On the Pragmatics and Problematics of Defining Beauty and Character: The Greek Poet Lucian (120-200) Engages Exacting Portraitures and Difficult Subjects

Although best known as a satirist of the classical Roman era, Lucian's (c120-200CE) Essays in Portraiture and Essays in Portraiture Defended provide considerable insight into the problematics of people knowing and defining objects (along with the consequential and related matter of people sharing their definitions of reality with others). Engaging notions of admiration, beauty, and character in these two statements, Lucian not only faces the task of establishing viable frames of reference for linguistically defining the essence of a woman deemed to be particularly beautiful and gracious but also assumes the challenge of defending one’s preferred definitions of particular subject matters from others who do not share these views. Whereas Lucian uses the works of prominent sculptors, painters, poets, and philosophers as reference points in articulating beauty and grace, this paper also acknowledges the perils of people who sincerely express their viewpoints on others even when these descriptions of others are cast in clearly positive terms. Lucian may be a lesser-known classical Greek (Syrian) author, but he is an astute observer of human endeavor. Lucian’s work on portraiture also has a striking cross-cultural and transhistorical relevance for a more enduring pragmatist emphasis on human knowing and acting. Not only is Lucian (a) explicitly attentive to the necessity of people establishing frames of reference for describing objects to others in meaningful terms, but he also overtly recognizes (b) the multiple viewpoints that people may invoke with respect to describing particular objects, (c) the resistances that people may encounter from others, and (d) the importance of speakers articulating the foundations for their claims amidst contested notions of reality. Approached from an interactionist perspective (Mead 1934; Blumer 1969; Strauss 1993; Prus 1996, 1997, 1999), wherein attention is given to the more general matters of people acquiring perspectives, defining objects, and sustaining particular notions of reality, this paper uses Lucian’s materials on portraiture as a cross-cultural and transhistorical resource both for assessing (and qualifying) existing interactionist conceptualizations of human group life and for suggesting some more particular areas of inquiry to which contemporary scholars may attend.

Why do hotel interns stay in the hospitality and tourism industry? An interactionist perspective of organizational socialization

Purpose Promoting interns’ organizational socialization has become an urgent concern for the hotel industry. Building on career construction theory, this study aims to use a time-lagged design to investigate the interrelationships among perceived organizational support (POS), psychological capital and organizational socialization and their consequent effects on interns’ intention to stay in the hotel industry. Design/methodology/approach Panel data were obtained in three waves from hotel interns from 21 upscale hotels located in 13 cities in China with a time lag of 10 weeks (N = 369). The structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. Findings POS has a significantly positive effect on interns' psychological capital. Additionally, both POS and psychological capital contribute to the intention to stay in the hotel industry through the mediation of organizational socialization. Practical implications Hotels should communicate with interns more explicitly, provide assistance programs to alleviate uncertainty and reward interns on their excellent service performance to improve POS. Moreover, setting up psychological capital programs and empowering interns to be involved in task development is beneficial for enhancing psychological capital. Hotels should also consider mentoring as a socialization approach. Further, career planning and counseling programs should be provided for interns’ long-term hospitality career development. Originality/value A time-lagged research method is adopted to provide a new approach to improve interns’ intention to stay in the hotel industry from the interactionist perspective. This study enriches research about psychological capital, POS and organizational socialization.

The Appearance of Nothingness

Unexceptional by definition, the natural appearance of everyday life is not a matter of conscious awareness, let alone deliberate calculation, but an uneventful background against which, ordinarily, nothing special seems to happen. This feeling that nothing is going on, however, may be intentionally elicited (i.e., preserved) and used for instrumental purposes, through strategic actions that dissemble themselves to better affect their target. In this view, this chapter elaborates the concept of concealed strategic actions (CSA), actions that are not experienced as such by the observer and are designed to be so. Somewhat oversuspicious, this idea can be traced back to the work of Goffman on fabrications, normal appearances, and the difference between expressed versus transmitted information. CSA’s current relevance, more practically speaking, is shown by the extensive use in policy making of default options, which are interpreted here as a consequential form of interventions that do not feel as interventions at all. Though CSAs can backfire and are, indeed, inherently obsolescent, their ambition to deploy a reactance-proof strategy seems intriguing from an interactionist perspective, highlighting the nexus among intentions, actions, and reactions—something to eagerly inspect for an expansive symbolic interactionism.

“I STARTED THE DAY JUST CRYING FOR 2 HOURS STRAIGHT.” ECHO-LOCATING THE VULNERABLE SELF ON INSTAGRAM.

Building on previous online-ethnographic fieldwork on the #strokesurvivor-community on Instagram, this contribution dives deeper into practices of echo-locating (Markham 2020) the vulnerable self on Instagram. This paper aims to reconstruct practices of adapting to a new body, identity and self through communicating on Instagram from a symbolic-interactionist perspective. I build on Goffman’s concept of stigma, Charmaz’ studies on adapting to illness and impairment and use the lens of Markham’s (2020) concept of echo-locating the self through online connection, Based on close readings and interpretations of postings, including pictures, captions and comments, as well as interviews with active community members, two critical antipodes of sense- and self-making in the #strokesurvivor-community emerged: First, mourning the loss of the familiar body, self, and identity and related identity goals. Users seek permission to mourn and also validation for their grief through their postings and comments. Second, and probably oppositional, perseverance, or in its extreme form, toxic positivity - this concept refers to a (more or less forced) attitude of optimism while ignoring valid reasons to actually not be positive, a mindset that seems to be embedded in a “contemporary cult of happiness” (Wright 2014) and cruel optimism (Berlant 2010). In the #strokesurvivor-community, a positive mindset and belief in the possibility of regaining physical and mental functions is a recurring theme and strong imperative. The contribution focuses on the reconstruction of patterns and practices of mourning and perseverance and their relevance to the echo-location of the vulnerable self.

Social Organization, Macro Phenomena, and Symbolic Interactionism

This chapter analyzes the study of social organization within the interactionist perspective as a historically conditioned pursuit as well as a conditioning influence on the interactionist analysis of macro phenomena. The argument demonstrates that while the development of the social-organization concept helped to focus scholarly attention on the interactionist analysis of macro phenomena, the explicitly interactionist study of social organization and macro phenomena in contemporary sociology is suffering from a lack of attention—despite it having been a significant part of the interactionist toolkit from the earliest expressions of the perspective. The chapter identifies a number of the interactionist analyses of macro phenomena, and the chapter concludes with a set of directions for future development and reinvigorating of the interactionist analyses of social organization and macro phenomena.

Intelligente Persönliche Assistenten (IPA) mit Voice User Interfaces (VUI) als ‚Beteiligte‘ in häuslicher Alltags­interaktion. Welchen Aufschluss geben die Protokolldaten der Assistenzsysteme?

The paper presents research results emerging from the analysis of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPA) log data. Based on the assump­tion that media and data, as part of practice, are produced and used cooperatively, the paper discusses how IPA log data can be used to analyze (1) how the IPA systems operate through their connection to platforms and infrastructures, (2) how the dialog systems are de­signed today and (3) how users integrate them into their everyday social interaction. It also asks in which everyday practical contexts the IPA are placed on the system side and on the user side, and how privacy issues in particular are negotiated. It is argued that, in order to be able to investigate these questions, the technical-institutional and the cultural-theoretical perspective on media, which is common in German media linguistics, has to be complemented by a more fun­damental, i.e. social-theoretical and interactionist perspective.

Disasters

The chapter’s objective is to summarize various theoretical and substantive contributions that researchers working in the tradition of Symbolic Interactionism have brought to disaster studies. We begin by discussing the advantages of conceptualizing disasters from a social constructionist perspective in public and political discourse. Next, we continue our review by turning to constructionist and interactionist thinking (or lack thereof) with regard to disaster perception at the micro level. In a third step, we consider the importance of examining culture, a traditional stronghold of interpretive social research, when studying disasters. Lastly, we conclude our review by assessing constructionist framings of vulnerability and resilience, two current key concepts in the field of disaster studies. Overall, we strive to show that the symbolic-interactionist perspective can help disaster scholars formulate and answer important research questions, as well as solve problems in the real world.

Understanding employees' innovative work behavior through interactionist perspective: the effects of working style, supportive noncontrolling supervision and job complexity

PurposeThis study extends the actor–context interactionist model of individual innovation from the traditional synergetic pattern to a complementary one. The complementary perspective emphasizes the need for integration of divergence and convergence in enhancing employee's innovative work behavior. This study examines how individual working style relates to innovative work behavior through supportive noncontrolling supervision and job complexity.Design/methodology/approachThe study used a time-lagged research design, collecting data through surveys from 262 employees and their immediate supervisors working in telecommunication companies of Saudi Arabia.FindingsThis study found that (1) employee with an intuitively inclined working style (e.g. a divergent predictor) engages in higher levels of innovative work behavior when supportive noncontrolling supervision or job complexity (e.g. convergent factors) is higher; and (2) the positive interactive effect of intuitive working style and supportive noncontrolling supervision on employee's innovative work behavior is stronger when job complexity is higher rather than lower.Originality/valueThis study provides deeper understanding of the interactionist perspective of employees' innovative work behavior. This study is the first of its kind to integrate complementary and synergistic perspectives of actor–context interactionist model of employees' innovative work behavior.