (2011).

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd xv 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 xvi ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Margarethe Kusenbach is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of South

Florida. Her research on urban and community sociology, emotions, and qualitative
methods appears in Symbolic Interaction, Qualitative Sociology, and City & Community.
She is coeditor of Home (2013).

Meika Loe is Professor of sociology and Director of women’s studies at Colgate Univer-
sity. She is the author of The Rise of Viagra (2004), Aging Our Way (2011), and various
journal articles on aging, sexuality, and gender.

Daniel D. Martin is Professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He

is coauthor of Symbols, Selves, and Social Reality (2010) and author of The Politics of
Sorrow (2013).

Karin A. Martin is an Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. She

is the author of Puberty, Sexuality, and the Self: Boys and Girls at Adolescence (1996) and
articles in Child Abuse & Neglect, Sex Education, Sex Roles, and Journal of Family Issues.

Amir Marvasti is Associate Professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University, Al-

toona. He is the author of Being Homeless: Textual and Narrative Constructions (2003),
Middle Eastern Lives in America (2004), and Doing Qualitative Research (2008).

Janice McCabe is Associate Professor of sociology at Dartmouth University. She studies

gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, education, and childhood. Her work appears in Social
Forces, Teaching Sociology, and Symbolic Interaction. Her book Connecting in College is
forthcoming.

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) profoundly influenced early generations of Ameri-

can sociologists while he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
His published lectures and other work provided the basis for a distinctively sociologi-
cal psychology and include Mind, Self and Society (1934) and The Philosophy of the Act
(1938).

Angela Orend is an adjunct lecturer in sociology at the University of Louisville. She

teaches classes in theory, diversity, inequality, social problems, and the sociology of
families. Her research focuses on issues of commodificaton with respect to the body
and popular culture.

Sharmila Rudrappa is Professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Asian
American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches and research-
es topics on reproductive justice, race, and labor. She is author of Discounted Life: The
Price of Global Surrogacy in India (NYU Press, 2015).

Kent Sandstrom is Professor of sociology and Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at
Old Dominion University. He is the co-editor of this volume and coauthor of Know-
ing Children (1988) and Symbols, Selves, and Social Reality (2010). He is the former
­co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd xvi 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 About the Contributors xvii

Douglas Schrock is Professor of sociology at Florida State University. His work appears
in Social Psychology Quarterly, Gender & Society, and Social Problems.

Shane Sharp is Associate Professor of sociology and Graduate Director at Northern Il-
linois University. His work appears in Social Problems, Social Forces, Social Psychology
Quarterly, and the Sociological Forum.

David A. Snow is Distinguished Professor of sociology at the University of California,

Irvine. He is coauthor of Down on Their Luck (1993) and A Primer on Social Movements
(2010) and coeditor of Together Alone (2005). His is a recipient of the Society for the
Study of Social Problems’ Lee Founders Award for his career-long contributions to the
study of social problems.

Christian Vaccaro is Assistant Professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsyl-

vania. He is coauthor of Unleashing Manhood in the Cage (2015). His work also appears
in Social Currents, Journal of Men’s Studies, and Sociology Compass.

Phillip Vannini is Professor in the School of communications and culture at Roy-

al Roads University and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Public
­Ethnography. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Understand-
ing Society through Popular Music (2006), Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society
(2009), Ferry Tales (2011), The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture (2012), and Life Off
the Grid (2014).

Jessica Vasquez-Tokos is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.

She is author of Mexican Americans across Generations (2011) and Marriage Vows and
Racial Choices (2017). Her work appears in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Sociological Per-
spectives, and Sociology Spectrum.

Dennis D. Waskul is Associate Professor of sociology at Minnesota State University,

Mankato. He is the author of Self Games and Body Play (2003), editor of net.seXXX:
Readings on Sex, Pornography and the Internet (2004), and coauthor of Authenticity in
Culture, Self, and Society (2009) and The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture (2012).

Desiree Wiesen-Martin is Assistant Professor of sociology at University of Wisconsin,

River Falls. Her work appears in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence and The Journal
of Forensic Nursing.

Eviatar Zerubavel is Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of sociology at

Rutgers University. He is the author of several books, including Hidden Rhythms (1981),
Social Mindscapes (1997), Time Maps (2003), and Hidden in Plain Sight (2015).

cah47889_fm_i-xviii.indd xvii 05/19/17 12:28 PM

 I
PA R T

Human Being and

Social Reality

T he study and understanding of any subject must start with something—with

some general ideas about that subject. The subject of sociological psychology
and microsociology is human experience, in both its shared and private forms.
Thus, sociological psychology and microsociology must start with some general
ideas about human nature, human experience, and social existence. The selections
in this section advance some ideas about these fundamental questions. Taken to-
gether, they provide the conceptual foundations on which a study of human social
life and experience can be built. In doing so, they highlight the following themes:
• By adopting a sociologically informed perspective, we can gain a unique un-
derstanding of ourselves and the social worlds we occupy. We can understand
how we create the realities that shape our everyday lives, how we acquire
culture and connect with others, how we fashion and realize identities, how
we exercise power, and how we construct and perpetuate social patterns and
inequalities. Perhaps most crucially, a sociological perspective helps us to
develop an in-depth understanding of how and why we think, feel, and act
in the ways we do, particularly by enabling us to see how our thoughts, feel-
ings, and actions are influenced by our social positions and relationships.

cah47889_ch01_001-012.indd 1 05/06/17 06:51 PM

 2 PART I. HUMAN BEING AND SOCIAL REALITY

Through acquiring this understanding, which C. Wright Mills described as

the “sociological imagination,”1 we can become more thoughtful, informed,
and responsible members of our communities. When we apply the sociologi-
cal imagination, we can make more conscious choices about when, how, and
why we should comply with or resist social expectations.
• Human nature is relatively “plastic” and open-ended. Some scholars assert that
almost all human characteristics are products of genetic inheritance. Others
argue that people are almost totally products of their experience. This disagree-
ment is often described as the “nature versus nurture” debate, as if human biol-
ogy and experience were easily separable. Although some scholars still embrace
either biological or environmental determinism, a growing number of biological
and social scientists recognize that most human characteristics result from com-
plex interactions between biological processes and experience. Probably the most
telling research in this regard is that which focuses on human neural plasticity, or
how the human brain responds to its social environment and experiences.
The authors of the selections in Part I recognize the plasticity and “world-
openness” of our human biological make-up. That is, they recognize that we are
not born with genetic or instinctual hard wiring that dictates how we will act in
our social and physical environments. Instead, we have a relatively open-ended
biological constitution characterized by highly unspecialized and undirected
drives. For instance, even our drives to eat and reproduce are guided by our cul-
ture. We must learn when, where, how, and what we should eat. We must also
learn when, where, how, and why we should have sex. Because of our biological
openness, human nature can manifest itself in an incredibly diverse number of
ways. Indeed, sociologists point out that the ways of being and acting human
are as numerous as the thousands of cultures that exist on our planet.
Most important, due to the plasticity of our brains and biological constitu-
tions, we must learn how we fit into the world and how we should respond to
the natural and social realities that make up this world. In doing so we must
rely on the meanings and guidelines we acquire from the society into which
we are born. In essence, then, we can only learn our place in the world, and
how to act in it, through interacting with others who expose us to culture, or
a widely shared system of social meanings, standards, and guidelines.
• Reality is socially constructed and human behavior is guided by social mean-
ings. The selections in Part I advance ideas that are consistent with the argu-
ments of Herbert Blumer, the founder of the sociological perspective known
as symbolic interactionism. Blumer emphasized that if social scientists want
to understand human behavior, they must understand how people construct
and define reality. More specifically, they must consider how we define the

cah47889_ch01_001-012.indd 2 05/06/17 06:51 PM

 Part I. Human Being and Social Reality 3

things we encounter in our environment. These things do not have a fixed or

intrinsic meaning. Rather, their meanings differ depending on how we inter-
pret and respond to them. For example, the thing we call a “tree” will have
a different meaning depending upon whether we identify it as something
to chop, climb, decorate, prune, or turn into lumber. If you cut down a tree,
chop it into smaller pieces, and burn it in a fireplace, it becomes “fuel.” On
the other hand, if you take it into your house, put it in a stand, and trim it
with lights and ornaments, it becomes a holiday “decoration.” A tree has dif-
ferent meanings depending on how we define and respond to it. In the same
way, a person will mean different things to us and call out different responses
depending upon whether we define him or her as a teacher, parent, lover,
terrorist, or friend. The crucial factor, then, is how we name, or give meaning
to, the things we encounter because that will shape our actions toward them.
In pointing out how our behavior is directed by the meanings we give
to things, Blumer also emphasized that these meanings derive from and
emerge through our social interaction. Put simply, we learn what things
mean through interacting with others. In this process we rely heavily on lan-
guage and the shared system of symbols it provides. Guided by language and
the processes of communication and role taking it facilitates, we learn how
to define and act toward the objects, events, and experiences that constitute
our environment. We thus learn to see and respond to symbolically mediated
realities—realities that we name, such as friend, party, college, dorm, car, and
football game. These realities are socially constructed. In other words, they
are jointly created and sustained by us, especially as we use language and
engage in ongoing conversations with others. Through these conversations,
we establish a correspondence between the shared and seemingly “objective”
reality of society and our subjective experience as individuals.

• Language both constrains and enables human perceptions and actions. On the
one hand, language profoundly conditions how we see, interpret, and respond
to the world, particularly by providing us with a social lens—a shared system
of meanings and classifications—through which we organize our perceptions
of reality. Guided by this lens, we learn how to shape the world into distinct
categories, thereby giving order to our experiences and our relations to the
environment. We also learn how to ignore, overlook, or disregard some fea-
tures of the world and people around us. Yet, while language organizes our
experience and thus constrains our perceptions and actions in some ways,
it also provides us with a vital resource—a system of symbols—that en-
ables us to have agency, or the capacity to act freely. Through acquiring and
using symbols, we can think, remember, make plans, imagine alternatives,

cah47889_ch01_001-012.indd 3 05/06/17 06:51 PM

 4 PART I. HUMAN BEING AND SOCIAL REALITY

transcend the here and now, communicate with others, and most crucially,
exercise a notable element of choice in crafting our actions.
• The nature of social reality has changed significantly in recent years. The author of
the first selection in this book, Kenneth Gergen, is a proponent of “postmodern”
social theory. Postmodern theorists argue that we live in a new and distinctly
different social world marked by unprecedented social, economic, and techno-
logical change. Western societies are characterized by the explosive growth of
information technologies, the transformation of images into commodities, the
emergence of increasingly diverse communities, the fragmentation of personal
selves, and the crumbling of previously dominant outlooks, such as beliefs in
progress or absolute truth. Also, many of our interactions are becoming charac-
terized by a profound change in their temporal rhythms, marked by an increas-
ing emphasis on speed and efficiency. In a related vein, a growing number of
our interactions are electronically mediated, taking place through cell phones,
computers, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, You Tube,
Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit, Flickr, and Vine, to name only a few.
Because of the convenience of electronic communications and the growth
of social networking platforms, social life in Western societies has become
much less dependent on face-to-face interactions. In many respects, those
of us who live in the West find ourselves immersed in a hypermodern
“cyberculture”—a culture that emphasizes rapid communication, fluid iden-
tities, computer-mediated interactions, and virtual social networks. Indeed,
our lives and identities have become marked by how “connected” we are to
others in cyberworlds as well as to people in non-virtual spaces. As a result
of the growing impact of computers, cell phones, and electronically mediated
interactions, we have learned to regard virtual connections as a necessity of
everyday life and, in some cases, as a key ingredient of happiness.
Overall, the selections in Part I offer conceptual pillars and analytic insights that
securely support sociological psychology and microsociology. They also remind us
that more popular ways of thinking about human beings and social reality may not
do justice to their fascinating complexity, particularly given the rapidly changing
nature of contemporary social

Note
1. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1959). For a related discussion of the value of “sociological mindfulness,”
see Michael Schwalbe, The Sociologically Examined Life: Pieces of the Conversa-
tion, 3rd ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2005).

cah47889_ch01_001-012.indd 4 05/06/17 06:51 PM

1
Together We Construct Our Worlds
KENNETH GERGEN
Most people today are at least vaguely aware of the
wide variety of human cultures or ways of life that
populate the globe. Although they may consider their
own way of life superior to others, they recognize that
other people hold radically different beliefs and ob-
serve wildly different customs than they do. It is as if
such people live in a completely different world, and, in
an important sense, this is true. Humans at all times
and in all places do not experience the same reality.
Rather, they experience a socially constructed reality
that their predecessors have bequeathed to them and
that they reproduce in their everyday actions and in-
teractions. In this selection, Kenneth Gergen explains
how and why people construct their own reality and
how that reality is grounded in language, conversa-
tion, and shared meanings.
In addressing these themes, Gergen highlights the
key features of a social constructionist perspective,
which recognizes that people’s biological constitution
does not adequately order their relationship to the en-
vironment. Instead, people must interpret, define, and
endow their environment with meanings to respond to
it effectively. Human meanings provide the regulation
and order to human conduct that biology does not.
However, individual humans construct these mean-
ings together rather than alone. They endow their
environment with shared meanings that promote
the coordination of action. Moreover, because those
Reprinted from: Gergen, K., An Invitation to Social Construction, 3rd Edition, pp. 1–12. Copyright © 2015 by Kenneth
J. Gergen. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications, Ltd.
cah47889_ch01_001-012.indd 5
meanings are shared or intersubjective, they assume
an objective status–that is, they exist apart from any
particular individual’s experience.
The seeming objectivity of social constructed re-
alities is further enhanced by the fact that infants are
born into a world already interpreted and organized
by others. The significant others who care for an infant
transmit their culture’s prevailing definitions of real-
ity to him or her. To the naïve child, the construction
of reality is simply given and inevitable. In addition,
the significant others who care for infants and chil-
dren also transmit messages to them concerning their
socially defined identities. They might name and re-
spond to a child in ways that indicate she is a girl,
an African American, pretty, a tomboy, and the like.
Eventually, the child comes to define herself similarly
and acquires a self, a process that will be discussed in
far more detail later in this volume.
As sociologists emphasize, the term “socializa-
tion” is commonly used to refer to this process whereby
children are inducted into a society and its shared
conceptions of reality. One goal of socialization is to
establish a correspondence between that shared view
of reality and the individual’s own subjective experi-
ence. This is initially accomplished during primary or
childhood socialization by the seeming inevitability
of the significant others’ definitions of reality. These
definitions provide the child with his or her most basic
05/06/17 06:51 PM
 6 PART I. HUMAN BEING AND SOCIAL REALITY
nomic structure, or ways of meaningfully ordering ex-
perience. Subsequent or secondary socialization into
particular roles builds on this primary reality.
Yet correspondence between socially shared or ob-
jective reality and subjective experience is never estab-
lished once and for all. It must be constantly confirmed
and maintained. As Gergen argues, the most impor-
tant means of reality maintenance is conversation.
Conversation with others continually reaffirms social
definitions of reality, not only by what is said but also
by what is taken for granted and underserving of com-
ment. Conversation also maintains the shared reality
through the language and “language games” in which
it is conducted. Language classifies, typifies, and de-
fines experience. Because it is shared, it gives the reality
it constructs the accents of objectivity and inevitability.
Gergen illustrates how a social constructionist
perspective enables us to see how our society’s defini-
tions of reality are neither objective nor inevitable.
They do not simply reflect “the world as it is.” Instead,
they represent the understandings of a particular cul-
tural tradition rooted in a specific time and place. As a
result, the conceptions of reality we share with others
in our society are partial and selective in nature. They
do not offer us a complete or unbiased understanding
of the world. As Gergen emphasizes, a social construc-
tionist perspective can help us to recognize that other
ways of understanding the world exist or can be cre-
ated. This recognition offers us an important measure
of freedom. We can embrace or construct new and
different ways of seeing the world and ourselves. As
we hear new voices, learn about different cultures and
perspectives, question taken-for-granted assumptions,
and consider alternative ways of being, we can “cross
the threshold into new worlds of meaning” and action.
We can also acquire a deeper understanding of who
we are, how we developed into that person, how we
might change in the future, and how we can better re-
spond to the social and historical forces that are shap-
ing our identities, interactions, and everyday lives.
I t was hilarious. We were showing our grandson,
Sean, photographs from the “old days,” those old
black and white Kodak prints of grandparents,
cah47889_ch01_001-012.indd 6
early motor cars, vintage clothing and the like. A
good thing, we felt, that this little four-year-old
learns about his ancestors. When the photo show
was over, Sean looked up slowly and thoughtfully
asked, “In the old days was everything in black and
white?” We roared with laughter. . . .Only later did
we think of the deeper implications. Consider:
• We usually assume that photographs tell us
the truth about their object. Sean did exactly
this, and we laughed.
• If a black and white photo was used as evi-
dence in a trial, we would say that it tells us
the truth. So, whether a photo tells the truth
seems to be a matter of social convention. To
further illustrate [how the truth of a photo de-
pends on social agreement, think about how
you react] when a friend shows you a photo of
yourself; the friend loves it, but you feel, “ugh,
that’s not how I look.”
You may want to stop the show at this moment
to tell me that Sean was just wrong in assuming that
the photo was true. “After all, the world is in color!”
But is it? Stroll in the forest at midnight, and what
colors do you see? Ask experimental psychologists
if the world is colored. They will tell us that our
experience of color results from light reflected on
the retina. For them, colored photos don’t tell the
truth about nature.
So, here we have an interesting premise: whether
a photo tells the truth about the world is a matter of
social agreement. If this seems reasonable, let’s take
another step: what about our verbal descriptions of
the world? After all, we use words to describe the
world just as we use photos? We even argue that
photos are more accurate than words in revealing
the truth. But can words tell us the truth regardless
of social agreement.
This is not a trivial matter. Isn’t the aim of science
to tell the truth about the world? Don’t jury trials
seek to determine guilt or innocence on the basis
of the facts? Don’t we trust certain newspapers to
tell us “what’s really going on?” We institutionalize
people because they are “out of touch with reality.” Is
05/06/17 06:51 PM
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 How odd, how strange and lonely poor Florian felt; he seemed to belong
to no one, and, like the Miller o' Dee, nobody cared for him; and ever and
anon his eyes rested on the mighty castled rock that towers above streets,
monuments, and gardens, with a wonderous history all its own, 'where
treasured lie the monarchy's last gems,' and with them the only ancient
crown in the British Isles. 'Brave kings and the fairest of crowned women
have slept and been cradled in that eyrie,' says an enthusiastic English
writer; 'heroes have fought upon its slopes; English armies have stormed it;
dukes, earls, and barons have been immured in its strong dungeons; a
sainted Queen prayed and yielded up her last breath there eight centuries
ago. It is an imperishable relic—a monument that needs no carving to tell
its tale, and it has the nation's worship; and the different church sects cling
round its base as if they would fight again for the guardianship of a
venerable mother..... And if Scotland has no longer a king and Parliament
all to herself, her imperial crown is at least safely kept up there amid strong
iron stanchions, as a sacred memorial of her inextinguishable independence,
and, if need were, for future use.'

Florian was a reader and a thinker, and he felt a keen interest in all that
now surrounded him; but Shafto lurked in a corner of the smoke-room,
turning in his mind the task of the morrow, and unwisely seeking to fortify
himself by imbibing more brandy and soda than Florian had ever seen him
take before.

After a sound night's rest and a substantial Scottish breakfast had fitted
Shafto, as he thought, for facing anything, a cab deposited him and Florian
(who was now beginning to marvel why he had travelled so far in a matter
that concerned him not, in reality) at the residence of Mr. Kenneth
Kippilaw, W.S., in Charlotte Square—a noble specimen of Adams Street
architecture, having four stately symmetrical corresponding façades,
overlooked by the dome of St. George's Church.

'Lawyers evidently thrive in Scotland,' said Shafto, as he looked at the

mansion of Mr. Kippilaw, and mentally recalled the modest establishment
of Lawyer Carlyon; 'but foxes will flourish as long as there are geese to be
plucked.'
 Mr. Kippilaw was at home—indeed he was just finishing breakfast,
before going to the Parliament House—as they were informed by the
liveried valet, who led them through a pillared and marble-floored
vestibule, and ushered them into what seemed a library, as the walls from
floor to ceiling were lined with handsome books; but every professional
man's private office has generally this aspect in Scotland.

In a few minutes Mr. Kippilaw appeared with a puzzled and perplexed

expression in his face, as he alternatively looked at his two visitors, and at
Shafto's card in his hand.

Mr. Kippilaw was now in his sixtieth year; his long since grizzled hair
had now become white, and had shrunk to two patches far apart, one over
each ear, and brushed stiffly up. His eyebrows were also white, shaggy, and
under them his keen eyes peered sharply through the rims of a gold pince-
nez balanced on the bridge of his long aquiline nose.

Shafto felt just then a strange and unpleasant dryness about his tongue
and lips.

'Mr. Shafto Melfort?' said Mr. Kippilaw inquiringly, and referring to the
card again. 'I was not aware that there was a Mr. Shafto Melfort—any
relation of Lord Fettercairn?'

'His grandson,' said Shafto unblushingly.

'This gentleman with the dark eyes?' asked Mr. Kippilaw, turning to the
silent Florian.

'No—myself,' said Shafto sharply and firmly.

'You are most unlike the family, who have always been remarkable for
regularity of features. Then you are the son—of—of—'

'The late Major Lennard Melfort who died a few weeks ago——'

'Good Heavens, where?'

 'On the west coast of Devonshire, near Revelstoke, where he had long
resided under the assumed name of MacIan.'

'That of his wife?'

'Precisely so—my mother.'

'And this young gentleman, whose face and features seem curiously
familiar to me, though I never saw him before, he is your brother of course.'

'No, my cousin, the son of my aunt Mrs. Gyle. I am an only son, but the
Major ever treated us as if he had been the father of both, so great and good
was his kindness of heart.'

'Be seated, please,' said the lawyer in a breathless voice, as he seated

himself in an ample leathern elbow chair at his writing-table, which was
covered with documents and letters all arranged by his junior clerk in the
most orderly manner.

'This is very sudden and most unexpected intelligence,' said he, carefully
wiping his glasses, and subjecting Shafto's visage to a closer scrutiny again.
'Have you known all these years past the real name and position of your
father, and that he left Kincardineshire more than twenty years ago after a
very grave quarrel with his parents at Craigengowan?'

'No—I only learned who he was, and who we really were, when he was
almost on his deathbed. He confided it to me alone, as his only son, and
because I had been bred to the law; and on that melancholy occasion he
entrusted me with this important packet addressed to you.'

With an expression of the deepest interest pervading his well-lined face,

Mr. Kippilaw took the packet and carefully examined the seal and the
superscription, penned in a shaky handwriting, with both of which he was
familiar enough, though he had seen neither for fully twenty years, and
finally he examined the envelope, which looked old and yellow.

'If all be true and correct, these tidings will make some stir at
Craigengowan,' he muttered as if to himself, and cut round the seal with a
penknife.

'You will find ample proofs, sir, of all I have alleged,' said Shafto, who
now felt that the crisis was at hand.

Mr. Kippilaw, with growing interest and wonder, drew forth the
documents and read and re-read them slowly and carefully, holding the
papers, but not offensively, between him and the light to see if the dates and
water-marks tallied.

'The slow way this old devil goes on would exasperate an oyster!'
thought Shafto, whose apparently perfect coolness and self-possession
rather surprised and repelled the lawyer.

There were the certificate of Lennard's marriage with Flora MacIan,

which Mr. Kippilaw could remember he had seen of old; the 'certificate of
entry of birth of their son, born at Revelstoke at 6 h. 50 m. on the 28th
October P.M., 18—,' signed by the Registrar, and the Major's farewell letter
to his old friend, entrusting his son and his son's interests to his care.

'But, hallo!' exclaimed Mr. Kippilaw, after he had read for the second
time, and saw that the letter of Lennard Melfort was undoubtedly authentic,
'how comes it that the whole of your Christian name is torn out of the birth
certificate, and the surname Melfort alone remains?'

'Torn out!' exclaimed Shafto, apparently startled in turn.

'There is a rough little hole in the document where the name should be.
Do you know the date of your birth?' asked Mr. Kippilaw, partly covering
the document with his hand, unconsciously as it were.

'Yes—28th October.'

'And the year?'

Shafto gave it from memory.

'Quite correct—as given here,' said Mr. Kippilaw; 'but you look old for
the date of this certificate.'
 'I always looked older than my years,' replied Shafto.

Florian, who might have claimed the date as that of his own birth, was—
luckily for Shafto—away at a window, gazing intently on a party of soldiers
marching past, with a piper playing before them.

'Another certificate can be got if necessary,' said Mr. Kippilaw, as he

glanced at the Registrar's signature, a suggestion which made Shafto's heart
quake. 'It must have come from the Major in this mutilated state,' he added,
re-examining with legal care and suspicion the address on the envelope and
the seal, which, as we have said, he had cut round; 'but it is strange that he
has made no mention of it being so in his letter to me. Poor fellow! he was
more of a soldier than a man of business, however. Allow me to
congratulate you, Mr. Melfort, on your new prospects. Rank and a very fine
estate are before you.'

He warmly shook the hand of Shafto, who began to be more reassured;

and saying, 'I must carefully preserve the documents for the inspection of
Lord Fettercairn,' he locked them fast in a drawer of his writing-table, and
spreading out his coat-tails before the fire, while warming his person in the
fashion peculiar to the genuine 'Britisher,' he eyed Shafto benignantly, and
made a few pleasant remarks on the Fettercairn family, the fertility and
beauty of Craigengowan, the stables, kennels, the shootings, and so forth,
and the many fine qualities of 'Leonard'—as he called him—and about
whom he asked innumerable questions, all of which Shafto could answer
truly and with a clear conscience enough, as he was master of all that.

The latter was asked 'what he thought of Edinburgh—if he had ever been
there before,' and so forth. Shafto remembered a little 'Guide Book' into
which he had certainly dipped, so as to be ready for anything, and spoke so
warmly of the picturesque beauties and historical associations of the
Modern Athens that the worthy lawyer's heart began to warm to so
intelligent a young man, while of the silent Florian, staring out into the sun-
lit square and its beautiful garden and statues, he took little notice, beyond
wondering where he had seen his eyes and features before!
 CHAPTER X.

ALONE IN THE WORLD.

'And you were bred to the law, you say, Mr. Melfort?' remarked the old
Writer to the Signet after a pause.

'Yes, in Lawyer Carlyon's office.'

'Very good—very good indeed; that is well! We generally think in

Scotland that a little knowledge of the law is useful, as it teaches the laird to
haud his ain; but I forgot that you are southland bred, and born too—the
more is the pity—and can't understand me.'

Shafto did not understand him, but thought that his time spent in Lawyer
Carlyon's office had not been thrown away now; experience there had 'put
him up to a trick or two.'

'I shall write to Craigengowan by the first post,' said Mr. Kippilaw after
another of those thoughtful pauses during which he attentively eyed his
visitor. 'Lord and Lady Fettercairn—like myself now creeping up the vale
of years—(Hope they may soon see the end of it! thought Shafto) will, I
have no doubt, be perfectly satisfied by the sequence and tenor of the
documents you have brought me that you are their grandson—the son of the
expatriated Lennard—and when I hear from them I shall let you know the
result without delay. You are putting up at—what hotel?'

'At the Duke of Rothesay, in Princes Street.'

'Ah! very well.'

'Thanks; I shall be very impatient to hear.'

'And your cousin—he will, of course, go with you to Craigengowan?'

 Shafto hesitated, and actually coloured, as Florian could detect.

'What are your intentions or views?' Mr. Kippilaw asked the latter.

'He failed to pass for the army,' said Shafto bluntly and glibly, 'so I don't
know what he means to do now. I believe that he scarcely knows himself.'

'Have you no friends on your mother's side, Mr. Florian?'

'None!' said Florian, with a sad inflection of voice.

'Indeed! and what do you mean to do?'

'Follow the drum, most probably,' replied Florian bitterly and a little
defiantly, as Shafto's coldness, amid his own great and good fortune, roused
his pride and galled his heart, which sank as he thought of Dulcie Carlyon,
sweet, golden-haired English Dulcie, so far away.

Mr. Kippilaw shook his bald head at the young man's answer.

'I have some little influence in many ways, and if I can assist your future
views you may command me, Mr. Florian,' said he with fatherly kindness,
for he had reared—yea and lost—more than one fine lad of his own.

It has been said that one must know mankind very well before having the
courage to be solely and simply oneself; thus, as Shafto's knowledge of
mankind was somewhat limited, he felt his eye quail more than once under
the steady gaze of Mr. Kippilaw.

'It is a very strange thing,' said the latter, 'that after the death of Mr.
Cosmo in Glentilt, when Lord and Lady Fettercairn were so anxious to
discover and recall his younger brother as the next and only heir to the title
and estates, we totally failed to trace him. We applied to the War Office for
the whereabouts of Major Lennard Melfort, but the authorities there, acting
upon a certain principle, declined to afford any information.
Advertisements, some plainly distinct, others somewhat enigmatical, were
often inserted in the Scotsman and Times, but without the least avail.

'As for the Scotsman,' said Shafto, 'the Major——'

 'Your father, you mean?'

'Yes,' said he, reddening, 'was no more likely to see such a provincial
print in Devonshire than the Roman Diritto or the Prussian Kreuz Zeitung;
and the Times, if he saw it—which I doubt—he must have ignored. Till the
time of his death drew near, his feelings were bitter, his hostility to his
family great.'

'I can well understand that, poor fellow!' said Mr. Kippilaw, glancing at
his watch, as he added—'You must excuse me till to-morrow: I am already
overdue at the Parliament House.'

He bowed his visitors out into the sun-lit square.

'You seem to have lost your tongue, Florian, and to have a disappointed
look,' said Shafto snappishly, as they walked slowly towards the hotel
together.

'Disappointed I am in one sense, perhaps, but I have no reason to repine

or complain save at our change of relative positions, but certainly not at
your unexpected good fortune, Shafto. It is only right and just that your
father's only son should inherit all that is legally and justly his.'

Even at these words Shafto never winced or wavered in plans or

purpose.

It was apparent, however, to Florian, that he had for some time past
looked restless and uneasy, that he started and grew pale at any unusual
sound, while a shadow rested on his not usually very open countenance.

Betimes next morning a note came to him at the Duke of Rothesay Hotel
from Mr. Kippilaw, requesting a visit as early as possible, and on this errand
he departed alone.

He found the old lawyer radiant, with a letter in his hand from Lord
Fettercairn (in answer to his own) expressive of astonishment and joy at the
sudden appearance of this hitherto unknown grandson, whom he was full of
ardour and anxiety to see.
 'You will lose no time in starting for Craigengowan,' said Mr. Kippilaw.
'You take the train at the Waverley Station and go viâ Burntisland,
Arbroath, and Marykirk—or stay, I think we shall proceed together, taking
your papers with us.'

'Thanks,' said Shafto, feeling somehow that the presence of Mr.

Kippilaw at the coming interview would take some of the responsibility off
his own shoulders.

'Craigengowan, your grandfather says, will put on its brightest smile to

welcome you.'

'Very kind of Craigengowan,' said Shafto, who felt but ill at ease in his
new role of adventurer, and unwisely adopted a free-and-easy audacity of
manner.

'A cheque on the Bank of Scotland for present emergencies,' said Mr.
Kippilaw, opening his cheque-book, 'and in two hours we shall meet at the
station.'

'Thanks again. How kind you are, my dear sir.'

'I would do much for your father's son, Mr. Shafto,' said the lawyer,
emphatically.

'And what about Florian?'

'The letter ignores him—a curious omission. In their joy, perhaps Lord
and Lady Fettercairn forgot. But, by the way, here is a letter for him that
came by the London mail.'

'A letter for him!' said Shafto, faintly, while his heart grew sick with
apprehension, he knew not of what.

'Mr. Florian's face is strangely familiar to me,' said Mr. Kippilaw aloud;
but to himself, 'Dear me, dear me, where can I have seen features like his
before? He reminds me curiously of Lennard Melfort.'

Shafto gave a nervous start.

 The letter was a bulky one, and bore the Wembury and other post-marks,
and to Shafto's infinite relief was addressed in the familiar handwriting of
Dulcie Carlyon.

He chuckled, and a great thought worthy of himself occurred to him.

In the solitude of his own room at the hotel, he moistened and opened
the gummed envelope, and drew forth four closely written sheets of paper
full of the outpourings of the girl's passionate heart, of her wrath at the theft
of her locket by Shafto, and mentioning that she had incidentally got the
address of Mr. Kippilaw from her father, and desiring him to write to her,
and she would watch for and intercept the postman by the sea-shore.

'Bosh,' muttered Shafto, as he tore up and cast into the fire Dulcie's
letter, all save a postscript, written on a separate scrap of paper, and which
ran thus:—

'You have all the love of my heart, Florian; but, as I feel and fear we may
never meet again, I send you this, which I have worn next my heart, to
keep.'

This was a tiny tuft of forget-me-nots.

'Three stamps on all this raggabash!' exclaimed Shafto, whom the girl's
terms of endearment to Florian filled with a tempest of jealous rage. He
rolled the locket he had wrenched from Dulcie's neck in soft paper, and
placed it with the postscript in the envelope, which he carefully closed and
re-gummed, placed near the fire, and the moment it was perfectly dry he
gave it to Florian.

If the latter was surprised to see a letter to himself, addressed in Dulcie's

large, clear, and pretty handwriting, to the care of 'Lawyer Kippilaw,' as she
called him, he was also struck dumb when he found in the envelope the
locket, the likeness, and the apparently curt farewell contained in one brief
sentence!

For a time he stood like one petrified. Could it all be real? Alas! there
was no doubting the postal marks and stamps upon this most fatal cover;
and while he was examining it and passing his hand wildly more than once
across his eyes and forehead, Shafto was smoking quietly at a window, and
to all appearance intent on watching the towering rock and batteries of the
Castle, bathed in morning sunshine—batteries whereon steel morions and
Scottish spears had often gleamed of old.

Though his soul shrank from doing so, Florian could not resist taking
Shafto into his confidence about this unexplainable event; and the latter
acted astonishment to the life!

Was the locket thus returned through the post in obedience to her father's
orders, after he had probably discovered the contents of it?

But Shafto demolished this hope by drawing his attention to the tenor of
the pithy scrap of paper, which precluded the idea that it had been done
under any other influence than her own change of mind.

'Poor Florian!' sneered Shafto, as he prepared to take his departure for

Craigengowan; 'now you had better proceed at once to cultivate the wear-
the-willow state of mind.'

Florian made no reply. His ideas of faith and truth and of true women
were suddenly and cruelly shattered now!

'She has killed all that was good in me, and the mischief of the future
will be at her door!' he exclaimed, in a low and husky voice.

'Oh, Florian, don't say that,' said Shafto, who actually did feel a little for
him; and just then, when they were on the eve of separation, even his false
and artful heart did feel a pang, with the sting of fear, at the career of
falsehood to which he had committed himself; but his ambition, innate
greed, selfishness, and pride urged him on that career steadily and without
an idea of flinching.

After Mr. Kippilaw's remarks concerning how the face of Florian

interested him, and actually that he bore a likeness to the dead Major—to
his own father, in fact—Shafto became more than desirous to be rid of him
in any way. He thought with dread of the discovery and fate of 'the
Claimant,' and of the fierce light thrown by the law on that gigantic
imposture; but genuine compunction he had none!

'Well,' he muttered, as he drove away from the hotel with his

portmanteau, 'I must keep up this game at all hazards now. I have stolen—
not only Florian's name—but his place, so let him paddle his own canoe!'

'I'll write you from Craigengowan,' were his parting words—a promise
which he never fulfilled. Shafto, who generally held their mutual purse
now, might have offered to supply the well-nigh penniless lad with money,
but he did not. He only longed to be rid of him—to hear of him no more. He
had a dread of his presence, of his society, of his very existence, and now
had but one hope, wish, and desire—that Florian Melfort should cross his
path never again. And now that he had achieved a separation between him
and Dulcie, he conceived that Florian would never again go near
Revelstoke, of which he—Shafto—had for many reasons a nervous dread!

Full of Dulcie and her apparently cruel desertion of him, which he

considered due to calm consideration of his change of fortune—or rather
total want of it—Florian felt numbly indifferent to the matter Shafto had in
hand and all about himself.

While very nearly moved to girlish tears at parting from one with whom
he had lived since infancy—with whom he had shared the same sleeping-
room, shared in the same sports and studies—with whom he had read the
same books to some extent, and had ever viewed as a brother—Florian was
rather surprised, even shocked, by the impatience of that kinsman, the only
one he had in all the wide world, to part from him and begone, and to see he
was calm and hard as flint or steel.

'Different natures have different ways of showing grief, I suppose,'

thought the simple Florian; 'or can it be that he still has a grudge at me
because of the false but winsome Dulcie? If affection for me is hidden in his
heart, it is hidden most skilfully.' No letter ever came from Craigengowan.
The pride of Florian was justly roused, and he resolved that he would not
take the initiative, and attempt to open a correspondence with one who
seemed to ignore him, and whose manner at departing he seemed to see
more clearly and vividly now.
 The fact soon became grimly apparent. He could not remain idling in
such a fashionable hotel as the Duke of Rothesay, so he settled his bill
there, and took his portmanteau in his hand, and issued into the streets—
into the world, in fact.

CHAPTER XI.

SHAFTO IN CLOVER.

About six months had elapsed since Shafto and Florian parted, as we
have described, at Edinburgh.

It was June now. The luxurious woods around Craigengowan were in all
their leafy beauty, and under their shadows the dun deer panted in the heat
as they made their lair among the feathery braken; the emerald green lawn
was mowed and rolled till it was smooth as a billiard-table and soft as three-
pile velvet.

The air was laden with the wafted fragrance of roses and innumerable
other flowers; and the picturesque old house, with its multitude of conical
turrets furnished with glittering vanes, its crow-stepped gables and massive
chimneys, stood boldly up against the deep blue sky of summer; and how
sweetly peaceful looked the pretty village, seen in middle distance, through
a foliated vista in the woodlands, with the white smoke ascending from its
humble hearths, the only thing that seemed to be stirring there; and how
beautiful were the colours some of its thatched roofs presented—greenest
moss, brown lichen, and stonecrop, now all a blaze of gold, while the
murmur of a rivulet (a tributary of the Esk), that gurgled under its tiny arch,
'the auld brig-stane' of Lennard's boyhood, would be heard at times, amid
the pleasant voices of some merrymakers on the lawn, amid the glorious
shrubberies, and belts of flowers below the stately terrace, that had long
since replaced the moat that encircled the old fortified mansion, from
whence its last Jacobite lord had ridden forth to fight and die for James
VIII., on the field of Sheriffmuir—King of Scotland, England, France, and
Ireland, as the unflinching Jacobites had it.

A gay and picturesquely dressed lawn-tennis party was busy tossing the
balls from side to side among several courts; but apart from all, and almost
conspicuously so—a young fellow, in a handsome light tennis suit of
coloured flannels, and a beautiful girl were carrying on a very palpable
flirtation.

The gentleman was Shafto, and his companion was Finella Melfort,
Cosmo's orphan daughter (an heiress through her mother), who had returned
a month before from a protracted visit in Tyburnia. They seemed to be on
excellent terms with each other, and doubtless the natural gaiety of the girl's
disposition, her vivacity of manner, and their supposed mutual relationship,
had opened the way to speedy familiarity.

She was a dark-haired and dark-eyed, but very white-skinned little

beauty, with a perfect mignonne face, a petite but round and compact figure,
gracefully formed, and very coquettish and spirituelle in all her ways.

She had received her peculiar Christian name at the special request of
her grandfather, that silly peer being desirous that her name might go down
in the peerage in connection with that of the famous Finella of Fettercairn.

'A winsome pair they would make,' was the smiling remark of Mr.
Kenneth Kippilaw, who was of the party (with three romping daughters
from Edinburgh), to Lord Fettercairn, who smirked a grim assent, as if it
was a matter of indifference to him, which it was not, as his legal adviser
very well knew; and my Lady Drumshoddy, who heard the remark,
bestowed upon him a bright and approving smile in return for a knowing
glance through the glasses of his gold pince-nez.

In Craigengowan the adventurous Shafto Gyle had found his veritable

Capua—he was literally 'in clover.' Yet he never heard himself addressed by
his assumed name without experiencing a strange sinking and fluttering of
the heart.
 The once-despised Lennard Melfort's sword, his commission, and his
hard-won medals earned in Central India and the Terai of Nepaul were now
looked upon as precious relics in his mother's luxurious boudoir at
Craigengowan, and reclaimed from the lumber-attic, his portrait, taken in
early life, was again hung in a place of honour in the dining-hall.

'What a fool my old uncle was to lose his claim on such a place as this,
and all for the face of a girl!' was the exclamation of Shafto to himself when
first he came to Craigengowan, and then he looked fearfully around him lest
the word uncle might have been overheard by some one; and he thought
—'If rascally the trick I have played my simple and love-stricken cousin—
and rascally it was and is—surely it was worth while to be the heir of this
place, Craigengowan. To reckon as mine in future all this grand panorama
of heath-clad hills, of green and golden fields, of purple muirland, and
stately woods of oak and pine where the deer rove in herds; as mine the
trout-streams that flow towards the Bervie; the cascades that roar down the
cliffs; the beautiful old house, with its stables, kennels, and terrace; its
cellars, pictures, plate, and jewellery, old china and vases of marble and
jasper, china and Japanese work; and I possess all that rank and wealth can
give!' and so thought this avaricious rascal, with a capacity for evil actions
far beyond his years.

To the fair inheritance he had come to steal he could not, however, add
as his the blue sky above it, or the waves of the German Sea, which the
North Esk flowed to join; but he was not without sense appreciative enough
to enjoy the fragrance of the teeming earth, of the pine forests where the
brown squirrels leaped from branch to branch, and on the mountain side the
perfume of the golden whin and gorse.

Appraising everything, these ideas were ever recurring to his mind, and
it was full of them now as he looked around him, and at times, like one in a
dream, heard the pretty babble of the high-bred, coquettish girl, who, to
amuse herself, made œillades at him; who called him so sweetly 'Cousin
Shafto,' and who, with her splendid fortune, he was now beginning to
include among the many goods and chattels which must one day accrue to
him.
 Lord and Lady Fettercairn were, of course, fully twenty years older than
when we saw them last, full of wrath and indignation at Lennard for his so-
called mésalliance. Both were cold in heart and self-absorbed in nature as
ever. The latter was determined to be a beauty still, though now upon the
confines of that decade 'when the cunning of cosmetics can no longer
dissemble the retribution of Time the avenger.' The former was bald now,
and the remains of his once sandy-coloured hair had become grizzled, and a
multitude of puckers were about his cold, grey eyes, while there was a
perceptible stoop in his whilom flat, square shoulders.

He was as full of family pride as ever, and the discovery of an

unexpected and authentic heir and grandson to his title, that had never been
won in the field or cabinet, but was simply the reward of bribery and
corruption, and for which not one patriotic act had been performed by four
generations, had given him intense satisfaction, and caused much blazing of
bonfires and consumption of alcohol about the country-side; and smiles that
were bright and genuine frequently wreathed the usually pale and immobile
face of Lady Fettercairn when they rested on Shafto.

We all know how the weak and easy adoption of a pretender by a titled
mother in a famous and most protracted case not many years ago caused the
most peculiar complications; thus Lady Fettercairn was more pardonable,
posted up as she was with documentary evidence, in accepting Shafto Gyle
as her grandson.

We have described her as being singularly, perhaps aristocratically, cold.

As a mother, she had never been given to kissing, caressing, or fondling her
two sons (as she did a succession of odious pugs and lap-dogs), but,
throwing their little hearts back upon themselves, left nurses and maids to
'do all that sort of tiresome thing.'

So Finella, though an heiress, came in for very little of it either, with all
her sweetness, beauty, and pretty winning ways, even from Lord
Fettercairn. In truth, the man who cared so little for his own country and her
local and vital interests was little likely to care much for any flesh and
blood that did not stand in his own boots.
 Lady Fettercairn heard from her 'grand-son' from time to time with—for
her—deep apparent sympathy, and much genuine aristocratic regret and
indignation, much of the obscure story of his boyhood and past life, at least
so much as he chose to tell her; and she bitterly resented that Lennard
Melfort should have sought to put the 'nephew of that woman, Flora
MacIan,' into the army, while placing 'his own son' Shafto into the office of
a miserable village lawyer, and so forth—and so forth!

Fortunate it was, she thought, that all this happened in an obscure village
in Devonshire, and far away from Craigengowan and all its aristocratic
surroundings.

She also thought it strange that Shafto—('Whence came that name?' she
would mutter angrily)—should be so unlike her dark and handsome
Lennard. His eyebrows were fair and heavy; his eyes were a pale, watery
grey; his lips were thin, his neck thick, and his hair somewhat sandy in hue.
Thus, she thought, he was not unlike what her husband, the present Lord
Fettercairn, must have been at the same age.

As for the Peer himself, he was only too thankful that an heir had turned
up for his ill-gotten coronet, and that now—so far as one life was concerned
—Sir Bernard Burke would not rate it among the dormant and attainted
titles—those of the best and bravest men that Scotland ever knew.

As for their mutual scheme concerning Shafto and their granddaughter

Finella, with her beauty and many attractive parts, the former was craftily
most desirous of furthering it, knowing well that, happen what might in the
future, she was an heiress; that marriage with her would give him a firm
hold on the Fettercairn family, though the money of her mother was wisely
settled on the young lady herself.

Indeed, Finella had not been many weeks home from London, at
Craigengowan, before Lady Fettercairn opened the trenches, and spoke
pretty plainly to him on the subject.

Waving her large fan slowly to and fro, and eyeing Shafto closely over
the top of it, she said:
 'I hope, my dearest boy, that you will find your cousin Finella—the
daughter of my dead darling Cosmo—a lovable kind of girl. But even were
she not so—and all say she is—you must not feel a prejudice against her,
because—because——'

'What, grandmother?'

'Because it is our warmest desire that you may marry her.'

'Why, haven't I money enough?' asked Shafto, with one of his

dissembling smiles.

'Of course, as the heir of Fettercairn; but one is always the better to have
more, and you must not feel——'

'What?' asked Shafto, with affected impatience.

'Please not to interrupt me thus. I mean that you must not be prejudiced
against her as an expected parti.'

'Why should I?'

'One hears and reads so much of such things.'

'In novels, I suppose; but as she is so pretty and eligible, why the dickens
——'

'Shafto!'

'What now?' he asked, with some irritability, as she often took him to
task for his solecisms.

'Dickens is not a phrase to use. Exclamations that were suited to the

atmosphere of Mr. Carlyon's office in Devonshire will not do in
Craigengowan!'

'Well—she won't look at me with your eyes, grandmother.'

'How—her eyes——'
 'They will never seem so bright and beautiful.'

'Oh, you flattering pet!' exclaimed my Lady Fettercairn, with a smile and
pleased flush on her old wrinkled face, for her 'pet' had soon discovered that
she was far from insensible to adulation.

Shafto certainly availed himself of the opportunities afforded by

'cousinship,' propinquity, and residence together in a country house, and
sought to gain a place in the good graces or heart of Finella; but with all his
cunning and earnest wishes in the matter—apart from the wonderful beauty
of the girl—he feared that he made no more progress with her than he had
done with Dulcie Carlyon.

She talked, played, danced, and even romped with him; they rambled
and read together, and were as much companions as any two lovers would
be; but he felt nearly certain that though she flirted with him, because it was
partly her habit to appear to do so with most men, whenever he attempted to
become tender she openly laughed at him or changed the subject skilfully;
and also that if he essayed to touch or take her hand it was very deliberately
withdrawn from his reach, and never did she make him more sensible of all
this than when he contrived to draw her aside to the terrace on the afternoon
of the lawn-tennis party.

She had long ere this been made perfectly aware that love and marriage
were objects of all his attention, yet she amused herself with him by her
coquettish œillades and waggish speeches.

'Finella,' said he, in a low and hesitating voice, as he stooped over her, 'I
hope that with all your flouting, and pretty, flippant mode of treating me,
you will see your way to carry out the fondest desire of my heart and that of
our grandparents.'

'Such a fearfully elaborate speech! And the object to which I am to see

my way is to marry you, cousin Shafto?'

'Yes,' said he, bending nearer to her half-averted ear.

'Thanks very much, dear Shafto; but I couldn't think of such a thing.'
 'Why? Am I so distasteful to you?'

'Not at all; but for cogent reasons of my own.'

'And these are?'

'Firstly, people should marry to please themselves, not others. Grandpapa

and grandmamma did, and so shall I; and I am quite independent enough to
do as I please and choose.'

'In short, you will not or cannot love me?'

'I have not said so, you tiresome Shafto!' said she, looking upward at him
with one of her sweetest and most bewitching smiles.

'Then I have some hope, dear Finella?'

'I have not said that either.'

'You may yet love me, then?'

'No; not as you wish it.'

'But why?'

'You have no right to ask me.'

His fair beetling eyebrows knit, and a gleam came into his cold, grey
eyes as he asked, after a pause:

'Is there anyone else you prefer?'

'You have no right to inquire,' replied she, and a keener observer might
have detected that his question brought a tiny blush to her cheek and a fond
smile to her curved lips; 'so please to let this matter drop, once and for ever,
dear Shafto, and we can be such delightful friends—such jolly cousins.'

And so ended one of many such conversations on this topic—

conversations that developed indifference, if not quite aversion, on the part