Between Situations: Anticipation, Rhythms, and the Theory of Interaction

Abstract

This article pushes interactionist sociology forward. It does so by drawing out the implications of a simple idea, that to understand the situation—the mise en scene of interactionist theory—we must understand it in relation not only to past-induced habits of thought and action but to future situations anticipated in interaction. Focusing especially on the rhythmic nature of situations, the paper then argues that such a recalibration both unsettles core tenets of interactionism and helps solve some problems in the sociology of culture. As an illustration, it focuses on two such puzzles—the place of disruption in interaction and the relationship between the notion of “boundaries” and of “distinctions” in the sociology of culture.

Cognition in Situations

“…Further developments in recent interactionist theorizing has considered how actors' orientation to the(ir) past and future shapes their activities in ongoing social interactions (Tavory 2018; Wiley 1994). Tavory and Eliasoph (2013) consider how anticipations toward the future shape behavior in the present.…”

“…While temporal landscapes can be considered part of public culture, Tavory and Eliasoph (2013) introduce the concepts of protention and trajectories to unpack how projections of anticipated futures shape behavior oriented toward short‐term expectations, in the case of protentions, and long‐term expectations, in the case of trajectories. Picking up on the relevance of the ability to anticipate the future in the present, Tavory (2016, 2018) theorizes the rhythmic quality of social life. As Mead has illustrated (1959), we learn to align our expectations for the present and the future from the past (Maines, Sugrue, and Katovich 1983).…”

“…In the former case, the individual's home and work life are both shaped by daily rhythms associated with child‐rearing whereas in the case of the stand‐up comedian the situations are shaped by contrasting rhythms: the demands of child‐rearing (regular routines and early mornings) as well as the demands of working as an aspiring entertainer (irregular routines and late nights) are in stark contrast (cf. Danna‐Lynch 2007; Tavory 2018:123).…”

“…In this essay, I draw on the sociological epistemology espoused by Herbert Blumer (1969) in Symbolic Interactionism , Mead's (1938, 1959) conception of how the past and the future shape the present, as well as recent contributions to microsociological theory (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003; Fine and Tavory 2019; Tavory 2018; Tavory and Eliasoph 2013) in order to propose strategies for operationalizing dual process models of cognition in situational contexts. I advance resonance and iterative reprocessing as indicators sociologists have to this end.…”

Interactionism in the Twenty‐First Century: A Letter on Being‐in‐a‐Meaningful‐World

“…Thinking about the affordances of temporality—both in terms of obduracy and of potentiality—causes us to re‐evaluate how we see that interaction unfolds. The emphasis on the significance of webs of situations is one of the contributions of Iddo's (Tavory , ) theoretical agenda, along with the notion of “thinking between situations.” He argues that it is limiting to think only of the importance of “the situation” (a traditional interactionist trope), but rather we require a “relational” analysis of situations.…”