Social Worlds Perspective Research Articles

Serious leisure is social: Things to learn from the social world perspective

In this article, the social world perspective (SWP) is discussed to address the concern that current serious leisure (SL) studies focus predominantly on individual experiences while overlooking the broader sociocultural context. In addition to using SWP to identify how social organization and process shape a leisure world and its members’ experiences, the fluidity of SWP indicates the need to explore social changes in a leisure world, underlying situations, and the influences of individuals’ and groups’ actions on social changes. SL experiences and qualities in those situations may be performed differently or innovatively by enthusiasts to legitimize and sustain their or their group’s status in a leisure world. Those diverse and innovative actions, in turn, can enrich a leisure world. This study reveals that SWP is a useful tool for conceptualizing the social aspect of SL.

Exploring the Trajectory of Active-Sport-Event Travel Careers: A Social Worlds Perspective

Utilizing a social worlds perspective, the study examined active-sport-event travel career progression in the sport of cycling. Event travel careers are considered potentially lifelong patterns of travel to participate in events that evolve through stages with distinct behaviors and motivations. Quantitative methods were used to test tenets of an inductively derived model of the active-sport-event travel career for cyclists. An international sample of cyclists were surveyed online; N = 1,452 responded. Using general linear modeling, the results depicted an escalation in motivation related to intellectual, social, mastery competence, giving back, and competition against others with career progression. However, while travel behavior related to preferred events characteristics changed with career progression, preferred characteristics related to destinations and travel style remained relatively stagnant. Implications for destination and event management are discussed.

Towards an Understanding of How School Administrative Clerk’s Negotiate Their Work in Public Schools: A Social Worlds Perspective

There is a dearth of literature concerning the social worlds of school administrative staff. The aim of the presentpaper is to understand the complex (social) reality of their work. Hence, the researchers used the notion of social worlds as a theoretical lens. The theoretical lens challenged us as researchers to understand the administrative clerk not as individuals but as participants within the social world of public schools. A qualitative methodology and case studies with multiple levels of input from participants were used. The researchers argued that the agency of the school administrative clerk lies in reworking, reconstructing, and influencing the social world of the school. The researchers asserted that the social worlds of school administrative clerks are closely tied to their perspectives, that is, their subjective understanding of their social context. The researchers argued that school administrative clerks are an integral part of the school social world-much more than the current discourse gives them credit for. The researchers findings suggestedthat the role of school administrative clerks needs to be re-imagined and re- conceptualized to recognize the existing commitments that they are dedicated to. Finally, using social world's theoretical lens clarifies the crucial role of administrative clerks for the successful running of their schools.

Towards an Understanding of How School Administrative Clerk’s Negotiate Their Work in Public Schools: A Social Worlds Perspective

There is a dearth of literature concerning the social worlds of school administrative staff. The aim of the presentpaper is to understand the complex (social) reality of their work. Hence, the researchers used the notion of social worlds as a theoretical lens. The theoretical lens challenged us as researchers to understand the administrative clerk not as individuals but as participants within the social world of public schools. A qualitative methodology and case studies with multiple levels of input from participants were used. The researchers argued that the agency of the school administrative clerk lies in reworking, reconstructing, and influencing the social world of the school. The researchers asserted that the social worlds of school administrative clerks are closely tied to their perspectives, that is, their subjective understanding of their social context. The researchers argued that school administrative clerks are an integral part of the school social world-much more than the current discourse gives them credit for. The researchers findings suggestedthat the role of school administrative clerks needs to be re-imagined and re- conceptualized to recognize the existing commitments that they are dedicated to. Finally, using social world's theoretical lens clarifies the crucial role of administrative clerks for the successful running of their schools.

“We didn't know what it was going to be until we built it”: Exploring processes of collaboration across disciplinary boundaries

This poster reports on findings from a study of the processes used by an interdisciplinary academic team to work across domain boundaries. Interdisciplinary research holds much promise to address complex social problems, but there has been little work addressing the work processes of time-limited academic teams. The project takes a social constructionist approach, using the social worlds perspective (Strauss, 1978), the intrinsically transient social worlds model (Kazmer, 2010), and boundary objects theory (Star & Griesemer, 1989) as sensitizing concepts, and grounded theory, situational analysis, and social network analysis as methods. This paper discusses the iterative nature of the project and its work, the need for both specialist and generalist work roles, and the need for team members to be willing to take chances and fail.

The Bolt Wars

Subculture research on alternative sports has focused on the seemingly inevitable commodification and media co-option of these activities and their internal status hierarchies. In this article, I examine the neglected issue of how participants define the informal “rules” of a self-governed sport. Specifically, I am interested in intragroup conflict among long-time traditional rock climbers over the legitimacy of practices that reduce risk. I spent sixteen months conducting participant observation in multiple locations in the rock climbing world, collected seventeen in-depth interviews, and consulted a wide range of secondary material. Drawing on social worlds theory to analyze the sociohistorical sources of competing ideologies, the participants’ claimsmaking activities, and their strategic actions to maintain and challenge informal rules, I provide a more nuanced and complex picture of social change in alternative sports. I also demonstrate the value of the social worlds perspective for understanding the interactive construction of social worlds and participants in constant flux.

Recreation Specialisation among New Zealand Whitewater Kayakers: A study of motivation and site preference

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of specialisation to motivations and site preferences among whitewater kayakers. Subjects consisted of 358 whitewater kayakers in New Zealand. Data was collected via an internet survey in New Zealand in 2008. Research questions addressed the delineation between levels of specialisation and associated relationships with motivation and site preference variables. Results found that high levels of motivation and site preference for wilderness values, enjoyment of nature, similar people, achievement, and physical fitness were supportive of a social world perspective, regardless of the specialisation level. Specialisationrelated differences emerged for achievement, teaching others, and challenge/safety. Low motivation and preference were found for introspection, family togetherness, escape, equipment, facilities, and novelty. Hammett, Backlund, and Bixler (2004) indicate that recreation resource managers would find this information to be instrumental in aiding future policy and planning decisions.

When Disciplinary Worlds Collide: The Organizational Ecology of Disciplines in a University Department

This study draws from the social world perspective to examine the relationships between scientific disciplines (i.e., molecular biology, plant physiology, agronomy, horticulture, and agroecology) at a university department in the field of plant production research. The interview data obtained in the study revealed that the complex organizational ecology of disciplines in the department involved four sources of conflict: (1) a challenge of the established departmental research tradition of agronomy, (2) a struggle over working space, (3) the extension into the department of an ethical-ideological controversy over genetically modified organisms, and (4) the anchoring of disciplines to different organizational units of the university. Thus, instead of facilitating the synergistic potential of the disciplines, the organizational arrangements at the university blocked it. From this perspective, the study challenges, but does not refute, previous symbolic interactionist research by suggesting that conflicts may function as valuable analytic devices in revealing how formal organizational structures hinder the achievement of social order at the working level.

Classifying Universities and Their Departments: A Social World Perspective

The prevailing ways of classifying higher education institutions rely upon structural characteristics. In this article, a cultural means of institutional classification is introduced by adopting a perspective that conceptualizes universities and their departments as "social worlds." In the analysis, the social world perspective is grounded by how faculty members conceive of career success and failure in the contexts of their departmental environments. Based on interviews with professors about their careers, a delimited set of social worlds is postulated to compose a cultural system of classifying American academe.

Classifying Universities and Their Departments: A Social World Perspective

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJoseph C. HermanowiczJoseph C. Hermanowicz is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia.

The redemption of thalidomide: standardizing the risk of birth defects.

In this paper we examine how a standardized drug distribution system contributed to a therapeutic and symbolic make-over of thalidomide. In the 1960s, thalidomide was seen as a horror drug that caused severe birth defects among over 10,000 babies who were exposed to it in utero. Currently, thalidomide is viewed as a potentially life-saving drug which is being distributed in the USA. We discuss this transformation from a social worlds perspective, showing how the standardized drug distribution system normalized the risk of foetal birth defects, while preserving the autonomy of health care professionals. The distribution system accomplished this transformation by focusing on the risk associated with female reproductive behavior, and by providing close reproductive surveillance of female patients. This standardized system solidified social inequalities and professional power relationships, revealing assumptions about trust, responsibility and risk.

The Three Faces of PMS: The Professional, Gendered, and Scientific Structuring of a Psychiatric Disorder

The case examined here concerns the 1986 decision by the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to include Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder (LLPDD)—a PMS-related diagnosis—in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised (DSM-111-R). Drawing on a social worlds perspective in the sociology of science, I argue that this controversy was not restricted to conflict between feminists and the APA as was portrayed in the popular press; nor, was it a natural result of scientific progress set within rational procedures of the revision process within the APA. Rather, I argue that as a result of sustained debate and conflict, the diagnosis of LLPDD assumed different forms and even became a different artifact: I) In the “health and mental health domain,” LLPDD became the object of struggle for professional control over mental disorders among the various scientific, medical, and mental health fields; 2) in the “woman domain,” LLPDD was defined as a result of struggle for control over the definition of a normal and healthy woman; 3) in the “science domain,” LLPDD was a site in which the definition of the “truth” about PMS was debated publicly and the knowledge used in settling social and policy issues in powerful organizations like the APA.

A Symbolic Interactionist User's Guide to the Answering Machine: 22 Reflections on Vocal Encounters in an Emerging Social World

This article offers a sociological analysis of a new communication technology—the answering machine. A general semiotic model of “machine talk” is suggested and connected, through the social world perspective, to forms of sociability that involve the fragmentation of time and space. The symbolic meaning given to the answering machine in literature, television, the cinema, and everyday language, as well as its use at home, are examined. Drawing on such disembodied discursive practices as speciality and simulacra, the conclusion provides a Baudrillardian look at “machine talk” as reflecting the postmodern shift from face‐to‐face interactions to telecommunications.

Recreation Specialization: Re-conceptualization from a Social Worlds Perspective

This paper initiated development of a theory of recreation specialization from a social worlds perspective and provided empirical testing for some of the stated propositions. Recreation specializat...

An analysis of adult play groups: Social versus serious participation in contract bridge

Abstract Missing from the study of leisure behavior is a research tradition expressly devoted to the study of adult play groups. This article presents a social world perspective for analyzing such groups and frames the analysis of play groups in terms of both individual interactants and the broader social world in which the groups are a part. The social world perspective provided the basis for exploring the nature of adult participation within a distinct social world—contract bridge. Results from a yearlong study of bridge groups in a town fictitiously named Glenn Valley revealed that bridge players used the terms social and serious as frames of reference in defining what constitutes legitimate bridge activity and in determining people with whom it is acceptable to play bridge. The use of these terms was pervasive enough to support the conclusion that the bridge scene in Glenn Valley is segmented into two distinct components: one composed largely of social groups and the other of serious groups. Social an...

Overtones: The Social World of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra

Resume The present paper, anchored in a social world perspective, endeavors to apply symbolic interactionist methods to an empirical case study that of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) Subscribers' Series -, in order to analyse the relations between the social production of music and its context. The discussion opens with a brief account of the IPO's foundation and development. The consecutive section describes the current world of the subscribers' series, indicating its predominant traits. The concertic mode of musical experience is then analysed as constituted by a number of social processes, the most significant of which is the creation of a symbolically controlled and predictable field of relevance. The empirical material presented gives rise to the main argument according. to which the musical experience and social context are (in terms of the different codes and rules of relevance regulating each sub-system) seemingly mutually exclusive yet existentially conditioned. It means that the social world collapses into the realm of the music performed while the converse fading away takes place when the musical part is concluded. Control and predictability are denoted as major integrating processes.

The Molecular Biological Bandwagon in Cancer Research: Where Social Worlds Meet

This paper analyzes the development of a scientific bandwagon in cancer research using a social worlds perspective and qualitative methods. It shows that a “standardized” package of oncogene theory and recombinant DNA technologies served as a highly transportable interface among many different laboratories and lines of research. That is, the package promoted intersections among different social worlds which, in turn, facilitated the rapid development of oncogene research and the larger molecular biological cancer research bandwagon. The paper proposes the bandwagon as one process by which conceptual shifts in science occur and shows that the process of such change is inseparable from both the local and broad scale organization of work and technical infrastructures.

A. ストラウスの「社会的世界」論に関する一考察

A. ストラウスの「社会的世界」論に関する一考察