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An Ethnographic Analysis of Escort Services in Poland: An Interactionist Approach

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Ślęzak I.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 4
122-144
EN
In the Polish literature on the subject, prostitution is analyzed from various theoretical perspectives, but, first of all, from the perspective of social pathology. This approach makes the researchers focus mainly on the social maladjustment of women providing sex services and the reasons for their violation of the normative order. In my ethnographic research conducted in escort agencies in Poland, I was willing to go beyond this narrow outlook. I have adapted an interactionist perspective to analyze the escort agencies as organizations where intense interactions between employees, as well as employees and clients, take place, the sex work process is organized, and the meanings of prostitution are negotiated. I conducted the analysis according to the procedures of the grounded theory methodology. It allowed me to see and describe such processes as: (re)defining the situation of providing sex services from vice to work, sex work as a collective action, performing sex work, secondary socialization for sex work. The adaption of an interactionist perspective opens some new directions for analysis, which could help to understand the phenomenon of women getting involved in and continuing to provide sex services for a long time.
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How Non-Heteronormative Mothers Negotiate Meaning: Experiencing and Contextualizing “Invisibility”

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Wojciechowska M.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 4
146-163
EN
This article aims to shed light on how non-heteronormative mothers-whose child had been conceived via artificial insemination of one of them with the sperm of an anonymous donor- decode, experience, and make meaning of diverse (symbolic) dimensions of their social invisibility, as well as how their understandings of the category at hand have an impact on projecting and negotiating their roles as mothers (especially in case of those women who did not give birth to their children). Drawing on specific examples from the field, I analyze how-while acting within the context of anxiety exemplifying their non-existing legal status-non-heteronormative mothers construct the image of self against the backdrop of no ready-made role scripts available, as well as strive towards making oneself (socially) visible. The insights at hand are based on data collected during my six-year ethnographic study of planned non-heteronormative motherhood in Poland, where same-sex relationships are not legally recognized.
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The Interactive Dimension of Creating Cultural Artifacts Using Agile Methodologies

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Wiśniewski R., Bukalska I.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 4
198-210
EN
The authors consider symbolic interactionism to be a suitable theoretical framework to analyze projects in creative sectors because it affords ample space for individual and collective creativity. Furthermore, teams working on different cultural artifacts establish a negotiated order (interactionist term coined by A. L. Strauss) among artists, managers, the audience, and sponsors, et cetera, by discussing and translating various meanings and perspectives. This is especially noticeable when projects are managed using an agile methodology. The application of agile methodologies in creative sectors is a relatively new idea, although it seems to be in harmony with the nature of artistic work. For instance, it implies the acceptance of unpredictability and flexibility while also recognizing the ability and individuality of project participants. There are also specific problems related to the personalities of the artists and the irregularities and discontinuities inherent in the process of creation. The first part of the article raises the topic of creativity in symbolic interactionism. This perspective is subsequently extended to teamwork in creative sectors employing the description of collective work in Howard Becker’s book entitled Art Worlds as an example. The authors reflect on other contemporary works explaining the cultural shift transpiring during the move from the analog age to the current digital age and its influence on the process of creation in the world of artists. This leads to a discussion of distributed agility, a concept stemming from agile management. The various agile methods are mentioned and shortly characterized; we also present a succinct depiction of historical perspective. The literature on the use of agile methods in creative sectors is referred to along with some of the challenges they face. The need to develop an agile management methodology specifically for creative industries is emphasized. This article utilizes the literature on symbolic interactionism to explain group dynamics by drawing analogies with agile management.
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Piecing Together the Meaning of “Dirty Work”

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Torelli J.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 2
92-105
EN
I reflect upon Dr. William Shaffir’s influence on my approach to ethnographic research and my study of homeless shelter workers. Dr. Shaffir introduced me to his own brand of the craft of qualitative field work, but also introduced me to important sociologists and ideas in the symbolic in­teractionist tradition. Most central was Everett C. Hughes’ notion of “dirty work,” which helped shape my research focus. Building from Hughes’ concept, but expanding it with Shaffir and Pawluch’s (2003) social constructionist approach to occupations, I was better able to conceptualize the process of how workers themselves piece together the meaning of “dirty work.” Beyond gaining these conceptual insights, I also reflect on Dr. Shaffir’s teaching philosophy of qualitative methods, that is, the impor­tance of learning by doing. I conclude with some thoughts regarding Shaffir’s perspective on the wider ethnographic task of describing, in situ, members’ understandings and definitions. Following Everett Hughes, I call on interactionists to give more attention to “dirty work” as a generic and transcontextual process.    
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Agnostic Interactionism and Sensitizing Concepts in the 21st Century: Developing Shaffirian Theory-Work in Ethnographic Research

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Kelly B., Adorjan M.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 2
76-91
EN
In this paper, we reflect upon our experiences taking a graduate qualitative methodol­ogy course with Dr. William (Billy) Shaffir. We highlight Billy’s approach to ethnographic research and his declaration to “just do it.” Rather than just absorbing theoretical knowledge from the liter­ature, Billy taught us to be wary of the dangers of a prior theorization and how it can distort rather than shed light on empirical investigations. Despite his belief that sociological theory is far too often abstract and removed from real-world contexts, he nevertheless provided us with a latent theoreti­cal commitment to concept formation, modification, and testing in the field that guides our research to this day. We explore Shaffir’s agnostic and at times ironic approach to theory and demonstrate how his specific type of theory-work, derived from Everett Hughes’ and Howard Becker’s interac­tionist perspective on “people doing things together,” influenced how many of his students study occupations and organizations via sensitizing concepts. Billy managed to get us to think differently about how we theorize in the field and how to cultivate a playful and healthy skeptical attitude towards its application. This type of agnostic-interactionism does not dismiss theory outright, but is always vigilant and mindful of how easy it is for practitioners of theory to slip into obfuscation and reification. We conclude with a Shaffir inspired theory-work that argues for the continuing sig­nificance of an agnostic stance towards ethnographic and qualitative inquiry; one that continues to sensitize the researcher to generic social processes through which agency-structure is mediated and accomplished.   
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The Social Organization of Merchants’ Activities. An Interactionist Study of Urban Marketplaces

88%
Marciniak L.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 4
106-121
EN
The article briefly presents the empirical results of a large research project focused on Polish urban marketplaces, commonly known as bazaars, and their interactional order. Due to the spatial separation and legal regulations concerning bazaar trade, a relatively constant community of market vendors is created in the area of the particular marketplace. The primary activity of each merchant is to offer and sell goods; however, the specificity of marketplace trade results in the necessity to maintain relationships with other vendors to keep this primary activity going. Thus, the activities of merchants are carried out in the same direction for both economic results and performance (sales and profit) and social action, that is, building and managing relations with vendors operating in the same marketplace. A wide range of activities and interaction strategies is developed that create an order of interactions between vendors, both in terms of perceiving and assigning meanings, interpreting, and taking actions. The consequences of such an interactional foundation affect the economic layer of the market, embedding, on the one hand, economic phenomena in social phenomena, and, on the other hand, generating paradoxes of prices and competition-the two economic concepts that cannot be analyzed without their social contexts.
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Body and Social Interaction-The Case of Dance. Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

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Byczkowska-Owczarek D.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 4
164-179
EN
The article aims at presenting the symbolic interactionism as a useful and flexible theoretical perspective in research on the human body. It shows the assumptions of symbolic interactionism in their relation to the human body, as well as explains how basic notions of this theoretical perspective are embodied-the self, social role, identity, acting, interacting. I depict the unobvious presence of the body in the classical works of George H. Mead, Anselm Strauss, Howard Becker, Erving Goffman, and in more recent ones, such as Bryan Turner, Ken Plummer, and Loïc Wacquant. I also describe the Polish contribution to the field, including research on disability, hand transplant, the identity of a disabled person, together with the influence of sport, prostitution as work, yoga, climbing, relationships between animals and humans based on gestures and bodily conduct, the socialization of young actors and actresses, non-heteronormative motherhood, and the socialization of children in sport and dance. In a case study based on the research on ballroom dancers, I show how to relate the theoretical requirements of symbolic interactionism with real human “flesh and bones.” I depict three ways of perceiving own bodies by dancers: a material, a tool, a partner; and, two processes their bodies are subjected to: sharpening and polishing a tool. I draw the link between the processual character of the body, of the symbolic interactionist theoretical perspective, and process-focused grounded theory methodology.
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The Role of Sport in the Process of Negotiating Identity: Dealing with the Stigma of Disability by People with Acquired Bodily Dysfunctions

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Niedbalski J.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 4
180-197
EN
This paper is intended to present the role of sport in the lives of people with physical disabilities and to determine how practicing sports changes the way a person with a physical disability sees themselves. The paper reflects the experiences of people who started practicing sports, which allowed them to adopt an alternative perspective of their bodies and thus pushed them to negotiate their identities. Using the concept of Goffmanian stigma, I point to the sports activities’ usefulness in understanding the management of stigma by those dealing with a physical disability. Taking into account the above theoretical references, in the research, which constitutes a foundation of this paper, I refer to the subjective perspectives of the researched individuals, rendering their points of view, and, based on that, construct and offer theoretical generalizations. Therefore, the research materials employed in this study are constituted by the personal experiences of people with physical disabilities who practice sports. All data have been gathered by conducting unstructured interviews with such people. The research materials were analyzed and interpreted following the procedures of grounded theory methodology.
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Jane Addams and the Lost Paradigm of Sociology

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Misheva V.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2019
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vol. 15
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issue 2
216-228
EN
The present work is the beginning of a discussion that again addresses the question of Jane Addams’ sociological heritage. That latter is defined as a puzzle which may finally have a solution in that all of the pieces now appear to have been collected. The approach taken to recovering Addams’ identity as a sociologist involves a historico-sociological exploration of the influences upon the formation of her sociological thought, with a focus on Auguste Comte, the Father of Sociology. The article argues that Addams emulated Comte’s scientific mission and took upon herself the task of continuing his project by following another route to the goal. She is thus Comte’s successor, and even rival, insofar as she sought to establish sociology as a science that may be placed in charge of producing knowledge about social life and has the social mission of finding solutions to social problems that politicians proved incapable of tackling. Addams emerges from the discussion as the creator of a sociological paradigm that was dismissed, dismantled, and then lost in the process of the scientific revolution that took place unnoticed after the end of World War I, when the normal period of the scientific development of sociology in America came to an end. The suppression during the 1920s of the type of sociology that Addams developed and adhered to has left sociology in a state of unresolved identity crisis and arrested scientific development.
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The Hughesian Legacy: William Shaffir-A Principal Interpreter of the Chicago School Diaspora in Canada

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Low J.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 2
14-26
EN
In this paper, I discuss the invaluable role played by William Shaffir, my mentor and doc­toral supervisor, who shaped my approach to interpretive fieldwork and deepened my understanding of symbolic interactionist theory. Known affectionately as Billy to his colleagues and students, Shaffir is a gifted educator and one of the finest ethnographic researchers of his generation. My focus is on how the scholarly tradition that flows from Georg Simmel through Robert Park, Herbert Blumer, and Everett C. Hughes, passed from Billy on to me, is illustrative of what Low and Bowden (2013) conceptualize as the Chicago School Diaspora. This concept does not refer to the scattering of a people, but rather to how key ideas and symbolic representations of key figures associated with the Chicago School have been tak­en up by those who themselves are not directly affiliated with the University of Chicago. In this regard, while not a key figure of the Chicago School himself, Shaffir stands at the boundary between the Chica­go School of sociology and scholars with no official relationship to the School. As such he is a principal interpreter of the Chicago School Diaspora in Canadian Sociology.
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The Work of Sales Representatives in the Context of Interactions and Work with Emotions

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Pawłowska B.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 4
64-88
EN
The article aims to present the interactional encounters undertaken within their professional context by the studied group of Polish sales representatives concerning their emotions and emotional work. It is an internally diverse group made of individuals skillful in managing their emotions, as well as the ones of others. Additionally, the professional group at hand is purposefully trained to acquire skills in the area of managing emotions. The concepts of Everett Hughes (1958) concerning work, Arlie Hochschild (1983) in the context of emotional labor, Anselm Strauss (1993) pointing to the coexistence of emotions and action, and Robert Prus (1997) on the contextual nature of social life are the theoretical underpinning of the article. They all derive from the interpretative paradigm and fit into the theoretical premises of symbolic interactionism, assuming the constant construction of social reality as a result of interactions undertaken by social actors (see: Blumer 2007). It is the nature of their interactions with customers, colleagues, and direct and indirect superiors that determines the specificity of a sales representative’s work situation. The analyses presented in the article are based on qualitative research using unstructured interviews, conversational interviews, and observations.
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Symbolic Interactionism in Poland. Inspirations and Development

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Konecki K. T., Kacperczyk A.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2020
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vol. 16
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issue 4
8-34
EN
In the paper, we present the development of symbolic interactionism (SI) in Poland by tracing and discussing its beginnings, as well as the influence the Chicago School had on the reception of SI in Polish sociology. Furthermore, we differentiate between two trends in the development of SI in Poland. One is connected with the early theoretical elaborations of the SI orientation and translations of classical books representing this perspective; another is linked with empirical work underpinned by SI concepts and the grounded theory approach in empirical research and data analysis. Stressing the importance of translations of classical texts of SI in its reception in Poland, we emphasize the role of field research and applications of SI concepts in sociological investigations that we shortly characterize.
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Do We Have the Right? How Polish Same-Sex Female Families Negotiate Turning Parenting Desires into Parenting Reality

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Wojciechowska M.
Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej
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2021
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vol. 17
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issue 2
62-83
PL
Celem artykułu jest refleksja na temat tego, jak odczytywanie zjawisk zachodzących na poziomie mikro i makro współkształtuje proces podejmowania decyzji o powiększeniu rodziny w przypadku jednopłciowych par kobiet w Polsce. Odnosząc się do wyników sześcioletnich badań z udziałem rodzin planowanych, koncentruję się na przedstawieniu doświadczeń kobiet na etapie myślenia o możliwości powiększenia rodziny w kontekście ich chęci „wpasowania” rodziny nieheteronormatywnej z dzieckiem w tkankę społeczną. Akcent położony jest na zilustrowanie tego, jak badane – działając w ramach niesprzyjających warunków społeczno-kulturowych – nadają swoim doświadczeniom na tym polu znaczenie, negocjując moralne prawo do zostania matkami. Jednocześnie analizie poddane zostają ukontekstualizowane czynniki interakcyjne, które wpływają na myślenie o macierzyństwie nieheteronormatywnym w kategoriach możliwości. A zatem przybliżane jest to, w jaki sposób jednostki wychodzące poza umowną ramę heteronormatywności podejmują decyzję o powiększeniu rodziny, co – w przypadku osób mieszczących się w jej obszarze – uznawane jest za normalne.
EN
This paper aims to shed light on how various micro- and macro-level contexts shape the parenting decision-making process among same-sex female couples. Drawing on my six-year study of two-mother planned families in Poland, I focus on voicing their experiences related to the process of family formation from its genesis and their related desires to fit in the social fabric despite being different. Specifically, I illustrate how those who navigate within the unfavorable socio-cultural climate give meanings to their experiences thereof, and thus negotiate their moral right to become mothers, as well as what kind of interactional and contextual factors shape how same-sex female couples in Poland embrace motherhood as an option they can choose. That is, how they decide to do what is largely considered normal-to enlarge their families.
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Influence Work, Resistance, and Educational Life-Worlds: Quintilian’s [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus] (35-95 CE) Analysis of Roman Oratory as an Instructive Ethnohistorical Resource and Conceptual Precursor of Symbolic Interactionist Scholarship

51%
Prus R.
Qualitative Sociology Review
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2022
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vol. 18
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issue 3
6-52
EN
Despite the striking affinities of classical Greek and Latin rhetoric with the pragmatist/interactionist analysis of the situated negotiation of reality and its profound relevance for the analysis of human group life more generally, few contemporary social scientists are aware of the exceptionally astute analyses of persuasive interchange developed by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Having considered the analyses of rhetoric developed by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and Cicero (106-43 BCE) in interactionist terms (Prus 2007a; 2010), the present paper examines Quintilian’s (35-95 CE) contributions to the study of persuasive interchange more specifically and the nature of human knowing and acting more generally. Focusing on the education and practices of orators (rhetoricians), Quintilian (a practitioner as well as a distinctively thorough instructor of the craft) provides one of the most sustained, most systematic analyses of influence work and resistance to be found in the literature. Following an overview of Quintilian’s “ethnohistorical” account of Roman oratory, this paper concludes by drawing conceptual parallels between Quintilian’s analysis of influence work and the broader, transcontextual features of symbolic interactionist scholarship (Mead 1934; Blumer 1969; Prus 1996; 1997; 1999; Prus and Grills 2003). This includes “generic social processes” such as: acquiring perspectives, attending to identity, being involved, doing activity, engaging in persuasive interchange, developing relationships, experiencing emotionality, attaining linguistic fluency, and participating in collective events. Offering a great many departure points for comparative analysis, as well as ethnographic examinations of the influence process, Quintilian’s analysis is particularly instructive as he addresses these and related aspects of human knowing, acting, and interchange in highly direct, articulate, and detailed ways. Acknowledging the conceptual, methodological, and analytic affinities of The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian with symbolic interactionism, an epilogue, Quintilian as an Intellectual Precursor to American Pragmatist Thought and the Interactionist Study of Human Group Life, addresses the relative lack of attention given to classical Greek and Latin scholarship by the American pragmatists and their intellectual progeny, as well as the importance of maintaining a more sustained transcontextual and transhistorical focus on the study of human knowing, acting, and interchange.
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