Lifting the Mantle of Protection from Weber’s Presuppositions in His Theory of Bureaucracy

Early reactions to the publication of Harold Garfinkel??s Studies in Ethnomethodology, which have persisted over the passing decades, was that ethnomethodology could not address what sociology deemed to be socially significant matters such as ??power?? and ??the state??. This, however, is not the case. How such matters enter into the practical everyday affairs of members is of equal interest to ethnomethodology when compared to how any matter enters into members?? everyday life, and how they display that. It just does not have more importance. Egon Bittner spelt this out with regard to Weber??s interest in bureaucracy when he reminds sociology that when Weber talked about efficiency he was not referring to an objective standard but as something that is attuned to practical interests as they emerge in the context of everyday life. This paper examines some of the actions and interactions that were encountered in a Governmental Department in one of the European countries. It makes visible how characterisations of bureaucracy such as ??rational??, and ??efficient?? are achieved in the actions and interactions of Department employees, and some of the practices involved in that achievement. Garfinkel, and ethnomethodology in general, are not, in principle, to be found wanting where matters of overarching, primordial interest to sociology are concerned.     

Book briefly noted

Introducing Applied Ethics Edited by Brenda Almond, Blackwell, 1995. Pp. 375. ISBN 0–631–19389–8. £45.00 (hbk), £14.99 (pbk).

Environmental Ethics Edited by Robert Elliot, Oxford University Press, 1995. Pp. 255. ISBN 9–19–875144–3. £9.95 (pbk)

Medicine and Moral Reasoning Edited by K.W.M. Fulford, Grant Gillett and Janet Martin Soskice Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 207. ISBN 0–521–45325–9 £37.50 (hbk), £12.95 (pbk).

Enlightenment and Religion. Rational Dissent in Eighteenth‐century Britain Edited by Knud Haakonssen, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xii + 348. ISBN 0–521–56060–8. £40.00.

Dialettica, Arte e Società: Saggio su Theodor W. Adorno By Giacomo Rinaldi, Quattroventi, Urbino, 1994. Pp. 205. L. 30,000.

Relevance: Communication and Cognition, new revised edition, By Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Blackwell, 1995. Pp. 326. ISBN 0–631–19878–4. £15.99.

Autobiographical Reflections By Eric Voegelin (Edited, with Introduction, by Ellis Sandoz), Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Pp. 131. ISBN 0807120766 $10.95.     

Theorizing Language and Discourse for the Interactional Study of Identities

The following commentary critically reflects on the pragmatic and semiotic approach to language and identity articulated by Tapia, Rojas, and Picado (Culture & Psychology, Tapia et al. 2017). The following questions are central: 1) What theoretical position is (tacitly) being articulated regarding the nature of language and discourse? Although the authors admit that an explicit theorization of language and discourse is not their focus, the absence of a clear theoretical position is conspicuously problematic. And 2) is there an unintended cognitivism present in the way the authors formulate the relationship between language/discourse and identity? After discussing these questions, select parts of a radical interactional approach, grounded in discursive positioning, will be presented as an amendment to the present work, insofar as it attempts to both articulate a progressive theorization of language and discourse and avoid an unintended slide into cognitivism.     

Employee personality, justice perceptions, and the prediction of workplace deviance

We examined the relative and incremental prediction of workplace deviance (i.e., intentional acts that harm the organization or its employees) offered by personality and organizational justice perceptions in a sample of 464 employees working in a large retail organization. We found that personality - including a sixth factor called Honesty-Humility, and its facet of trait Fairness - accounted for incremental variance in deviance criteria beyond justice perceptions. We found little support for the reverse. From a practical standpoint, these findings suggest that organizations may benefit from personality-related interventions (e.g., screening job applicants for relevant traits) more so than from justice-related interventions (e.g., organizational changes involving policies and procedures) in order to reduce workplace deviance. From a research perspective, our findings highlight the advantages of considering traits beyond the Big Five (e.g., Honesty-Humility) for maximizing the prediction and understanding of deviant behaviors at work.     

A step at a time: Preliterate children’s simulation of narrative movement during story comprehension

A growing body of work suggests that narrative comprehension involves the simulation of the described events and actions (e.g., Barsalou, 2008, Matlock, 2004). Preliterate children’s ability to simulate a narrative character’s movements is explored here in three studies. Children’s simulations of a character’s movements were found to be constrained by their expectation of the duration of the described activities (i.e., walking vs. driving) and by their expectations about the motivating influence of certain psychological factors (i.e., character being eager or not eager to get to a location). These findings reveal an ability among preliterate children to create impressively rich and dynamic mental representations of narrative events and address, with a novel methodology, an identified need for greater exploration of precursors to narrative comprehension.     

Caught in the act: How extraverted and introverted friends communally cope with being recorded

This study explored how close friends who were similar or opposite on extraversion communally coped with being put on the spot to produce a recorded conversation. Participants were 50 pairs of same-sex college-age friends (54% female) who explicitly discussed the fact that their conversation was being recorded. The initial ‘on-stage’ episode emerged consistently earliest for extraverted dyads, and the majority of their episodes quickly diverted the on-stage moment. Dyads that included at least one introvert engaged in more extensive assortments of on-stage maneuvers, including research talk, soothing, and joking. In introvert–extravert dyads the extravert usually initiated and ended these episodes. Implications are discussed for understanding how personality is reciprocally implicated in managing shared everyday problems.     

Retention of massed vs distributed response-prevention treatments in rats and a revised training procedure.

Two experiments were conducted to estimate the retention of response-prevention effects using massed vs distributed treatments in a model of animal avoidance-learning. In Exp. I, 120 rats were trained to avoid shock in a one-way platform avoidance apparatus. Groups received response-prevention treatment or nontreatment in a 36-min. massed session or in several sessions distributed over a four-day period. In Exp. II, 160 rats were given two trials of escape training in a one-way shuttle box. Groups received response-prevention treatment or nontreatment in a 24-min. session of massed or distributed treatments delivered in one day. Subjects in both studies were tested using a passive-avoidance paradigm immediately following treatment, 24 hours later, and 30 days later. Analysis showed that response-prevention treatments were effective in reducing avoidance behavior and there were no significant differences in retention of avoidance associated with massed vs distributed response-prevention treatments. Implications for animals and humans are discussed, and researchers are encouraged to change from a criterion training procedure to an escape procedure since the latter is a closer analogue to the human condition.