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David R. Maines was a founder of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, a fierce defender and practitioner of interactionist sociology, and cross-disciplinary pioneer, bridging sociology and communication research in the study of narrative. He invariably gathered collaborative circles of colleagues and students around him wherever his intellectual travels took him. Here, I recall the collaborative circle that formed with him at its center at Penn State in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was a time of both personal and professional turmoil for David, and also prolific scholarly achievement. I then introduce other contributions to this volume that feature others' remembrances and appreciations of David's life and work.

The passing of David Maines has left a void in the field of Symbolic Interactionism. His contributions to developing narrative sociology remain part of the foundation of the perspective, but his empirical contributions and theoretical insights were at least as important in advancing Interactionist thought on scientific principles. His teaching and mentoring of others stimulated interest in Interactionism and his career-long dedication to helping others as an Interactionist apostle were factors in encouraging students and peers to launch their own successful careers in academia and elsewhere. My intent here is to trace his career and provide examples of how his legacy both influenced the profession and provided the basis for defining Interactionism as the powerful approach it has become today.

Scandals regularly sweep through organizational fields: they wreak havoc in markets, vaporize billions of dollars in firm value, bring down giant corporations, get CEOs fired, alter the evolution of technologies, and trigger major changes in society. In spite of their significance for organizational life, scandals have received remarkably limited attention in management research. I build on the social sciences’ sparse but growing stream of research on scandals to explore the concept beyond its usual representation as a discrete event. I propose that an organizational scandal may be understood as an interactional process associated with the disclosure of alleged organizational misconduct that involves: a public struggle between alleged perpetrators and social control agents over the framing of organizational misconduct; moralizing by audience members; collective effervescence at the societal level; and the potential rewriting of the moral rules applicable to organizations and their members.

David Maines established himself as one of the premier symbolic interactionists who did not attach himself to any particular interactionist school of thought. In creating an extensive and intensive legacy via his publications, Maines looked into issues that other interactionists, bound to particular schools of thought, either took for granted or neglected to examine. In so doing, Maines resembled Simmel's Stranger not only as one who fits into a community but also as one who remains distant from the community. One of the key areas of investigation that defined Maines' work and that separated him from other interactionists pertained to his interest in social structure and specifically, how people become structurally situated as social-structural interactors. This chapter examines, in detail, Maines' interest in getting structurally situated and uses a television series, Dopesick, to discuss the relationships between institutional actors as a way to substantiate Maines' theoretical interest in social structure and the activities involved in the process of getting structurally situated.

This chapter honors the opportunity I have had to learn with David Maines over the past 35 years. I connect my research on communication and disability, specifically among individuals who are blind and visually impaired, to Maines' discussion of narratives incorporating Rawlins' exploration of similarity and difference. I discuss narratives of disability as difference using three examples: A short story written by H. G. Wells; the American with Disabilities Act; and interviews conducted with elite blind goalball athletes. I conclude with 10 lessons learned about disability and difference including that the goal of my research is to help us all perceive disability as a difference that matters, but not as a difference that disables.