Performing Social Distancing: Culture, Scripts, and Meaningful Order in the Italian Lockdown

Cossu, Andrea

doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2022.101684

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…35-75) called "breaching experiments"-artificial interruptions in the scripted performance that may annoy or confuse the participants and alter their perception of what constitutes their "reality." A massive breaching experiment of that kind took place during the 2020/1 pandemic (Collins, 2020;Cossu, 2022), when epidemiologists and governments forbade the traditional handshake (Oxlund, 2020) and many persons replaced it with "elbow bumps." This makeshift ritual revealed a pervasive feeling that a proper greeting ritual should somehow entail a physical touch between the two participants.…”

Section: Conventionality Rituals and Meaningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conventional rituals are so embedded in the social flow of everyday life that revealing their ritual superfluousness might necessitate what Garfinkel (1967, pp. 35–75) called “breaching experiments”—artificial interruptions in the scripted performance that may annoy or confuse the participants and alter their perception of what constitutes their “reality.” A massive breaching experiment of that kind took place during the 2020/1 pandemic (Collins, 2020; Cossu, 2022), when epidemiologists and governments forbade the traditional handshake (Oxlund, 2020) and many persons replaced it with “elbow bumps.” This makeshift ritual revealed a pervasive feeling that a proper greeting ritual should somehow entail a physical touch between the two participants. Another example of a breaching experiment regarding the handshake comes up occasionally when observant Muslims and Jews avoid giving a hand to persons of the opposite sex.…”

Section: Conventionality Rituals and Meaningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

Shoham

2023

American Behavioral Scientist

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Can conventional rituals be meaningful? When and how can conventionality be part of processes of meaning-making rather than a mere obstacle that the cultural analyst must overcome? The article traces the meanings of minor rituals that populate the world of modern industrial societies and seem to have universal appeal. The article applies a Blochian regressive method to ethnological history in order to re-create the gradual process in which conventions appear, are disseminated, popularized, turned into group icons, and ritualized, and only then—and only sometimes—acquire discursive meanings that are often contested. This sequential model reveals the power of conventionality—the lack of contemplation about social conventions—in the processes of popularizing, ritualizing, and iconizing conventional acts. In the terms of Alexander’s meaning-centered performance theory, this conventionality exemplifies a “perfect” or “effortless” fusion of performers and audience. The article thus argues that the meanings of conventional rituals—and perhaps also of conventional performances of more “sacred” rituals—often lie not in symbolic significance or semiotic thickness, but in deep conventionality: meaningfulness encoded in the convention itself.

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Section: Conventionality Rituals and Meaningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conventionality Rituals and Meaningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

Shoham

2023

American Behavioral Scientist

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“…In our case, the emotional scripts that the members of the crime organization choose to follow construct a specific relationship between basic symbolic elements of gift‐giving, and the concrete social situations that they live through. The alignment of scripts to situations depends on actors' understanding of what, within a script, can be best adjusted to a scene, as well as his or her selection and performance (Cossu 2022).…”

Section: The Constitutive Role Of Gift and Favor Exchange In Criminal...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can't Buy Me Love: Gift‐Giving Among Members of Criminal Organizations

Bar‐Lev,

Morag

2023

Symbolic Interaction

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This paper problematizes gift relations in criminal organizations. It adopts a symbolic interaction perspective to focus scholarly attention on the way in which actants skillfully maneuver within the social expectations inherent in gift‐giving relations. The study is based on insights from twenty interviews with ex‐convicts and ten interviews with police officers or associates, and an in‐depth analysis of memoirs, police reports, and newspaper articles. Our study expands the scope of symbolic interactionism by considering how the exchange of gifts and favors is emotionally stylized to achieve both social and operative goals. We aim to carefully deconstruct the performance of gift‐giving and favor exchange in Israeli crime organizations, to understand how it is orchestrated to elicit genuine feelings among givers and recipients, as well as to control the use of violence. Finally, we identify gift‐giving as a double‐edged sword designed to lure recruits into a network of binding obligations, only to form a durable system of credit and debt wherein any transgressions are strictly punished.

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Convivial Quarantines: Cultivating Co-presence at a Distance

2022

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Sociology’s focus on sociality and co-presence has long oriented studies of commensality—the social dimension of eating together. This literature commonly prioritizes face-to-face interactions and takes physical proximity for granted. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 largely halted in-person gatherings and altered everyday foodways. Consequently, many people turned to digital commensality , cooking and eating together through video-call technology such as Zoom and FaceTime. We explore the implications of these new foodways and ask: has digital commensality helped cultivate co-presence amidst pandemic-induced physical separation? If so, how? To address these questions, we analyze two forms of qualitative data collected by the first author: interviews with individuals who cooked and ate together at a distance since March 2020 and digital ethnography during different groups’ online food events (e.g., happy hours, dinners, holiday gatherings, and birthday celebrations). Digital commensality helps foster a sense of co-presence and social connectedness at a distance. Specifically, participants use three temporally oriented strategies to create or maintain co-presence: they draw on pre-pandemic pasts and reinvent culinary traditions to meet new circumstances; they creatively adapt novel digital foodways through online dining; and they actively imagine post-pandemic futures where physically proximate commensality is again possible.

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Performing Social Distancing: Culture, Scripts, and Meaningful Order in the Italian Lockdown

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

Can't Buy Me Love: Gift‐Giving Among Members of Criminal Organizations

Convivial Quarantines: Cultivating Co-presence at a Distance

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