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Book part
Publication date: 16 October 2013

Michael A. Katovich

In this chapter I attempt to merge Athens’ conception of domination as a complex interactionist concept with Goffman’s notion of demeanor and deference as lynchpins of…

Abstract

In this chapter I attempt to merge Athens’ conception of domination as a complex interactionist concept with Goffman’s notion of demeanor and deference as lynchpins of dramaturgical analysis. I ground the merger in an analysis of metaphorical duel between a superordinate and subordinate in the TV show Mad Men. The examination of this metaphorical dual also implies a connection between a radical interactionism as defined by Athens and a radical dramaturgy informed by Athens’ conception of domination. In particular, I propose an examination of civil domination within institutionalized settings in which use of shared pasts and concomitant acts of demeanor and deference enhance the construction of domination between superordinates and subordinates. The fictional representation of a metaphorical duel in the television show Mad Men depicts a struggle for control in which the superordinate demands that a willful subordinate sign a contract which will bind the subordinate to a particular place for an extended period of time. The examination of events leading to signing reveals a complex weave of social acts that combines the force of domination with the artistry of demeanor and deference.

Details

Radical Interactionism on the Rise
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-785-6

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Book part
Publication date: 30 April 2024

Michael A. Katovich and Shing-Ling S. Chen

This chapter provides the historical and intellectual context of studying inequality and domination using the symbolic interactionist perspective. Lonnie Athens' radical…

Abstract

This chapter provides the historical and intellectual context of studying inequality and domination using the symbolic interactionist perspective. Lonnie Athens' radical interactionism was identified as a useful framework to research the omnipresent and insidious inequality found in everyday life. Chapters presented in this volume represent a follow up of Volume 41 of Studies in Symbolic Interaction, edited by Athens, where he laid the ground work for the research of domination and subordination. Chapters in this volume demonstrate the advancements made in studying inequality in symbolic interactionist research.

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Symbolic Interaction and Inequality
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-689-8

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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 2 November 2021

Rabha W. Ibrahim

In this study, the authors introduce a solvability of special type of Langevin differential equations (LDEs) in virtue of geometric function theory. The analytic solutions of the…

Abstract

Purpose

In this study, the authors introduce a solvability of special type of Langevin differential equations (LDEs) in virtue of geometric function theory. The analytic solutions of the LDEs are considered by utilizing the Caratheodory functions joining the subordination concept. A class of Caratheodory functions involving special functions gives the upper bound solution.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology is based on the geometric function theory.

Findings

The authors present a new analytic function for a class of complex LDEs.

Originality/value

The authors introduced a new class of complex differential equation, presented a new technique to indicate the analytic solution and used some special functions.

Details

Arab Journal of Mathematical Sciences, vol. 29 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1319-5166

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Article
Publication date: 28 March 2008

Bernie Quinn

To ascertain if the use of attractive staff is common practice within the hospitality industry in Edinburgh.

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Abstract

Purpose

To ascertain if the use of attractive staff is common practice within the hospitality industry in Edinburgh.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative approach by a series of semi‐structured interviews. The researcher took an instinctive humanist approach to this study. A sample of 3, 4 and 5 star hotels, bars and restaurants were included. The focus of the research developed from ascertaining if attractive staff were common place into one that, some organisations use more sophisticated techniques to have customers literally buy‐in to the goods and services on offer.

Findings

Open admission from respondents, that they use attractive staff. However, aesthetic labor is strongly supported by the use of emotional labor as the worker needs to have a certain empathy with the customer. Furthermore, the aesthetic worker is supported by the uniform, the environment in which the service encounter takes place and provides a performance in which the customer actively participates. The highly developed manner that the organisation induces the customer to perceive when in this environment lead the researcher to propose a 007 Dynamic that happens, as the customer takes on an almost “James Bond” like persona.

Research limitations/implications

A relatively small sample but is perhaps indicative of contemporary hospitality industry common practices.

Practical implications

Hospitality management are using less highly “hard” skilled employees and focusing more on the “soft” skills of new workers.

Originality/value

Customers are susceptible to subliminal messaging from staff appearance, their empathy and environment.

Details

International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, vol. 2 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1750-6182

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 April 2024

Robert Perinbanayagam

Individuals develop and perform and process their identities in relationships with others as well as with the environment in which they find themselves, Many of these…

Abstract

Individuals develop and perform and process their identities in relationships with others as well as with the environment in which they find themselves, Many of these relationships with others are characterized by fundamental inequalities. In finding their identities, the subordinate in the relationship develops an identity that typically take steps – by vocal and non-vocal gestures – to perform this particularized identity. The identification of self is not only related to the others, with eachindividual in reflective communication, but also reflections characterized by inequality. In continuing to do so, he or she will experience a certain powerlessness, indeed what Marx called alienation.

Book part
Publication date: 12 August 2014

Gil Richard Musolf

This is an interpretive study in the sociology of literature that explores Aeschylus’s trilogy of dramatic plays known as the Oresteia. The plays dramatize a normative argument…

Abstract

This is an interpretive study in the sociology of literature that explores Aeschylus’s trilogy of dramatic plays known as the Oresteia. The plays dramatize a normative argument that exemplifies the dialectical struggle between domination and democracy. Social relations are characterized by agon (struggle), domination, and contradictions brought about by learning through suffering. These social realities reflect the primary theoretical claim of radical interactionism (RI) that domination and conflict are profound, pervasive, and perennial. On the interpersonal level, the plays dramatize structure, agency, role-taking, and the Thomas Axiom. As the first drama to interrogate an inchoate polity as an object of the public’s gaze, the Oresteia anticipates the sociological importance of critical consciousness, collective decision-making, political institutions, moral and, ultimately, cultural transformation. Despite a social context of slavery, imperialism, xenophobia, ostracism, misogyny, exclusivity, and constant warfare, the Oresteia foreshadows Western civilization’s ideals of legal-rational domination, citizenship, human rights, persuasion, and justice that have been imperfectly institutionalized to reduce surplus domination. The West still struggles to realize those ideals.

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Revisiting Symbolic Interaction in Music Studies and New Interpretive Works
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-838-9

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Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2006

John Higley

Elites are the principal decision-makers in the largest or otherwise most pivotally situated organizations and movements in a modern society. By commanding major business firms…

Abstract

Elites are the principal decision-makers in the largest or otherwise most pivotally situated organizations and movements in a modern society. By commanding major business firms, large trade unions, state bureaucracies, the mass media, the military, important pressure groups, and mass movements, as well as political parties, elites are the persons and groups who have the organized capacity to affect political outcomes regularly and substantially. Researchers have estimated that elites in this sense number about 10,000 people in the United States (Dye, 2002, p. 139); roughly 5000 in middle-sized democracies like France, Australia, and Germany (Dogan, 2003; Higley, Deacon, & Smart, 1979; Hoffmann-Lange, 1993); and perhaps 2000 in smaller democracies like Denmark and Norway (Christiansen, Möller, & Togeby, 2001; Gulbrandsen et al., 2002). This is a narrow definition and identification of elites. It does not equate high occupational, educational, or cultural status with “elite,” even though this “high status” definition is often employed. I understand elites in a much more restricted sense – as the few thousands of people who occupy a modern society's uppermost power positions.

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Comparative Studies of Social and Political Elites
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-466-9

Book part
Publication date: 6 May 2008

Ronald Kahn

Legalists and social scientists have not been able to explain the expansion of gay rights in a conservative age because they refuse to respect the special qualities of judicial…

Abstract

Legalists and social scientists have not been able to explain the expansion of gay rights in a conservative age because they refuse to respect the special qualities of judicial decision making. These qualities require the Supreme Court to look simultaneously at the past, present, and future, and, most importantly, to determine questions of individual rights through a consideration of how citizens are to live under a continuing rights regime. Unless scholars understand how and why Supreme Court decision making differs from that of more directly politically accountable institutions we can expect no greater success in explaining or predicting individual rights in the future.

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Special Issue Constitutional Politics in a Conservative Era
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1486-7

Book part
Publication date: 2 December 2013

David Norman Smith

The aim of this chapter is to argue that charisma is a collective representation, and that charismatic authority is a social status that derives more from the “recognition” of the…

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this chapter is to argue that charisma is a collective representation, and that charismatic authority is a social status that derives more from the “recognition” of the followers than from the “magnetism” of the leaders. I contend further that a close reading of Max Weber shows that he, too, saw charisma in this light.

Approach

I develop my argument by a close reading of many of the most relevant texts on the subject. This includes not only the renowned texts on this subject by Max Weber, but also many books and articles that interpret or criticize Weber’s views.

Findings

I pay exceptionally close attention to key arguments and texts, several of which have been overlooked in the past.

Implications

Writers for whom charisma is personal magnetism tend to assume that charismatic rule is natural and that the full realization of democratic norms is unlikely. Authority, in this view, emanates from rulers unbound by popular constraint. I argue that, in fact, authority draws both its mandate and its energy from the public, and that rulers depend on the loyalty of their subjects, which is never assured. So charismatic claimants are dependent on popular choice, not vice versa.

Originality

I advocate a “culturalist” interpretation of Weber, which runs counter to the dominant “personalist” account. Conventional interpreters, under the sway of theology or mass psychology, misread Weber as a romantic, for whom charisma is primal and undemocratic rule is destiny. This essay offers a counter-reading.

Details

Social Theories of History and Histories of Social Theory
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-219-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 10 February 2015

Mike Reed and Mike Wallace

This paper focuses on the strategic role of elites in managing institutional and organizational change within English public services, framed by the wider ideological and

Abstract

This paper focuses on the strategic role of elites in managing institutional and organizational change within English public services, framed by the wider ideological and political context of neo-liberalism and its pervasive impact on the social and economic order over recent decades. It also highlights the unintended consequences of this elite-driven programme of institutional reform as realized in the emergence of hybridized regimes of ‘polyarchic governance’ and the innovative discursive and organizational technologies on which they depend. Within the latter, ‘leaderism’ is identified as a hegemonic ‘discursive imaginary’ that has the potential to connect selected marketization and market control elements of new public management (NPM), network governance, and visionary and shared leadership practices that ‘make the hybrid happen’ in public services reform.

Details

Elites on Trial
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-680-5

Keywords

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