Everyday Troubles: The Micro-Politics of Interpersonal Conflict 022623794X, 9780226237947

Citation preview

Everyday Troubles

FIELDWORK ENCOUNTERS AND DISCOVERIES A series edited by Robert Emerson and Jack Katz

Everyday Troubles The Micro-Politics of Interpersonal Conflict

ROBERT M. EMERSON

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

Robert M. Emerson is professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology, at the University of California, Los Angeles. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2015 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15

1 2 3 4 5

ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 23780- 0 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 23794- 7 (paper) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 23813- 5 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226238135.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Emerson, Robert M., author. Everyday troubles : the micro-politics of interpersonal conflict / Robert M. Emerson. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-226-23780-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-23794-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-23813-5 (e-book) 1. Interpersonal conflict. 2. Social conflict. 3. Interpersonal relations. I. Title. HM1121.E564 2015 302—dc23 2014038548 o This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

The Lone Ranger and Tonto they’re riding down the line, fixing everybody’s troubles, everybody’s except mine. Someone must of told them that I was doing fine. “Bob Dylan’s Blues”

CONTENTS

Foreword by Jack Katz / ix Preface / xxv ONE

/ Introduction / 1

T WO

/ Beginnings / 30

THREE

FOUR

/ Remedial Complaints / 91

FIVE

SIX

/ Unilateral Responses / 70

/ Informal Others / 135

/ Accusations and Extreme Responses / 162 SEVEN

/ Authoritative Involvement / 206 EIGHT

/ Conclusion / 249

Acknowledgments / 259 Reference List / 261 Index / 271

F O R E WO R D

Bob Emerson’s approach to “troubles” has its origins in “the Sixties,” that protean and misleadingly labeled era which erupted from stirrings in the 1950s and continued to launch new lines of thought long into the 1970s. “Everyday troubles” is not an unusual focus for a sociological study today but it would have seemed an odd book title earlier in sociology’s history. Like Howard S. Becker and his insufficiently appreciated mentor, Everett Hughes, Emerson honors simplicity in writing style. His texts are eminently accessible and modest to a fault. It takes a bit of explanation to convey just how true to the sixties, how radical this book is. A few notes on the author’s intellectual biography are essential. When Hughes left Chicago and resumed his teaching career at Brandeis between 1962 and 1967, he became central to Emerson’s development as a sociologist. Another powerful influence was Egon Bittner. Although he came to Brandeis after Emerson left, Bittner read Emerson’s dissertation and through their interactions became a window onto Harold Garfinkel’s work, which was then a cultish, for most readers impenetrable, to many established sociologists infuriating, and for young sociologists a truly dangerous rebeginning of sociological theory that would alienate many from established and viable academic career paths. Bittner had trained at UCLA, as had Aaron Cicourel and John Kitsuse, all of whom were powerfully influenced by Garfinkel, who began teaching at UCLA in 1954. (In that larger project of intellectual history, the supposedly conservative Eisenhower years would be appreciated as the gestation period of what only became universally visible in the “anti-Establishment” 1960s.) After Brandeis, Bob took a postdoc at the Law and Society Center, an exciting new center for qualitative sociologists at the University of California– Berkeley. Erving Goffman was then on the Berkeley faculty. Perhaps because

x / Foreword

of their common if generation- separated past as students of Hughes and their shared ongoing research interests in the official treatment of juvenile delinquents and the mentally ill, and via the intermediation of Sheldon Messinger, among other intermediaries, Goffman became a mentor to Bob, reading and discussing parts of his dissertation in detail, then commenting on Bob’s work through correspondence that was sustained after Bob started his faculty career at UCLA and Goffman moved to the University of Pennsylvania. Another window onto the same stream of emerging social thought was through Bob’s sister, Joan, who was a PhD student at Berkeley in the 1960s. Joan studied alongside Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff and was sponsored in part of her work by Garfinkel. The protean nature of the times is indicated by the many ways that Garfinkel’s influence flowed independent of classrooms, PhD committee composition, and institutional boundaries. It is fitting that it would require a creative ethnographic research project to trace this intellectual movement. Through his forty- year career at UCLA, Emerson lived within an ecology of Sixties- era social thought. Continuous influences traceable to Hughes, Garfinkel, and their students were kept vivid by Emerson’s departmental colleagues, Schegloff, Garfinkel, later myself (conveying influences from Becker and Kitsuse), John Heritage, and Steve Clayman. Most important was his frequent coauthor, Mel Pollner, a joyful and witty intellect who often seemed to have floated into sociology out of a Chagall painting. Emerson’s work became a blend of micro- sociological traditions. The terms often used in US academic sociology for referencing these traditions, “Chicago school” fieldwork, “symbolic interactionism,” and “ethnomethodology,” will seem odd to nonspecialists, and they should. The central ideas are rooted in American pragmatism and European phenomenology, two philosophical traditions whose similar honoring of both an active human subject and of the scientific method as an arbiter of competing ideas was recognized by and stimulating to early twentieth- century contributors. That these traditions should be blended in academic sociology would, to an outsider, seem inevitable. But due to the machinations of academic power, young researchers were pressed to affiliate with exclusive research camps. If the “Sixties” was a period of striking intellectual independence, it was also one in which the self- serving constraints of disciplinary boundaries were being institutionalized in new forms. Academic sociologists then and now emphasize, even rigidify, their differences, for strong if not good reasons. As time goes on and literatures mount, there is an ever greater con-

Foreword / xi

cern to limit what one needs to read. Departmental faculties differentiate subtypes of sociology when they make hiring claims for open faculty positions; specialization limits competing candidates and intercollegial conflict. Among late twentieth- century academics, social networks that distanced themselves from each other became widely useful for stimulating in- group loyalties and excluding unsympathetic peer reviewers of journal articles, book manuscripts, and research grant applications. Emerson refused to choose, through some combination of factors— wisdom, a deeply independent mind (his father, a Yale law professor, was perhaps the leading First Amendment legal scholar in the US; Bob grew up listening for telltale FBI wiretapping clicks on the home phone), and an aversion to conflict. His independence was rare. (For a while, David Sudnow also kept feet in both camps, only to abandon academia entirely at midcareer. Murray Davis’s aborted career at UC–San Diego also showed the difficulty of straddling “interactionist” and “ethnomethodological” camps.) One unfortunate upshot of the split between pragmatist and phenomenologically rooted sociology is the lack of a common rhetoric for addressing fundamental issues. As a product of Emerson’s stubborn open- mindedness, Everyday Troubles invites an attempt to explicate a shared methodology. Readers of this book may wonder how to read statements which assert that at a given stage of a troubled relationship, the aggrieved party “may” take a particular course of action. Why mention a particular course of behavior if others unmentioned might have been taken? Did the actor face any constraints on alternatives? If so, why not describe them? If not, do the instances reported constitute an arbitrary collection from the relevant set? And if all of the analyzed actions might or might not have occurred, in what sense does the social life of troubles have stages? Whence the patterning of the social life of troubles? Emerson’s theorizing builds on a particular Sixties- era departure from the conventional genres of sociological explanation. Academic sociology was then entering a specific moment in which the dialectics of “the discipline” took on unprecedented intensity. The dynamic tension was not between quantitative and qualitative work; that conflict had already worked itself to a dead end in the 1950s. By 1960 there was an uneasy peace in which survey and demographic methods increasingly characterized articles in leading journals while qualitative sociologists, even as they typically manifested a besieged mentality, created their own journals, thrived on the unprecedented expansion of the job market in undergraduate teaching, and produced sociology’s most successful books as well as many presidents of academic sociology’s professional organizations.

xii / Foreword

The central intensifying dialectic in the 1960s was between advances in methodology, especially the ability to describe change over time, and the content of sociological explanations. On the one hand, sociologists who had matured in the postwar period now knew seemingly everything. Celebrated works answered grand questions, like why some societies would become dictatorships and others democracies and why some large nations would modernize their economies and others, like China and India, had religions and value systems that condemned them to languish in “third world” status. Eastern European nations living under the tank- backed oversight of the Soviet Union were said to have established a viable middle ground between state socialism and Western capitalist democracy. Great progress was proclaimed in answering middle- range questions, like the patterning of sons’ inheritance of fathers’ social status and why crime rates were high in some cities and low in others. And at the micro level, through “exchange” theory, “expectations states” theory, and “social geometry,” sociologists made successful academic careers by arguing conflicting claims that they could predict when norms will be enforced in the everyday situations of social life. When I began graduate school in sociology in the fall 1969, a professor in the Northwestern department, Bernard Beck, had just returned from an American Sociological Association annual meeting. He was still reeling (well, chuckling) in amazement at the panoply of research findings he had witnessed. The dominant style was correlational analysis that charted the state of given variables when other variables were in specified states. The overall thrust was an implicit claim for a comprehensive, final knowledge that one day would be visible on the world’s biggest blackboard, which would display lines in all logically possible directions connecting all of sociology’s mainstay demographic and social ecological variables, each line annotated with a quantification of the extent of variance explained. The ambitions of academic sociology seemed at once limitless and precise, both cosmological and astronomical. To dissidents like Garfinkel, who enjoyed provoking “the worldwide social science movement,” the quest was astrological. The background of sociological explanation in the Sixties was an intellectual confidence that, not coincidentally, paralleled the confidence of postwar US national leadership, which in the 1960s was turning enthusiastically to academic sociology for policy guidance. Well into the 1930s, US academic sociologists were backward- looking, still trying to catch up on the great social transformations that had occurred during nineteenth- century industrialization, which had been established before the academic field was created. After World War II, however modest they may have been personally,

Foreword / xiii

academic sociologists had arrived at a historic moment of stunning collective hubris: they were future- oriented, geared to predict. At the same time, major leaps were being made in descriptive power, in particular in the ability to describe social process or change over time. This turn, picked up by some as a call to focus on sequence, by others as a commitment to create new forms of diachronic data, ran across both quantitative and qualitative research. The audiotaping of conversations opened up an unprecedented analysis of turn- taking sequences: with a precision and in patterns that had never been accessible since humans began to speak to each other, every speech act could be shown to be tailored in appreciation of its immediate backward- and forward- looking interaction significance. An outstanding 1965 article by Norman Ryder set cohort analysis at the center of the study of social change. Historical sociology’s research programs were expanded by creating data sets of event histories. The importance of path dependencies in organizational development was recognized in a celebrated publication by Arthur Stinchcombe, and the utility of the concept began a long process of expansion, which still continues. Quasi- experimental design, stimulated by national policy initiatives that demanded evaluation, was pushed to unprecedented sophistication, in part by introducing additional phases of data collection on experimental and control groups, beyond snapshot “before” and “after” measures. Large data- gathering operations were organized to create multiple panel cohort studies, which could overcome the limitations of “sampling on the dependent variable” (e.g., studying father’s influence on son’s status by looking through the younger generation back to the older) that had compromised research on social mobility. Given methodological specialization, few of the pioneers in these descriptive advances talked with each other or in their writings seemed to care about each other’s work. Emerson, while explicitly following leads only in qualitative sociology, was moving in parallel with many of sociology’s fields when he began to describe social processes that had been ignored by the sociological theories that had reigned up through the mid- twentieth century. Everyday Troubles is a direct continuation of his dissertation work, which was on how juvenile court judges worked. The vast majority of sociological research on juvenile justice had been correlational, asking what kinds of persons, as defined by the researcher, committed what kinds of offenses and got what kinds of sanctions. To explain norm enforcement, the prevailing theorizing grew out of positivistic, highly abstracted formulations in small group and social psychological work in which, when the participants or the group or the interaction situation is in this or that state, actors will be more or less inclined to define others as deviant.

xiv / Foreword

Influenced directly by “labeling” theory, which had been advanced by both interactionists (Becker, Erikson, Goffman) and ethnomethodologists (Kitsuse, Cicourel, Pollner, Garfinkel), Emerson abjured making his own independent definitions of the accused, or even of the situation, and created data that followed change over time. He asked how judges developed their understanding of the kind of boys and the status of the cases they were judging. In his Boston- area case study he found, in part, that judges’ definitions of juvenile defendants were developed in response to critical interactions with probation officers, who in turn defined the accused with an eye to what could be done practically with them by remedial or punitive others. Routinely, the tail of the case, or what could be anticipated to emerge when bureaucracies got hold of it, dogged the judicial heads. Next, collaborating in the 1970s with Sheldon Messinger to examine conflict outside of official forums, Emerson described the “natural history” in which people came to perceive, test, and reformulate the interpersonal troubles they experienced. The definitions of troubles made by “members” (a term that ethnomethodologists often used to emphasize the distinction between the analyst’s and subjects’ views) were not their psychological projections nor were they ecologically determined, as the vast majority of thencurrent research approaches assumed; they were “negotiated” in relation to how others in the immediate situation responded. Emerson’s studies were part of a destabilizing thrust in the dialectical relationship between sociology’s substantive theories and its methods. Confidence in the potential of substantive sociological explanation in effect funded the development of methodological advances, which then unearthed limits in prevailing substantive explanations, which, however, were by then so well established in tenured positions as not easily to give way. There was funding from government and from private foundations to study deviance and conflict, based on the confident assumption in mid- twentieth- century social thought that these were things that the researchers could more or less simply code as social facts and then explain via biographical and social environmental background conditions. The insidious nature of Sixties research was earnestly to improve sociological description, with the result of attacking the premises that had led to confidence in sociology’s substantive potential. Emerson’s work on “troubles” was part of the critique of the prevailing positivistic approach to explaining crime and deviance. The typical research approach was predictive: social problems were presumed to be caused by prior events. The analyst portrayed crime, deviance, or other forms of trouble as existing at time 2 and sought causal forces operative at time 1. That was

Foreword / xv

a problematic approach when data were correlational. But even when researchers developed diachronic data, fundamental problems remained, because they had an overly simple understanding of the process and even the direction of causality. New research began uncovering more and more contingencies between time 1 conditions and time 2 behaviors. Indeed, the new process- attentive research often showed that part of time 2 behavior was the creation or manipulation of effective social descriptions of what had happened at time 1. Again and again, those working in the spirit of Goffman, Becker, Cicourel, and Garfinkel found that part of the process by which members, at time 2, perceived others as homosexual, as delinquent, or as mentally ill at time 1 was through developing their appreciation at time 2 that the deviants had manifested their moral status long before time 1. This retrospective reconstruction of deviance was visible in data showing how power- wielding officials as well as lay actors in everyday life reconstructed their view of people they treated as problem- bearing. There was a strong social critical thrust to this process- focused work. Judges and people handling their own troubles in everyday life contexts seemed to invent, or at least invoke, definitions of deviance based on what remedies were available. Prevailing theories and research designs, which had been supported with relatively little or no data describing empirical processes between time 1 conditions and time 2 behavior, were also cast as fundamentally problematic. The thrust of sociological work on crime and deviance was “if/then,” forward- looking: Robert Merton theorized delinquency as the result of a contradiction between a materialistic culture and a social structure of limited opportunity, Peter Blau combined census and police data sets to explain that metropolitan inequalities promoted high crime rates, Donald Black predicted norm enforcement in everyday police work as the result of pre- existing situational factors. The new critique was that a vast amount of such sociological work was aimed at explaining fantasy phenomena: mainstream sociologists had assumed that individual deviants and interpersonal problems existed to be explained even while they unwittingly made them up; conventional research was subtly circular because the problems to be explained could be detected only when the factors explaining them were in evidence; sociologists were unwittingly serving those in power by giving professional grounding to arbitrary versions of social life that justified officials’ exercise of power. Any good historian of social thought could find that these Sixties studies were developing long- standing threads in Chicago school interactionism, Weberian verstehen sociology, and the “emic” perspective in anthropology. For philosophical readers, there was no news in the ethnomethodologi-

xvi / Foreword

cal operation of “bracketing” members’ claims that their current action was founded upon conditions that previously existed. But within sociology, ethnomethodology made news by attacking sociologists who ignored members’ perspectives and imposed their own via what Cicourel damned as “measurement by fiat” and by research procedures that, in Garfinkel’s scathing language, treated members as “dopes,” robotic transmitters of preexisting situational norms, cultural themes, and societal values. Members were elevated in status and regarded as superior authorities to whom the academics who studied them must in effect defer by studying their methods of interpretation, that is, ethno- methods. But beyond broadcasting the call that the researcher ground his or her concepts in members’ constructions of reality, there was a new insistence that the analyst appreciate that members were folk sociologists, invoking their own elaborate, sequencesensitive theories as they perceived others’ conduct and in response formulated their own. Not only must the researcher study the sequence of social action to see where and how definitions of the situation and of others arose, the researcher should understand that members have their own understandings of the sequencing of social action, such that every action that a subject under study took was shaped with regard to how that subject understood how others would understand the action’s specific sequential meaning. Officials would treat “the first case we have seen of this kind” differently from “just another routinely encountered case.” The causal significance of the sequential meaning of the current case within the historical flow of cases was understood by the others as well, such that characterizing the case as “unprecedented” or “typical” was at the very essence of the processes determining how an accused, an inmate, or a patient would be treated. But recognizing members’ sociological theorizing did not make the sociologist simply a scribe. The researcher would not find members using “typical,” “unprecedented,” or any other particular phrases to base his/her understanding that members were negotiating over the status of the case within their understanding of the sequences manifested by cases in general. Members would suggest that the case is unprecedented or typical perhaps only with inflections, by the colorful character of their expressions, via all sorts of mannerisms and tangential behavior that indirectly, subtly, but to others effectively suggested they were dealing with a routine or an exceptional case. Part of the impact of Sixties’ sociology was to expand the ethnographer’s descriptive work explosively. The recentering of the research focus on members’ in situ experience and action meant a new moral and epistemological relationship between researcher and subject. Doubt about honoring the subject’s perspective was

Foreword / xvii

well established by the 1960s. Freud’s writings on symptomatic, neurotic, self- justifying, phobic attributions of one’s problems to others were still resonant. In quantitative research, the methodological concern to limit “reactivity” sounded a similar alert: what someone said about their social life could not be accepted as a transparent truth. Data were artificial if produced in response to cues the researcher unwittingly was emitting. Subjects’ neurotically distorted accounts of the past, and researcher-“contaminated” versions of subjects’ biographies, had been something that the scientist should cure, avoid, or discount when analyzing data. Now that members were understood as folk sociologists, there was a new research agenda to launch. The new work was to detect, document, and articulate how the folk sociological work of the members studied was a natural, ubiquitous part of their behavior, part of the very being of the stuff all sociologists study. Folk sociology was not a problem to be cleared away from the vision of correct, professional sociological understanding of social life. Nor, as sociologists reading anthropology might think, was it only a subject for ethnological curiosity. Folk sociology was what all social life at its most fundamental level was made of. As Emerson shows throughout his text, members do not simply invent the grounds of their responses to the troubles others make for them. Accordingly, he does not seek to delegitimize their accounts of the grounds of their conduct. He shows the nuanced sociological understandings of any course of action a member takes. Members’ trouble- relevant behavior always consists of responses made within an elaborate semiotics of possible responses. When acting positively, people always know of the alternatives they forego. Here the theme of negation in existential thought came into academic sociology, albeit without being announced as such. To choose to do is also to choose not to do. Indeed, any course of observed action is, as a social reality, even more a negative choice; any observable action exists even more profoundly in what is not observable, because so many alternatives are wittingly, if implicitly, foregone. Further, the semiotic context of a member’s action is historically differentiated. At each and any moment that a party to a troubled relationship is forming a response, he or she understands which of the possible responses he or she has already tried and which of the possible responses that might have been tried were purposefully deferred. Moreover, in capturing any party’s response in descriptions, the analyst must appreciate how that party is acting upon his or her understanding of how the other party’s behavior has been a product of the other’s folk sociology, which is also sensitive to sequence and aware of possible paths that were not taken.

xviii / Foreword

In a further effort at clarification, let me be a particularly troublesome ego. If I respond today to my neighbor’s parking his car in front of my house by taking out my shotgun and waving him away, a researcher would be correct in understanding that I am very likely imputing to my neighbor intentional defiance and a view of me he does not have. But an accurate description of my action would also include that I am knowingly foregoing a host of less grave responses to the irritation (like complaining politely) as well as more grave responses (I am only waving the gun, not firing it), on my understanding that my neighbor’s action today is itself meaningful within a series of his prior irritating actions, and my responses and nonresponses at prior times. My current response, that of introducing the new instrumentality of a shotgun into the troubled relationship I have with my neighbor, is based on my understanding of how my neighbor responded to my previous efforts to remedy our relationship. And I also understand that, while the current conflict is with a particular neighbor, others are watching or are likely to hear about the event, so that I am shaping their understanding of what I am likely to do in conflicts with them. And that too, I know, has a history. To appreciate what is being accomplished in Emerson’s text, the reader should keep in mind that, in inspecting a given passage of his data, all the researcher- observer sees is a waving of the shotgun. But that moment is the superficial if potentially mortal upshot of an interaction which is threedimensional both in an emotional and historical sense. Emerson’s path out of the Sixties ferment in sociological thinking was to opt not to base an explanation of trouble- relevant behavior on the visible tips of the iceberg and hope that the massive underlying realities can be ignored. He chose to jump into the risky business of documenting the micro- historical underpinnings of what becomes readily observable. The reader will immediately appreciate the rewards, much as when reading Erving Goffman’s work. The author reveals biographical and environmental meanings that are critical to the motivation and shaping of the situated action that is observed— here my waving of the shotgun— which the reader, even if present on the scene without any impediment to perception, could never appreciate without the researcher’s aid. The three- dimensional, situational tip/sequential iceberg understanding that Emerson opens up would be enough to make these studies invaluable for anyone doing sociological research on troubled relationships as well as for anyone working in remedial, adjudicatory, or therapeutic occupations. But there is also an ethnomethodologically inspired contribution. Emer-

Foreword / xix

son’s text specifies the folk sociology that members invoke as they perceive and deal with interpersonal troubles. What sort of explanation does that provide? Clearly it is not a “sufficient condition” explanation of the type sought by predictive theorizing. When writing “may” propositions, Emerson does not mean to say that, once other conditions are specified in additional research, the “may” conditions will be converted into causal propositions of either the necessary or the sufficient kind. He is not using a qualitative sociologist’s rhetoric for the quantitative sociologist’s claim of explaining some significant part of the variation in the explanandum. Nor is he following an explanatory formulation once tried by David Matza: framing the causal impact of an explanans in the nature of “soft determinism.” Nor is he following the contemporary fashion in academic ethnography of offering a “mechanism” in a causal relationship. As used today by those who would justify ethnography by claiming a contribution to deterministic explanations, a “mechanism” is a “how,” a qualitative connection between causal variables measured quantitatively. By specifying mechanisms, qualitative sociologists make the explanatory value of quantitative research easier to digest. Emerson’s book is a decades’ long product, a multicourse meal showing infinite patience with the details of social interaction. It is the equivalent in sociology of slow cooking. He does not take up any of the familiar recipes for framing the explanatory contribution of ethnography. But then, put in the faddish way to state the question now, which seemingly borrows a term from the social life of fast food restaurants, we may reasonably ask, what is the “takeaway”? One useful alternative to sufficient condition or predictive theorizing is common in micro- interaction- focused social research. Emerson has used it elsewhere in his writings, but it will not work with the current materials. Instead of specifying conditions at time 1 that will produce specified behavior at time 2, the analyst examines behavior realized at time 2 and, based on sequential descriptions of prior actions, develops an analysis which predicts that certain prior behavior or events will have occurred at time 1. Sometimes called retrodiction, this type of explanation is familiar in “natural history” and Darwinian theorizing. Stanley Lieberson has argued that sociologists have too narrow an understanding of “science.” With a more accurate appreciation of what natural scientists actually do, sociologists would better exploit this nondeterministic alternative. In fact retrodiction is often used in micro- sociology, although typically without the author writing selfconsciously about the kinds of theoretical claims that are being made.

xx / Foreword

Emerson, without using the phrase or identifying the kind of explanation he is offering, has developed retrodictive theorizing in his peopleprocessing writing. In his paper “On Last Resorts,” he argued that, across an organizationally independent variety of institutions, including juvenile courts, psychiatric emergency intervention agencies, and school administrations, officials dealing with people in trouble all organize their responses within a folk- sociologically- appreciated, graded series of alternative responses, which series always has a “last resort.” Last resorts are meaningful contingencies of official behavior even, indeed most often, when they are not used. (Again the negation, the “what does not happen,” looms as the most important social fact.) Emerson does not specify the contingencies that predict the turn to last resorts. Instead he shows how a collective folk sociology of last resorts is used to organize what the officials do. That is, the official in effect communicates to the others involved (other officials and professionals working on the case, the troublesome person, his or her family and comrades) that “you know that I have a graded series of possible responses and could as a last resort order imprisonment (or physical restraint, or expulsion)” in order to get compliance that will resolve the case, at least momentarily. In order to get their work done, authorities arrange their alternative actions sequentially, such that an analyst can retrodict that if a last resort has been employed, other “lesser” responses will have been tried or attended to and passed over. But in this volume propositions of a retrodictive sort are never asserted. For systematic reasons, Emerson cannot provide a retrodictive explanation of everyday troubles. Officials intervening in troubled relationships and responding to troubled people have constraints on them that the subjects of the current chapters— us in our everyday lives— do not. In particular, organizational officials are aware that they are making records which other officials may use to review and assess their actions. Officials’ future- oriented action brings a discipline into their people processing which is absent from the everyday living of tensions with neighbors, residential mates, lovers, work colleagues— situations in which individuals, correctly or not, presume that they are living more or less private moments that are insulated from official review. (After reading a draft of this foreword, Emerson sent me a copy of a 1981 letter in which Goffman, after reading the published version of the “Last Resort” paper, made a similar point.) Now, if for “everyday troubles,” predictive and retrodictive theorizing are both unworkable, what sort of explanation can enable the book’s descriptions of situated trouble- related actions to hang together? This study shows how people themselves systematize their behavior in troubles. They use the

Foreword / xxi

same actions to systematize how they respond to incessant irritations from people they know intimately and to sporadic irritations from those they know hardly at all. We may be surprised at who gets mad at us. We may be taken aback when they express their anger at us. We may whisper prayers that help us refrain from voicing protests and moving down the path toward calling in a third party to tranquilize a troubled situation. Our behavior in troubled relationships seems to us idiosyncratic, emotionally volatile, or unpredictable, but Emerson shows that it is not random. What the following chapters make clear is that, while predicting or even retrodicting particular responses is a problematic explanatory strategy, sociological theory can grasp the universal systematization of trouble- related behavior by those caught up in everyday troubles. We all go through the same operations in living our everyday troubles. At its most expansive, Emerson can justify the theoretical claim to have begun the outlining of the universal folk sociology through which interpersonal troubles arise and are transformed. Emerson writes directly about folk sociology only in the conclusion. What he shows throughout are trouble- perceiving and responsive behaviors experienced in intimate emotional depth, differentiated by members with a fine interaction sensitivity, and encased in a vivid awareness of historical detail. (After reading these materials, one could conclude that no one is a better sociological observer than when inspecting the interaction contingencies of his or her own troubles.) But Emerson shows that the sociology of trouble- related social life is not a matter of collecting colorful facts. It is the sociologist’s discovery of a universal institution of folk theorizing. As Simmel would have appreciated, in everyday troubles even when the parties never put their conflicts to rest they share with each other the same folk sociology for registering irritations; they appreciate the proper contingencies for transforming them into complaints; they anticipate the same results when calling in third parties; and so forth. That means that each party to a conflict, at each moment of the conflict, is locating the moment within what he or she understands to be the general or typical natural history of conflicts of the sort at hand. The two parties in a troubled relationship may not see each other as normal or typical actors, but what they understand to be happening is a troubled relationship progressing as a variation on what they (rightly or wrongly) understand the natural history of troubled relationships to be. How do they theorize? Not abstractly, not through explicit generalizing, but by forming their expressions in the current conflict as a version of what typically happens. One party sees that the other is responding now in a way that should be— and among right- thinking people is— reserved for a “late”

xxii / Foreword

stage of conflict. At the same time, the other party knows that she is gracious, that she is presenting herself as a forbearing soul, by foregoing a response that other right- thinking people would deem appropriate at this stage. In a sense, troubles progress through interactions among theorists, each viewing the other as a deficient theorist, one who does not understand what is appropriate at this stage. Each takes for granted that what is appropriate and inappropriate as action in a troubled relationship depends on the stage it is in. Everyone knows the difference between living with irritations in the hope they will go away versus acting on them, between resolving irritations unilaterally or through trying to secure the cooperation of the troublesome party, between various ways of framing a complaint in the hopes the other will resolve the matter, between keeping it a matter between the two or involving others informally, between limiting the conflict to particular behavior and turning vindictive, and between keeping the dispute informal and bringing it to the attentions of the authorities. Roughly stated, this universal, sequence- sensitive folk sociology defines the stages that are represented in the chapters of this book. This is not to say that all or most or even any conflict will go through these six stages. It is not to say that if a troubled relationship gets to the stage of authoritative involvement, it will have gone through the stages previously presented in prior chapters of the text. It is to say that at each moment of behavior in a troubled relationship, each party is acting on an understanding of where he or she is and how he or she is advancing the progression that Emerson has captured and has made the backbone of his text. The systematization of everyday troubles is done by the participants, just because there is no official to provide a systematic progression of stages of response, as occurs when a trouble enters a judicial, occupational, military, religious, or educational bureaucracy. In the bureaucratized trouble context, individuals in a troubled relationship will often need expert advice just because the stage progression is not of their devising. In everyday troubles, people must be their own advocate, judge, mediation counselor, psychotherapist, witness, and enforcer. In some of the material that follows, it will seem that a party to conflict, compelled to play all these roles simultaneously, is led to an Alice in Wonderland “off with their heads” justice that shows impatience with exploiting less consequential solutions. Nevertheless, in no case can parties conduct themselves coherently, in no instance can parties in a troubled relationship form conduct that makes sense to themselves as trouble- responsive behavior, without locating where the trouble is in a taken- for- granted, generalized understanding of a progressive treatment of troubles that is “natural.”

Foreword / xxiii

This volume is a testament to the abiding potential of sociological discovery. As such, it is a model for this book series, which is dedicated to showing how sustained ethnographic fieldwork of the first order can serve sociology’s collective project. Across all methodologies, quantitative and qualitative, sociology since the Sixties has been making consistent progress in improving the collective capacity to describe social life by more fully and precisely tracking its constantly flowing character. The discipline has been less successful in producing predictive substantive explanations that survive the test of time. Based on a career- long examination of the social life of troubled relationships, this volume not only advances knowledge of a universally compelling area of social life, it also makes an extraordinarily deliberated contribution to the still pressing challenge of developing a genre of sociological explanation that can live in an untroubled relationship with the discipline’s ever- increasing descriptive powers. Jack Katz

P R E FAC E

While a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at Berkeley from 1967 to 1969, I began talking and writing with Shelly Messinger about the concept of “trouble.” Shelly and I were struck by processes common to the identification and response to mental illness in the families that he had studied, and the routine decision- making concerns of juvenile court personnel that had impressed me in my dissertation research (published in R. M. Emerson 1969). These processes centered around the recognition of and response to “trouble”— when people identified it, what it entailed, what had caused it, and what should now be done about it. We began collaborating on a manuscript that we eventually published in 1977 in the journal Social Problems under the title “The Micro-Politics of Trouble.” The abstract for this article described our concerns in this way: This paper proposes a natural history framework for analyzing interactional processes through which personal difficulties or troubles are identified, reacted to, elaborated, and perhaps transformed into a specific sort of deviance. These processes center around efforts to do something about or remedy the trouble, and are critically shaped by the nature and direction of the intervention of some outside, usually official party. The form a trouble ultimately assumes is in large part a product of the micro- political struggles for the support and legitimation of such official agents. (Emerson and Messinger 1977:121)

While Shelly by and large pursued a different set of research issues in the following years, I retained a strong interest in “trouble” as a way of understanding both disjunctive experiences in everyday life and informal and official responses to these experiences. With my colleague Mel Pollner, I went out to observe the routine work of community- based psychiatric emergency

xxvi / Preface

teams as they responded to complaints of trouble involving mental illness. With other colleagues I studied requests for domestic violence restraining orders, stalking, troubles on buses, and Alzheimer’s family caregiving. I carried out a number of other studies— most short- lived and aborted early on— of the movement of everyday troubles into some official system: probation screening of parental allegations that a child was out of control and “incorrigible,” intake decision- making by prosecutors, the presentation of delinquency cases by probation officers seeking psychiatric placements to an interagency mental health group. And working on my own in opportunistic fashion, I collected interviews and first- person accounts of a variety of everyday troubles— problems within intimate relationships and families, difficulties with neighbors, disputes and differences between roommates, tensions and disagreements between coworkers. In this book I draw on these and other materials to take up, update, and extend the trouble framework Shelly and I sketched in 1977. “The Micro-Politics of Trouble” sought to modify and extend aspects of the then current “labeling” or “societal reaction” approaches to deviance. At their core these approaches reconceptualized deviance as a product of ongoing efforts at social control rather than with a fixed and invariant meaning inhering in particular acts and actors. As Becker (1963:9) argued in his seminal statement in Outsiders, “Deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender.’” “Deviance” in this sense is established by processes of social control by which people come to interpret and respond to acts and actors in negative ways. Common to all versions of labeling/societal reaction is a concern with the interactions that generate such interpretations and responses. However, much of the theory and research in this tradition prioritized and focused on official “labeling” by agents of institutional social control. For example, while Becker’s understanding of deviance as a product of “the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’” can certainly be applied to informal reactions, it draws directly on formal legal terms and imagery; indeed it is particularly helpful in understanding the processes whereby official agents of social control apply “rules and sanctions” to some in certain circumstances but not to others in somewhat different circumstances. And indeed in subsequent years the labeling/societal reaction approach has exercised substantial if sometimes unacknowledged influence on a rich body of research analyzing processes of decision making by institutional agents of social control, particularly the police and courts.

Preface / xxvii

While exploring the implications of official third- party intervention, “The Micro-Politics of Trouble” also directed attention to the informal processes of control that precede and generate such official involvement. With several notable exceptions, particularly Kitsuse (1964) and Goffman (1971), work in the societal reaction tradition generally neglected these processes. In this book I want to pick up and extend the beginnings of the analyses of such informal troubles and informal reactions that Shelly and I developed in the original article. Specifically, I will examine the nature and course of troubles arising in interpersonal relationships with those we know by name or face and encounter on a recurring basis— families, couples and intimates, roommates, neighbors, coworkers, etc. I will analyze the beginnings and turning points of these informal troubles across a range of such intimate and/or physically close relationships, emphasizing the evolving character of trouble as people interpret and deal with it. In some ways shifting to a primary focus on informal, interpersonal troubles moves “deviance” to the margins of the analysis. For most troubles never come to be recognized and treated as full- blown deviance. Many emerge suddenly but fizzle out and disappear; others persist but eventually are fixed or corrected. Some, while seeming trivial and mundane, recur again and again without resolution, but are neither perceived nor treated by the parties involved as matters of “deviance” despite sometimes producing intense conflict, personal trauma, and profound uncertainty. And in some cases trouble ends the relationship— marriages break up, children run away or are sent to live elsewhere, jobs are lost, roommates move out— often without definitive attributions of deviance. This book will give special attention to these routine, everyday relational troubles, many of which eventually fade away or are incorporated into the fabric of relational routines without giving rise to explicitly deviant interpretations. (Furthermore, this analysis will not specifically address issues of how law and “everyday perceptions of law” are reflected in and affect people’s understandings of and responses to troubles [see Sarat et al. 1998], in large part because interpersonal troubles, at least until severe escalation, seem propelled by “relational consciousness” rather than “legal consciousness” [see Emerson 2008:510 for this argument with regard to roommate troubles].) In other instances, of course, efforts to live around and with recurrent troublemaking by another do eventually lead to clear- cut attributions of deviance and to unofficial responses that have a distinctly “deviant” quality (Emerson 2011). Indeed some relational troubles may escalate into fullblown and even dramatic instances of deviance— crime, mental illness, vio-

xxviii / Preface

lence, substance abuse, and so on. Furthermore, troubled parties may complain to outside authorities to deal with a recalcitrant and resistant other. In many cases such authoritative intervention, tied to and growing out of prior informal responses to interpersonal troubles, leads to sanctions and official designations of deviance. A focus on informal troubles in interpersonal relationships helps revitalize a core commitment of the societal reaction approach— understanding deviance as a distinctively interactional phenomenon. In studies of official responses to deviance, attention to interactional processes tends to be restricted to exchanges between candidate deviants and authoritative institutional agents. But examining unofficial interpersonal troubles moves a series of more complex and varied interactions to the center of the analysis. Troubles begin in informal interactions when one party responds to what another has said or done, the latter responds in turn, and so forth. While some troubles remain private matters of concern to only the troubled individual, many become repeated, long- standing issues in interpersonal relations. Indeed, some troubles develop into the focal points of recurrent relational gripes and disputes; others transform into deep- seated emotional conflicts that poison or end the relationship; and some escalate into major life events that receive attention from legal, medical, or psychiatric agents. Troubles, then, arise, consolidate, or disappear in and through ongoing interaction between the parties to the troubled relationship. Focusing on such relational “glitches, disputes and trouble cases” (Llewellyn and Hoebel 1941) directs attention both to interactions in which ordinary routines and social order may be stressed and challenged, and to the interactional responses people develop to deal with such stresses and challenges, sometimes maintaining, sometimes changing that order. Honing in on interactional processes also highlights the interpretive practices (Gubrium and Holstein 1997) that mark interpersonal relationships. Recognition of trouble and calibrating responses to trouble depend directly how each party interprets and formulates what the other has said and done. Indeed, the societal reaction approach in general shares the same constructionist framework used to analyze a wide variety of “social problems” (Spector and Kitsuse [1977] 1987; Miller and Holstein 1993). As Ibarra and Kitsuse (1993:22) emphasize, this approach is “oriented toward figuring out ‘what is it that people seem to know and use’ (Sacks, quoted in Heritage 1984, p. 233) in discerning the objectionable amid their lives.” Ongoing processes of interaction and interpretation shape and transform trouble, sometimes toward recognized “deviance,” but more often not.

Preface / xxix

As a result the concept of “deviant careers,” frequently employed by those taking a labeling/societal reaction approach, has only limited relevance. Goffman (1961) developed this notion in analyzing the “moral career” of the mental patient— the transitions in status, identity, and relational standing attendant on admission and treatment in a mental hospital. Other sociologists identified distinctive careers in depression (Karp 1996), alcoholism and drug abuse (Wiseman 1991), delinquent and criminal behavior (Werthman 1967), and spousal abuse/codependency (Irvine 1999). These analyses begin by considering problems and troubles in informal relationships, problems and troubles that ultimately culminate in formal “labeling” and institutional responses. But in all cases, such career models are keyed to explaining movement into and through specific institutional systems, with institutional processing providing an end point against which a particular career is identified in the first place. Without institutional processing, troubles may follow radically different trajectories that move to wildly different outcomes. The notion of career, then, must be loosened to avoid imposing an artificial regularity on the development of informal interpersonal troubles. Troubles do certainly move through distinct transitions and stages over time. But this movement follows a variety of alternative pathways and hence is open and indeterminate rather than linear and predictable in character. Rather than assuming single- stranded careers, I will view the development of interpersonal troubles through the lens of a natural history approach. Spector and Kitsuse ([1977] 1987:137) have analyzed the natural histories of collectively recognized social problems, treating such histories as “descriptions of how things develop over time.” In a similar vein, Vaughan (1986) organized her study of intimate separation or “uncoupling”— moving out of an intimate relationship— as an ongoing social process punctuated by a number of key turning points. This process starts when one party develops secret discontents with the relationship, begins to build separate activities and commitments in response, entertains the possibility of separation as his or her new social world expands, with the other realizing the extent of a problem only after the “initiator” has effectively already moved on. Similar processes mark the development and transformation of a broader set of relational troubles as people come to recognize and respond to the actions of a relational other that bother and upset their daily lives. Extending Vaughan’s analysis of intimate uncoupling, this book will advance a natural history focused on key turning points across a variety of relational troubles, turning points that transform prior understandings and responses in significant ways.

xxx / Preface

In identifying turning points in troubled relationships, the contingencies that affect when and how these transitions occur, and the varied outcomes that may emerge, this book takes up these specific questions: •

How do interpersonal troubles begin?

•

How do interpersonal troubles take on particular form and shape? When and why do some troubles fizzle out while others become relationally and socially fateful?

•

When and how are interpersonal troubles transformed? What are the processes whereby earlier interpretations and responses are abandoned and new ones developed?

•

When and how do some interpersonal troubles escalate into extreme and perhaps even newsworthy forms?

•

When and how do parties initially outside the trouble, both informal and official/professional others, become involved in the trouble? What are the consequences of their involvement?

After introducing the theoretical framework and the sources of data used in this study in chapter 1, I will address these questions in detail. Chapter 2 examines the beginnings of troubles in everyday negative experiences of upset, irritation, and worry that are attributed to the actions or attitudes of a relational other. Chapter 3 takes up common initial responses to such troubles, responses that the troubled party can initiate and carry through in a largely unilateral, nonconfrontational fashion. Chapter 4 looks at making a direct complaint to the troubling other in order to pressure or entice this person to change the troubling behavior. Chapter 5 explores troubled parties’ efforts to get support, sympathy, and advice from those close to them in dealing with troubles. Chapter 6 analyzes how some troubles persist and escalate, leading to explicit accusations of wrongdoing and perhaps punitive and violent responses. Chapter 7 looks at making complaints to authoritative third parties, notably the police, but also community mental health workers, mediators, and relationship counselors.

ONE

Introduction

[The] original causes or antecedents of deviant behavior are many and diversified. —Edwin M. Lemert, Social Pathology (1951:75)

When people encounter problems or difficulties in their everyday lives, they often talk about “trouble.” “Trouble” signals a sense that something is wrong and, in many cases, that something should be done about it. “Something wrong” may be experienced in a moral sense as something inappropriate or “offensive,” but more generally involves vaguer, more ill- defined feelings of discontent, upset, irritation, or worry. These feelings are intricately tied to the anticipation that something may need to be done about this occurrence or situation, although, of course, no overt response may ever actually be made.

Two Illustrations of Interpersonal Troubles Consider the following reports of troubles: the first from an interview of a fellow student conducted by a college student in the early 1990s, the second based on observation of an incorrigibility complaint in a Southern California probation office in 1971.1

1. The data excerpts used in this study have been minimally edited, as I have tried to balance “the reader’s need for clarity against a commitment to providing an accurate rendering of people’s actual use of words” (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 2011:225). As a result some excerpts contain nonstandard grammar and punctuation.

2 / Chapter One

Roommate Trouble Late in the academic quarter for a sociology course assignment, a woman student interviewed a dorm friend and neighbor, Joel, about continuing troubles with his roommate. Joel and William shared a bedroom in a four- person suite. In response to the interviewer’s question, “what were your reactions (to William) when you moved in?” Joel recalled: “The first few weeks I was just really careful because this guy was obviously different. He was like 25 years old. I’m 20. He had lived by himself last year. This is his fifth year in college, first in the dorms. Just everything was weird about him. He had weird habits. Like he was quickly spotted jump- roping at 4 am in the morning. Very weird and bizarre.” Joel described tensions and small crises with William right from the start, complaining the latter tended to preemptively “draw lines right away” and was persistently and incorrigibly sloppy. And William almost immediately had an ugly run- in with another suitemate who accused him of being gay. While William acknowledged being gay, Joel came to feel that this was not really the case: “Looking back on it, he was leading us on to think he was gay. He thought it was like just his fun. He liked to do that to people, to experiment” (with them). (I: “How was he leading you on?”) “Like guys would call and he’d like say, ‘Well, let me call you back tonight. I’ll see you tonight.’” I: “OK, well let’s set up the situation.” J: “There was a definitive event.” I: “OK, go ahead and tell me what led up to the definitive event . . .” Several days previously he had told William that he would have to stay up “pretty late” to work in their bedroom on a term paper due the next day. William responded, “Absolutely not, that’s unacceptable,” insisting that Joel work instead in the dorm computer room. An argument ensued, with William demanding that Joel work elsewhere, Joel countering that he could work in their room without disturbing William. Joel became increasingly angry, bringing up a series of complaints about William’s behavior, including his reading late at night with his light on and keeping him “up till three just scratching yourself.” “I just came out and said, ‘That’s just sick— your side of the sink. There! Let’s go look at it.’ He goes, ‘It’s clear.’ ‘That’s cause I took the oats off, your gross spoon food off, and I cleaned it all off. Look at this over here.’ I pointed (to) his towel draped on my little wardrobe. I said, ‘This towel is yours. This is my wardrobe. I’ve been asking you all year, please keep it off.’ I just lost (it).” However, Joel immediately felt that he had reacted with too much anger, and apologized: “I said, ‘You know what, I’m sorry. I went too far. But, I mean,

Introduction / 3 I just don’t understand how you can just tell me, with such a straight face, like so innocent, that I should go and leave (to work on my paper), not impede upon you for the second night of the whole year. That I can’t type in my room if I type quietly.’” Joel then left the room to go to church, only to return to reencounter the very same problem he had just vehemently complained about: “When I came home from church I walked in and there was stuff by the sink again and on my bed was a pair of underwear. And then I said, ‘What is this underwear doing on my bed? Didn’t we just have like this huge argument? Didn’t I just like lose control?’ I was shaking. I’m shaking right now talking about it. I said, ‘I can’t believe you did this.’ I said, I said, ‘Can you please take your underwear off my bed?’ He got up, picked up the underwear and threw it on my face. And I said, ‘What?’ Like I didn’t, I, I just [indecipherable]. He said, ‘Oh, oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Huh, huh, huh.’ And he left.” “And then I sat down and I started typing my paper. And I just started thinking, I’m thinking—And no, he also said, ‘Well it was clean underwear anyway.’ He put it back in his drawer. And that’s when I started to think. I sat down to write my paper, I just started wandering . . . my mind was starting to wander. And I had heard him, I remember him saying the underwear was clean. And I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, he put the underwear there on purpose.’ And then, just right then, everything else started falling into place. ‘He’s been doing this whole thing, to me, on purpose. He’s not—I’ve been giving him too much credit, he’s not just a slob. He is like using me for some big experiment.’ That was when I found out. I just discovered it right there. I thought about it for half an hour. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ It all fell into place.” I: “Alright, so now that you’ve realized that he was doing all of this on purpose, what had— what was he doing?” J: “Well, he was just— he later admitted that he was putting those things there on purpose every day. Like a sweaty wristband on my phone. Like clothes on my bed on purpose every day. He was basically playing the image of the slob, an unresponsive slob that wouldn’t change, just to see how far I would go without, before—I don’t know what he expected me to do.” Joel offered this reflection on his reaction: “I realized it took me so long to figure that out cause I couldn’t fathom anybody just doing that to their roommate. I just wasn’t expecting that at all, and when that hit me, I was mad. . . . I mean, I was thinking this is the first true asshole I have met in my entire life.” He made plans to move to another suite before the beginning of the next quarter. (RM [Roommate Trouble Interview] 40)

4 / Chapter One

Incorrigibility Complaint Mrs. Garcia came to the probation office to see about filing an incorrigibility complaint against her 14 year old niece Nancy, who lived with her and her younger daughter in a nearby apartment.2 The PO begins by asking how she was doing in school (a local junior high); aunt replied that she cut some classes, sometimes missed school, and “she makes a D average.” Nancy bursts out loudly, I do not! and began crying. PO asks about other problems. Mrs. G complains that Nancy will go out and not tell her where she’s going. And, “she doesn’t come home after school.” She begins to talk quite intensely to PO, leaning slightly across his desk, ignoring Nancy and me. At home she will not talk or respond to me, just stay kind of expressionless. PO asks Nancy how she felt about the situation— did she want to stay at home? Nancy replies very angrily, I don’t want to stay with her! PO asked Nancy to wait outside in the waiting room. Aunt immediately explained that Nancy’s troubles had begun when they moved in November and Nancy transferred to a new junior high school. No skipping or attendance problems before this. PO then asked her, “Are you prepared at this point to sign a statement of incorrigibility?” Aunt: “Yes. . . . We have tried— she doesn’t know this, but I’m afraid of her.” I don’t know what she might do; she is so resentful. “This one turns on me. She’s three times stronger than I am. I can’t hold her.” “She doesn’t come home after school,” and goes away all the time. Last weekend she had been away from Friday until Tuesday without calling and telling me where she was. I worked Friday, got off at 10 and came home to find Nancy wasn’t there. This has happened before. She’d gone to stay with her friend Stacy, so I didn’t think much was wrong. Saturday morning I asked my daughter, did Nancy come in from school? She said no, she didn’t come in at all. But I had to go work and wasn’t able to do anything about it. On Sunday she still hadn’t come home, and Mrs. G rounded up two of Nancy’s friends and drove around a nearby beachfront area “where I’d found her before,” but couldn’t find her. “Monday I called the school, but I called too early and they didn’t have their [attendance] reports.” I had to go to work before they found out. Tuesday I went to the school to see the counselor, but Nancy saw me in the office and ran away. School counselor had recommended that she contact probation about filing an incorrigibility complaint. 2. In presenting observational data I use quotations marks to indicate speech recorded verbatim as jottings during the relevant interaction; speech composed from memory soon after observing the relevant event is presented without quotation marks as an indirect quotation. See Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (2011:63–64) for a discussion of the use of direct and indirect quotation in fieldnotes.

Introduction / 5 Nancy came home Tuesday evening, but went straight to her room and shut the door. She didn’t even come in to say hello and explain where she’d been. I told her, “All I want to know is where you’re at.” Nancy responded with just that blank expression. PO asked if she had tried to find out where the girl had been. “Yes, I tried, but she wouldn’t say anything. . . . You just want to tear into her!” PO asked about her comment on the phone the day before about retardation. Mrs. Garcia explained that Nancy had been held back in the second grade and had difficulties learning to read, but had never been tested. But “the real problem began when she went to junior high in November.” PO: “You mean the behavior problems?” Yeah, although grades have always been a problem. PO asked about her policies on Nancy’s dating: “I let her date,” but emphasizes that you have to be careful, you can’t “just trust everybody.” “It’s come to the point where I can’t control it. . . . I told her it’s got to the point where I have to make a doctor’s appointment to check for VD. All because she won’t tell where she’s going or what she’s doing. And I’m beside myself! I’m a nervous wreck.” PO agrees to “open a case,” putting Nancy on “informal probation” while getting a psychiatric evaluation. The probation officer assigned to the case “might want to involve you in some kind of program.” Would you be willing to do that? Mrs. Garcia laughs embarrassedly, saying that she’s willing, “but I’m working.” The aunt goes out to the waiting room and Nancy returns, looking tense and with tears in her eyes. PO asks gently: “When you said you didn’t want to stay, you didn’t mean it, did you?” Nancy: “Yes I did!” PO: “You did?” N: “I don’t want to go home and get hit.” PO: “Does she hit you?” N: No, Joe [the aunt’s son] did. After she had come home on Tuesday, her aunt had called her older son who lived nearby and he had come over to talk to her. He had grabbed her by the hair and started slapping her, saying “you dumb bitch.” He then wound up and hit her as hard as he could in the eye, threatening her that if she ran away again she better hope the police caught her first because if he caught her he would kill her. Nancy insisted several times that she did not want to go home and get hit again. PO reassured N that Joe had no right to hit her, and gave her his card, telling her to call him if anything like this came up again. After talking with Nancy about why she hadn’t contacted aunt during the five days she was away (the phone at her friend’s house was locked) and whether she dated (a “boyfriend” walks her home from school), PO asks: What does Nancy want? Huh? What do you want? When Nancy does not answer, he asks whether she will go back to the aunt. Nancy agreed to do so, but

6 / Chapter One said she would run away again if anything happened. PO: That’s not enough; if you can’t stay with your aunt and not run away, the only alternative is court. Are you ready to stay here now? To go out to Juvie right now? Nancy seems quite shaken by this, and agrees to stay home without running away again. They set up an appointment in two weeks to see how it is working out. They talk about walking to the probation office from her school, and Nancy says she will bring her friend Marta with her. PO: “Is she ah— good?” N: “Yes, she’s a good girl.” PO: “Are you a good girl— as far as the drug scene?” “Yes.” “Sure?” “Yes, I’m a good girl every way except for running away.” (Probation Incorrigibility Interview, May 1971)

The troubles in these two instances involved different interpersonal relationships: previously unacquainted college roommates sharing a dormitory room for an academic year; an early adolescent girl living with her aunt. But they show important similarities. To those involved the issues are very emotional; the voices of the troubled parties— the reporting roommate, aunt, and niece— convey deep upset, frustration, and anger. The troubles initially arise around problems in the routines of daily life— how clean to keep shared living space, what kinds of consideration are due one another, youthful failure to keep a parental figure apprised of her whereabouts when not coming home at night, and not showing proper respect and concern when coming home. In both cases the troubled parties report a series of responsive actions: gentle reminders, recurrent complaints, angry confrontations, moving out as soon as possible, in the first case; lectures and verbal reprimands, setting limits and specific requirements by the aunt, arguing back and eventually running away by the girl in the second. And finally, the two instances show elements of both interpersonal conflict and deviance. At times, relations between the parties involved are described as a recurrent series of disagreements and disputes. But troubled parties also come to describe the disturbing other in increasingly derogatory and stigmatizing terms: the student in the first case comes to characterize his deceiving, manipulative roommate as “the first true asshole I have met in my entire life”; in the second the aunt, in addition to suggesting that her niece may well be retarded, contends that she is out of control and in need of psychiatric help, while the niece implies that her aunt is overly restrictive and complicit in using threats and violence to control her. But these troubles also differ. The disturbing actions of the other vary— for instance, insulting treatment and leaving dirty clothes and other messes around the room on the one hand, and staying out without contacting home, suspicions of dating and sexual activity with boys, and behavioral prob-

Introduction / 7

lems in school on the other. The interactional structures of the two trouble situations differ significantly: the first case focuses on trouble between two roommates, while the second case is triadic, with an official third party— the probation officer— trying to mediate between the contending claims of aunt and niece. But even more critical are differences in how these matters are elicited and presented. In neither case do we directly witness the troubling actions at issue; rather we learn about these actions through reports or accounts provided by those involved. In the roommate case we hear what happened from one party by means of an interview conducted by a female friend. We learn about the various acts and situations solely from Joel’s recounting of events, hence in ways that reflect only his point of view. The second incident is reported in fieldnotes written by an outside observer that describe what both parties to the trouble said as they were questioned by a third party/probation officer. The third party attends to and elicits different accounts of what happened, giving insight into the differing perspectives of each party. Furthermore, in the first case the troubled party directs a grievance against the other, depicts the other’s actions and intentions as duplicitous and deeply manipulative, and concludes with a proposal to resolve the trouble— ending the relationship as soon as possible. In contrast, in the incorrigibility case both parties present grievances against the other, as the aunt’s complaints about her niece’s behaviors are countered by the girl’s report of threats and violence by the older son. And while the aunt expresses upset and anger with wrongful actions engaged in by her niece, these complaints are interwoven with deep worries about how her niece is leading her life. Yet the relatively nonevaluative stance adopted by the third party leads to a situation in which just what the trouble is remains equivocal and without immediate resolution. These cases illustrate some of the general processes through which troubles originate and are conveyed in particular relationships. These processes involve distinct patterns of interaction within each of these relationships, and a series of distinct turning points that punctuate and transform these relationships. In what follows, I will lay out a general framework for understanding and analyzing these processes of interaction and transformation.

A Framework for Analyzing Interpersonal Troubles Troubles arise and develop over time in ways that, while not linear and highly structured, are sequenced and patterned. To cite one example: People may respond to another’s troubling behavior in a number of common and

8 / Chapter One

patterned ways. Thus turning to the direct and explicit trouble responses that mark later stages usually requires showing that reasonable efforts have previously been made to respond to the trouble in less extreme ways: friends may not take one’s gripes about another’s recurrent misbehavior seriously if one has not conveyed those feelings specifically to the other; in many instances calls to in- house authorities or the police and other outside agencies for help in relational troubles will not be taken seriously unless indigenous responses have first been tried. We can begin to appreciate such patterning by examining two dimensions of such everyday interpersonal troubles: their relational groundings, and their development and possible transformation over time. Situational, Individual, and Relational Troubles While troubles are social matters, in some instances they arise in relationships and interactions that are singular, one- time occurrences. Troubles occurring in public places often have this character, as they typically involve people who are strangers to us and whom we are unlikely to encounter on another occasion. And while public place and other contacts between the unacquainted are socially ordered and hence have a distinct relational base (Goffman 1963; Lofland 1973; Gardner 1995), these relations are usually ephemeral and of limited scope and depth. As a result most public place troubles involving strangers are better understood and analyzed as situational rather than fully relational matters. Other troubles arise and remain private, personal “upsets,” “problems,” or “worries” that enter into and dominate our internal dialogue yet are not communicated to others. In many cases, these concerns and worries center on our individual self and life circumstances: we have gained too much weight, feel nauseous or fatigued, are preoccupied to the point of obsession with some minor issue or occurrence, frequently feel down or depressed. Many serious troubles, including depression (Karp 1996), other forms of “mental illness,” suicide, drinking (Wiseman 1991), drug use, sexual feelings/behaviors, and the break- up of intimate relationships (Vaughan 1986) begin as (and may remain) such private individual troubles. In these situations the troubled party comes to recognize a “problem,” typically seeks to hide this problem from others, and develops responses that involve trying to change his own behavior, attitude, or circumstances (e.g., resolving to make friends, spending more time with others, finding ways to distract himself, reducing daily stress, taking a vacation). Finally, troubles may be grounded directly and specifically in our deal-

Introduction / 9

ings with others, particularly in our relationships with “known” others: spouses, intimates, family members, friends, and acquaintances; those we live with, live near, work with, and play with; those we encounter on a recurring if occasional basis in public places like parks, malls, bars, gas stations, and stores. These troubles derive from and reflect these relationships and the distinctive interactions between their parties. These troubles, which may affect any and all aspects of our everyday lives, are thus distinctly relational in character. While some individual problems eventually come to be defined and treated as relational troubles (see chapter 2), other upsets and dissatisfactions are fully and distinctly relational right from the start in that we locate them specifically in our dealings with others. The nature of our ties with these relational others may vary. In some cases, through recurrent contact we come to know these others on the basis of “categoric” knowledge of their roles and statuses (Lofland 1973:15–16). That is, we know who the other is socially— through role or repeated contact we know more about them than just what can be read simply from their visible appearance; often, for example, even if we do not know their names, we know at least bits and pieces of their daily lives and routines, habits and duties. In other cases we have “personal” knowledge of at least some aspects of the other (Lofland 1973:15– 16): for example, we may know not only the other’s name, but also some details of their personal life and biography. The detail and depth of this knowledge may vary widely with the particular relationship: we know only the first name and incidental information about a regular dog- walker in our neighborhood, the full names and general work situations of our immediate neighbors, and specific (if never complete) information about the life circumstances and biographies of intimates and family members. Such biographical knowledge provides us with a variety of fundamental resources for understanding troubling behavior, and shapes how we identify and respond to it. Relational troubles may begin with discontent, upset, or irritation, on the one hand, or worry or concern about some behavior or condition of another, on the other. In the former, we experience something a relational other says or does in a way that disturbs or perhaps even harms us as a person; a roommate leaves dirty dishes or continually interrupts a personal phone conversation, for example. In the latter, we develop concerns about another’s condition or behavior that we see as having negative implications for his or her life: an intimate appears unhappy, fatigued, or depressed; a daughter behaves in a moody and disoriented fashion. Troubles in the first instance thus arise from irritation, upset, or discontent that we attribute

10 / Chapter One

to a relational other’s behavior or attitude that we directly experience as negatively affecting ourselves; the prototypical response is to complain that we are irritated by this behavior or attitude. In contrast, in troubles involving worry for the other we need not experience negative feelings toward the other, but rather attribute some negative condition to the other; here the prototypical response is an expression of concern about this negative condition. Of course, irritation and concern may arise in tandem: in the incorrigibility case, for example, the aunt is both upset by her niece’s behaviors (staying away from home without telling her where she is going, not acknowledging her or explaining where she was when finally returning home) and worried about what these behaviors portend for her future. Initial awareness and interpretations of relational irritations and worries can vary. In some cases we experience discontent, upset, or worry as an immediate reaction to the behavior or condition of another: the feeling floods through our mind and body, and while sometimes we may decide not to do or say anything about it immediately, at others we express our discontent or concern to the other, sometimes subtly, sometimes directly. In other instances we may initially be uncertain about who is responsible for the irritation— where is the loud music coming from?— or about the validity of our upset feelings— is the music really “too loud,” or am I just overly sensitive? And we may initially doubt that another’s condition has in fact changed for the worse, or if it has, that we have sufficient relational standing to say anything about it. While irritations and full- blown troubles are relationally grounded, they arise from one party’s feelings and concerns and may not be shared or acknowledged by the other. Thus what irritates one party (e.g., loud music) may provide simple relaxation and enjoyment to the other. Indeed, troubles are typically reported (represented) by one side only, these accounts reflecting the distinctive concerns and perspective of that party. We know what troubled Joel about his roommate’s behavior, but we have no information about what William would or might say about these events. Similarly, the worries of one party about another’s behavior may not be shared (or at least acknowledged) by this other. Parents may worry when their teenage daughter ignores her curfew, while the latter insists that that worry is uncalled for, and becomes angry that her overly restrictive parents do not allow her to “stay out” as late as her friends. In sum, in many situations parties mutually recognize one another’s discontents and worries, but define these matters and the nature of the trouble they involve in very different terms. Furthermore, expressions of discontent or worry may come to irritate or upset the person to whom they are addressed, thus transforming the rela-

Introduction / 11

tionship into one marked by mutually oriented- to trouble. One initial response to many troubles, for example, is to pressure the other to correct the upsetting behavior or attitude; these efforts impart a distinctive character to subsequent interactions, perhaps coloring the relationship as a whole. Similarly, where trouble persists or is seen as “serious,” troubled parties often respond by turning to some previously outside party— a friend or acquaintance, a physician or therapist, someone with local or legal authority. Such outside or third- party intervention radically transforms what had been a two- way matter. A Natural History of Interpersonal Troubles Interpersonal troubles begin when someone experiences irritation, upset, or worry linked to their dealings with a relational other. The sequence of turning points and transformations that may then ensue can be analyzed as a natural history. These transformations are propelled by two related processes—interpretations of the nature and sources of the irritating behavior or situation and the responses the troubled party makes to this irritation or discontent. At first glance it is tempting to understand these transformations simply as a process of first defining the nature of the trouble and then responding in appropriate fashion. But in practice, interpretations and responses are mutually dependent in several ways. First, the envisioned range of feasible responses may constrict or shape relevant interpretive possibilities; the real difficulties of exiting or leaving relationships with intimates or roommates, for example, may create preferences for more “normalizing” interpretations of the other’s troublemaking behavior. Second, while particular interpretations often parallel and even call forth particular reactions, the success or failure of initial responses can lead to a series of interpretive reframings. In these cases, then, interpretations follow from and are linked to prior response efforts. In what follows I will treat a “response” as any action initiated in reaction to an irritating event or worrying state of affairs. Such reactions include a wide variety of overt actions— not only efforts to dissuade, correct, or punish the irritating other, but also activities to avoid, minimize, live with, or live around the trouble, tolerating it if only for the moment. Emphasizing this broad range of responses to perceived irritations and worries modifies the framework proposed in “The Micro-Politics of Trouble,” where we identified the beginning of troubles in “the recognition that something is wrong and must be remedied” (Emerson and Messinger 1977:121). Rather I would

12 / Chapter One

now push the origins of troubles back to experiences of discontent that may or may not be understood as “something wrong”; this change opens up for examination how troubled parties develop and construct a sense of having suffered a “wrong” in the first place (see Emerson 2011). And this approach expands consideration to include any and all responses, not just those that are corrective or remedial. Deciding to respond (or not) provides a key turning point in the development of troubles, whether or not such irritations were framed in terms of “wrongdoing,” and whether or not such responses are remedial or corrective in character. The trajectories of troubles vary widely. In some cases irritation, discontent, or upset is immediately recognized and successfully responded to, ending the trouble then and there. As a result many troubles turn out to be onetime matters, involving one specific incident or action that is more or less quickly corrected; an expression of discontent to a family member or work colleague, for example, may well lead the targeted party to change his or her behavior or attitude in subsequent encounters. In contrast, other troubles recur or persist; irritating or worrying behavior continues, and (eventually) the troubled party feels unable to ignore or tolerate it, and undertakes some responsive action, which may work partially or temporarily, or not at all. Some such troubles undergo long, complex transformations marked by increasingly serious problems and progressively more severe responses. With the multiplication and extension of response efforts, troubles tend to be elaborated, changed in form and content, deflating or escalating as new responses are attempted, the troublemaker responds to these responses, and so forth. In the roommate trouble considered earlier, Joel comes to reinterpret what he initially thought was casual sloppiness as deliberate, hostile provocation. And in the incorrigibility situation, the aunt reacts to what she sees as overly independent and disrespectful conduct in ways that further distance and alienate her niece. But troubles that do not reach such dramatic outcomes and do not become subject to formal treatment regimes also move through stages marked by distinctive transformations: how parents handle “going out” and curfews, for example, may move through a series of stages, changing over time as teenagers mature, become more duplicitous, or obtain the resources to act more independently.3 In particular, if and when informal responses fail to stop or correct the trouble, the troubled party tends to frame or accent the 3. The term “decisional career,” which Wiseman (1991:5, 17–21) used to examine the processes through which wives eventually identified their husbands as “alcoholics,” can be applied to parent- teenager and similar situations.

Introduction / 13

actions of the troublemaker in different ways. Many troubles are initially treated as interpersonal disputes or conflicts, as in the aunt’s and niece’s disagreements about what are appropriate going- out/curfew arrangements. Yet such troubles may also come to be experienced and described in distinctly moral terms as wrongdoing, as in the aunt’s characterization of her niece as deliberately “running away” by failing to inform her of where she was staying or what she was doing. In analyzing everyday troubles, we are concerned with both dispute and wrongdoing framings of troubles— with the similarities and differences between these formulations and with when and how each develops. In one- shot troubles, the brevity of the encounter often means that interpretive reframing, if it occurs at all, takes place quickly, although sometimes dramatically: illicit touching on a public bus may evolve from hidden injury to a public accusation of wrongdoing and then to a criminal complaint to the police within a matter of minutes (Emerson and Gardner 1997:269, 272). But in relationships that continue over time, as troubles persist despite the efforts of the troubled party to accommodate to the upsetting action or to bring about change, interpretive reframings not only proliferate, but come to incorporate a number of previously ignored or “irrelevant” incidents. It is useful to distinguish between two broad categories of responses to discontents and worries in continuing relationships— indigenous and extrinsic.4 The former involve responses that “draw upon the interpersonal resources” inherent in a troubled relationship (Emerson and Messinger 1977:124), and in turn may take either unilateral or bilateral form. Unilateral responses involve actions initiated and carried out by the troubled party more or less independently of the troubling party. In these instances the troubled party responds without explicitly consulting with the other— indeed, in some instances without the latter’s knowledge— making no effort to obtain the cooperation and agreement of the other; examples include hiding food, drink, or desirable clothing items from roommates, and moving to another room without waking one’s bedmate to escape loud snoring or incessant tossing. Bilateral responses, in contrast, involve bringing one’s discontent to the other’s attention; typically this involves making a complaint to this other, the complaint conveying the discontent and/or im4. Our original statement (Emerson and Messinger 1977:124–26) contrasts “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” trouble remedies. Replacing the former with “indigenous” better captures the locally embedded character of these responses, while also recognizing the frequent turn to friends and peers for informal advice and support in understanding and responding to troubles. Note also that this distinction refers not simply to “remedies”— efforts to correct or remedy a trouble— but to any and all possible responses to trouble.

14 / Chapter One

plying some sort of remedial action. Bilateral responses thus involve communicating discontent or upset to the other, often in an attempt to work out a way of handling the matter with this person’s participation and perhaps even agreement. With extrinsic responses the troubled party turns to others outside the immediately troubled situation or relationship in order to deal with the trouble. Initially these outside “third parties” tend to be friends, relatives, peers, or acquaintances (i.e., people without official or professional status) who become informally involved in the trouble; we turn to our spouses to vent about problems at work, to close friends to get advice about how to handle troubles at home, and so on. If troubles persist or become especially serious, we turn to officials or professionals for help— for example, calling the police about escalating trouble with a neighbor, seeing a marriage and family therapist for help preserving a relationship as a couple, or turning to juvenile court and probation in response to out- of- control teenagers (see fig. 1). Troubles, then, are marked by “sequences of responses, continuing troubles, and further responses, some proving at least temporarily successful, others failing— through a number of iterations” (Emerson 2008:500), tending to move over time from indigenous to official/extrinsic responses. The involvement of official third parties— local authorities, police, therapists, courts— marks a particularly significant point in natural histories of trouble. Indeed, much prior research on interpersonal problems and deviance has focused on the nature and consequences of such official thirdparty intervention (Aubert 1965). This research has shown, for example, that the careers of severe and chronic troubles and troublemakers are critically shaped by the involvement of specialized institutions and agencies— many official, with legal and professional authority, others informal organizations. Just as mental hospital admission changes the status and shapes the fates of psychologically disturbed adults (Goffman 1961), and contact with police and juvenile courts affects the fates of wild youth (Werthman 1967), so too going to AA or NA meetings marks a change in how people think about and characterize drinking or drug use. Nonetheless even in highly bureaucratized societies with extensive formal/legal institutions, indigenous responses remain pervasive: people continue to identify and deal informally with troubles with others in public place encounters, in family and intimate relations, in relations among neighbors, in informal social settings, and in the daily affairs of institutions and organizations. But informal troubles and indigenous responses are significant for reasons beyond their persisting prevalence. First, in many

Introduction / 15

Fig. 1.

instances people turn to professionals and officials only upon the failure of indigenous efforts to deal with troubles. People typically go to see a doctor when initial, commonsense responses to a physical problem seem to have no effect. Similarly, people take problems to criminal and civil courts when they conclude that informal ways of dealing with a problem have failed or are inappropriate (e.g., Merry 1979, 1990). Examining the careers of informal troubles is thus a key to understanding when, how, and why people have turned to the official agents and institutions available in a society to deal with troubles. Second, indigenously handled informal troubles not only precede (and lead to) official troubles, but also highlight and reveal the distinctively malleable character of trouble. For while official troubles typically have been “shaped up” in particular ways as more or less fixed, unproblematic entities— as “crime,” “mental illness,” and so on— ordinary troubles are particularly open- ended and variable in character, subject to multiple and shifting interpretations and a range of diverse responses. Consider, for example, the variety of possible interpretations of and responses to a “hit” or “slap” in a couple relationship, as when a twenty- seven- year- old African American woman reported that her former boyfriend “slapped me in my face” in filling out the application for a temporary restraining order in a legal aid clinic in the early 1990s (Emerson 1994:11–13). While presented here as serious physical violence and hence as evidence of spousal abuse, in everyday life “slapping” may be interpreted in a number of ways: as “horsing around,” as a reaction provoked by something the other said or did, as a normal event providing emotional release in an often stressful relationship, as an effort to maintain or change the balance of power in a relationship, as the product of excessive drinking, as the expression of one party’s aggressive or frustrated personality. Similarly, what is done about such an act can vary just as widely: the other may feel that he had the slap coming and quietly accept it as pay-

16 / Chapter One

back for whatever he did to provoke the onslaught; the other may return the slap, and if this act is reciprocated and things escalate, the incident becomes a “fight”; the act may be accepted as a normal part of the ups and downs of an intimate relationship; the act may be seen as out of character for the slapper, leading to inquiries into factors that may have brought it on (excessive drinking, exceptional stress, displaced hostility, aging, desire to end the relationship) and perhaps then to responses to deal with such developments (e.g., medical or psychiatric intervention); the act may be explicitly defined as “violence,” perhaps leading to a call to the police or recourse to the courts for protection and prosecution. Third, the examination of “ordinary troubles” directs attention to a wide range of problems, actions, and situations. The concept of “trouble” draws our attention to common patterns and processes across a variety of events, avoiding a restriction on the types of problems or difficulties that can be compared and analyzed. For the concept of “trouble” avoids prespecifying the nature of the problem; rather than predetermining what a problem or difficulty “really is,” this approach focuses attention on how people come to interpret what that problem “really is.” Again, such interpretations are not inherent and unchanging, but typically develop and shift over time.

Comparing Troubles across Interpersonal Relationships While the interpretation of and response to troubles reveal many similarities across interpersonal relationships, troubles are also recognized, interpreted, and responded to in ways that reflect distinctive features of specific relationships. This book examines troubles in relationships involving roommates, intimates, partners and spouses, family members (particularly parents and children), neighbors, and coworkers. These relationships reveal a variety of distinctive features bearing on the identification of and responses to trouble. Roommates. Roommates share living space, generally with daily contact marked by varying degrees of personal intimacy and physical closeness but not sexual relations. Among college students, roommates are often strangers to one another before moving in; hence becoming familiar with the other and working out routines for sharing space and household responsibilities are developed from scratch. College roommates anticipate living together for the duration of the academic year, giving the relationship a built- in, preset exit point; noncollege roommate situations may well be temporally more open- ended. Formal equality characterizes relations among roommates in college- run facilities and often among students who rent off- campus hous-

Introduction / 17

ing, although in many rental situations the person who signed the lease acquires more say in setting up and overseeing living arrangements. Intimates, Partners, and Spouses. These relationships involve couples not only closely sharing common living space, but also having physical and sexual intimacy. Those involved in such relationships are known personally to one another, often with intense familiarity with the other’s biography, other relationships, work circumstances, and daily worries and concerns. Couples develop distinctive ways of doing things together— an idiosyncratic “micro- culture” (Fine 1979, 2012) comprised of established sequences of activities, known routines and practices, and anticipated preferences and gripes. Some aspects of their relationship are treated as private, as matters not to be spoken about and shared with others. Although intimate relationships are characterized by formal equality, couples’ cultures may come to incorporate actual inequalities of power, perhaps distributed across different household activities— for example, finances, provisioning, furnishing, and so forth. Ending an intimate relationship is generally not anticipated and if it occurs may produce a dramatic crisis. Family Members. Families involve those of different generations who have regular contact, often living together. If this involves parents and children, relations are marked by formal differences in authority and power that are particularly extreme when the latter are younger, and may decrease with age. Children are expected to leave the household when they reach maturity and develop independent means of support, but the timing of such exit is highly variable and sometimes uncertain. Adolescence is often a particularly crisis- filled period of transition in this regard. Like intimate couples, family members may have intense and emotional contacts and develop their own micro- cultures; some involve matters that are subject to a “family information rule” (Goffman 1971) and are not communicated even to closely related others. Families may also be composed of a more elderly parent living with a grown child, and perhaps the latter’s own family, often in caregiving situations in which the earlier allocation of authority is reversed. Neighbors. While those living near one another often have only occasional and limited face- to- face contact, spatial proximity can generate a number of recurring irritations and upsets. Noise and parking are frequent problems for those living in both apartments and houses. Concerns with one’s “property” may make changes in the physical landscape— overhanging or tallgrowing trees, construction projects— troubling matters. Since neighborly relations do not usually involve close contact or extensive personal knowledge, appeals to outside authorities— police, housing authority, neighbor

18 / Chapter One

councils— are common. Exit is burdensome but nonetheless relatively available for renters; homeowners have substantially less mobility. Coworkers. People develop informal relations of varying degrees of intimacy and intensity with those with whom they work. Close ties are more common with those in close proximity and of more or less equal status, and hierarchical and more extreme differences in status complicate relationships. Relations with some coworkers may be extended outside the workplace, but often most contacts are occasioned by and embedded in the demands of organizing and coordinating work. Coworker relations are temporally open- ended, but may offer limited opportunities for mobility and avoidance.

In this book I draw heavily on my own published and unpublished research to analyze and compare the development of trouble across these different relationships. My sources of data include the following. Roommate Trouble Interviews (RM), 1993–96. This data set includes 184 first- person accounts of problems with roommates collected by undergraduate students in sociology classes at UCLA. The bulk of these accounts (154) involved interviews with friends and peers about the problems of living together in dorm rooms or apartments; the remainder (30) included firstperson written accounts of students’ own experiences with a roommate problem. I selected the interviews and accounts included in this data set from the larger collection of class papers on two primary grounds: they included transcripts of tape- recorded interviews, or presented material that impressed me as unusual, rich, or revealing. I instructed student interviewers to find subjects among their friends and acquaintances willing to talk about recent or current roommate problems. An interview guide framed the purpose of the interview in these terms: “I’d like to hear about your experience of this problem/trouble with your roommate in your own words, from beginning to end, in as much detail as you can recall.” The interviews covered how they had come to room with this person, when they first noted a problem and how they reacted, subsequent developments in detail, if and when they had sought outside help, their emotional reactions, and where the situation currently stood. The interviews used here varied widely in length, comprehensiveness, and quality: at one extreme, transcripts ran to eight to ten single- spaced pages covering all the proposed topics in detail; others were several pages, providing a general summary of the relationship and a description of a single major trouble incident.

Introduction / 19

The roommates involved here were by and large college students, primarily undergraduates in their late teens and early twenties. Sixty- one percent of the cases involved troubles between female roommates, 35 percent troubles among male roommates, and 4 percent mixed gender roommate troubles. The roommate situations varied widely: 33 percent involved universitysupervised two- person rooms in high- rise dorms or larger apartment- like dormitory suites, 6 percent roommates in co- ops, fraternities, or sororities, and 61 percent shared off- campus apartments and houses. The vast majority roomed with others they had not known prior to college, and in a significant number of cases with people they had not known prior to moving in together. Most were living away from home for the first time. Irritation Diaries (ID), 2012. As part of an undergraduate self and society course at UCLA, students were asked to focus on one day during their week and to write detailed accounts of at least two interactions in which they became irritated, upset, or frustrated with a person with whom they were acquainted. Of the over 100 such first- person irritation accounts I received, I selected 63 for detailed qualitative coding. Eight of the selected diaries had been written by men, the rest (87 percent) by women; most were sociology majors. These diaries provided personal accounts of interactions that disturbed or bothered the writers, but to which they did not necessarily respond overtly and hence which did not necessarily involve clear- cut relational troubles. Clearly the accounts of everyday irritations, as well as those of roommate troubles, were disproportionately provided by women informants. In light of the findings of Gilligan (1982) and others that women view and deal with relationships differently than men, is my analysis of troubled relationships skewed by these heavily female samples? It may well be that many women are more concerned than most men with minimizing direct confrontations and aggressive responses to trouble. But my analysis is directed toward the distinctive patterns of interaction that mark troubled relationships; given this focus, oversampling women may throw into relief “milder,” more subtle processes of response that have been underappreciated in prior analyses. Furthermore, almost without exception I have found no instances in which only women or only men respond to relational troubles in particular ways,5 5. One exception: while a small number of male roommates reported “stepping outside” and trading punches as a response to continuing trouble with another male roommate, no female roommates reported this response to trouble with female roommates. However, female roommates did report brief, “spontaneous” bursts of violence by a female roommate (see the analysis of “blowups” in chapter 6), and the only accounts of roommate killings I have found in the national media involve women.

20 / Chapter One

although there are undoubtedly significant differences in the frequency in how they do so. However, the highly nonrepresentative samples in both cases preclude meaningful comparisons of the frequency of different trouble reactions by gender. Alzheimer’s Family Caregiving Interviews (AFC), 1993–95. Funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA 5 R01 AG1011- 03), Nancy Blum and I carried out a longitudinal study titled “Caregiving Practices in Hispanic and Anglo Families.” We interviewed seventy- one generally lower- income family caregivers, forty- one Hispanic and thirty Anglo, with two to three follow- up interviews with a significant portion of these caregivers at approximately sixmonth intervals. Family caregivers included both spouses and adult children of the person with Alzheimer’s. The interviews covered initial recognition of problems, subsequent stages of and responses to troubles, sources of information, help, and support, the development of in- the- home caregiving and management practices, and the turn to outside agencies and institutions. Studies of Family Interaction. I collected a variety of materials on probation screening of incorrigibility complaints from the 1970s, beginning with a month of observation and interviewing in a local probation office that I carried out in May 1971, and including a comparable series of visits to the same probation office carried out by a graduate student late in 1973. Furthermore, working with several graduate students in 1985, I assembled ten interviews with members of “families without trust”— family situations marked by “extreme distrust” where one family member had become “someone who has to be watched” routinely, minutely, and systematically. Three cases involved elderly family members with Alzheimer’s disease, three adult ex- mental patients living at home, two situations of extreme domestic violence, two out- of- control adolescents, and one woman with Prader-Willi syndrome. Finally, I also draw on the dissertation research of Carla Davis, who conducted intensive interviews with a group of girls incarcerated in a local reform school, focused on their family situations and movement into the juvenile justice system (see C. P. Davis 2007). Accounts of Neighbor Disputes (ND). Here I rely heavily on the MA research of Eric Rivera (1991), involving interviews and analysis of neighbor troubles. I also draw on seventeen interviews and first- person accounts of neighbor disputes assembled in the 1980s and 1990s by undergraduate students and turned in as course papers. Notes on Police Ride-Alongs. I gave students in an undergraduate course on the control of crime the option of riding along with local police and sheriff patrol officers for several hours, and then writing up and analyzing their observations of officers’ encounters with citizens. Most of these ride- alongs,

Introduction / 21

focused on police decision- making on the street, took place in southern and central California in the 1980s and 1990s. Fieldnotes on Psychiatric Emergency Teams. In 1973 over a period of six months Melvin Pollner and I observed and interviewed psychiatric emergency team members in one mental health clinic in Los Angeles as they went about responding to calls requesting psychiatric evaluations of people in the community. We observed PET operations in the office as incoming calls were processed; as the team selected cases to be seen and organized to go out; and in the field as candidate patients were sought out, interviewed, and evaluated, and some disposition of the case was made. Miscellaneous Personal Accounts. I make use of a variety of personal accounts of interpersonal upsets and troubles collected over the past forty years. Some of these involve accounts of my own personal experiences with irritating and troubling situations, written up soon after they occurred; others were provided by family, friends, students, colleagues, and others who were willing to write up accounts of recent bothersome or troublesome encounters. I will also consider and incorporate materials from other studies of informal troubles, including those involving disputes and troubles in community settings (Baumgartner 1988; Merry 1979, 1990), troubles specifically between neighbors (Baumgartner 1988; Rivera 1991); troubles in families and between intimates, ranging from minor yet persistent “irritations” (Kaufmann 2009) through the normal processes of controlling teenagers (Kurz 2006) or separating and divorcing (Vaughan 1986) to what have become severe problems involving drink, drugs, or dementia (Wiseman 1991; Blum 1991, 1994), and occasionally to troubles in institutional settings such as schools, workplaces (Morrill 1995; Denissen 2010), and business organizations (Macauley 1963). Where possible, I have also used conversation analysis and sociolinguist research that provide tape- recorded transcripts of relational troubles and conflicts occurring in real time, and of talk about such troubles and conflicts to others at some later point in time (i.e., “troubles- tellings”).

Working with Trouble Accounts The data I will analyze consist overwhelmingly of descriptive narrative accounts of troubles delivered to someone not previously involved in the trouble— an ethnographer or interviewer, a friend or peer sought out for informal help or support, an official third party authorized to intervene in such situations. Many of these accounts were provided by college students, either reporting on their own experiences or interviewing friends and peers

22 / Chapter One

about their experiences. In fact, analyses relying on such student accounts have an important place in societal reaction approaches to deviance. Kitsuse described what appears to have been the first use of this procedure in his classic article (1964), noting that his sample of 75 students who described their experiences with someone they interpreted as homosexual was drawn from interviews with approximately 700 persons, mostly college undergraduates, asking about their experiences in interpreting and responding to a variety of forms of deviant behavior (90–91).6 A number of important later studies focused on the identification and response to mental illness, notably Smith (1978) and Lynch (1983), used this method. While not providing random or representative samples, these accounts offer a number of distinct advantages in understanding informal troubles. First, in most cases students were interviewed by their peers, a procedure that presumably minimized distance and intimidation in the interview situation. Second, these accounts provide insight into actors’ perceptions and subjective understandings of events that would be difficult or impossible to capture through observational methods (Kleinman, Stenross, and McMahon 1994). Finally, the elicited accounts describe a wide range of persisting and irritating problems, most of which were handled exclusively by informal means. Thus data derived from these accounts avoid a problem that besets a number of studies of deviance and disputing— namely, samples composed only of cases that have reached some official and/or legal end point. Data from accounts, however, incorporate someone’s telling about a trouble after the fact, rather than a description of a troubled interaction observed or recorded as it occurred in real time. Such accounts are fundamentally situational and occasioned: in different circumstances, on different occasions, the same teller may depict a trouble in different ways, although variations may be relatively minor and subtle or strikingly divergent. In trouble narratives, for example, the teller orients to the specific audience for this telling, the familiarity of this audience with the people and contexts involved in the incident, the commitments and concerns of the audience with these matters, and specific hearings and outcomes anticipated or sought after in providing the account. In this sense accounts are narratives produced in their 6. The interviews sought to document “(1) the behavior forms which are interpreted as deviant, (2) the processes by which persons who manifest such behaviors are defined and (3) treated as deviant” (Kitsuse 1964:91). Ten categories of deviant behavior, including “alcoholic, illiterate, illegitimate child, ex- convict, (and) sexual deviant” were listed. In a footnote Kitsuse (1964:102 n. 12) added, “The interview schedule and methods were conceived and constructed in consultation with Aaron V. Cicourel.”

Introduction / 23

own interactional contexts. How, then, do we move beyond tellings- about or accounts of trouble tied to their own distinctive interactional occasions to understand and treat these matters as more or less factual reports or data about trouble? There are no simple solutions to this issue. Accounts, particularly accounts of trouble, provide essential and revealing materials about the interactions that constitute social relations. But accounts do not provide neutral, “objective,” or straightforwardly “factual” descriptions of these interactions and the troubles they are tied to. While it is tempting to view accounts simply in terms of “biases” that warp or distort representations of trouble, it is more useful to recognize and take into account the key features of these occasioned and situated narratives, in this way proceeding self- consciously to glean what we can from accounts as reports. In the following I examine three such features— reactivity, retrospection, and selectivity/partisanship— and will explore ways of recognizing and perhaps minimizing their potentially limiting effects. But in addition, I will argue that these features of accounts are an essential and inevitable part of how troubles are constituted as interactional phenomena; that is, to use the terms developed by Gubrium and Holstein (1997), the “what” of a trouble is intricately tied to the “how” it is established through a trouble account, and in fact is “done” in ways that rely on and use these features of accounts. The Reactivity of Accounts Since all accounts arise and are situated in interaction, they reflect features of their specific interactional context and in this sense are inevitably reactive. As a general policy, then, analysis should identify these reactive features by attending to how participants in these interactions invoke and make them relevant. This approach is basic in working with naturally occurring accounts of trouble; for example, we are well aware of the differences between telling a friend about a recent problem and making a complaint to the police, understanding these differences as products of our different relationships to these parties and of the divergent concerns that motivate each such account. Attending to reactive effects involves further complications when trouble accounts are not naturally occurring but are solicited through a research interview. Indeed, many of the accounts I use were elicited in interviews conducted either by a researcher or by a peer fulfilling a course assignment. In either case, respondents were asked to describe their experience of a “prob-

24 / Chapter One

lem or trouble” with another person from the beginning in close detail.7 All ways of eliciting accounts of problems or troubles focus and restrict what people will report. Specifically, asking about “problems” or “troubles” tends to solicit accounts of more consequential problems or fully realized, recurrent troubles; college roommates, for example, tend to describe “troubles” by providing accounts of more “serious,” memorable, “storyable,” or “tellable” problems. Respondents provided few descriptions of minor tensions or disagreements that were resolved quickly, often tacitly, without major recurrence. And when accounts of quickly resolved “minor troubles” were provided, they were typically offered as part of a broader narrative showing how accommodating the teller had been; that is, while the troubled party reported some agreement or “resolution,” that party still placed the incident on the scorecard documenting the emergence and/or persistence of some other trouble. As a result, telling about troubles tends to involve accounts of recurring problems and irritations, minimizing reports of small, one- time disagreements and irritations. The result is to discourage and thus underrepresent descriptions of discontents and worries that were resolved quickly and more or less immediately, and in this sense to provide few accounts of potential troubles that “came to nothing.” There are a number of ways to work around this sort of reactive effect. First, one can look for similarities and differences between interview- elicited and naturally occurring accounts, such as those grounded in complaints made directly to a troubling other or to some outside party. Second, one can attend to indications in trouble interviews of prior responses that did “work” to resolve the trouble, even if only partially or temporarily. Third, one can specifically collect accounts of interactions, including initial experiences of irritations, upsets, and worries, and initial complaints made directly to the irritating or upsetting other, from which troubles may but do not always or necessarily develop; the irritation diaries described previously provide one method for eliciting such accounts. The Retrospective Qualities of Accounts Trouble accounts are almost inevitably retrospective in character, relying on current understandings to characterize what had occurred earlier. For ex7. Other researchers have used slightly different procedures: Baumgartner (1988) presumably asked community residents about “grievances” or problems; Merry (1990) about “problems” or disputes.

Introduction / 25

ample, in the roommate trouble discussed at the beginning of this chapter, Joel’s eventual understanding of William’s actions as deliberately provocative and manipulative—“using me for some big experiment”— discredits and replaces his earlier interpretation of these actions as products of selfcentered forgetfulness. In general, how a trouble is described depends on how it is now understood, an understanding that tends to neglect and distort earlier, discredited understandings. In addition, with new understandings incidents that had previously been viewed as entirely unrelated may now be cited as instances of the same pattern; Joel, for example, retrospectively resolved his earlier uncertainties about whether or not William was gay by interpreting the latter’s claims and actions to this effect as another provocative “experiment.” Indeed, trouble accounts routinely rely on current understandings to specify a relevant beginning and to trace the course of subsequent development. For example, when asked to describe how troubles begin, people generally move backward from some full- blown incident or trouble to recount what they now offer as its first expressions. But it is only in light of a second, third, or fourth occurrence that we can identify what is the “first” occurrence. Similarly, locating the first signs of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in memory lapses or particular episodes of disorientation relies on the ultimate recognition of Alzheimer’s in order to attribute a significance to these earlier events that was not present, or not present in just the same way, at the time when they first occurred. I will deal with the dilemmas of retrospection in several ways. First, troubles are frequently represented by and communicated through accounts, and I will treat and indeed highlight retrospective interpretation as a central feature in constructing such accounts of trouble. Second, I will attend to and honor indications of prior understandings of the trouble as “adequate at the time,” rather than as flawed or incorrect in light of subsequent developments. And finally, in so doing I will give close attention to reports of “onetime” and “first- time” troubles, as the issues of retrospective reinterpretation do not usually arise in the first and are minimized in the second. With regard to the latter: an intimate may become deeply and recurrently irritated with her partner when he regularly leaves his socks on the floor, or puts his dirty coffee cup in the sink rather than in the dishwasher (Kaufmann 2009). But her reactions and feelings were necessarily different the first few times she observed and tried to deal with these behaviors, since at that point she did not know whether or not the behavior would continue, or if she would continue to be bothered and upset if this proved to be the case.

26 / Chapter One

Selectivity and Partisanship in Accounts Trouble accounts are rhetorically and narratively structured in distinctive ways. First, as occasioned tellings, trouble accounts are inevitably selective and hence partial. They are selective in the specific facts or features that the teller includes, in what sort of detail is provided, and in where the beginning and ending of an incident or exchange are located. And selectivity also produces incompleteness, as accounts inevitably leave out facts or features that might have been included or emphasized. Second, trouble accounts are one- sided, reflecting and privileging the concerns and claims of the person providing the account. Indeed, not only the specific interpretation of the “trouble,” but also the very existence of “trouble” in the first place, may reflect the claims of only one of the two parties involved, as the other side may well have had a different understanding of the development of the relationship and its purported troubles. In one instance, for example, one college student complained that a roommate took his food without paying for it or replacing it; the other roommate, however, argued that while he did not provide much food, he purchased the bulk of the beer and many supplies for the apartment, so that there was really no trouble since it all “evened out” in the end. In privileging the position and claims of the troubled party, trouble accounts often represent the trouble in ways that frame the other’s position as an inaccurate or distorted “point of view.” Thus accounts may reference the other’s “perspective,” but frame it as misinformed, selfish, wrong, or off base in some way or other. Indeed, some trouble accounts blatantly and explicitly delegitimate the other’s point of view as obviously out of touch with reality, completely irrational, or even delusional. Consider, for example, a wife’s account of her husband’s understanding of his current condition and of her efforts to provide care for someone afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease: He is denying that there is something wrong. He’s difficult— he is seeing me as the problem. If I’d get out of the way then things would be fine. . . . The story he tells is that I’m doing it to him. He thinks he’s getting better. (AFC 4/90:35–36)

Relying on the imagery of disease, this caregiver identifies her husband’s conflicting explanation as a completely inaccurate if touching “perspective.” Her account thus recognizes conflicting perspectives, but in highly skewed terms that diminish his perspective as in error, a product of “denial” and quasi delusion in the face of the “reality” of his disease.

Introduction / 27

To assert that trouble accounts are one- sided highlights the fact that they are distinctly partisan; frequently they are structured to provide convincing narratives that justify one’s own position and discredit the behavior of the other. Sometimes trouble accounts do so subtly and indirectly, presenting the teller as acting in a reasonable, fair- minded fashion, given the particular circumstances, and so on. Consider these processes in the details of the following roommate trouble account of the initial incident of late- night typing: Trouble account

Occasioned and partisan features

I think it started when she started typing her papers really late at night, and because I’m a light sleeper, things like that really disturb me. Not intentionally, I just can’t sleep. I can’t sleep with the light on usually or with the noise in the background,

Teller highlights her difficulty sleeping with lights on or noise, a personal sensitivity that she cannot change or control; she clearly acknowledges that the other is not deliberately trying to disturb her, yet still is in fact disturbing her by typing late at night.

and so I decided to tell her one night when I had come back, it was Thanksgiving weekend and I was really exhausted because my flight was delayed and I had a midterm the next day. I couldn’t study so I just decided to go to sleep at like 11:00 . . .

Teller is not pushy or demanding, as she has endured the problem without saying anything for some time previously; and she does so now only under special circumstances—she was exhausted from a delayed flight and needed to go to sleep early because of a midterm the next morning.

And she made it a habit to come back every Sunday night. She would never come back during the day unless she had to work, which was very rare, so she would come back around 9:30, 10:00, sometimes even 11:00, and when she had papers that is, then she’d sit down and type them.

Roommate is depicted as regularly choosing not to return “during the day” to work on her papers, but instead as habitually returning late on Sunday nights and then typing her papers; this practice thus sets up conflict with her own established sleeping pattern.

I had not said anything to her for a long time, until it really affected me, which was that night when I really needed to sleep for my midterm.

An explicit formulation of having previously endured this trouble without having complained, but now unable to do so because of her need for sleep with an impending midterm.

I told her that I needed to sleep and that her typing was bothering me, and I wished that I wasn’t like that, but that I was a light sleeper and I’d really appreciate it if she’d stop . . . and this was around 1:30 in the morning, it wasn’t 10:00.

Describes in detail how she politely presented her complaint to the other; provides a “good reason” for asking the roommate to stop, expresses regret that she can’t sleep with the typing; asks as a personal matter, does not demand; explicitly notes that she complained when it was very late (1:30 am), not at an hour when typing would have been appropriate.

What I said really bothered her. Which I knew it would bother her because I wasn’t letting her do what she had planned on doing. My schedule was interfering with

Implicitly presents the other as rigid, used to getting her own way and tending to get upset when she cannot “do what she had planned”; but the problem was unavoidable, normal conflict

28 / Chapter One her schedule, and that was something that neither of us could have avoided, it was inevitable. But the thing is, she didn’t react very nicely, she didn’t respond very nicely. She did turn off her computer, but I could feel a lot of tension after that night.

in nighttime schedules; roommate complies, but ungraciously and resentfully.

I had looked for another room to go sleep in. I assumed maybe . . . some other people would be awake so perhaps I could go to sleep in their rooms, but most of the people were already settled in and I didn’t really want to bother anyone else.

Had tried to come up with an alternative solution, sleeping in another room; but she could not find anyone awake and did not want to “bother” those who were sleeping.

I really felt like crying because I just did not want to be in that situation.

Deeply upset with the situation; something she “had” to do given the circumstances, not something she freely chose to do.

So basically it ended where I guess I won the fight and she left, but it wasn’t really a win/lose situation. She just slammed her keyboard into the desk, ran out, and slammed the door. She was really pissed off. I felt even worse afterwards, I’m sure we both felt pretty bad.

Again, the other stopped typing, directly expressed anger and ill-will, and left; troubled party prevailed, but did not see it as “winning”; she felt upset with how making this complaint turned out; recognizes that the roommate “felt pretty bad” as well, but more due to anger than to regret over an irresolvable difference. (RM 70)

Extending Smith’s (1978) analysis of how students construct convincing “factually” based accounts of another person’s mental illness, we can identify some of the practices used to construct a convincing narrative of this trouble encounter with her roommate. These practices include (1) framing the trouble as an unfortunate, unavoidable conflict between different personal “needs,” in this way not explicitly identifying the other’s behavior as “transgression” or “wrongdoing”; (2) detailing the specific local circumstances that both produced this conflict (in part by ruling out the possible alternative of staying up late to study for her midterm while her roommate typed because she was “exhausted” as a result of her flight delay) and now justify making an explicit complaint about a matter that had been tolerated on past occasions; (3) invoking a possible alternative course of action (coming back during the day on Sunday) that frames the other’s late- night typing as a product of choice and hence as inconsiderate and self- centered; (4) presenting the troubles- teller as a thoughtful, considerate person, aware of and concerned about the needs and priorities of the other, asserting her own needs only in exceptional circumstances and doing so politely and respectfully; (5) providing a contrasting view of the other as self- centered, petty, angry, resistant, and ungracious; and (6) implicitly contrasting her

Introduction / 29

own good- faith effort to come up with an alternative solution (sleeping in another room) with the other’s failure to have moved elsewhere— to a lounge, or even a dorm computer room— to type as soon as it was apparent that her typing was keeping her roommate from sleeping. Despite— and because of— these one- sided, partisan qualities, we learn a great deal about the dynamics of a trouble encounter from this account. We can see the delicacy and forethought that may lie behind a simple request or complaint to another. We can see the contingencies whereby this trouble arose and played out. We can see how a convincing trouble account is constructed, in part because the person providing the account uses many of the same practices to justify her actions to us as outsiders/readers as she did to convince the other that her requests and concerns were necessary, appropriate, and “reasonable.” In sum, for analytic purposes the data provided by trouble accounts are invariably messy— reactive to the particular circumstances in which they arise, deeply retrospective, incomplete and selective, and one- sided and partisan, although often in subtle ways. Yet these materials also offer distinct benefits for analysis: they are close to and recount people’s experiences of everyday irritations, worries, and troubles; they report the idiosyncratic biographical “local knowledge” that gives these troubled interactions their distinctive significance and impact; and they convey the detailed subjective meanings of troubles for the relationships in which they are embedded

T WO

Beginnings

There is no act whose meaning is independent of reasons understood for its occurrence; and there seems to be no act for which radically different reasons cannot be provided, and hence radically different meanings. —Erving Goffman, Relations in Public (1971:110)

Those concerned with various forms of deviant behavior usually locate the beginnings of “deviant careers” in “the commission of a nonconforming act, an act that breaks some particular set of rules” (Becker 1963:25), or, in Goffman’s (1971:345) take on mental illness, in “a deviation from social norms, . . . an infraction of social rules and social expectations.” Similarly, those concerned with interpersonal conflicts and disputes frequently tie the start of these processes to the development of a grievance— that is, in “a circumstance or condition which one person (or group) perceives to be unjust, and the grounds for resentment or complaint” (Nader and Todd 1978:14–15). In this vein, Black (1998:5) argues that social control “is a mechanism by which a person or group expresses a grievance”; and Laforest (2002) holds that complaints in intimate family relations have a grievance as a starting point. But both “rule infractions” and “grievances” have their own prehistories, their own processes and contingencies of development whereby people come to understand and shape up others’ behavior as “a deviation from social norms” or as “unjust” in the first place. This chapter will examine these neglected prehistories, using the emergence of a sense of trouble in interpersonal relationships to illuminate key features of these processes. Troubles begin when in the course of everyday life someone experiences a state of affairs in negative terms— as irritating, upsetting, dissatisfying, unpleasant, difficult, or worrisome (Emerson and Messinger 1977:121). People

Beginnings / 31

often interpret these negative experiences in a variety of ways. For example, we may attribute many everyday irritations and upsets to nature (rain, snow, or cold), to inanimate objects and machines (a car that does not start), or to human and social forces beyond our individual control (traffic jams). Or we may recognize that other people are experiencing the same “offensive and undesirable” condition, and begin to “transform private troubles into public issues” through the processes of collective claims- making analyzed by Spector and Kitsuse ([1977] 1987:141– 54). However, we regularly encounter masses of negative experiences that remain private and distinctly personal that we never interpret in collective terms. We may, for example, experience a variety of concerns and worries focused on our own bodies and selves, ruminating about how we as individuals are currently faring in the world or about how we will be able function in the future: Why am I feeling so sad? Am I getting sick? Is my memory failing? We locate other negative experiences, however, as arising from our interactions and exchanges with others in daily life. Such moments when we experience upset, discontent, awkwardness, strain, worry, or alienation in our contact with others pervade everyday life. Indeed, we might think of these experiences as relational disfluencies, that is, as the normal, everyday discontents and glitches that arise massively and routinely in our ongoing contacts with others.1 I will consider two primary types of relational disfluencies— those arising when we are upset, irritated, or angered by the behavior or attitude of another, and those that develop when we feel concern or worry about another.2 In the former, we focus on how something another has said or done negatively affects our own feelings, daily routines, and sense of who and what we are: a neighbor’s loud music intrudes, a spouse is rude to us or our mother, a teenager takes the family car without permission. In other situations we do not key in on how another’s behavior or attitude negatively affects our own ego- centered life circumstances and feelings, but on the negative effects of 1. Wendell Johnson (1956) used the term “disfluencies” to characterize the recurring glitches, pauses, hesitancies, false starts, and repetitions in “normal,” everyday speech, matters that could develop into full- blown stuttering when focused on and reinforced. 2. Stokoe and Hepburn (2005) develop this distinction in comparing callers to a neighborhood mediation service who complained about “being irritated by” the noise made by neighboring children, and callers to a child abuse hotline who expressed “concern” or “worry” about how overheard children were being treated by their parents. In a similar vein Spector and Kitsuse ([1977] 1987:143) earlier emphasized that in social problems claims- making “the complaining group may or may not be the victim of the imputed condition; for example, the complaint that the welfare system demoralizes its clients may be made by an organization of social workers, clergymen, or another humanitarian group not directly subject to the condition.”

32 / Chapter Two

these behaviors or attitudes for that person’s condition and well- being, or for the well- being of another tied to and dependent on this actor: a spouse seems angry and distant, an elderly woman on a walk mistakenly tries to enter a neighbor’s house as her own, crying and screams from across the alley suggest that a neighbor may be mistreating a child. Some initial worries involve concerns about our bodies and selves that we develop, entertain, and ruminate about in our internal dialogues. These worries about self may develop into individual troubles and will provide the first topic in this chapter. I will then turn to irritations and upsets as negative experiences that may mark the beginning of a relational trouble. I will conclude the chapter by considering relational troubles that begin with worries and concerns about others and their life conditions and behaviors.

Worries about Self As noted earlier, many troubles begin as private worries and concerns when we experience moments of disfluency in or about our bodies, minds, and selves— aches and pains; lessened physical abilities; spells of sadness, anxiety, forgetfulness, or disorientation; concerns about our eating, drinking, or drug- taking— experiences Aubert and Messinger (1965:28) characterized as undergoing “an apparent change for the worse.” Many of these matters are initially opaque: we are uncertain about whether we should be concerned or disturbed about them, about where they come from, and what they mean. In addition to physical/bodily problems, we regularly develop private concerns about our own behaviors. We often devote a great deal of time and energy to thinking about these problems, entertaining various possibilities about what is going on, what these experiences “really” involve, whether they are merely straightforward reactions to difficult situations, or symptoms of some deeper and more lasting problem. In other instances we immediately experience some bodily or psychic condition as negative and serious: having tripped and fallen on the wet sidewalk, we badly injure an ankle; we know that severe pain in the chest and arm is very likely a heart attack and should not be ignored. In the case of many such private negative experiences we decide that nothing serious is happening; that the feelings are due to some specific physical cause (a flu bug), the stress of extreme circumstances, or a passing mood or vulnerability. Similarly, we may begin to take note of a series of momentary lapses— forgetting words or names, becoming briefly disoriented, leaving a stove burner on, and so forth. Ordinarily we view these occurrences as unimportant incidents produced by the overloads of everyday life, periods of spe-

Beginnings / 33

cial stress, or normal aging. But we may also become more sensitive to and self- aware of these disfluencies, making note of when and how frequently they occur, perhaps beginning to wonder if the inability to recall names is connected with losing or misplacing personal items or with momentarily forgetting what we were about to do, hence reflecting a broader pattern of “memory loss” and perhaps the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Indeed, we may then recognize these disfluencies as a problem, linking them to other of our experiences or behaviors, and at least tentatively deciding that we have to do something more than we have been doing about them. The recognition and understanding of such self- problems are fundamentally influenced by both lay medical knowledge and self- help advice; particularly with easy access to the Internet, we can now worry not only about our physical and mental health, our drinking and drug use tendencies, but also about whether we are codependent, a compulsive gambler, or a sex addict. One common response is to take these private worries to another person— intimates, close friends, physicians, or therapists— and in extreme instances to strangers encountered by chance. Feedback from these sources may convince us that many others have these same feelings and experiences, that what we are going through is completely normal. Or it may lead us to abandon our prior understanding and to decide that we really do have a problem and need to do something about it. Whatever the outcome, our self- problem is no longer private, but is now a matter of concern in and for some social relationship. Our worries may continue as an internal preoccupation, but are now projected outward and made social in the sense that at least one other knows about them. Moreover, such self- problems can become not simply social but explicitly relational if another person detects signs of our concerns and problems and brings these issues to our attention. Often it is only with some critical incident— a particularly acute experience, a dramatic change for the worse, an inability to carry out some routine activity— that we come to understand some private concern as a coherent and deeper individual trouble. In so doing we discard prior minimizing explanations for what might be wrong, and link together features and characteristics of our situation. David Karp (1996:3–4) provides this insightful account of the critical incident leading him to redefine himself not as simply “more anxious than other people” and “a worrier” but as someone who has “something . . . ‘really wrong’ with me”: People who have lived with depression can often vividly remember the situation that forced them to have a new consciousness as a troubled person. One

34 / Chapter Two such occasion for me was a 1974 professional meeting of sociologists in Montreal. By any objective standards I should have been feeling pretty good. I had a solid academic job at Boston College, had just signed my first book contract, and I had a great wife, beautiful son, and a new baby daughter at home. From the outside my life looked pretty good. During the week I was in Montreal I got virtually no sleep. It’s true, I was staying in a strange city and in a borrowed apartment— maybe that was the problem. But I had done a fair amount of traveling and never had sleeping difficulties quite as bad. Then, I thought, “Maybe I’m physically ill. It must be the flu.” But again, it was unlike any flu I’d ever had. I wasn’t just tired and achy. Each sleepless night my head was filled with disturbing ruminations and during the day I felt a sense of intolerable grief as though somebody close to me had died. I was agitated and sensed a melancholy qualitatively different from anything in the past. I couldn’t concentrate because the top of my head felt as if it would blow off, and the excitement of having received the book contract was replaced by the dread and certainty that I wasn’t up to the task of writing it. It truly was a miserable week and the start of what I now know was an extended episode of depression. It was also the beginning of a long pilgrimage to figure out what was wrong with me, what to name it, what to do about it, and how to live with it. It has been a bewildering, frustrating, often deeply painful journey.

Rather than deciding that nothing serious was happening, Karp redefined his feelings as representing a major problem, framing them as exacerbations of a series of prior difficulties, and committing to responding in a qualitatively different way. Our understandings of our self- problems, then, change and develop over time, as we accumulate new experiences and assess their relevance for our earlier interpretations of what is wrong. Indeed, we may reinterpret some initially private worries as full- blown relational discontents. While in our medicalized society the default assumption is that physical and mental problems have physiological, bodily causes, if no such cause can be identified, such problems may be attributed to stress caused by interpersonal relations, or to some other psychological process seen as affecting the body and/or mind. In this respect, theories of stress and/or psychosomatic illness provide devices for (re)interpreting almost any private problem in interpersonal terms. Consider this instance involving a woman interviewed in the 1960s who describes the circumstances that eventually led her to begin psychotherapy:

Beginnings / 35 She noticed her problems “when I found myself crying on my job, while I worked. Bursting into tears in the face of a friend, while talking. And finally sobbing so continuously I could not leave the house without sobbing into the face of the first person I’d meet who greeted me with the words, ‘Hello, how are you?’” After several months of this a neighbor, who was a school teacher, “told me to go to a mental hygiene clinic for aid.” . . . Other unsolicited advice came from two physicians, one of whom “told me I had no heart trouble but mental aggravation that caused me pains in (my) chest.” . . . “A close friend told me to get rid of my husband because he was no good. . . .” She solicited advice from several friends and from her husband. “Friends all advised me to leave my husband. My husband will never listen to me when I talk without ridiculing me.” (Kadushin 1969:172)

Here the disturbed party, discussing her out- of- control crying with a number of others, comes to understand this and related problems as products of her relationship with her ridiculing husband and takes this trouble to a specific professional— a therapist. Thus a problem that began as a purely individual matter is given specifically relational features and horizons.3 Similarly, in many other cultures, even while physical causes are recognized, people assume that this particular person became ill at just this time because of a curse or spell cast by an angry neighbor or community member; healing specialists then undertake diagnostic practices to identify others who have been angry and upset with the ill person, implement remedies that seek to counter any spell put on this person, and seek to ritually mend relations with these others (e.g., Janzen 1978; Yoder 1982). In these ways physical illness is understood and treated not as a private matter but as the product of interpersonal (and communal) tension and discontent. In sum, the beginnings of some relational troubles can be traced back to private concerns or worries about ourselves and our ongoing lives and experiences. These individual concerns become social matters when we seek advice, feedback, and support from another, thus “publicizing” the problem, making it part of the relationship with the person who now knows about our problem. Individual concerns become relational matters when another, either having been told about our problem or having observed our behavior or condition, becomes involved. In this way what had been our private worry becomes a relational other’s worry about us. 3. Of course, her friends could have insisted that she needed a vacation or more vitamins, thus preserving an individual frame around the problem.

36 / Chapter Two

The Landscape of Relational Irritations In contrast to private worries, many troubles arise when we experience personal feelings of upset or discomfort with what another has said or done (or failed to say or do). Researchers have termed these sorts of relationally grounded dissatisfactions “discontents” (Vaughan 1986), “irritations” (Kaufmann 2009), “unhappy events” (Pomerantz 1978), “problems,” and so forth. As a practical matter, distinguishing between irritations that are relationally based and those that are not is often tricky. For example, we wake up in bed shivering in the middle of night (see Rosenblatt 2006). We may attribute this unhappy event to a variety of nonrelational factors: to not having worn pajamas or put warm- enough blankets on the bed, to the furnace having failed to go on as the temperature fell, to an oncoming bout of the flu. But we may also attribute being cold at night to our partner having pulled the blankets off of us, having failed to provide enough blankets in the first place, having misset the thermostat, or opened a window too wide on a freezing night. In all cases, we can take action to fix the problem ourselves: pulling up the blankets, closing the window, turning up the thermostat, taking a nighttime flu medicine. But responding becomes interactionally complex when we locate the source of our discontent in the behavior of another, since it requires either dealing directly with this other and his or her actions, or making changes that will be visible to and perhaps implicate our relationship with this other. Among the results described by Rosenblatt (2006:66– 73) are “thermostat wars,” “window wars,” and “give me my covers back.” Again, irritations linked to others’ behaviors arise regularly and routinely in the course of everyday life. But the relational and interactional circumstances within which such negative feelings arise vary in a number of social dimensions. First, some relational disfluencies are singular events that do not recur; others occur a number of times but are by and large ignored or tolerated; still others cease, perhaps quickly, perhaps after a number of recurrences, sometimes of their own accord, sometimes as the result of something the irritated party has said or done. And some recur and persist, eventually getting built into the fabric of our everyday lives. Second, our feelings of upset or irritation have very different qualities depending on just who this other is for us. It is one thing, for example, when a casual acquaintance at a party talks in a loud, domineering, and offputting manner; we can edge away, take care to distance ourselves during the rest of our copresence, and leave with the resolve never to have contact

Beginnings / 37

again. It is something else when our partner or a good friend behaves in this fashion. We may experience something like the same initial “irritation,” but this feeling becomes more intricate when we know we cannot (easily) walk away from this person and this behavior because of our relationship with him or her. The distinctive nature of our connection with another, then, may produce very different experiences of irritation and upset in intimate, family, friendship, workplace, and casual relationships. Third, the interactional situations within which we experience relational disfluencies differ in significant ways. Some relational disfluencies arise directly in the interaction with another who says or does something that disturbs us: a man sees a guy who “has a thing” for his girlfriend “give her a long, hard hug”; a person interrupts our morning get- to- work routine or insists on talking while we want to get on with a task that must be done; a roommate takes a leisurely, early morning shower when she knows that we have ten minutes to shower and leave for work; a fellow barista uses his off- moments to send text messages rather than “cleaning up his mess.” In these situations the irritating or disturbing other is immediately present, and the upsetting talk or behavior is often ongoing and open- ended; hence the opportunity to respond is immediately available. In other circumstances we come upon a negative condition that we attribute to the action of another who is not immediately present: a woman notices her partner’s “toothpaste scum” unrinsed in the bathroom sink after he has brushed his teeth; in the shower we find our shampoo bottle empty, or in the tanning salon our tube of tanning lotion squeezed dry; an apartment resident finds a strange car in the resident’s assigned parking spot. In these situations, people experience frustration, upset, or anger in the absence of the person understood as having caused the irritating condition. If a response is going to be made, it must necessarily be put off to a later point in time. Finally, relational irritations may have different temporal structures. In many instances we instantly feel irritated with another, the experience seeming to come upon and overwhelm us in a direct and immediately transparent fashion; we encounter some jarring event— blaring music, blatant disregard of our self and belongings, inappropriate anger and hostility— and immediately recognize that “something is wrong.” These negative feelings seem almost instinctual, overtaking us instantaneously. They are not thought out or thought through, although these reflective processes can and do occur in subsequent moments; rather they seem to arise as almost instinctual reactions to something that has happened. Neighbor problems involving excessive noise, for example, frequently have this quality:

38 / Chapter Two It began about five, six months ago when my neighbor first moved in. I remember vividly on a Tuesday night, I was watching “thirtysomething” . . . and they were blasting the music so loud. . . . Our walls are very thin so I can hear almost everything that happens in there unfortunately. Yes, loud music, very loud music. (Rivera 1991:12) I remember exactly when it started, which was about three months after we moved in. It’s a really vivid memory because my now- husband thenboyfriend’s mother had just died and we had just come home from taking care of everything and we were feeling kind of like we needed to just lock ourselves away from the world and we rented a silly movie and all of a sudden in the middle of the movie we heard this crashing and it was horrible sounds, screams coming from the next apartment and it was really a horrible feeling, especially coming at that particular moment when we were feeling kind of vulnerable. (12–13)

These moments are recalled flashes of upset in which noise intrudes on a private, secluded sphere; they are “vividly” remembered, and linked specifically to the actions of others. Yet on occasion we may clearly experience irritation or upset but remain uncertain about just which relational other is responsible. Often the irritated party cannot immediately identify the relational culprit, as in the following roommate situations: [Arriving home,] I was desperately longing for a shower at the end of my day. As soon as I entered the restroom I noticed that my body wash had been completely used up. Nothing makes me more irritated as to not having essential bathroom items at all times, especially since I had bought the wash last week. But which one of my roommates had used my wash? I went out of the bathroom just with a towel wrapped around me and asked each one of them if they had used my body wash. Of course none of them confessed, but I knew the whole time none of them would. I gave each and every single one of them a lecture about how I hate it when people take my belongings without permission and they all just gave me the same nod and look. Although I still do not know who finished my bottle, I am sure they will think twice before ever doing that again. (ID 1) I was in the kitchen in my apartment cooking Top Ramen. As I waited for the water to boil, I decided to do some dishes. In the sink I discover a rancid aroma. I see a little bit of milk dried up in the bottom of a few cups and

Beginnings / 39 bowls. I instantly get disgusted wondering which one of my roommates left the mess. After thinking about it I am sure it was Steven who left the milk since my other roommate Joyce has just returned from Irvine and the dry milk had to have sat there for a couple of days. . . . When Steven got home I casually mention that I have done the dishes to see what his response is. He just nodded. So I then say, “There was some milk in those cups you should rinse it out.” He then says that it wasn’t him and saying that it was my other roommate because he knows that it bothers me. He seemed upset that I had blamed him. I wanted to say more but I left it there because at least he does know that I don’t like a messy sink. (ID 55)

In these instances people experienced irritations directly and strongly, but had to make further inquiries to try to identify the party responsible. And in still other instances the experience of irritation itself can be ambiguous and problematic right from the start, our recognition that we are put off by what someone is saying or doing emerging in opaque and shifting stages. Indeed, many discontents begin with vague and perhaps unfocused feelings that something another has said or done is “not quite right,” but with no certainty about just what it is, or even if it is or should be a matter of concern. Here our sense of just what is “wrong,” and indeed, our sense that there is a something wrong at all, are established gradually over time. In the following case, for example, noise from a neighboring apartment came to be recognized and experienced as disturbing only over the course of a month when a roommate was temporarily away: Well, we moved into this apartment in the middle of September and I was there alone for about a month because my roommate was in Mexico . . . when I realized that the guy next door has a very loud stereo system because there wasn’t anything to distract me . . . from his noise, so that all I heard was his noise. It’s like a bass vibration from his TV and his stereo that I hear through the wall all the time. It’s like “mua mua mua mua mua mua,” so I somehow endured it for a while. And then I thought, he can turn it down because it’s bothering me. (Rivera 1991:13)

Similarly, in the following roommate situation, feelings of “annoyance” developed over time as one party began to realize that the division of household labor was unequal and that the other was not pulling her weight: From what I knew of her, I thought she was a cool person and stuff. But after a little while, some stuff really started to annoy me . . . . I noticed that I did all

40 / Chapter Two the chores. She wouldn’t do anything. I always have to take the trash out. She would just keep piling stuff on top of the trash can and things would be falling on the floor. The floor would be all gross and stuff. (RM 77; emphasis added)

In these instances, people did not identify relational disfluencies in a flash, but rather came to do so gradually on arriving at new interpretations of what was going on; these interpretations eventually dissolved earlier ambiguous feelings by keying on distinctive but previously unaccented patterns of behavior. When relational exchanges produce niggling doubt about what is going on, we may have to await further developments to determine whether we should “really” be upset or irritated. Consider, for example, the following incidents that Emerson and Gardner (1997:269) use to illustrate initially “ambiguous” touching on public transit: I was riding the bus to work one morning when I thought I felt someone stroke my thigh. I looked around but the guys next to me all had on business suits and innocent expressions. Thought maybe I imagined it. Then I felt it again. Same thing— couldn’t catch the guy doing it. [Finally she identifies a well- dressed man reading The New York Times as her harasser . . .] (25- year- old white sales trainee in New York) A young white photographer’s assistant, while “traveling around downtown on the trolley” thought she “felt something brush up my leg. Then I wasn’t so sure: this guy next to me was sitting there, looking out at all the shops like he’s so interested, you know. I tried to tell myself that it was all my imagination. Then all of a sudden I get a big pinch that I can’t ignore.”

The women in these situations felt physical contact, immediately entertaining the possibility that this involved deliberate, illicit touching; but in then examining their immediate environment, they (re)interpreted this possibility as “imagined.” This occurred in part because the culprits “used crowded public transit conditions to disguise their touching actions,” making it difficult to distinguish accidental from deliberate physical contact and thereby leading their victims to doubt their own experience. This doubt was only extinguished when touching reoccurred. Similar uncertainties may arise in intimate relationships where dissatisfied parties take care to hide or to only obliquely express deeper, relationalthreatening discontents. Vaughan (1986:33), for example, found that the eventual initiators of uncoupling initially provide signs of discontent and

Beginnings / 41

alienation to their partners that they deliberately make hard to read: “In the presence of others, the initiator may react to the partner in ways that reflect disinterest, disrespect, or dislike. Some strategies are subtle— a failure to react, a frown displayed at the proper moment, innuendo, mimicry, hints— so subtle that the initiator cannot be accused of doing something unacceptable.” Of course, this subtlety means that the partner may not be sure just what these acts mean, whether they in fact were intended to convey disinterest or disrespect, and hence whether they are in fact matters that the partner should be concerned or upset about. We often do not immediately resolve ambiguous feelings about possible relational disfluencies, preferring instead to bide our time, to wait and see what future developments bring. In some cases we may simply dismiss and ignore the incident that produced these feelings, “letting it go” by assuming that we or the other was simply having a bad day, that the matter is too minor and inconsequential to worry about, and so on. In other cases, we may internally register our feelings as discontent or upset, but give the other another chance, making a mental note that the other had said or done something off- putting. Consider this account of “the very first incident,” signaling possible trouble in a woman’s relationship with her dance instructor: She was giving me a private lesson, showing me a video on the computer which illustrated two people who dance together so gracefully that it looked almost magical. I was kind of in awe, and said that it looked like their dancing was very intuitive, that each knew just what the other was going to do and fit their own dancing into that. She suddenly got very angry, and said, “That is totally wrong! They learned to do all these dance steps through lessons and practice, and intuition has nothing to do with it! You insult my work by implying that there was some sort of intuitive magic going on! They practiced for years to look like that!” I was so taken aback by the tone in her voice that I backed down immediately, and said “Oh of course, I understand.” But I really was hurt, and very very surprised by the heat of her reaction. So I just sort of chalked it up to a small misunderstanding, and let it go, though I was more wary of her after that. (Pers. comm.)

In these situations, we are definite in our feelings of discontent and upset, but decide to continue the relationship with a wait- and- see attitude, entering a simple “noted” on our mental checklist for dealing with this person. And indeed, things may work out in the relationship, leading to the abandonment of our initial stance of careful wariness and to thwarting the development of full- blown trouble. Or they may not.

42 / Chapter Two

Inhibiting Displays of Irritation It is striking that in many situations upset or frustrated parties take care not to display their irritation either to the other causing the irritation or to those in the local environment. The following accounts illustrate this tendency: It is 7:47pm and I have just finished a long and laborious studying session for an upcoming exam at one of my favorite coffee shops. As I walk to my car, I decide to call my boyfriend to let him know that I am going to stop by a friend’s house to straighten my hair before I go over to his house for the night. Knowing that he is a little OCD about being on time, I let him know that it will take me about 10 minutes to get to her house from the coffee shop, and that I should be done straightening my hair at about 8:45pm and should be back to his house at 9:00pm (just in time for our favorite Sunday night television show). Although keeping my cool, I am already a little irritated that I have to report to him about exactly what I am doing at exactly what time. However, I blow it off and disguise my annoyance by maintaining an uplifting, bubbly voice over the phone. (ID 6; emphasis added) The girls and I go to Bruin Café to get food, planning to take it to another one of our friend’s room. We got a lot of food to share and had our hands quite full. We took orders from our friends who were in the room to take back with us. As we approached Rieber Terrace, we realized we could not swipe into the building although we live on the hill. So I called my friend Gabriela to come swipe us in because there was no one else walking into the building. She replied “Are you sure no one is walking in?” This made me irritated with Gabriela because she would not swipe us in although we had gone out of our way to get her food. We waited in the cold, hands full, for someone to walk in the building. When we finally got up to the room Gabriela answered the door greeting us with “About time!” I could have reacted with words or just left, but considering I have never had a confrontation with her before I just laughed and smiled to keep the peace. (ID 9; emphasis added) Before I became a UCLA student, I worked in a small coffee shop in Westwood that emphasizes well- made coffee in small cups with latte art. We were trained for hours in how to pull “perfect” shots of espresso and how to steam milk so it was the right consistency for pouring latte art. One of the most important lessons we learned was to make sure that the milk was not too hot (which burned it and made it overly frothy).

Beginnings / 43 I still go to the coffee shop at least once a week to hang out, and I know everyone who works there. This afternoon I ordered a small latte and stood at the counter, talking to the workers as they were making it. As we chatted, I noticed that my friend who was steaming the milk had left the steam- wand on for a very long time. I knew that the milk was burning. I became distracted, stopped talking and stared for a moment at the milk pitcher that he had in his hand (somewhat in hopes that he would notice my gaze and remove the wand). He did not notice where I was looking, but soon he removed the pitcher from the wand and began pouring the milk into the shot of espresso. I could see that it was too frothy, and I knew this meant that my drink would not taste very good. I continued talking with them, sat down and began drinking my latte. I did not like it. I felt irritated that I had just paid extra for a drink that I could have gotten for $2 on campus. However, as a worker I also know how frustrating it can be to have a customer complain; and once somebody complains you start to think of that person as overly- picky and rude. So I did not say anything about the quality of the drink when my friend then asked me, “How is it?” gesturing to the latte. I smiled and said, “Good. Thank you.” I made sure that I sounded honest, because I did not want him to ask any further questions. I did not voice my irritation in order to preserve our friendship and to position myself as a good customer. But the next time I go in I will probably order a tea if he is working on the milk steamer. (ID 44; emphasis added)

In all these instances, a person experienced irritation while interacting with another— a boyfriend, a friend, and a former coworker, respectively. But in all cases the irritated person consciously sought to avoid expressing these feelings to the other, indeed making a special effort to cover up these feelings— adopting an “uplifting, bubbly” phone voice in the first instance, laughing and smiling in the second, and feigning contentment with a flawed latte in the last.4 And underlying these responses is a concern with presenting a particular version of self— that of the kind of person who rises above the relational other’s obsessive, inconsiderate, or incompetent behavior, who is not thrown off course by another’s petty flaws.5 4. Note that in this case the irritated customer did initially signal her concern by staring at the milk pitcher and the steam wand; but the other did not pick up this nonverbal expression of discontent. 5. Note here again, I treat these statements both as factual reports of the selves presented to relational others, and as accounts available to us as readers asserting versions of self that explain and justify these particular ways of handling irritations.

44 / Chapter Two

Why do these irritated people avoid expressing their irritation to the person whose behavior produced these feelings? Obviously one concern is to avoid antagonizing the relational other. With many irritations, we weigh the likely consequences of bringing seemingly fleeting negative feelings into an ongoing relationship, anticipating the likely reparative work that will be required to smooth things out if expressing irritation generates ill will. An apartment dweller explicitly assesses this issue in the following account: [A woman had called her roommate earlier in the day to ask her to take a chicken out of the freezer for her dinner. When she got home that evening she could not find the chicken, and when asked about it, the roommate apologized profusely for forgetting to take it out of the freezer.] I have two options: (1) getting upset and making a scene or (2) forgetting about it and moving on. I think about both options, and weigh out the pros and cons of each. If I choose to go with option 1, that would include me stomping out of the living room into the kitchen without another word to my roommate. This would undoubtedly ignite a negative response from her. She might storm off into our room and slam the door, or perhaps leave the apartment altogether. On the other hand, option 2 would consist of my silent acknowledgment of both of our errors. I would think to myself, “It happens to all of us. We’re both human, and we may forget things from time to time. Hopefully I do not make the same mistake next time.” After going over this in my head, I would smile at my roommate, letting her know that it was okay. I would then find my way into the kitchen and search for my alternative dinner: a microwaveable meal. After evaluating both options, the answer is clear. I am not going to make a big deal out of a trivial matter, so I choose option 2. (ID 29)

Similarly, a woman who was irritated by her roommate’s “constant freeloading,” including most recently using her nail polish remover, reflected: I haven’t blatantly said “Stop using my things.” I doubt I ever will. I’ve confided this issue with another friend and my mother, and decided to take my mother’s advice. She understands why I would be irritated, but she also realizes that if I were to confront my roommate about this as a serious issue, I would seem irrational since I would be arguing over small and trivial things. The best thing to do is to simply “let it go.” The cost of all those items is not worth the drama that will ensue if I decide to make serious complaints about it. (ID 4)

Beginnings / 45

As these accounts suggest, in addition to wanting to avoid upsetting and alienating the other by openly expressing discontent, irritated parties also desist from expressing irritations to avoid the loss of face envisioned from making “a big deal out of a trivial matter.” Expressions of discontent make what have been private feelings relationally visible to the irritating other and publicly visible to the wider audience of those present. And these feelings, often grounded in one’s own idiosyncratic sensitivities, may well center on matters that can be anticipated to appear “trivial” to others, and that may even seem “minor” to us.6 Thus one may not want (at this time, on this occasion) to “make a scene” with a roommate over one forgetful act, to offer a “serious complaint” about petty borrowing, or as in the bad latte incident described earlier, to present oneself to former coworkers as an “overly picky and rude” customer. Finally, irritated parties may also self- consciously decide not to express discontent because of concern about upsetting the broader moral balance with the relational other. In some cases, irritated parties may account for their reluctance to express “minor” irritations by noting past favors owed to the other: Kelly bought a new alarm clock with a Hello Kitty voice, a cartoon character that speaks in a very annoying and squeaky- like voice which according to Kelly is cute. Every morning I hear: “Wake up, wake up! You are late!” for at least 5 to 10 minutes. Also she does not turn off her alarm, and just lets it go off but still manages to sleep. Unlike her, I cannot stand the annoying chanting, it is really a disturbance. There are many instances, where I wanted to knock on her door, and say, “Hey, people need to sleep, can you not understand there are other people living in the apartment as well? Or can you get rid of that? However, I have never gathered up the courage to say those things to her, or even text her about it. We have known each other for three years already and I have been living with her for only a couple of months. She even took me to the hospital when I had appendicitis. If I do tell her, I might jeopardize our friendship and my stay in the apartment, since we split the rent. (ID 2; emphasis added)

6. “Trivial,” “petty,” “small,” “minor,” and so on, of course, are meanings constructed by implicit reference to what might comprise “serious” or “major” complaints. Persson and Wästerfors (2009) in particular show how nursing home staff routinely treat resident complaints as products of “small” irritations rather than deep dissatisfactions. For example, one staff person noted that residents complained “if you put the pillow wrong, or if the wheelchair was a bit displaced, or if they got one instead of two cutlets for dinner. Such trivial matters” (7). Such complaints were often dismissed by characterizing residents as “attention seekers” or “impossible to satisfy” (7).

46 / Chapter Two

On other occasions, an upset party may be reluctant to express irritation because of the other’s earlier forbearance of the upset party’s own foibles and shortcomings. Thus a woman reported: On Friday morning I woke up late for class. I jumped out of bed and quickly threw on some clothes. Rushed, I grabbed my wallet and headed down the stairs. As I get downstairs, I notice that the backyard door is wide open. I then go to close it while I begin to wonder why it was open. As I start to leave I realize my roommate’s keys are off the rack, informing me that she had already left. This leads to my first instance of annoyance: my roommate had left me in the apartment alone and sleeping with a door open. I allow myself to feel annoyed, but it only lasts a moment. By the time I am walking out of the front door I have decided to not bring it up to my roommate either by text or by letting her know later when we are both back at home. I do so because there are many things I do that annoy my roommate as well, even if she does not say anything: I leave my cups out on the coffee table, I barely sweep, and I scarcely take out the trash. My roommate is good at cleaning and I am good at making sure the house is secure (unplugging outlets, double locking doors, making sure the oven is off, etc.). It is important to pick one’s battles: It was not a big deal, it did not become a tragedy, and there was no reason to cause unnecessary tension between my roommate and myself. Almost immediately after leaving my apartment the annoyance had completely passed. (ID 53; emphasis added)

In these ways, irritated parties may locate their irritation within a broader relationship with the other, invoking notions of relational reciprocity and balance in deciding not to convey some current discontent. Furthermore, reimagining this wider context may help to dissolve or release one’s personal feelings of annoyance and upset toward the other, in the process presenting a self that is unflappable, mature, and fair- minded. Finally, note that although these irritated parties made no overt response, they did identify and evaluate a variety of possible action responses in eventually deciding not to act. In this way, those with discontents may go through a complex internal response, weighing different action possibilities and imagining their likely consequences, even though they ultimately take no responsive action.

Initial Responses and Response Horizons Analytically I will treat relational troubles not simply as discontents attributed to another’s behavior, but as such discontents to which the irritated

Beginnings / 47

party has responded in some way, taking an action of one sort or another to deal with it. In these terms situations remain pre- troubles when an upset party does not display discontent to the person whose behavior caused the problem (or to relevant others), and makes no overt response to discourage repetition of the irritating behavior. But in many instances irritated parties do respond, sometimes immediately and sometimes at a later juncture, sometimes by expressing their discontent to the other, at others by taking action on their own to try to deal with the upsetting situation or by simply talking the situation over with friends for support and advice. At this point I want to consider minimal responses— those that simply convey discontent to a relational other. The following chapters will examine more specific responses, including unilaterally initiated actions (chapter 3), making complaints to the other to correct the irritating behavior (chapter 4), and taking the trouble to others previously outside it (chapter 5). More often than not, irritated parties do make at least a minimal response, signaling their discontent to the other, although often in understated and even roundabout ways. Thus irritation may be displayed through nonverbal behaviors such as stares, grimaces, frowns, or groans: a cigar smoker, on reentering his office building after a smoking break, felt irritated on seeing the security guard’s “face change as soon as he caught a sniff of the smell when I entered the building” (ID 1)— a case of irritation with another’s expressed irritation. Or irritated parties may behave in ways that signal their negative feelings indirectly— by not talking to or acknowledging the other, by staying in one’s bedroom, and by strategic paybacks, as in the following case: I was getting really irritated because of all the noise she was making in the morning so . . . I too started slamming the closet doors, slamming the front door, letting the fridge door slam, etc. I hoped that she would notice I was being abnormally loud and get the hint that if I was being loud she too was being loud. (ID 11)

Similarly, in the following instance, an irritated party tries a series of progressively modulated signals to alert the other to his frustration over not having an empty laundry basket for his dirty clothes: I live with my sister and we generally have different standards about the cleanliness of our apartment. We did four loads of laundry this weekend at the laundromat. When I came home, I folded all my laundry and put it away. My sister just left her clean clothes in the laundry basket and day- by- day picked

48 / Chapter Two out the things she needed. For several nights I would take off my socks in the evening and see the laundry basket missing in the bathroom. The first night, I just left my socks where the hamper usually is, the next night I moved them out into the main part of the bathroom to inadvertently convey the message I was annoyed I didn’t have a place for my laundry. The next night I set my socks down next to her hamper of clean clothes, which is beside her bed. (ID 8)

It should be noted that these subtle signals had no effect in getting the other to correct the problem. Other upsets may be expressed verbally in briefly voiced remarks, protests, or quips: a student greeted a friend who was late meeting to go to class with “‘FINALLY’ in a jokingly exasperated voice” (ID 32); a coffee shop barista, previously asked by a coworker to bring her some coffee base from the shelf, responds to a second request to refill the ice bin with “‘Anything else?’ in a somewhat sarcastic tone” (ID 13). By these varied, indirect means, what had been private matters are transformed from inner feelings into full- blown relational matters. They now affect not just the person experiencing them, but the relational other to whom they have been expressed, who must now respond to this response. And it is exactly because of these relational implications that irritated parties are frequently so careful and cautious about whether or not and how to display their upset. However, there are further complications here: the expression of discontent and upset may be keyed to the immediately irritating event or situation, or to the ongoing relationship within which that event or situation is embedded, or to both. That is, irritations have both immediate and long- term response horizons (i.e., imagined contexts and trajectories evoked in considering possible alternative responses),7 as illustrated in the following account: It’s 6:30am on a Friday morning. I get up go wash up and get ready to head to work which starts at 7am. When I reach the restroom door I find it’s locked. I

7. The concept of “horizon” derives from the work of Husserl and Gurwitsch on the phenomenology of perception. Gurwitsch (1965:25) proposed the concepts of “perceptual adumbration” and “perceptual implications” to emphasize the processes whereby “noematic components not given in genuine sense- experience are effective in shaping and molding the perceptual noema.” My approach, focused on specifically response horizons, draws heavily on Bittner’s (1967a) distinction between scenic, temporal, and manipulative horizons in on- the- street police decision- making with regard to the mentally ill; see Emerson 1992a:17–18; Emerson and Paley 1992.

Beginnings / 49 hear my roommate say “I’m in here, I’ma take a shower.” All that comes out of my mouth is “K.” But in my head I began to think why out of all the times she had to pick this exact time to take a shower. She did not have to get ready for work. She didn’t have class till 2pm so why take a shower now? She already knew I had work. I sit down on my desk to wait, hoping she hurries up knowing I’m awake and have to get ready for work. The next noise I hear is music and singing; not only is she in there wasting time but she is singing using up even more time. I sit for about 15 min, in which I take the time to complain via text to my best friend on her actions. “So my roommates is so effin up my morning, I’m trying to get ready to work and can’t because she’s hogging up the restroom.” At 6:45 I knock on the restroom door and ask my roommate, “How much longer are you going to take? I have to go to work in 15 minutes!” I decide to keep a normal voice tone as not to let her know I am angry but that I urgently need the restroom and fast. She responds, “What did you say?” and opens the door. I look at her with an urgent face, tell her to look at the time, and repeat that I have work at 7am. She gives me a look of I am taking a shower don’t rush me, seeming ready to go back into the restroom. Before she can do so I tell her that I only need it a few minutes just to at least brush my teeth. In my mind I am thinking she should at least give me 5 minutes to wash up since she was in there so long. She motions me to go ahead and use the restroom, stepping out with her towel and sitting at her desk. I rapidly get inside, start washing my teeth, throw some water on my face and then pull up my hair and get out as fast as promised. When I come out my roommate says “Done?” I say yes but I am thinking shouldn’t she be a bit more patient. I should be the one in charge of the restroom use at this time. Does she not understand my urgency? I change and head off to work. No real anger was portrayed to each other but I was surely not happy in the least about this situation. I left the dorm and left thinking on what I shall say to her later on the evening so that another occurrence like the experiences this morning doesn’t happen again. (ID 45; emphasis added)

Here the troubled party makes a number of immediate responses to this situation, all aimed at getting into the bathroom in time to leave for work. First, she alerts her roommate that she needs to get in the bathroom, but then accepts some delay, sitting and waiting for the other to finish while expressing her frustration to a friend in a text message. Second, she knocks on the door, asking how much longer and insisting that she has to leave

50 / Chapter Two

for work in fifteen minutes, making sure to banish anger from her voice. Third, when the roommate opens the door, she points to the time, and then when the roommate shows no sign of vacating the bathroom, negotiates a compromise of “a few minutes” possession for her own needs. Finally, after quickly finishing in the bathroom and getting dressed, she leaves, again deliberately not displaying any anger. However, once she is outside the immediate trouble situation and on her way to work, she reflects on how she can deal with the roommate to prevent this problem from arising again, in this sense shifting gears to focus not on the immediate situation but on a longer- term response horizon— what she is going to say to her roommate to prevent similar instances from occurring in the future. In many trouble situations, people prioritize immediate response horizons. Kaufmann’s (2009) analysis of couples’ reactions to “the first night spent together” illustrates this tendency in newly forming relationships. Looking at how such couples move from their separate “old worlds” to begin to recognize and reconcile differences between their tacit expectations about the routines of everyday life, Kaufmann expected “all manner of difficult confrontations” involving upsets and irritations centered primarily around the bathroom and the breakfast table. Yet, as he explains, I did indeed encounter some of these, but by no means as many as I had thought. Feelings of irritation in particular were almost non- existent. Instead there was a great deal of anxiety, embarrassment and unease. And the desire to run away, to forget about the whole experience as quickly as possible. But very little in the way of irritation. Vincent is a striking example. His first “morning after” is nothing short of a disaster movie, and he reels off a string of disturbing or hostile comments on the subject of his lady- love. Even the milk tastes strange that morning. Yet he continues as though nothing had happened, as though all these negative emotions were water off a duck’s back. The verdict is yet to be reached. . . . In those stories of first mornings in which the old world triumphs, all kinds of negative feelings are experienced, but not in the form of irritation.8 This is because the hapless candidates for conjugal life are not interested in trying to resolve any of the contradictions which set them in opposition to the universe they are presented with. He (or she) is more intent on working out how best to

8. Kaufmann seems to reserve the term “irritation” for negative feelings tied to frustrations in trying to create a world in common with another. This would seem an unnecessarily restricted use of the term.

Beginnings / 51 escape, or, if the night in question has been spent on home territory, to get rid of the intruder. (2009:14–15; emphasis added)

Kaufmann, then, argues that his informants were in a transitional state, not yet committed to trying to create routines of daily life as a coupled unit. Hence they strongly experienced “all kinds of negative feelings,” but framed these feelings in terms of an immediate response horizon of escaping from or “getting rid of the intruder.” These negative feelings seemingly ran the gamut from anger to disgust and upset. In general, then, I would suggest that the more circumscribed the relationship with an irritating other, the more salient the immediate response horizon as opposed to the longer- term relational response horizon. This tendency is most pronounced in public place encounters with the unacquainted, which typically generate only immediate response horizons, since “walking away” and terminating future contact are usually readily available. In contrast, disfluencies arising in behaviorally similar contacts with those with whom we have continuing relationships can be projected to recur and continue in the future, even if on an occasional and episodic basis, and hence also produce relationally embedded feelings of irritation, discontent, and upset. Waking up cold in bed, for example, while we may well fix the immediate problem by closing the window the other opened, we are also aware that this action is visible to and may well have fallout for our relations with this other. In sum, when we know that we will continue to have contact with a person in the future, our feelings of discontent become tied to considerations of not only what we are going to do about the matter in the here and now, but also what these feelings and our immediate responses imply for the continuing relationship. Of course, we may decide to deal with these issues by saying nothing; but even this response is something we must think about and decide how to implement given the particulars of this relationship, generating a distinctive response horizon.

From Discontents to Recognized Troubles Given that many discontents are disregarded or simply “noted” “until further notice,” what processes push these matters toward some sort of immediate and/or longer- term relational response? I will consider three such processes: working through the self- questioning and doubt that upset parties frequently experience; linking one discontent to others; and assess-

52 / Chapter Two

ing the disturbance as the product of the other’s negative intentions and motives. Working through Self-Questioning In many situations we experience some incident as irritating, but then step back from our immediate experience to reflect on our feelings and impulses about how to respond. Such self- questioning usually involves not doubt about the reality of the upsetting experience or about one’s fundamental sense of self, but about the appropriateness of particular feelings of upset— specifically, whether these feelings are “normal,” legitimate, or worthy of the kind of person one wants to be. Crystallizing feelings of irritation requires working through these internal hesitancies. Self- questioning may arise, in the first place, from uncertainty about whether one has adequate standing in the relationship to make a particular complaint. In the following instance, for example, a woman, deliberating about whether to confront her roommate for having left rancid dried milk in dirty dishes in the sink, first had to assess whether she would then be opening herself up to criticism from this other: However I hesitated making a complaint because I consider how Steven takes the trash out and perhaps if I brought something up he would call me out on something as well. Had I left a huge mess the past few times? Had he made a complaint about me? So I stopped and thought if there was anything that I had been doing that I could be called out on, and there wasn’t. (ID 55)

Here a disturbed party examines and resolves her own vulnerability to a countercharge by the other before deciding to voice her complaint. Sometimes uncertainty about expressing discontent is built into the basic outlook of a person experiencing this feeling. Vaughan (1986:73–74) provides an example of a spouse who viewed relational “problems as a normal part of being coupled and, therefore, nothing to get alarmed about”: I was a person who thought that one suffers through and that throughout life certain sufferings happen and that’s just the way it is. And I thought that as a woman I should really feel so lucky that I was married to this bright man who a lot of people thought was witty and I had these two beautiful children and I had a nice house and I had what seemed to be a glowing possible future. Why in the world, even though if one looked one might see that I was not

Beginnings / 53 happy, why in the world would I ever want to change that? I mean, I never saw my mother happy. Why should I assume that I should be happy? You know. Happy, what’s that?

But feelings of uncertainty are usually more fleeting and episodic, keyed to uncertainties about what are “normal” and appropriate expectations to have of some relational other. College roommates, for example, frequently groped to determine appropriate standards of cleanliness and neatness, a situation often giving rise to self- questioning: The first time that Mary noticed something was not right was when Alice threw her belongings everywhere. She never made her bed and she had clothes lying all around the floor. “There was so much stuff on the ground, you couldn’t even see the carpet!” At first, Mary tried very hard not to let it bother her. She thought, “Not everyone is going to be as neat as me. Not everyone makes their bed every morning.” Mary never expressed how she felt [to her roommate]. (RM 137)

Doubt about inappropriate levels of noise occurs frequently in neighbor troubles: Then there’s the part of me that thinks I’m totally neurotic and I shouldn’t let this bother me, that . . . I’m oversensitive to noise and that I’m not tolerant of other people and that I shouldn’t be letting this bug me as much as it is. (Rivera 1991:14)

Finally, upset parties may come to experience questions of inner doubt precisely because of the vehemence of their own reactions. Kaufmann (2009:122) provides these reflections of a thirty- nine- year- old married woman: Zoe gets really annoyed when her husband licks his knife in front of her, before plunging it back into the butter dish. . . . But, surprised by the violence of her own reactions in the face of his uncouth behavior (in a fit of rage, she puts his socks in his coffee cup), she sometimes finds herself questioning her own upbringing, with an increasingly self- critical eye. “My father impressed certain principles and good manners on me so deeply that it was as though there was a little omnipresent censor hovering over me, ready to tap me on the head anytime any of these rules were transgressed. I trembled at the thought!”

54 / Chapter Two

Zoe thus experiences moments of reflective distance from her gut- level reactions, seeing herself as a possible captive of an internal “censor” voicing her father’s attitude toward traditional “good manners.” One common response to self- questioning is to seek the advice of others— intimates, friends, colleagues. College roommates, for example, frequently sought to resolve their uncertainty about whether their discontent was appropriate by taking up the matter with friends and peers. In many instances these others helped resolve previously ambivalent feelings of upset: A woman complained about her apartment roommate being “tight with her food” and going to bed early, leading her to have to study in the living room. “At first I would never say anything but I would ask my roommates if they thought she was being picky about things and they would agree. . . . (What did your roommates think?) They all thought someone should say something but no one ever did.” (RM 26)

At times, of course, relational others challenge the upset party’s discontent, interpreting this reaction as in some way inappropriate or unjustified— as “petty,” “neurotic,” or “overreacting”: I told them that I needed the place clean so then they started telling me I was neurotic, you know, and I don’t think that I am cause I’m just clean. You know I just want the place neat but they thought I had a problem with that. (RM 12; emphasis added) (Did you ever consult another roommate?) I did, and Charlotte had a boyfriend at the time, so it all came down to me being jealous. This is what it all came down to, this was going on in my apartment and I wasn’t part of them. And Charlotte told me there were a couple of times when I almost walked in on her and her boyfriend and so she could understand how Chloe felt. She was sorry that it happened to me but she thought I was overreacting. (RM 27)

In these instances others framed the disturbed roommates’ upsets as idiosyncratic and ultimately unjustified, as a “neurotic” reaction and as a product of jealousy at another’s open sexual activity in the apartment, respectively. These reactions reaffirm and often strengthen feelings of inner doubt and uncertainty. In the face of these kinds of counterclaims, overcoming internal questioning may require presenting one’s discontent as the product of a distinc-

Beginnings / 55

tive personal preference— that is, as a legitimate feeling tied to one’s upbringing, ingrained habits, or deep sensitivities. Invoking personal preferences presents upset feelings not as moral absolutes but as nonrational, unalterable proclivities. One woman, for example, emphasized that her discontent with her roommate’s “clingy” tendencies resulted from her own distinctive sensitivities—“It was just me, I would get annoyed at her” (RM 79). These framings present discontents as products of the normal, expected differences in how people manage their lives on a day- to- day basis— in how clean they keep their living space, in how sensitive they are to “dependency,” in how they react to open displays of sexuality. Clearly working through these kinds of hesitancies both draws on and affirms key qualities of personal identity. Through internal dialogue or consultation with others, irritated parties grapple with questions like “Should I feel discontent in these circumstances? Do I have the right to be so upset? Am I the kind of person who wants to complain about this sort of discontent to the other? If so, how can I do so in ways that reflect who I am or who I want to be?” In deciding how to respond to a discontent, then, the irritated party orients to a range of possible identities— a person who can live with and tolerate trying others, who is self- aware of personal preferences and sensitivities to others’ behaviors, who establishes clear limits in relating to others, who does not overreact to temporary, petty problems. And in resolving these uncertainties the irritated party asserts the specific identity implicated by a particular response. Connecting Multiple Incidents When most people talk about troubles, they usually recount not single incidents that they successfully resolved on the spot but rather a series of recurring incidents involving some disturbing behavior. It is one thing when a roommate does not clean up her mess in the kitchen on a morning she has to get to class on time. It is something else when this behavior is regularly repeated, or when it is noted that she also never takes out the trash; under these circumstances “messiness” or a failure to pull one’s weight may come to be seen as typical of this person. And it is something else again if the behaviors continue even after the troubled party has directly brought them to the other’s attention by complaining or by expressing discontent in more indirect ways. In many instances, of course, it is a seemingly straightforward matter to decide that the troubling party has engaged in the “same” irritating act

56 / Chapter Two

again.9 Time after time the dishes don’t get washed, the coffee cup is left in the sink rather than being put in the dishwasher. But people also come to connect a number of distinctly different upsetting actions or incidents as expressions of a single pattern of troubling behavior. A college student, for example, links two different acts— a roommate borrows her lamp and laptop desk and moves them to her own her bed to study, and on another occasion asks to use her nail polish remover— by characterizing both as “freeloading” (ID 4). Similarly, Kaufmann (2009:44, 126) recounts how Gally, a woman he interviewed, linked two separate trouble incidents involving her husband, Akira, as products of an underlying character trait of “absentmindedness”: a one- time obliviousness to a severe flood in the apartment caused by an overflowing washing machine, and a recurrent tendency to leave the living room windows open after a nightly cigarette. Indeed, one central practice we rely on to make sense of some candidate discontent is to link it to other incidents and occurrences, thereby coming to establish the meaning of the current matter by making it part of a broader “pattern.” What is involved here, then, is what Garfinkel (1967), drawing on the classic work of Karl Mannheim, has termed the documentary method of interpretation: a particular act or document is understood by reference to an underlying pattern, while at the same time the act adds to or elaborates just what this pattern involves. Consider, for example, how the initial problem in a woman’s relationship with her dance instructor recounted earlier is given weight and consequence on being linked to a series of subsequent incidents: Then in our next class, we were all standing in a circle while she and her partner were illustrating a dance step. She and her partner were talking about it, and everyone else in the circle was talking, too. It all seemed quite informal as we waited for her final words. Suddenly, she wheeled around and looked directly at me, shouting “Burdette! No talking!” I was completely nonplussed, because she and her partner had NEVER criticized anyone for talking, and she had certainly never used names before. I was suddenly reduced to a junior high school student who had been chastised: I think I blushed and looked away. This one was very hard to take, though I pretended it didn’t bother me. I did wonder at the time if she was sick, or awaiting a difficult diagnosis, or something of that order, to have made such a hurtful remark. I am old enough to be her mother, after all.

9. “Seemingly,” of course, because of the innumerable contingencies that may be invoked to account for why what would appear to be the “same act” is “in fact” “different,” by identifying different contexts, meanings, or intentions.

Beginnings / 57 I debated whether to even go back to the class, but I loved swing dancing, and thought I would call her to enroll in another class. She has always either answered the phone before, or returned my call immediately. I left 2 messages for her. She has not returned either of them. While I was waiting for her to call, I checked her website for information about my son, whose band played at her last dance and who is scheduled to play twice more in the next two months. I noticed he was not, as previously believed, scheduled to play in October. Of course I assumed that she had cancelled him, because she hated me, so I called him to ask him why he wasn’t playing for her in October, and he told me that he had had to cancel himself, because of prior engagements. So she hadn’t cancelled him after all, I thought. But somehow that didn’t mitigate what she had already done. I was still hurt by her treatment of me. So I have put it all together, and come up with the only possible explanation: she is angry at me for something, I don’t even know what, and wants to end the relationship. I am not one to beg or question or cajole or wonder. I now want to end the relationship also, because I feel so insulted. If she and I had had a long- term relationship, I would have put some effort into understanding what happened. But since she is new in my life, and I don’t know her very well (and now of course, don’t want to), I am happy to just pull out of the relationship altogether. I have my pride. (Pers. comm.)

Here, a series of discrete incidents are connected to document a recurring pattern of insult and hurtful treatment, the pattern linking the incidents, the incidents elaborating and specifying the pattern. Establishing linkages,10 clearly, is a deeply interpretive process: a different pattern occasions the relevance of different incidents, and focusing on other incidents may suggest alternative patterns. Furthermore, linking prior incidents is at least partially a retrospective process: some “last straw” or “critical incident” often propels a new interpretation and a kind of casting of the net for previously unappreciated “signs” or “indicators” of the problem. Alternatively, a gradual buildup of “problematic” incidents may eventually tip the scales toward recognition of a consistent pattern, although 10. There are a number of helpful examinations of the rhetorical process involved in characterizing events as recurrent and patterned. Riessman (1990: chap. 3) identifies several narrative practices used to establish regularity, repetition, and frequency in accounts of marital separation, including episodic, habitual, and hypothetical narratives. Edwards (1995:345, 319) has identified a variety of linguistic devices—“verbs with iterative aspect,” “event pluralizaton,” temporal adverbs, etc.— used to produce “script formulations,” that is, “descriptions of actions and events that characterize them as having a recurring, predictable, sequential pattern.”

58 / Chapter Two

understanding incidents as “problematic” in the first place involves further interpretations. Assessing Negative Intent Ambiguous feelings of discontent and irritation become crystallized when we suspect or determine that the other is acting intentionally out of dislike, anger, hatred, or for some other negative personal motive. We obviously can become upset by another’s actions even when they are not intended to upset or irritate; college roommates, for example, reported becoming irritated by another’s messiness, clinginess, personal mannerisms, smells—all matters initially understood as incidental by- products of another’s habits, personality, and/or lifestyle. And Kaufmann (2009:78) reports the following situation in which a wife is continually irritated by her husband’s frequent, unthinking laugh: He can’t finish a single phrase without that little laugh. So I look at him as if to say “what’s so funny?” . . . It’s become a reflex he can’t do anything about. . . . Of course I’ve mentioned it to him on various occasions and he just says that’s how he is and he can’t do anything about it. I’m worried I’ll end up being really horrible to him, just because he gets on my nerves.

But when we come to understand these and other actions as motivated by personal spite or hostility, the solidity of our feelings of discontent is strengthened. In most continuing relationships we do not ordinarily assume intentional hostility. In the trouble account analyzed in chapter 1, for example, the disturbed student, while noting that her roommate deliberately chose to stay up late in their room to write a class paper, emphasized that the latter did not intend to upset or disturb her by this action.11 It started when she started typing her papers really late at night, and because I’m a light sleeper, things like that really disturb me. Not intentionally, I just can’t sleep. I can’t sleep with the light on usually or with the noise in the background, and so I decided to tell her one night when I had come back, it was

11. Here I draw on Austin’s (1966) distinction between acting deliberately and acting intentionally. He illustrates the difference by noting that if “I realize that by insisting on payment of due debts, I am going to ‘ruin’ my debtor,” he would be acting deliberately but not intentionally since “at no time did I intend to ruin him” (433).

Beginnings / 59 Thanksgiving weekend . . . I had not said anything to her for a long time, until it really affected me, which was that night when I really needed to sleep for my midterm. I told her that I needed to sleep and that her typing was bothering me, and I wished that I wasn’t like that, but that I was a light sleeper and I’d really appreciate it if she’d stop— and this was around 1:30 in the morning. (RM 70; emphasis added)

Here the upset party specifically frames the other’s actions as deliberate but not intended to disturb her.12 Similarly, roommates do not initially interpret another’s leaving dirty dishes in the kitchen as an act intended to offend or upset, but rather as a product of different cleaning- up practices, of minimal or lax standards of cleanliness, or perhaps of some personality trait such as “sloppiness” or “laziness.” As a result, irritated parties avoid imputing harmful, injurious, or vindictive motives to the disturbing other. However, in some situations this presumption does not arise, or is not long sustained: if a roommate consumes food or drink that are known (or should have been known) to have been purchased for individual use, for example, the purchaser generally views that act as undertaken despite the likelihood of upset. Similarly, we generally interpret an action that directly reverses one we have just carried out— such as closing a window one party has just opened, or turning off a TV another has just turned on— as knowingly risking upset and discontent when it is not accompanied by a request, apology, or account (Goffman 1971). But even the most seemingly innocent acts can be understood as deliberately provocative and perhaps hostile where there is a history of tension and difficulty in the relationship. For example, a student coming home from work goes to her suite’s bathroom where “I notice that there are only three rolls of tissue”; there should have been four rolls from the weekly allotment from housekeeping. She suspects her two suite mates are “playing mind games” with her and her roommate by swiping one of their rolls, which will then force them into an embarrassing trip to the front desk to ask for more. She links this incident to the suite mates’ tendency to shower and blow- dry their hair at 1:00 a.m., recounting one specific occasion when one of the suite mates had showered at 3:00 a.m. and seemed to delay blow- drying for some minutes until she and her roommate had turned off their lights and 12. However, in explicitly noting lack of intention in this instance, the troubled party does anticipate and build toward a forthcoming claim that in later instances her roommate did knowingly and intentionally disturb and upset her (see chapter 6).

60 / Chapter Two

gotten in bed (ID 59). Or consider this account of the tensions and suspicions that can arise from the intricacies of sharing a bathroom: It’s in the morning and I’m getting ready for work. I’m at the bathroom counter doing my hair, minding my own business. I’m on the right side of the counter which is my side, the sink is in the middle, and the left side is my roommate’s. As I’m doing my hair my roommate makes her way to the bathroom sink and starts brushing her teeth. Usually I still have enough space for me to move about but for some reason today my roommate wants to be extra close. I’m looking at her like “Really now? You got to be this close for real?” Her back is towards me as she hunches over the sink so she cannot see the evil look I’m giving her. I continue doing what I’m doing. . . . She finally finishes brushing her teeth, but starts to do her hair as well. She is still close to me and at this point I’m starting to get irritated because she has more room on her side of the counter yet she wants to be all up in my space. I need arm room, and I have some but not as much as I would prefer. I’m trying to do the best I can without elbowing this girl in her face (although that will probably make me feel a little better). We are not talking to each other and don’t want anything to do with each other after our argument a week earlier. . . . Now she wants to have an attitude towards me. Well that’s fine with me. . . . And right now I’m thinking in my head that she’s doing what she’s doing because she wants to get on my nerves and is waiting for me to say something to her so that she can have a reason to go off on me. (ID 47; emphasis added)

Clearly assessing intent and hostility in relationships can be a complex and problematic process. Often the irritated party is suspicious but far from certain that the other’s upsetting actions are intentionally provocative. Consider Gally’s ambivalence toward her “absentminded” husband, Akira, noted briefly earlier: “He forgets the same things all the time and I sometimes find it difficult to believe he isn’t doing it deliberately.” She then provides this example: “before going to bed, Akira always goes downstairs to smoke a cigarette in the living room. We’ve got an arrangement whereby he opens the window while he smokes so that the house doesn’t end up smelling of smoke. Four times out of five, he forgets to close the window before coming back upstairs. And the next morning it’s freezing cold in the living room. The annoying thing is that if I ask him if he’s closed the window, he says he has. The worst of it is that he genuinely believes he has closed it. And that leaves me not knowing where I

Beginnings / 61 stand: if I thought he was just saying ‘yes’ for the sake of peace even though he knew perfectly well he hadn’t closed it, I’d get angry about it. But the fact is, he really believes he has closed it. The gesture is so routine he can’t be sure if it’s something he’s just done or something he did yesterday. What can you say??? But still, when I find that wretched window open, I feel like giving him a good shaking as though he was a naughty child.” (Kaufmann 2009:126)

Here the wife excuses her husband’s forgetting to close the window on the grounds that “he genuinely believes he has closed it.” But she simultaneously considers the possibility that he may just be saying he closed it “for the sake of peace,” in which case although the original act was not maliciously motivated, the denial was. In situations where intentions become suspect, the upset party may undertake special efforts to assess what the other’s motives “really” are. For example, a woman upset by her roommate’s practice of nonchalantly “changing her clothes in front of my boyfriend” initially suspected seductive and/or exhibitionist motives lay behind these actions. She then sought to check out this possibility by “jokingly” chatting with her roommate: “At first I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to start a conflict between us because I did really like her. Each time she would change, my boyfriend and I would talk about it and I was going to say something to her but I just kept putting it off till next time. I think more than that I was just trying to get used to it so it wouldn’t become any big deal to me.” She eventually jokingly commented about the problem to her roommate, leading the latter to explain that she was a dancer and “really didn’t think about it” since she was “used to changing in front of people, guys and girls, because there was no other area to change sometimes for rehearsal.” (RM 90)

Here the irritated roommate abandons her initial inference of intentionally seductive/provocative behavior when the other provides a convincing account for her behavior based on her practices as a dancer. This account dissolved the suspicion that her clothes changing was an intentionally sexualized act, reframing both the act and the initial upset it caused as products of different personal habits and preferences. Of course, many accounts are not so convincing, or, when the disturbed party focuses on the other’s continuing to act in the same fashion even after having been informed that this is highly disturbing, may be dismissed as beside the point in the face of a normal “lack of consideration.”

62 / Chapter Two

Worries about Others As noted earlier, the origins of some troubles lie primarily in experiences of worry or concern about a relational other’s behavior or condition.13 Othercentered worries often arise in longer- term continuous relationships in which parties have some commitment to the well- being and care of another: a close friend notices another’s increasing stress or constant fatigue; one member of a couple finds it increasingly necessary to look out for the other; parents worry about what they regard as the out- of- control behavior of a teenager. But less intimate yet physically close relationships may also give rise to worries about others, as when neighbors report hearing “a little girl about six always crying” in a call to a child protective hotline (Potter and Hepburn 2003:206). These experiences of worry or concern have a distinctly other- centered, even “altruistic” component; indeed in some cases the concerned party assumes some responsibility for the well- being or fate of the other. Of course, the line between the two experiences is frequently indistinct, as a person may simultaneously feel both irritation and worry with regard to a relational other. In the following example, a 1950s wife described her initial worries about and irritations with her husband, some years later committed to a mental hospital: At Thanksgiving, six months after marriage, Mr. F. “got sick and stopped working.” During the war he contracted malaria, he explained, which always recurred at that time of year. “He wouldn’t get out of bed or eat. . . . He thought he was constipated and he had nightmares. . . . What I noticed most was his perspiring so much. He was crabby. You couldn’t get him to go to a doctor. . . . I noticed he was nervous. He’s always been a nervous person. Any little thing that would go wrong would upset him— if I didn’t get a drawer closed right. . . . For a cab driver, he worked hard— most cab drivers loaf. When he felt good, he worked hard. He didn’t work so hard when he didn’t. (Yarrow et al. 1955:14)

Here a wife became concerned about rather than irritated by some of her husband’s behaviors and conditions— for example, constipation, night13. A number of analyses of concerns and worries about others have looked at calls to institutional agents, including the police (Whalen and Zimmerman 1990) and child protection services (Potter and Hepburn 2003; Stokoe and Hepburn 2005). Here I focus instead on actors’ initial experiences of worry about another; in chapter 4 I will consider how people may express such worries in direct complaints to the worried- about other.

Beginnings / 63

mares, perspiring. But she experienced other of his behaviors— frequently interrupted working, becoming “crabby” and upset with her “if I didn’t get a drawer closed right”— not only as causes for worry about his physical and mental condition, but also as direct sources of personal irritation for her and as thorns in their relationship. Similarly, parents of an “incorrigible” teenage girl may feel both profound worry about the latter’s unauthorized nights spent elsewhere, and deep irritation and upset that she disregards their curfew or neglects to inform them where she is. (Indeed, one way to integrate these divergent feelings is to frame the problem by asking, “How should we deal with these troubles?”) And many of the disjunctures attributed to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease— a pot left burning on the stove, forgetting to pay an important bill, driving erratically— generate feelings of both worry and irritation. Thus an Anglo man in his midseventies who eventually placed his wife in a board and care home described a number of his wife’s behaviors that led him to worry but with little or no feelings of personal irritation. For example, his wife would sometimes slip out of the house while he was watching TV, walk down the street, and then sit on the front porch of a house on the next corner, apparently mistaking it for her own. Sometimes a neighbor brought her home; sometimes he had to go and get her. This behavior increased his concern about her mental condition and led him to develop new ways of keeping her from getting out of the house and getting lost (wiring the front door shut, providing her with an ID bracelet), but did not upset or irritate him. However, he did experience deep upset and irritation when her disorientation affected a seemingly minor part of his daily routine: I don’t know how many times she would take the remote for the TV and the TV Guide and take it somewhere. And I’d come in and I can’t play the TV . . . or know what program I’m gonna get because I don’t have the TV Guide. That was terribly irritating. It really irritated me. And I’d start looking and it would be over there on the counter by the microwave. . . . I don’t think she ever did anything to hide it. . . . I think she just wanted to put it somewhere. (AFC 116)

The focus here is on his negative experience; concern about what this forgetful behavior says about the other is secondary and subordinate. In practice, then, the line between self- centered irritations and othercentered worries is often blurred; the lapses that bring worry and concern about the other can simultaneously cause a partner to feel shame, embarrassment, irritation, or discontent regarding his or her own circumstances. When

64 / Chapter Two

the acts of another family member directly disturb and bother one (e.g., a lost key, erratic driving, bills neglected and not paid), or are distinctly hostile or aggressive in nature (e.g., fits of temper or violence)— and Alzheimer’s disease is not yet firmly established as the cause of these behaviors— the partner often holds that family member accountable, perhaps complaining directly, perhaps initiating preventive or corrective responses. Here the problem is distinctly a matter of relational discontent, as these lapses and mess ups impinge on one’s daily life and interactions in direct and significant ways. Troubles become primarily other- centered with a shift to seeing these problems as grounds for concern and worry not about one’s own circumstances but about the family member’s functioning and well- being. As with self- centered irritations, other- centered worries may evolve gradually over periods of uncertainty about whether there is in fact “something wrong” and just what it might be. Initial disfluencies are often dismissed as momentary or minor occurrences, coming to be recognized as worrisome matters only in retrospect. Consider how the caregiving husband described above identified the beginning of the problems that were eventually diagnosed as products of Alzheimer’s disease: Actually I’d say she had it, shown the effects for about five years. I didn’t really realize it because she was operating pretty well. Her memory was a little bad but then what the heck, a lot of old people have—I don’t even know my own name at nine thirty in the morning (laughs)! You know, so I didn’t think much about it. . . . Except for a little memory loss now and then, I didn’t think anything was wrong. She was driving a car and she’d go to the beauty shop and she might forget to tip the hairdresser. But that again was just a little slip of memory. (AFC 116)

Similarly, wives of husbands eventually diagnosed as alcoholics initially tend to minimize or avoid recognizing a “drinking problem” by balancing periods when “their husband does not drink or act drunk” against periods of heavy drinking, and “by neutralizing their husband’s drinking behaviors as the normal result of unusual circumstances” (Wiseman 1991:24). Thus one woman reported: Yes, I noticed it [the heavy drinking]. Of course, I made up all kinds of excuses for it at first. He had recently come out of a divorce and I rationalized to myself that he was just confused now; the poor guy had been misused by his first wife and had really been given a rough deal. (Wiseman 1991:24)

Beginnings / 65

Similar processes characterize initial interpretations of what ultimately come to be recognized as other forms of disability or deviance. Parents of children ultimately diagnosed as deaf, for example, often viewed these children as “a bit unconcentrated,” “talking late in maturity,” “having a cold,” and so forth. (Åkerström 2004). Parents begin to worry that their teenage son is getting poor grades or having problems at school because he is hanging out with “bad friends,” or that their daughter does not come home directly from school and seems interested in the wrong kind of guys. Many wives whose husbands were eventually hospitalized as mentally ill were initially concerned about the latter’s growing nervousness and irritability and about recurrent “physical problems, complaints and worries” (Yarrow et al. 1955:17), coming to recognize serious mental problems only after years of concern about these more mundane problems. As with initial understandings of one’s own personal irritations, those beginning to worry about another’s condition may abandon minimizing interpretations only in the face of some behavior that signals a previously unappreciated depth to the problem. The husband caring for his Alzheimer’safflicted wife, for example, recounted two incidents that led him to see deep change in his wife’s normal functioning: [Also, about that time] she was driving a car, [but when I bought a new Cadillac] she would never drive that. Now, she had driven a Cadillac, cause we had one once before. [But] I couldn’t get her— finally one time I got her into the driver’s seat, to drive (inaudible). She drove it a couple miles and then pulled over to the side of the road and said, “Take me (home).” Which I never did quite understand it but I’m sure that she was— it was starting and I just didn’t know it. . . . And then four years ago last month, (she went) to renew her driver’s license and she couldn’t pass the test, and I guess that’s when I decided that things had gotten to where she had a real problem. . . . She took [the test] and had it graded and then, (so she wasn’t) answering (all) of the questions right. So I asked if she could take it again later, and they said, “Yes, come back next week.” So I came home and I drilled her on the book and uh, uh, she failed the second time. (When you were drilling her was she able to come up with the answers?) Sometimes. Not all of the time. . . . [Prior to this] it wasn’t so bad that I thought she had, you know Alzheimer’s or anything, until after the second time she couldn’t pass it, it was pretty obvious there was something radically wrong. . . . It kinda hit me when she couldn’t pass her driver’s test. That’s when I went to the doctor and checked it out. . . . He sent her to a neurologist

66 / Chapter Two who did a CATSCAN and that was a waste of time. . . . He said “well there’s a little atrophying of the brain is all” and that’s all I got outa him. . . . When she couldn’t pass the driver’s test I knew . . . she had a problem. (AFC 116)

Here, what the husband had initially viewed as momentary lapses in thought and behavior came to be seen as signs of a deeper “problem” only after two uncharacteristic, “anomalous” actions by the wife— a refusal/inability to drive a car she had in the past been able to handle, and repeated failure to pass the written portion of the state test to renew her driver’s license. The latter in particular “hit” him as indicating “something radically wrong,” leading to a medical referral and ultimately to the conclusion that she had Alzheimer’s disease.14 Finally, a critical factor in relational troubles arising from worries about an intimate other is whether or not the other shares these worries and concerns. In many cases it is the other who initially notes some change in body, mind, or functioning, starts to keep track of and elaborate such self- worries, and eventually comes to share these concerns with their relational intimate: Do I seem more forgetful? Am I gaining (or losing) weight? How can I handle the stress at work? In these instances both parties usually develop a common alignment to the troubling worry, determining whether it is real or imagined, exploring different avenues of response, and so forth. In other cases, however, common alignment either does not develop or eventually breaks down, leading to a situation in which one party feels that something worrisome is going on with the other, but the other denies or resists this claim: I am not forgetful, just preoccupied; my drinking is normal and what men do, or is a matter of how I lead my life and not your concern; my driving is not erratic, and anyway I have no other way of getting around. Such lack of alignment is common in spousal worries that the other is not exercising enough, drinking too much too frequently (Wiseman 1991), deeply lethargic or depressed, or too involved with peers, sports, or a hobby. 14. Note that this description of the problem was provided by the husband and reflects his concerns and interpretations: his wife has become unwilling or unable to perform actions she routinely performed in the past and that are necessary for their current life circumstances; e.g., if she drives the new Cadillac, they will be able to sell her old Barracuda and save on gas, fees, insurance, etc. Absent an adequate account from his wife, the husband immediately wonders, “What is going on with her?” On subsequently linking this incident with her failure to pass the written exam to renew her driver’s license, he concludes that her abilities and confidence are significantly declining. His account alludes only indirectly to what may have been his wife’s concerns/understandings— possibly, feeling pressured or bullied to do something she did not want to do and did not feel comfortable doing. In fact, we do not know what she made of these events; she may have recognized problems and wondered, “Why is this so hard for me now?”

Beginnings / 67

But perhaps the most radical lack of alignment over whether or not particular behaviors are cause for worry occurs in relations between parents and their teenagers. Consider the exchanges between Nancy and her aunt from the probation interview described in chapter 1. The aunt’s deepest worry seems to be about Nancy’s “dating” and possible sexual activity: “It’s come to the point where I can’t control it. . . . I told her it’s got to the point where I have to make a doctor’s appointment to check for VD. All because she won’t tell where she’s going or what she’s doing. And I’m beside myself! I’m a nervous wreck.” Nancy in turn presents her dating as a conventional junior high school relationship (she has a “‘boyfriend’ who walks her home from school”), and describes staying with girlfriends when she stays out overnight— not matters to worry about. And when the probation officer asks about her possible involvement in “the drug scene,” she insists that this is not an issue: “I’m a good girl every way except for running away.” Her worry is not about these matters, but about what she depicts as her aunt’s overly restrictive and at times violent efforts to control her behavior.

Conclusion This chapter has highlighted the uncertainties and ambiguities that frequently characterize our initial negative experiences of irritations and worries linked to a relational other. Some troubles begin as ill- defined negative feelings that something may be amiss where we remain uncertain about what specifically— if anything— is wrong. Furthermore, we frequently bracket these immediate feelings, sometimes only for a brief instant, sometimes for substantial periods of time, as we reflect on what they mean, whether they are appropriate or valid, whether the core problem lies with us or elsewhere, and what they imply about ourselves and our relationship with the other. Indeed, in many cases we decide that these upsets are unfounded or products of one- time chance factors— catching the other on a bad day, in a bad mood, on a touchy topic— that will not recur (although one may want to exercise a bit of care in these areas in the future). Many such irritations are ephemeral or inconsequential and do not become full- blown troubles; they disappear, fizzle out, or become irrelevant to the actor and to the dynamics of the ongoing relationship— at least until they appear again. In this sense, these fleeting upsets and worries are close to what Lemert (1972:62) long ago termed “primary deviation”: they are “polygenetic, arising out of a variety of social, cultural, psychological, and physiological factors,” and have “only marginal implications for the status and psychic structure of the person involved.”

68 / Chapter Two

In some instances, however, discontents and worries come to be recognized as distinctive sorts of problems or troubles. This is often a gradual process, marked by a series of interpretations and actions in which initial understandings are modified or abandoned and a variety of responses are undertaken to try to do something about the trouble. In contrast to irritations and worries that “come to nothing,” these negative experiences evolve into full- blown, recognized troubles. And as later chapters will suggest, while many of these troubles are experienced as routine, everyday relational matters, others create irresolvable tensions, distrust, and conflicts deep in the fabric of the troubled relationship. This analytic approach to the beginnings of what may eventually become troubles draws attention to a wide variety of negative experiences that may become linked in some way to the behavior of a relational other. This stands in contrast to prevailing approaches that identify one particular type of negative experience as the starting point— an act of norm violation or “rule- breaking” as the point of departure for various forms of “deviance” (Becker 1963), an interpersonal “offense” that may eventually lead to mental illness (Goffman 1971), a grievance, injury, or harm generating dispute or conflict (Nader and Todd 1978; Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat 1980–81). By assuming right from the start the meaning of another’s action as norm violating, offensive, unjust, or injurious, such approaches create a predetermined, overly homogenized, and restricted pool of “candidate troubles.” Such approaches thus gloss over and ignore the often- confused experiences of ill- defined and shifting feelings of dissatisfaction and worry that routinely arise and are dealt with in social relationships, honing in instead on more clear- cut, fully articulated interpretations. Examining a wide range of both personal irritations and worries about others broadens this pool, enhancing appreciation of the variety and multiplicity of events that may ultimately come to be recognized and treated as trouble. In addition, beginning analysis from one of these prespecified starting points cuts off full consideration of the processes whereby people come to shape up and respond to some (but not all) of these relational disfluencies as troubles. The meaning of another’s action as offense, infraction, injury, or harm is assumed from the start, rather than viewed as a product of the interaction and interpretation within a relationship. The following chapters, then, will explore the ways in which initial discontents and worries are understood and responded to in ways that may eventually shape them up precisely as reactions to norm violations, offenses, grievances, or injuries committed by a relational other.

Beginnings / 69

Finally, to assume norm violation, offense, injustice, or injury as a starting point sets up an artificial dilemma: If another’s acts have these qualities right from the beginning, why do the “victims” of these acts wait so long to respond to them, or respond in such mild or accommodating ways? The solution has been to argue that those who experience offense or injury from another often respond, at least initially, by denying the problem and/or by normalizing the behavior in question. “Denial” and “normalization,” then, provide explanations for why those who have suffered offense or injury have failed to act in assertive ways to respond to or redress these problems. But while denial and normalization are indeed important processes, logically they require showing that the person involved has come to some recognition that the other’s actions are offensive or harmful, and then has backed away from, discounted, or ignored this recognition. Indeed, this is a recurrent problem in understanding problems and troubles— we tend to assume that an irritation or trouble was really there in the first place and all along, but that the troubled party “denied” or “normalized” this experience. When we rely on notions of “denial” or “normalizing” we assume that our worry about ourselves or another “in fact” arises from a “real” underlying problem—“deafness,” “mental illness,” “alcoholism,” and so on. In doing so we ignore the complexities and indeterminacy of these processes of active interpretation and the possibilities that we will accept, ignore, and/or accommodate to initial discontents and worries. Thus, in the present analysis, I do not assume the prior existence or “reality” of such conditions; rather I want to understand how some instances come to be shaped up in these ways, while others move in different directions to other outcomes. Locating the beginnings of troubles in specific discontents and worries, rather than in the presumption of an already existing problem or disability, provides for this openness and indeterminacy. It recognizes that the initial issues for the upset and worried are simply “Is something going on?” and “If so, what is it?”— much more open and ambiguous matters, which allow for a variety of subsequent interpretations and outcomes.

THREE

Unilateral Responses

[In his family the manic pre- patient] is likely to detect that he is being watched, especially when he approaches some domestic device which could be used to harm himself or others, or which is itself valuable and vulnerable to harm. He will sense that he is being treated as a child who can’t be trusted around the house, but in this case one who cannot be trusted to be frankly shown that he is not trusted. If he lights a match or takes up a knife, he may find as he turns from these tasks that others present seem to have been watching him and now are trying to cover up their watchfulness. —Erving Goffman, Relations in Public (1971:381)

When people begin to do something about the irritations they attribute to another, private matters are transformed into interactional events. As noted in chapter 1, initial responses usually draw on resources available within the relationship. One set of such responses are unilateral, involving actions carried out by the troubled party more or less independently of the troubling party. In these instances the troubled party responds without explicitly consulting with the other— indeed, in some instances without the latter’s knowledge— making no effort to obtain the other’s cooperation and agreement. Examples include avoiding a troublesome other at moments of particular stress and tension, hiding food, drink, or desirable clothing items from roommates or intimates, and disabling a car to keep a family member with Alzheimer’s from driving. Troubled parties may employ unilateral responses at all stages of the development of troubles. But since these responses involve no consultation with the troublesome other and remain under the initiative and control

Unilateral Responses / 71

of the troubled party, such unilateral actions have particular appeal both as initial responses and as “last resort” responses (Emerson 1981) when troubles have escalated. Unilateral responses used at early stages of troubles are typically crafted to minimize or avoid entirely open confrontation with the disturbing other, and indeed are usually invisible or of low visibility to this other. But when employed at later stages after initial responses have failed and problems have escalated, unilateral responses are overt and often explicitly confrontational. This chapter will focus on the initial, more covert and muted uses of unilateral responses in order to explore the early stages of trouble development.1 I will analyze three types of such responses, all characterized by practical, “make- do” qualities: self- targeted changes, managerial responses, and preventive actions. Self- targeted changes involve efforts to do something about the discontent and trouble by making changes in oneself. Managerial responses seek to manage the consequences or implications of the troubling behavior of another. Preventive actions are remedial in intent, seeking to discourage or preempt another’s troublesome behavior.

Self-Targeted Changes We often initially react to feelings of irritation and dissatisfaction with another by trying to control and change our own feelings and the behaviors linked to them. With such self- targeted changes we urge ourselves to be more understanding and patient, and to act in ways that are more accepting of the other.2 Persons sharing sleeping space with another, for example, often try “to learn to accept and live with things as they are without being annoyed, upset, or even awakened” (Rosenblatt 2006:21): a ngel a .

Before we got together I would normally fall asleep with the TV on,

and he did not do that at all, and so when we moved in together, that was something that we had to overcome. . . . It made him uncomfortable and he couldn’t sleep so I was sympathetic to that need. And so I’ve taught myself to go to sleep without it. (21; emphasis added) 1. However, at some points I will also use illustrations involving unilateral responses to later, highly consolidated troubles. 2. Self- targeted change is an expression of what Goffman (1971:347) terms “personal control,” and Gibbs (1989:49) “internal” or “self- control”; Black (1998:65–73) takes a somewhat different approach, analyzing the “social control of the self” as a matter of the “self- application” of law and other forms of control.

72 / Chapter Three

In another case, a wife changed her sleeping habits in order to accommodate a husband whose legs shook violently all night: donna .

It took me a while, ’cause it felt like the bed was just vibrating. . . . And

when we first got married he would jerk his arms. He’s not a very still sleeper. He kind of jerks his arms and kicks his legs and rolls over a lot, and it took me a while to get used to him doing that and not wake up. (21)

Similarly, some roommates initially blame themselves for a problem with the other, feeling that they are overly sensitive or intolerant of another’s preferences or quirks. In response they undertake a kind of personal “shaping up.” Thus one woman described handling recurring tensions with her roommate “by trying to make changes in my character that would make her feel more accepted” (RM 161). Another commented that she began to feel “unreasonable” in negotiating with her roommate over what portion of the rent and utilities the latter’s boyfriend should pay on moving into their apartment (RM 141). Self- change may accompany and result from self- questioning of the legitimacy of one’s feelings of irritation. Consider, for example, this apartment dweller’s initial emphasis on being “patient” and learning to “block out” a neighbor’s noise: For a long time, I was afraid I was the only one who heard it. That I was somehow extra sensitive or something. In apartment living you do have to tolerate noise that you may not like but I sort of tried to just be patient for a long time. . . . I just assumed I was the only one hearing it and that I could just deal with it by blocking it out somehow. (Rivera 1991:14)

In this case the troubled party eventually abandoned these efforts. In other cases, however, such efforts at self- change may continue to be deployed, either because they “work” well enough, or, if direct confrontations with the other have failed to produce any change, because there is no ready alternative. Similarly, in marital relations troubled parties may engage in a process of self- monitoring over time “as they work to achieve compatibility with their mates in everyday life” (Zerilli 2006:79): I’m aware because, I’ll try to talk to myself, in my head, saying, “All right. Don’t make a big deal about this. Don’t say that, don’t say that.” Well, you know if you act a certain way, it’s probably going to make the problem even

Unilateral Responses / 73 more intense, but at the same time, your feelings are so strong that you almost can’t control it. Um, I look at it that you can be totally aware, because I am definitely aware of behaviors. I am aware of my own behaviors, I’m aware of his behaviors, and I consider myself an educated person, and I always look into, “Why am I acting this way? Why am I doing this? Why is he acting this way?” And I think, I don’t know. It’s weird. (80)

Or a spouse may try to disengage from an immediately troubling situation and self- consciously work at regaining psychological equilibrium. Kaufmann (2009:49) provides an example from a husband: “And when I get irritated (which I often do), I think it over quietly and I get out of the way or else I go out for a jog, to calm myself down and stop the atmosphere from getting any worse.” Such self- targeted changes promote the frequently noted patterns of “tolerance” and “accommodation” in troubled relations. Wives of husbands who drink heavily, for example, often initially explain this behavior as “the normal result of unusual circumstances,” making special efforts to “save” their marriage by acting more sympathetically or supportively toward the other as a victim of such circumstances (Wiseman 1991:24). Some of these wives may “actively attempt to improve all facets of the home environment for her husband” (55): As far as trying [to help him stop drinking], I tried to be the perfect wife. I tried to do everything so that he wouldn’t have to drink, and oh, I took over his responsibilities . . . I gassed his car . . . I bought his clothes . . . I did everything a normal man would do for himself. (56)

Here self- change— being “the perfect wife”— involved “taking over” a wide variety of everyday tasks and duties in order to reduce the stresses and burdens that presumably were leading her husband to drink to excess. If drinking or associated troubles increase, these efforts at supportive self- change may be dismissed as naive and ineffective: Yes, I noticed it [the heavy drinking]. Of course, I made up all kinds of excuses for it at first. He had recently come out of a divorce and I rationalized to myself that he was just confused now; the poor guy had been misused by his first wife and had really been given a rough deal, and I swallowed it all; and you know I said I’m going to make a difference. I made up all these beautiful excuses that worked for about ten months. (24; emphasis added)

74 / Chapter Three

While this informant was not explicit about how she changed her own behaviors, she clearly tried to respond in ways that would help her husband come through the “rough deal” he had received from his prior wife in order to bring his drinking under control.

Managerial Responses Attempts to unilaterally manage the consequences of a trouble are oriented to practical features and parameters of the disturbing situation. These actions do not involve trying to stop an ongoing trouble or disturbance, to prevent its future occurrence, or to implement an arrangement that would remedy the problem even temporarily. Rather unilateral managerial responses seek to modify the consequences of another’s disturbing behavior.3 Where the problem is disturbing noise, troubled parties may take unilateral actions to insulate themselves from that noise. Thus a roommate in her bedroom, bothered by the “annoying, obnoxious noise” of the living room TV left on by a guest who has gone to shower, gets up, turns the sound down, and goes back to her room “without saying anything to him” (ID 17). Another college student noted that “sometimes the TV playing until 2 in the morning is a little frustrating,” but added: “It is no big deal. I just put my walkman on” (RM 19). Similarly, one can deal with the disturbing light from another’s late- night reading by trying to sleep with an eye mask (Rosenblatt 2006:56–57), or with loud snoring or a TV playing while in bed with another by using earplugs: She has a TV in that room, which she chooses to sleep with on. She has a timer on it, and I didn’t think it was gonna be a big deal, until I started to hear things that I normally wouldn’t hear when I was sleeping, like referee whistles blowing because it’s basketball season. So, luckily one of my nice suitemates gave me some earplugs to use, which work but sometimes pop out. (RM 62)

Another common unilateral managerial device is short- term withdrawal from an upsetting or irritating situation. Such withdrawal can be hidden from the disturbing other by providing convincing accounts for one’s absence. Thus one woman described going elsewhere on anticipating her male roommate’s anger: “I would be able to read when he was upset and 3. Focusing specifically on managing a trouble’s consequences narrows the treatment of “managerial responses” proposed in Emerson (2008:492–97), where I used the term to refer generically to all types of unilateral responses.

Unilateral Responses / 75

so I would leave the apartment and go over to a friend’s house or something to study,” using the latter to provide a reason or excuse for this action (RM 159). People may respond to in- bed disturbances and tensions by withdrawing without waking the other, whether to the living room sofa or another bed, or even in the following case, to the unoccupied side of the bed: stev e .

She tends to tell me that I’m hogging too much of the bed, and so she

keeps pushing me over (she chuckles) and what will frequently happen, she’ll keep pushing me over until the point where I’m so far onto my side of the bed that I’ll get up, walk around her, and come and sleep on the other side of the bed where there’s more space (laughs). (Rosenblatt 2006:27)

Of course, in these instances, the withdrawal is only temporarily invisible to the other, and will be noted and perhaps commented on when the other awakens and discovers the absence or change. Other managerial responses involve trying to compensate for the negative effects of the disturbing behavior. Thus a woman who had difficulties coordinating a working and sleeping schedule with her roommate reported: “One day I was really tired and I didn’t want to go back to the room, so I just found this really long bench at the library and went to sleep” (RM 165). Often this sort of response requires careful monitoring and anticipation of the irritating event. An apartment resident whose shower immediately went cold when her downstairs neighbor turned on her shower reported: As I am taking my shower I make a point of listening for her turning her water tap on or off (her faucet squeaks rather eerily when she turns her water on or off). When I hear the squeak of her faucet I will quickly reach up to turn the shower head away from me in order that I do not receive a sudden blast of ice cold water. Having to counter her activity on the floor below means that I often need about twenty minutes of extra time to complete my morning shower. (ID 12)

Alzheimer’s family caregivers commonly rely on a variety of such unilaterally implemented managerial responses, practices intended not to “correct” misconduct or to “improve” the person with Alzheimer’s behavior, but to circumscribe the consequences and damage from known or anticipated troubles. For example, caregivers will frequently seek to “distract” the family member with Alzheimer’s from an ongoing trouble situation:

76 / Chapter Three One day I came, when she was still walking around, and it smelled gorgeous. She had a tray, with four wine glasses, with little milkiness in them. I smelled them, and she had made cocktails out of Chanel #5. So, I’m glad she’s not a solitary drinker. (laughter) “Oh,” I say, “how nice, that’s wonderful mom, come and let’s watch the news now.” Oh yes, I’ve learned to distract. (AFC 313)

Similarly, another daughter described several management practices developed as a response to her mother’s inclination to make indiscriminate purchases at the local supermarket: She loved the market and she loved to provide. She would go, when she could drive, and she would come home at 6:00 with the car full of groceries. . . . Finally we got to where we would go to the market with her and stand behind and put things away as she put them in [the shopping cart]. She would go for bright colors and things like that. At that time she had charge accounts. . . . I just kind of made an agreement with them [supermarket staff] that I would bring the stuff back the next day. (AFC 313)

Here the caregiver gives her mother the illusion of grocery shopping by replacing some items and by colluding with the supermarket to return other items; disruptive behavior is neither prevented nor changed, but the waste and expense that could result from such behaviors are thwarted. Finally, a troubled party may handle upset by taking it to their friends and “venting,” expressing annoyance and anger about the other’s behavior, while seeking advice and support. Thus one college roommate reported: She used my shampoo, she used my laundry detergent, she ate my food. Oh God, she used my toothpaste, my hair spray, it didn’t matter, my make- up, she just figured it was all hers. But I just kind of bitched to all my friends and not directly to her. Well, I did but I tried to be subtle with her. I guess I wanted to avoid confrontation. (RM 155)

Despite deep upset with her roommate’s behavior and vociferous complaints to her friends, this woman avoided or at least muted direct expression of her discontent to the other. In sum, in employing unilateral managerial responses, troubled parties continue to let the trouble occur, but try to tame its consequences, to limit its ill effects. In many cases these tactics work for a while, but continuing trouble may eventually exhaust sympathy and tolerance. At this point troubled parties may turn to other unilateral responses that do try to dis-

Unilateral Responses / 77

courage troubling behavior by another, responses that involve some sort of preventive action.

Preventive Actions Early on in the development of troubles, troubled parties may employ a variety of covert or quasi- covert actions intended to prevent troubled behaviors from persisting or recurring. Again, these unilateral responses are fundamentally practical and highly idiosyncratic, varying widely with particular situations and relationships. Such preventive responses typically involve either manipulating things and objects or shaping interaction with the troublesome other in distinctive ways. Manipulation of Objects Where discontents center on the other’s goods and possessions, troubled parties may destroy, move, or hide these objects. Thus the wives of men with drinking problems often attempt to “curtail the supply”: “They pour out liquor, smash bottles, or hide alcohol. They ask bars or friends not to serve him” (Wiseman 1991:51). Alzheimer’s family caregivers frequently hide car keys to keep the disoriented family member from driving. And in several cases, college roommates hid or destroyed another’s disturbing alarm clock. In one instance of the latter the troubled party took special care to cover up this response: after an earthquake he took a hammer to smash a particularly irritating clock (which had initially survived intact because in his roommate’s absence he had muffled it under a pillow) and then placed it under a fallen bookcase (RM 82). Similarly, where another uses one’s possessions too freely, troubled parties may remove or hide them. College roommates, for example, sometimes hid food and possessions to prevent others from consuming or using them without permission: A dorm resident complained that her roommate wore her shorts without asking, took her “hair things without asking permission,” and used her cups although she “never asked to borrow them and even let her friends use them.” In response she “hid all her things”; “her magazines, clothes and cups are all hidden.” (RM 4)

Clearly these kinds of responses will be detected by the other, and hence may increase relational tensions.

78 / Chapter Three

Hiding can also be used as a longer- term preventive response in intimate relationships. The wife in the following account, for example, explains how she relies on hiding snack food “stashes” to prevent conflicts with her husband: It came about because I would do the grocery shopping and would buy low- fat snacks for myself or a snack I wanted to share with guests. And within a day, maybe two, he would wipe out whatever I bought. I would reach for a snack and it would be gone. I got frustrated that I was the one grocery shopping and he was the one eating the treats. I wouldn’t have minded if he ate them in moderation— but he would completely eat the whole bag and never even consider that I might have bought them because I would have liked to eat some too. So I became extremely frustrated and started hiding snacks from him— sometimes in the crock- pot in the cabinet, other times behind pots and pans, sometimes even in a hallway closet. If he discovered a spot, I created a new one. To this day, if I want something kept for a special treat, I hide it deep in the fridge or above the fridge in a cabinet. It’s easier than telling him not to eat it because that may start a fight or me having to explain what moderation means. After seven years, I’ve just learned that stashes keep the peace. (Zerilli 2006:115)

Among some established couples, “hiding” may involve concealing receipts of recent purchases of a disputed item, even while openly displaying the object itself. One husband, for example, put recently purchased academic books directly onto his bookshelf, confident that his wife would not “discern one of the ‘new’ books on their shelves from the ‘older’ ones” (Zerilli 2006:121). And a wife reported a similar tactic of hiding contentious objects in plain sight with her recurrent purchases of black shoes: He thinks I have way too many shoes. So if I bought, like, another pair of black shoes, I don’t necessarily tell him. He thinks I have a million pairs of black shoes that all look the same. That’s what he always used to say. I don’t tell him because I don’t feel like listening to him tell me about all my black shoes, do you know what I mean? When clearly they’re different, or I wouldn’t have bought them, but you know, he doesn’t understand that, so I buy them and I wear them, and he doesn’t have a clue. (119)

Interactional Ploys Troubled parties may also seek to prevent trouble through a wide variety of unilateral interactional tactics. Perhaps the most direct is to simply with-

Unilateral Responses / 79

draw from the immediate presence of the disturbing other. For example, a woman complained that her roommate listened in on her phone conversations with her new boyfriend: Clifford and I would be on the phone, all shy and stuff because we had just started going out and she would try to listen and comment on whatever we were talking about. I would get so pissed and she would say, tell Clifford this and this. I finally solved the problem by going into the hall with the phone. (RM 165)

Withdrawal in this situation ended the disturbing trouble, but also introduced possible tension into the relationship with the roommate by signaling that her behavior was intrusive. In a similar vein, individuals may seek to disguise activities they know will elicit troubling reactions from the other. Kurz (2006:97) reports that teenagers with parents they regard as overly restrictive “sometimes just do things, without consultation, warning, or regard for future consequence,” relying on secrecy to avoid parental consequences. A Philadelphia girl recounted this incident: Like I had this group of friends a couple of towns away. My parents didn’t like them and didn’t want me being with them. But I had a friend who lived near where these friends lived. So I told my parents I was going to her house. But then we would just walk to these guys’ houses. (97)

Similarly, Blum (1994) describes family members’ use of mildly deceptive “white lies” to prevent upsetting or to overcome resistance from the person with Alzheimer’s; the ride to a day- care center would be orchestrated as a social outing, or the family car would be reported to be broken to keep the other from driving. College roommates sometimes used similar tactics. A woman who wanted to avoid socializing with her roommate reported: “When it was time to go out to a party or the movies, I would just leave the house and get dressed over [at] my other friends’ house so that my roommate would not volunteer herself to go along with us” (RM 85). Often, disguising imminent actions was combined with mild deception, as in the following instance, where a woman who had begun dating the ex- boyfriend of her roommate sought to forestall hostile comments by misleading the roommate about her plans to spend the night at his house: It got nuts because she got really mad at me. Like she would get mad at me for going to his house. I would like go to spend the night at his house, and

80 / Chapter Three I would wear my overalls and I would put my toothbrush and stuff in my pocket so she wouldn’t know I was going, because she’d be mean. (RM 158)

In these instances we see full- blown secrecy (Vaughan 1986; Zerilli 2006) emerging as a core feature of unilateral responses. At other times troubled parties may actively organize interaction in ways intended to preclude the other from engaging in disturbing behaviors. One Alzheimer’s family caregiver, for example, developed the following strategy to keep her husband from wandering and getting lost while she slept: At night, he used to get up and go down the stairwell, so I was afraid of that, so I strung a string, or some rope, across the stairwell, hung some things on it that made sounds, so I could hear if he started down the stairwell. That thing was a total barrier for him. He never tried to slide under it or remove it or anything. And he would say to me, “There’s the strangest thing on the stairwell.” Well, now he doesn’t go down the stairwell any more. (AFC 110)

And more subtly, troubled parties may attempt to preempt the other by visibly establishing a line of activity assumed to be incompatible with what the other is engaged in or is about to engage in. In the following situation a college roommate tried to discourage her dorm mate’s loud phone conversations at bedtime through an exaggerated display of “going to sleep”: She’s like, on the phone non- stop when I’m in the room. I mean, she freakin’ talks and laughs totally loud. Sometimes when I’m going to go to sleep, I make it all obvious. I fluff up my pillows and jump into bed, but she still doesn’t get off the phone or talk any softer. (RM 77)

Similarly, a woman who had been watching TV with her roommate and a common friend dramatized her need to complete a class assignment for the next day in the following fashion: [Moving to a nearby desk,] I turn on my lamp, spread out my books, and open my laptop. I assumed they would interpret this cue, and consequently turn off the TV and lower their tones. However, they continue watching TV, laughing, and speaking in rather loud voices. I yank my headphones out of my backpack and put them in, in an attempt to show them that the background noise is distracting, but this attempt is futile. I look over at them, hoping to catch their gaze so that I could show them— without having to tell them— that I was studying. This also is a failure. (ID 29)

Unilateral Responses / 81

And in several cases, women disturbed by a roommate’s sexual activities in their common bedroom reported trying to preclude this activity— again usually without success— by going to bed early in order to occupy the room. Finally, where discontents center on another’s failure to do something, or on the other’s having done something incorrectly, troubled parties may respond by taking over and doing what they feel needs to be done. A number of roommates, for example, reported managing the annoyance and troubles created by messes left by others by cleaning up those messes themselves: By now I pretty much knew that things weren’t going to get any better. So I tried to make things better by keeping the apartment neater when possible and washing dishes and stuff when I had time. (RM 159)

Here the troubled party temporarily corrected a recurring problem in pragmatic fashion, ignoring or bracketing issues of responsibility for the problem and the “fairness” of solutions to it.4 Studies of in- the- home caregiving have noted a similar tendency for troubled parties to take over actions and responsibilities previously performed by the disturbing other, but on a permanent rather than a temporary basis. Corbin and Strauss (1988) found that over time, as troubles proliferate and worsen, family caregivers for the chronically ill increasingly respond in more extremely unilateral ways, coming to take over control of and responsibility for the actions of the troubled person. Wiseman (1991:55) notes a similar tendency for the wives of men with drinking problems toward “taking over” anything in the home “that might put demands on him or upset him.” In sum, people may seek to manage physical and interactional environments they share with a relational other to avoid or prevent anticipated trouble. In so doing they engage in the kinds of informal control highlighted by Goffman (1971:347) in his analysis of families of the mentally ill. Such control, Goffman emphasized, becomes a collective family enterprise with multiple parties acting in concert through disguised coalitions and collusive nets to control a troubling family member (377–81). Control based on coalitions and collusions does mark some of the preventive responses 4. Conein (2003) similarly reports that roommates in France may clean others’ messes, but primarily as a means of asserting collective solidarity and responsibility. Communal sensitivity seemed weak among the American college students I studied; cleaning others’ messes was seen at best as expedient and was frequently accompanied by strong resentment; for example, one student reported, “I would just go clean it all up,” adding she “bitched” about doing so to her friends but “not directly to her” (RM 155).

82 / Chapter Three

considered here, but typically at later stages of the development of trouble involving more extreme circumstances. Earlier on, informal control typically involves one person, not collective preventive responses, yet the dynamics of such unilateral control are just those that Goffman identified: controlling the physical environment shared with a relational other by managing access to objects or possessions, and controlling the other’s definition of the situation through a variety of interactional ploys. Lack of collective support, however, may heighten the vulnerability of such unilateral preventive responses to evasion or resistance by the troublesome other.

The Appeals of Unilateral Responses As noted previously, troubled parties may turn to unilateral actions as backup, best available options if troubles remain unresolved. Actions involving self- change, for example, may be attempted after frustrated negotiations to change the other’s behavior. Managerial and preventive responses may similarly be implemented with the failure of prolonged efforts to remedy troubling behavior. Roommates, for example, may act unilaterally when confrontation and direct complaints have failed to produce any significant or lasting change in the other’s behavior, as in the following instances: I leave messages on the machine every day. I remind him, it’s your turn— it’s more than your turn— to do dishes, mop the floor. . . . It never works. Since we’ve lived here he has never done a load of dishes. He has never done anything. I pick up all his bottles, everything. (RM 25) We agreed that I’d buy my own food and he’d buy his own food. We agreed on that but obviously he changed his mind. (What have you done to try to remedy this problem?) I hide my food. (RM 6)

Here unilateral responses are almost “last resort” measures employed after the failure of explicit complaints and negotiations for change. Such responses allow troubled parties to take action to deal with a persisting trouble without further discussion with the other and hence without additional face- to- face confrontation. These unilateral responses are not only directly visible to the other, but may also convey despair that the other will willingly mend his or her ways. Indeed, some may be given distinctly confrontational twists— withdrawal framed as deliberate avoidance, hiding or locking away personal possessions openly presented as acts of distrust. However, this chapter has focused on unilateral responses as initial, “first

Unilateral Responses / 83

resort” ways of dealing with the troubling behavior of a relational other. Several factors account for this preference to act unilaterally in initially responding to troubles. First, troubled parties can implement these actions directly and immediately, without having to obtain the tacit or explicit consent and agreement of the other, and even without informing or consulting with this other. In short, unilateral responses enable troubled parties to take immediate action; indeed, in this way such processes provide the kind of active, individual initiative that has been analyzed in the socio- legal literature on disputing as “self- help” (Black and Baumgartner 1998; Black 1998; Ellickson 1991).5 But troubled parties also initially rely on unilateral responses for a second, related reason: in many instances they can be kept invisible or can be employed with low visibility.6 Self- change and managerial responses usually go unrecognized by the other in that they avoid overt expressions of discontent and direct proposals to correct the troubling behavior. Initial use of preventive responses is somewhat more risky, since in seeking to inhibit a troubling situation, no matter how indirectly, these responses signal discontent in ways that may be recognized by the other. In some cases troubled parties may seek to cover discontent by providing accounts that depict their action as a routine, unrelated occurrence: for example, with short- term withdrawals—“I went to the library to study”; with taking over and cleaning another’s messes—“I am just helping out.” Yet preventive actions, even with care to avoid direct expression of discontent and to keep upset low on the horizon, provide indirect and subtle cues to the other to not act as in the past. Hence troubled parties may proceed with caution and delicacy in undertaking such responses, qualities suggested by the following account of how a roommate went about unilaterally cleaning up another’s messes: A few weeks after I had lived there I noticed that every day she would cook and leave her dishes in the sink and on counters, crumbs and spills all over the counters and stove, and she left my milk and butter out on the counters all day after using them. In the beginning I would put a few of her dishes in with mine daily just to help out. I also would wipe off the counters every few days so that I could make a clean place to set my plate down. During this time not 5. “Self- help” is also sometimes used to refer not simply to unilateral responses, but also to complaints made directly to the troubling party; e.g., Edwards and Stokoe (2007). 6. Goldstein (1960) originally applied the term “low visibility” to discretionary decisions by the police not to arrest and hence to avoid review by supervisors, prosecutors, and judges. Unilateral trouble responses, in contrast, may have low visibility to the person toward whom they are immediately directed.

84 / Chapter Three as many items were cluttering up the kitchen because I kept putting her things in daily. (RM 21; emphasis added)

While cleaning up here was limited in scope and frequency and presented as “helping out” and as a practical necessity (making “a clean place to set my plate down”), these acts also provided an indirect and carefully modulated plea for remediation by the other. Yet despite “modeling” a desired change in the other’s behavior, this unilateral action provided a relatively “safe” initial response to this emerging trouble exactly because it was calibrated to obscure direct criticism and confrontation. To the extent that unilateral responses provide nonconfrontational devices for keeping the full import of discontents and upsets from the other, such actions draw on the dynamics and appeals of secrecy. Sometimes the screen of secrecy may collapse, as it did for the teenage daughter who told her parents she was staying with a girlfriend in a neighboring town in order to see some boys they disapproved of: Then my parents found out. I don’t know how they found out. How do parents find these things out? I guess someone saw us. Anyway, they were angry. They said, “You lied, and we’re punishing you more because you lied.” (Kurz 2006:97)

But secrecy need not involve explicit lies, but rather simply avoiding disclosure of emerging discontents that we are trying to grasp and clarify. Thus, Vaughan (1986:13) emphasizes, separation and divorce may begin with one- sided secrecy: “Uncoupling begins as a quiet, unilateral process” in which “the dissatisfied partner privately acknowledges that the relationship is a source of discomfort.” She adds: We walk around harboring and mulling over the secrets of our unhappiness [with our relationship]. Perhaps they are unarticulated in the beginning because our feelings are nebulous. Perhaps they remain unspoken because we are uncertain as to their cause, their depth, and their implications. Perhaps we are afraid to share them for fear of discovering or validating the other person’s unhappiness. Whatever the reason, we won’t do it until we are absolutely sure. (13)

In initially experiencing discontents and troubles, then, we may have good reason to keep these problems and the ruminations they generate to our-

Unilateral Responses / 85

selves. Yet invisible and low- visibility unilateral responses allow us to take action toward these problems, action that can help us clarify just what we are experiencing and what may need to be done about it.

Conclusion This chapter examines the uses and dynamics of nonconfrontational unilateral responses as early- on reactions to interpersonal troubles. Such responses involve low- visibility actions initiated by one party to do something about discontents without consultation with the other. While such unilateral actions are frequent responses, for a number of reasons they remain underappreciated and distorted in existing theories of informal control, disputing, and deviance. First, existing analyses fail to recognize major differences between initial, generally low- visibility, and nonconfrontational unilateral responses and the extreme, explicitly confrontational, and polarizing unilateral actions that may be turned to when troubles escalate. Black (1998:74), for example, defines unilateral control or “self- help” as “the handling of a grievance by unilateral aggression. . . . It ranges from quick and simple gestures of disapproval, such as glares and frowns, to massive assaults resulting in numerous deaths.” This approach conflates subtle, nonviolent unilateral acts (e.g., “quick and simple gestures of disapproval”) with extreme, violent responses, and as a result ignores the characteristic qualities, uses, and backgrounds of these different types of unilateral actions. Second, the significance of nonconfrontational unilateral responses has been distorted by the associated focus on violent and “aggressive” unilateral acts. For example, while recognizing subtle unilateral acts of self- help, Black (1998:75) concentrates on the “most extreme expressions” of self- help— “fighting, beating, and killing between family members, friends, acquaintances, ethnic groups, and nations” as instances of control- oriented selfhelp, and violent “vengeance” as the primary form of self- help in informal conflict management. Indeed in this way he conflates individual initiative with “unilateral aggression.” In contrast, the approach developed in this chapter argues that unilateral actions may assume aggressive and even violent forms, but that this is neither an inevitable nor characteristic feature of unilateral responses to trouble. For unilateral responses are defined not by aggression, but by actions initiated and carried out independently of consultation with the other toward whom they are directed. Relatedly, Black depicts unilateral social control as aggression “flowing in a single direction

86 / Chapter Three

from the aggrieved to the offending party (as when a parent scolds a child or a citizen assassinates a government official” (5; emphasis added). Again, I have argued here that unilateral responses are characterized less by unitary direction of action per se (a momentary occurrence if the other responds in some comparable way, as in situations generating feuds) and more by not informing the troubling other either of the problem or of the responsive action. Indeed, particularly early on in the development of troubles most unilateral responses are distinctly nonaggressive— subtle, muted, often hidden from the other, typically avoiding or minimizing confrontation. Third, some analytic frameworks ignore entirely the possible use of subtle unilateral responses to dissatisfactions, conflicts, and troubles. Most notable here is Hirschman’s (1970) highly influential model of the interdependencies of exit and voice in economic and other decision- making situations. This model holds that dissatisfied customers have only two options to deal with their discontent— to leave and take their business elsewhere, or to give voice to these dissatisfactions by complaining directly to the relational other. Indeed Hirschman insists: “The voice option is the only way in which dissatisfied customers can react when the exit option is unavailable” (33). But while dichotomized choice between leaving or complaining may indeed mark commercial relationships,7 there are other alternative ways of responding to dissatisfactions in multifaceted, ongoing interpersonal relationships. In particular, the troubled party can pursue self- change in order to accept or accommodate to another’s irritating actions; without complaining to the other attempt to manage the consequences or implications of the troubling behavior; or act unilaterally to prevent, preempt, or forestall the troubling behavior. Indeed, the intricacy and depth of continuing interpersonal relationships allow troubled parties to employ the unilateral actions considered in this chapter, in addition to exiting or directly complaining, as responses to their dissatisfactions.8 Fourth, collapsing unilateral responses into a residual category of “nonaction” or “inaction” discourages appreciation of their importance. Con7. Here Hirschman’s underlying imagery of a customer in a commercial or business relation encourages collapsing response options into the exit- voice dichotomy. Yet even if we picture a customer entering a large, impersonal store, it is possible to imagine ways of dealing with dissatisfaction other than walking out or complaining directly: theft (shoplifting) and sabotage (moving items, messing up displays) come to mind. Longer- term relationships providing more varied contacts and interdependencies between the parties obviously expand the possibilities for unilateral responses. 8. That certain unilateral responses indirectly and subtly express discontent to the other also suggests that in addition to explicitly voiced complaints, dissatisfied parties may employ nonvoiced “voice” responses.

Unilateral Responses / 87

cepts such as “lumping it” (Felstiner 1975) and “avoidance” (Black 1998), for example, depict these unilateral responses as not taking action with regard to a conflict or discontent, either by accepting and living with the matter, or by staying away from it. But just as the dichotomy between “arrest” and “nonarrest” renders the latter a residual category that obscures the range of “alternatives to arrest” police patrol officers may implement (Bittner 1967b), so the concept of “nonaction” restricts appreciation of the range of alternative, informal responses that may be made to troubles. Again, such responses may include efforts to make changes in one’s self, attitudes, and sensitivities, to dilute or deal with consequences and implications, and to prevent or discourage further trouble incidents. Finally, the appreciation of unilateral responses has been hindered by equating minimized confrontation with moral weakness. In particular, in her study of informal responses to disputes and troubles, Baumgartner (1988) depicted unilateral responses as expressions of the “moral minimalism” that she suggested characterized the moral order of a suburban community. “Moral minimalism,” she argued, “encompasses a variety of responses to interpersonal problems, all of which manifest an aversion to confrontation and conflict and a preference for spare, even weak strategies of social control.” The prototype of such morally minimal unilateral responses, avoidance, “is an especially prominent method of managing conflict, recurring in families, friendships, neighborhoods and among strangers” (10–11).9 Thus Baumgartner characterizes unilateral responses as nonaggressive, “weak,” and “minimalist” exactly because they avoid or minimize open expressions of moral upset and outrage. But in the initial phases of the development of most interpersonal troubles, the discontent party’s goal is typically to “do something” about the troubling behavior of the other, to manage or correct the immediately irritating problem. Early- on unilateral responses are usually profoundly pragmatic and expedient, centering on and implementing actions intended to avoid, work around, work out, or settle the problem in one way or another. That is, such initial responses are not principled, rule- governed solutions to matters of right or wrong, or moralistically driven efforts to identify and punish wrongdoing, but rather expedient, practical actions intended to stop or change some immediate local problem. Clearly there is a norma9. Baumgartner, however, uses the term “avoidance” to refer to both short- term or “temporary” staying out of the presence of the other, and long- term sustained separation. In general she ignores the temporal unfolding of informal control and trouble responses, making no distinction between initial responses to the first appearances of trouble, and later responses premised on the failure of the earlier actions.

88 / Chapter Three

tive dimension to these processes, although any moral claims are usually asserted implicitly rather than directly articulated, subordinated rather than made dominant. But these claims are rarely framed in the moral language of what Gilligan (1982) and others (Gilligan and Attannuci 1988) term the “justice mode” based on the application of rules, laws, and general or absolute moral principles. Rather these claims are tied to and reflect something akin to the “care mode,” which is “based on taking responsibility for others, avoiding hurt, and maintaining relationships and connections with others” (Garcia 1996:201). Early- on uses of unilateral responses thus display less a lack of deep moral commitment and more a heightened sensitivity to the relational implications of dealing with the troubling behavior of another. Indeed, nonconfrontational unilateral responses frequently show an intricate and subtle sensitivity to the complexities of interpersonal relationships. Troubled parties are usually well aware that one- sided responses, even when largely covert in character, risk making the other aware of one’s discontent and desire for change, thereby diffusing tension into the fabric of the ongoing relationship. Even when the other overtly ignores glimpses of previously unexpressed discontents, he or she may behave differently in particular areas of the ongoing relationship from that point forward. Seemingly simple nonconfrontational unilateral responses, then, may introduce new layers of complexity into a troubled relationship. Consider the following complicating possibilities. While perhaps “modeling” a desired change in the other’s behavior, unilaterally cleaning up for someone else communicates discontent with whatever the other has been doing in this regard. Thus such efforts can give rise to touchy interactional moments, as reflected in the following account from a college roommate: One day about a month and a half after he moved in, the place had just gotten bad. So Rhett (another roommate) and I just decided to clean it. So he came back. . . . And he came in, he looked, and you know the place was clean, you could obviously tell it was clean. And he just kind of rolled his eyes and he went into his room. And then he comes back, he like confronted me. I had taken his guitar out of the living room because it was in the way. . . . So he comes out a second later and goes, “Can I at least keep my guitar in here?” (RM 157)

Similarly, hiding food and drink, cups and spoons, clothes and makeup, are likely (eventually) to be noticed by the other, and when noticed to be understood as responsive to one’s prior “takings” and hence as expressions

Unilateral Responses / 89

of discontent. And such noticings, even if unremarked at the time, may create long- term resentment: a grown daughter, for example, now complains bitterly about how her mother hid food from her in her youth in a secret effort to control a weight problem (pers. comm.). Silent, seemingly small, and hidden acts, then, can speak loudly and lastingly, with very consequential relational effects.10 In many instances the success of unilateral responses depends on the passive acquiescence of the other party— that is, the other’s willingness not to act or not to act further. Situational withdrawal, to cite one instance, works only if the other accepts the troubled party’s leaving, as when the intruding other did not follow her roommate when the latter went out into the hall to make an intimate phone call (RM 165). Similarly, secreting personal possessions may prevent further takings if the other remains ignorant of the hiding; but given roommates’ mutual accessibility, previously available items are likely to be noted as absent, and then perhaps sought out. Thus hiding does not so much prevent access as create a symbolic barrier, a barrier that assumes that the other will accept and honor this action as a “limit” and not seek out and take the hidden items. Thus one roommate reported: “I don’t keep my nice clothes in the closet any more, I lock them up so she can’t take them and tape my boxes up” (RM 9). But tape and locks can be bypassed or broken, and hence while discouraging easy access, do not so much directly prevent access as assure visible signs of illicit entry. In effect, in hiding her nice clothes in taped boxes the troubled party shows an increased commitment to keeping them away from the other, but still must “trust” the other to honor this essentially symbolic barrier of tape.11 In sum, while we often turn to unilateral responses to avoid or minimize open confrontation, glimmers of our discontent and upset may slip through, not only for low- visibility unilateral responses, but also for those that are apparently invisible; the targets of even intentionally invisible responses may well pick up indicators of their presence, becoming cognizant on some level of our efforts to be more accepting, our timely withdrawals, or situational adjustments, in these ways coming to suspect unspoken discontents and upsets. The other may not overtly acknowledge these intuitions 10. As Simmel observed long ago, silence and secrecy create relational ripples, requiring discretion that “consists by no means only in the respect for the secret of the other, for his specific will to conceal this or that from us, but in staying away from the knowledge of all that the other does not expressly reveal to us” (1964:320–21; cited in Sellerberg 1994:18). 11. In some instances this limit was not observed, as with the student who had hidden his Cokes under his bed to keep roommates from drinking them only to wake up one evening to find one roommate surreptitiously helping himself to a bottle (RM 153).

90 / Chapter Three

and suspicions, or may react to them with open resentment or sympathetic acceptance. But in all these ways, the other’s appreciation of unilateral actions as reactions to discontent and trouble begins to transform his or her understanding of the relationship and hence the dynamics of the relationship itself.

FOUR

Remedial Complaints

For every offense that leads to an effective complaint, there are many psychiatrically similar ones that never do. No action is taken; or action is taken which leads to other extrusory outcomes; or ineffective action is taken, leading to the mere pacifying or putting off of the person who complains. —Erving Goffman, Asylums (1961:134)

If unilateral responses prove to be overly burdensome or ineffective, troubled parties can turn to two further responses: conveying their discontent directly to the troublemaking other, and going to friends and peers for support and advice about the trouble. Troubled parties of course may undertake both of these responses in tandem, running the problem by intimates or friends before deciding how and when to “confront” the other, or bringing back reports of the communication of discontent to assess how it went and how next to proceed. Chapter 5 examines the informal responses in which the troubled party takes the trouble to unofficial parties outside the initial trouble for support, advice, and help. This chapter focuses on responses in which the troubled party makes a complaint to the troublemaker, communicating discontent in an effort to involve the latter in correcting the problem.

Direct Complaints and Relational Tension One common way of communicating discontent is to make a complaint. A complaint involves an expression of negativity— what Schegloff (2005) has termed a “negative stance”— registering or expressing discontent, irritation,

92 / Chapter Four

or blame about some situation or behavior. Complaints made to the person whose behavior is negatively assessed involve direct complaints (Edwards 2005:6). In such complaints a negative evaluation is conveyed specifically to the person identified as its source. For example, an apartment resident gets out of bed and knocks on the door across the hall, politely asking the man who answers “to lower the sound since it is already around 12am and I have difficulty going to bed” (ID 35); a student discovers that her laptop had not been recharging and asks her roommate, “Hey, did you unplug my charger and the thing to my iPod dock?” (ID 43), implicitly expressing discontent toward this action.1 Direct complaints differ both from complaints about self made to another and from indirect complaints. In the former, one expresses a negative stance to another about some aspect of one’s own behavior or condition, as when a patient complains to a doctor, “It’s the headaches was the things that’s got me” (Drew and Holt 1988:401). In the latter, a person expresses negativity about the behavior of another to a third party. Indirect complaints include both informal “troubles- tellings” to friends or acquaintances (e.g., Jefferson 1980, 1984b, 1988; Drew and Holt 1988; Drew 1998; Edwards 2005; Schegloff 2005) and complaints to official agencies, such as calls to the police (e.g., Sharrock and Turner 1978; Meehan 1989; Whalen and Zimmerman 1990). People make direct complaints not only to express their personal discontent about the other’s behavior (e.g., parent to teenager: “You didn’t tell me where you were last night”), but also to convey worry about the possible negative consequences of some behavior for that other (e.g., “It’s not safe for you to be out all night”). In practice, direct expressions of worry are often comingled with complaints expressing irritation (e.g., “I was upset and could not sleep because I was worried about where you were”), and indeed expressions of concern for the other may be used to indirectly communicate discontent with the other’s behavior. Moreover, many complaints expressing worry assume or claim some responsibility for the condition or well- being of the other; such complaints commonly occur in family caring relationships involving intimates, parents and children, and adult children and their aging parents. Indeed, expressing con-

1. There are only a few studies of direct complaints, notably Dersley and Wootton (2000, 2001) and Laforest (2002). Garcia (1991), Stokoe (2003), and Stokoe and Hepburn (2005) do consider direct complaints, but in third- party mediation sessions that impose distinctive constraints on when and how such complaints can be made and responded to.

Remedial Complaints / 93

cern about another on that person’s behalf claims both responsibility for and power over this other’s well- being. In equalitarian relationships such as those between college roommates, such complaints tend to be read as presumptuous or condescending. Even in family relations such expressions may elicit response along the lines of “That’s my business and no concern of yours.” Given these complexities, the following analyses will focus on direct complaints that convey a complainant’s own irritation or dissatisfaction, giving minimal attention to complaints focused on worries about the other. In expressing irritation about and to a troubling other, direct complaints are oppositional and face- threatening (Brown and Levinson 1978:65–68; Olshtain and Weinbach 1993).2 As Laforest (2002:1596–97) emphasizes, like expressions of “disapproval, criticism, reprimands, accusations, insults, etc.,” complaints indicate that “the speaker’s wishes do not correspond to those of the hearer” and hence threaten the self claimed by the latter. Moreover, the risks of relational ill- will are exacerbated by the tendency for the other to respond to complaints with rejection (often some version of “It’s not my fault”) or denial (“I didn’t do it”) (Heritage 1984; Dersley and Wootton 2000), further escalating disagreement and tension. Indeed, in some cases the relationally disturbing effects of direct complaints may spiral out of control, generating highly emotional confrontations that undermine the current exchange and the longer- term relationship between the parties. By way of example, consider how an initial complaint escalates into a knockdown drag- out argument in the following incident from a videotaped documentary on UK television (Dersley and Wootton 2001:614–17). Joel, a nineteen- year- old youth, is riding in a car next to his mother, who urges him to go back to a “youth education program”:3

2. Framing a complaint as an expression of worry about the other rather than as an expression of one’s own discontent with the other’s behavior may minimize these oppositional tendencies, but of course leave untouched the face- threatening implications of complaints. 3. For analytic purposes I have divided this exchange into five segments (numbered in curly brackets); note, however, that the conversation is continuous, and for ease of reading, I have standardized spelling and used an initial capital at the beginning of a sentence. In this and other transcripts of recorded dialogue, I also employ only some of the transcription conventions used by conversation analysts: a single left bracket [ marks points of overlap; = indicates no gap between the words on either side; empty single parentheses ( ) represent speech that could not be transcribed; words in single parentheses are those the transcriber is not sure about; numbers in single parentheses indicate the length of pauses in seconds; capital letters mark loudness; double parentheses (( )) enclose physical acts or nonword sounds (see Dersley and Wooton 2001:614). Italics are mine, to mark emphasis.

94 / Chapter Four {1.} joel . The thought of living in a house with having hatred in it, it just breaks you down. Living in a house where there is anger and pain, it breaks you down no matter what. And then you go to school? It’s gonna effect all of that and then you’re not gonna learn anything because you’re thinking about all of that. Like when people are hitting you, you’re gonna be thinking about it. {2.} Look, I might a broke a window you didn’t have to cuff me up in the head. (2.0) Why I was a little child I didn’t know what I was doing maybe I was vacuuming and (from) oops, I didn’t meant to do that. (0.9) mum .

Look, whenever I hit you it was because you lie, you know. You’re a liar, you

know, joel .

[and I will not have anybody lying to me. [Exactly because I’m scared . . .

mum .

Scared of what?

joel .

The feeling of hatred and fear[ness of you coming to hit me.

mum .

[Nobody hates you

{3.} You listen you wanna put me on a guilt trip or what joel .

I’m not saying that

mum .

When we were in England there was nobody in the house so you can’t say

there was hatred and there was this and that. And all you did was lie to me. You spent a lot of time lying and doing every evil thing you can to me joel .

((unvoiced snort))

mum .

and I was doing— was doing the best I can. But it wasn’t good enough for

you. (1.8) {4.} joel . You weren’t there. mum .

PRECISELY. If I was not if I was there there wouldna been no money and

we’d a been on the goddamn dole. joel .

((unvoiced snort))

mum .

I had to go out to earn money. Because I’m NOT a taker and I don’t sit and

let people GIVE me. I work for my money. You have no appreciation of what I ever did for you boy. You don’t have that appreciation. I’m sorry but it’s true. And it’s HIGH TIME that you pull up your socks and sit and think what all what- I or anybody in this family has ever done for you. And stop acting like a big arsehole that you seem to be doing right now. (1.3) {5.} joel . That’s what I am, that’s the correct- word mum .

Yes, you’re GETTING ON LIKE ONE?

joel .

[why

mum .

[AND YOU HAVE BETTER TO GET ON TH[AN THAT?

joel .

[DON’T shout Mum.

Don’t shout mum .

BECAUSE YOU TELLING ME—

[SHIT?

Remedial Complaints / 95 joel .

[don’t SHOUT (1.8) you see this is

what—I don’t like is when you started raising your voice. THAT’S WHAT— HURTS ME I CAN’T TAKE IT ((screaming, starts to leave car)) CAN’T FUCKING TAKE IT ((walking away from car))

This exchange begins with Joel providing a defensive account to counter his mother’s urging to go back to an education program, implicitly blaming her treatment of him in the home for making it impossible for him to learn (#1). Joel then points to a specific instance of the kind of behavior that produced “anger and pain” in the home, making a direct complaint that she had hit him when he accidentally broke a window while vacuuming. She responds by justifying her actions in strong terms—“whenever I hit you it was because you lie”— and upgrades this defense by characterizing him as “a liar” (#2). She follows up with a series of countercomplaints (#3), an extended self- justification, and a sequence of further criticisms of her son, leading to a strongly worded insult (“big arsehole”) (#4). The final sequence (#5) is marked by shouting and ends with Joel getting out of the car and walking away. The exchange becomes increasingly polarized and volatile, the parties’ opposition building with accumulating disagreements, increasing anger, and highly personal insults, ending when the son unilaterally terminates the encounter. While all direct complaints are oppositional and potentially divisive, a number of factors make some more likely to lead to the kinds of explosive responses evident in this exchange. First, complaints that involve explicit accusations of wrongdoing specifically condemn the behavior and by implication the self of the other, making acceptance of the complaint by the latter difficult and perhaps demeaning. Second, if a complaint is made an occasion to vent upset and negative feelings toward the other, as by scoring points on some contentious issue within the relationship, the other has little room in which to maneuver without losing face, and disagreements are likely to accelerate. Finally, complaints that are focused on acts that are long past, as in Joel’s complaint “you didn’t have to cuff me up in the head,” make it difficult for the recipient to respond positively; amends can now be made, for example, only by recognizing and apologizing for prior wrongdoing. Under these conditions, disagreement and opposition are not resolved and may well escalate into full- blown, bitter arguments. However, direct complaints can also be organized in ways that offer the possibility of positive response by the troubling other and of some sort of resolution of the differences between the parties. Specifically, a troubled

96 / Chapter Four

party may adopt a conciliatory stance intended to entice the other to change his or her troubling behavior. This involves making a direct complaint that seeks a corrective or remedial outcome.

Remedial Complaints Direct complaints pressing for some substantive change in the behavior of the other party will be termed remedial complaints.4 Such complaints seek to get the other to desist from engaging in undesired behavior, and/or to engage in a desired behavior now and in the future. Remedial complaints simultaneously exacerbate and dilute the oppositional tendencies of direct complaints. On the one hand, in telling the other not only that the complainant is irritated by the other’s behavior but also wants the other to change it, remedial complaints accentuate the alienating implications of direct complaints. On the other hand, getting the other to change troubling behavior requires drawing that person into the remedial effort. To do so troubled parties tend to mitigate complaints (Brown and Levinson 1978; Garcia 1991; Laforest 2002), modulating and suppressing the alienating effects of telling another faceto- face that one is unhappy with how the other is behaving and wishes him or her to change. One key to mitigating complaints is to avoid entirely or to diffuse accusations of wrongdoing and malfeasance. Troubled parties, of course, may make remedial complaints that are stridently off- putting rather than conciliatory, such as the following: One day I just couldn’t take it because she ate up all my food, as usual . . . and I was studying for midterms and she talked on the phone with her squeaky voice . . . right next to my ear . . . while eating my cookies and finally I lost my temper and yelled at her and told her to shut up. She was really mad and called me a bitch and went to our room. (RM 61)

Here a desired change in behavior is delivered as an angry order to the other to “shut up,” a highly expressive but nonconciliatory response to irritating talk; the other responds in kind, ends the encounter, leaving the trouble unresolved. 4. Remedial complaints involve efforts to change another’s behavior, and hence differ from what Goffman (1971) has analyzed as “remedial interchanges,” the moves both parties engage in to ritually repair the relational disruptions that follow or anticipate an actual or “virtual” offense. Goffman provides this prototypical instance of such an interchange involving a public place encounter: “One pedestrian trips over another, says ‘Sorry,’ as he passes, is answered with ‘Okay,’ and each goes on his way” (139). Since this relationship involves strangers and is ended immediately, there is no opportunity for substantive remedy, only for ritual repair.

Remedial Complaints / 97

Many remedial complaints, however, are modulated and conciliatory in character. Especially when looking at initial responses to trouble, there are compelling reasons to focus on such conciliatory remedial complaints, taking up consideration of nonconciliatory and highly alienating complaints at a later point. First, there is at least some evidence that people, particularly in equalitarian relationships, prefer to try conciliatory complaints before turning to more extreme, oppositional complaints (Emerson 2011). Second, if conciliatory complaints are successful, discontents and trouble may be resolved without the use of extreme, alienating complaints. And finally, socio- legal scholars have tended to focus either on disputes that have not been resolved by informal means and are brought into the legal system (e.g., see the analyses of small- claims court proceedings by Conley and O’Barr [1990, 1998]) or on dramatic, accusatory, and sometimes violent disputing responses (e.g., Black 1998). Neither approach gives sustained attention to the structures and dynamics of more peaceful, bilaterally coordinated responses to troubles.5 In the following sections I first analyze how remedial complaints are framed or presented, and then consider the techniques troubled parties use to modulate their confrontational implications. The third section analyzes the mutual construction of remedial complaints, emphasizing instances in which complainant and recipient collaboratively act to mitigate complaints. After a brief consideration of remedial complaints in stratified relationships, the chapter concludes by examining the range of outcomes of remedial complaints, highlighting the processes whereby the parties come to some agreement about what to do about the trouble.

Framing Remedial Complaints Discontents and Remedial Proposals In their most direct form, remedial complaints combine an expression of discontent on the part of the troubled party with a request or demand for corrective action by the troubling party. Joel’s reactions to his roommate’s messes, considered in chapter 1, illustrates this combination: I just came out and said, “That’s just sick— your side of the sink. There! Let’s go look at it.” He goes, “It’s clear.” “That’s cause I took the oats off, your gross

5. In contrast, much of the discourse and conversational analytic research has given more attention to peaceful than to acrimonious conflicts (e.g., Garcia 1991; Laforest 2002); but see Dersley and Wootton (2001), and Pomerantz and Sanders (2013).

98 / Chapter Four spoon food off, and I cleaned it all off. Look at this over here.” I pointed (to) his towel draped on my little wardrobe. I said, “This towel is yours. This is my wardrobe. I’ve been asking you all year, please keep it off.” I just lost (it). (RM 40)

Here and in similar cases, the complainant both dramatizes his upset with the other’s behavior and delivers a specific corrective proposal— keep your messes on your side of the sink. However, remedial complaints are frequently presented in highly truncated form, with complainants relying on situational features, local context, and relationship background to convey discontent and/or corrective proposals indirectly. Some remedial complaints suppress any explicit expression of discontent and present only a corrective proposal. For example, a roommate, concerned about the other’s failure to lock their room, remarked on leaving, “Could you make sure you lock up when you leave?” (RM 181). Another roommate left a note to the other asking, “Please don’t use my bed for sex with your boyfriend when I’ve gone home for the weekend” (RM 48). Both these remedial complaints focus specifically on requesting the other to not engage in acts previously engaged in. Yet these requested changes also imply strongly negative evaluation of and personal upset with these behaviors. Troubled parties may also present remedial complaints by directly expressing discontent without explicit mention of a remedial action. This process is most clearly evident where a troubled party expresses disapproval of another’s immediate, ongoing behavior, that disapproval implicitly requesting the other to stop acting in that fashion. In these circumstances discontent and remedial request may be conveyed simply through briefly voiced groans or protests, succinct sarcastic remarks or pointed quips, or nonverbally through grimaces, frowns, and other low- visibility displays of upset. Particularly where regular patterns of expressing and responding to discontents have been established, the troubled party may rely simply on such nonverbal signals, pounding on a wall or ceiling to get a neighbor to turn down music, or, in the following case, simply coming into the presence of the disturbing other: A student with a long- standing problem with the noise level of his roommate’s stereo reported: “Played at a high decibel, his music could easily vibrate the walls of the apartment. Occasionally, I would exit my bedroom and enter the living room when John would suddenly lower the volume of his

Remedial Complaints / 99 stereo. No verbal exchange would be necessary as I would simply return to my bedroom to either study or sleep.” (RM 180)

Other situations are more equivocal. Where a troubled party expresses discontent about a matter that took place well in the past, only one time, or episodically over long intervals, an implication that one is requesting future corrective action becomes somewhat uncertain. Yet in general, expressing discontent explicitly (and perhaps forcefully) within the context of a continuing relationship signals to the recipient that the troubled party would like that disturbing behavior to be changed in the future. Hence in relational contexts where the problematic act can be anticipated to occur again on future occasions, an expression of discontent conveys a strong if still implicit remedial message. Consider, for example, the following account of roommate trouble from the 1990s, prior to widespread use of cell phones: She’s just [not] being considerate in getting off the phone when other people need to use it. . . . If I was on the phone and if five people called for Jill, I would get off the phone. But if like sometimes she’ll be on the phone for hours and hours and she’ll tell [me] at 1:30 [a.m.] that “Oh, this person called and this person called and wanted you to call her back tonight.” I’m like, “Thanks Jill!” (RM 22; emphasis added)

This sarcastic response clearly expresses disapproval of how the other had acted.6 And while the troubled party makes no explicit reference to future corrective action, her expression of discontent conveys strong upset with the other’s handling of her telephone messages, putting the other on notice that there is a problem. This implicitly signals that continued roommate harmony requires that these matters be handled differently if and when they arise in the future. So a desire for a change in the future is conveyed, but in an extremely indirect fashion. Moreover, just what kind of change is desired remains unspecified: specific remedial proposals might range from 6. And note the various rhetorical devices used to make this account convincing: the use of a hypothetical counterexample—(“If five people called for Jill, I would get off the phone”) contrasting how the complainant would have acted to the way the other actually behaved— thus the use of a “hypothetical narrative” (Riessman 1990:76–77) to create a variant of the “contrast structure” analyzed by Smith (1978); noting the exact time (“1:30” a.m.) the complainant was told about her missed calls, a detail that makes immediate calling back unfeasible and hence frames the other’s behavior as having created an irremediable problem; voicing Jill’s report and her response in a way that dramatizes their confrontation; and framing this report as one instance of a habitual pattern of behavior on Jill’s part.

100 / Chapter Four

a minimal “Pass on my messages in a timely fashion” to a more assertive “Give me the phone when I get calls” to a deeper solution along the lines of “Be restrained and considerate in your use of the phone.”7 Complications While truncated, highly indexical complaints can effectively convey what the discontent is about and that remedial action is desired, in some circumstances additional work may be necessary to fill in and clarify these contextual references. In particular, complainants may need to restate or clarify just what they are unhappy about, or to report a potentially disturbing act previously unknown to one of the parties involved. Specifying Discontents

An expression of discontent, particularly if conveyed in abbreviated form, may not be picked up or correctly read by the troubling other. In response complainants may elaborate their initial expression of discontent in order to clarify just what action by the other they are irritated with and, by implication, just what they want done about it. In the following instance, for example, a student worker describes a multistage process whereby she reenacted her discontent when a coworker took possession of the one locker big enough to hold her large bag containing books and a change of clothes: My coworkers all know that I go to class right after work and always put my bag in that locker. As I am walking towards the lockers, my boss stopped me to ask how I was doing. While we were talking the coworker I was working with that shift walked past and put his stuff in “my” locker. After finishing my conversation with my boss, I proceeded to the lockers and he was putting on his nametag. I looked at him in confusion with a “what are you doing” kind of expression on my face. He smiled back. I then made a huge scene as I attempted to shove my big bag in a little locker, knowing it wouldn’t fit. I squished my bag, made

7. The remedial implications of expressions of discontent may be weaker and more uncertain in more distant and occasional relationships. Consider this brother- sister exchange: “Paul’s sister phones him on March 31. After exchanging hellos, Paul says: ‘C’est le 30 ma fete, moi.’ (‘My birthday’s on the 30th.’)” (Laforest 2002:1601). Here the discontent and complaint are delivered as a rebuke for having failed to call on the proper day. The focus is on this past failure, perhaps because corrective action is not possible for a year. Yet the complaint would prefigure a nexttime remedy, i.e., “Remember the date, call on my actual birthday,” if the focus of the interaction shifted toward the future.

Remedial Complaints / 101 grunting noises, and was hitting the locker hard to make as loud of a scene as possible. He looked at me and offered me “my locker.” I said, “Why yes, I’d love that locker. Thanks!” in a sarcastic tone. (ID 18; emphasis added)

Here an initial “what are you doing?” look elicits only a confused smile in return. The complainant then bodily enacts just what she is irritated about by dramatizing the difficulty of fitting her big bag into a small locker. Her coworker picks up this cue, and offers her the sole large locker. Similarly, troubled parties may need to specify discontents and remedial possibilities where the other senses disapproval, but remains uncertain what this is about. Several roommates reported this reaction when they expressed general discontent by changing their prior pattern of relating to the other, usually by withdrawal or avoidance. I didn’t really talk to her for awhile. Just superficially, like to someone in passing. I kind of was mad at her because she wasn’t dealing with her personal relationships very well. I kind of avoided her. We all started to feel the same when her boyfriend started to come over alot. They kind of avoided her too. We’d do our stuff, like in the kitchen, and then come straight into the bedroom because they would always be in the living room. We’d acknowledge them and that was about it. I think, nonverbally she could tell we were annoyed. But it wasn’t until the end of last quarter that she found out how we really felt. Marie talked to her and I talked to her a little bit about stuff for next year and her future roommate. That she has to be considerate to her new roommate and not have the boyfriend over so much. (RM 22)

Here persisting relational tension and uncertainty eventually led to explicit presentation of a number of discontents and specific remedial proposals (albeit framed as personal advice for the future). Finally, specifying discontent may be required when the other has previously engaged in the behavior that now upsets the troubled party but the latter had not earlier expressed discontent. Consider, for example, the case discussed earlier concerning a complaint to a roommate who was working on her computer late at night in a dorm room: . . . I had not said anything to her for a long time, until it really affected me, which was that night when I really needed to sleep for my midterm. I told her that I needed to sleep and that her typing was bothering me, and I wished that I wasn’t like that, but that I was a light sleeper and I’d really appreciate it if she’d stop— and this was around 1:30 in the morning. (RM 70)

102 / Chapter Four

In addition to an explicit formulation of the reason for discontent (the other’s typing prevents her from sleeping), this elaborate remedial complaint involves the following elements: (1) an explanation of how and why this action was specifically disturbing (“light sleeper”); (2) an account of the “special circumstances” for making a complaint about behavior that had been ignored on past occasions (midterm the next day); (3) a framing of the discontent as the product of uncontrollable or unchangeable forces (“I wished that I wasn’t like that, but . . .”); and (4) a polite request for remediation, in this case, to stop typing in the bedroom. Reporting/Formulating Disturbing Behavior

To make a complaint about an act that occurred previously or elsewhere requires that one or the other party reinvoke that act and its disturbing character into the current exchange. In some cases the person who comes to be the recipient of the complaint reports what turns out to be the relevant act, as in Jill’s report of the earlier telephone calls for her roommate. In other circumstances the troubled party reports to the other a disturbing act that the latter has not recognized. Of course, those reporting such acts may well anticipate their possibly problematic character for the recipient and take care to frame them in ways that minimize the “bad news” they might relate (Maynard 2003). One way to do so is to formulate what happened in a nonaccusatory fashion as an “unhappy event” (Pomerantz 1978), as in this public place complaint: I am driving to my office at about 8:30 Sunday morning. I turn onto a one way street and half way down the road a van is stopped, blocking my way. When I pull behind the van, I can see a driver in it and notice the word “Paratransit” written on the back of the van. I wait a short while and then quickly beep the horn. I doubt that the driver heard my horn. I’m getting impatient but wonder if the driver might be waiting to take an incapacitated person to church. I debate about whether to back up and take another street. Then I realize I could ask the driver for information. I get out of my car and approach his van on the driver’s side. He sees me, obviously waiting to speak to him, and rolls down his window. I ask: “Are you gonna be here awhile?” He shakes his head no and has a puzzled look on his face. I say, “Cause I’m behind you.” He says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.” I return to my car as he starts his van and pulls down the block to a parking space. (Pomerantz 1988:363; emphasis added)

Remedial Complaints / 103

Here, when the initial honking has no effect, the impeded driver makes faceto- face contact with the other, asking, “Are you gonna be here awhile?” This question avoids challenging the positioning of the vehicle, and hence does not directly blame the driver for wrongdoing (in contrast to such possible remarks as “You’re blocking the street” or “I can’t get by”). However, the driver appears puzzled by the question, leading the irritated party to explicitly report the problem formulated as an unhappy event—“I’m behind you” (and cannot get by). As a result the other comes to recognize the discontent and acts to remedy the problem. As this incident illustrates, in reporting or announcing a previously unrecognized disturbing act by another, the troubled party provides a formulation of exactly what the disturbing act is. Laforest (2002:1606) provides this example from an interaction between intimates in Montreal: him .

What are you staring at me for Nathalie you’re making me nervous!

her .

I am daydreaming I’m sorry. (emphasis added)

Here the complainant expresses discontent by formulating the other’s action as “staring at” him. However, the other challenges this formulation by offering a different version of what she has been doing; she has not “in fact” been “staring at” him, but rather simply “daydreaming” (in French, “Je suis dans la lune”). In sum, remedial complaints may be highly indexical, communicated in abbreviated fashion directly through explicit remedial proposals and more indirectly through unelaborated expressions of discontent. Such complaints tend to be edgy and possibly oppositional, in many cases leading troubled parties to employ a variety of practices to modulate a complaint’s potentially alienating effects.

Modulating Complaints Troubled parties often proceed cautiously in making remedial complaints, presenting discontents obliquely and framing corrective proposals as tentative requests or suggestions. This preference for modulation arises from several different factors. First, making a complaint may expose the complainant’s self, revealing personal quirks and points of vulnerability, displaying disruptive emotions, asserting claims about who one is and by implication how one sees the relational other. We are all too aware that others may judge us as complaining too easily, too vociferously, or too insistently, and as a result come to feel we are relationally insensitive, self- centered, rigid,

104 / Chapter Four

angry, aggressive, and/or incompetent. Troubled actors, then, tend to modulate remedial complaints in anticipation of others’ evaluations of who and what they are. Second, troubled parties are all too aware that remedial complaints may threaten their ongoing relationship with the other and often seek to counter this risk by minimizing offensiveness. While a modulating, conciliatory stance may reflect an individual’s concern to avoid an unpleasant “confrontation,” there are fundamental relational pressures at work here as well: in equalitarian relationships, the troubled party cannot force or compel the other to change troubling behaviors. Rather, a remedial complaint must attempt to convince the other to recognize a problem, to discuss possible responses, and to agree to try to stop doing whatever it is that is bothering the complainant. The need to bring the troublemaker on board, then, reinforces preferences for conciliatory, modulated complaining. Troubled parties, then, may employ some of the following practices to try to modulate remedial complaints. Hiding Discontents. A troubled party may be able to hide or suppress entirely any indication of a discontent with the other, yet still act to correct another’s problematic behavior. In the following example, an irritated roommate introduces the topic that disturbs her into casual conversation with the other, then moves to indirectly introduce a corrective proposal, all the while expressing no discontent or even any knowledge of the other’s prior (mis)conduct: [An adult roommate bought bright red silicone reusable muffin wrappers to make blueberry muffins. She soon realized that her roommate Peggy had eaten some of the muffins but had thrown out the reusable wrappers in the recycling bin. She went through the mess in the recycling bin to recover these wrappers. She reported then handling her upset with her roommate in the following way:] Peggy comes home and I’m sitting at the dining room table. She sits down with me and I say: “I made a new batch of muffins today. I think they are better than last week’s batch, but still not great.” “Oh you made new ones? I didn’t realize. I tried the ones you made before— they were kind of—” “Hard, right?” “Yeah, hard.” “I was really excited because I got these re- usable muffin wrappers, and you don’t have to spray the tin and or anything, but then the muffins came out crap, again.”

Remedial Complaints / 105 “Oh! You mean you don’t throw them out? I was wondering why they were so thick.” “Yeah, you re- use them. You just wash them out.” “Well maybe that’s why they were hard— because of the plastic.” “It’s silicone though, I don’t think it seeps in or anything.” “Oh no, silicone wouldn’t do that. No.” (Pers. comm.)

Here the troubled party avoids making a direct complaint or even expressing discontent with the other by reporting, as part of her account of the day’s activities, that she made muffins (again), explicitly comparing them to “last week’s batch.” The other acknowledges having “tried the ones you made before,” and hesitantly begins a critical evaluation before agreeing with the deprecating “hard” characterization. The troubled party then introduces the topic of the wrappers, including the fact that they are “reusable”; however, she embeds this mention in accounts of the ease of use of these wrappers (no spray) and of the failure of this batch to turn out well nonetheless. The other then implicitly acknowledges having previously thrown out the wrappers, noting an incongruity now resolved (i.e., why these wrappers were “so thick”). The discontent roommate drives home this feature of these wrappers—“Yeah, you re- use them. You just wash them out.”— thereby indicating how she would like the other to deal with these wrappers in the future. The latter then takes the topic of the wrappers away from their reuse and toward the possibility that they made the muffins hard. So the discontented party indirectly brings up her discontent and desired remedy without making explicit either a complaint or a remedial proposal (which would have required admitting that she had noticed some wrappers were missing and that she had “gone into the recycling and dug them out”). The avoidance of a complaint allows the other to avoid explicitly admitting that she had previously thrown out the wrappers. As a practical matter this maneuver succeeded: “The next muffin she ate, she left the wrapper in the sink.” Alluding to Discontents. Troubled parties may convey discontents, but in indirect, roundabout ways that avoid or minimize expressions of negativity and hence skirt making an explicit complaint. Schegloff (2005), for example, has extended Sacks’s (1992: vol. 2, pp. 46– 50) analysis of “complainables” by showing that in ordinary conversation people may signal or allude to a possible discontent rather than directly presenting a complaint.8 8. In analyzing conversational interruptions, Sacks emphasized that immediately placing a complaint after another’s utterance renders the latter a “complainable.” As he argued, “Complaints regularly do not say ‘In the last utterance you interrupted me’ or “in the last utterance minus three you interrupted me.’ They just say ‘You interrupted me’ and things like that. And

106 / Chapter Four

In one instance, a fourteen- year- old girl, Bonnie, called her father, Norm, now remarried, late in the evening; after they had chatted briefly about her return from camp and how long she has been home, this dialogue occurs: bonnie .

hh[h

nor m .

[We were uh I- I wasn’t sure you’re gonna call, so we were in bed . . . you

know. bonnie .

hh, Oh I’m sorry.=

nor m .

=Oh that’s alright, we’d just gone to bed a few minutes ago.

No problem. bonnie .

uhh ’hh

nor m .

[ [except y’ know when the phone rings late at night you

kinda wonder (what you think) something is wrong somewhere y’ know bonnie . nor m .

Yeah.

Always a kind of startle thing, y’ know.

bonnie .

Yeah. Tch I’m sorry bout that. (456; emphasis added)

Here Norm makes no overt complaint and does not directly express discontent; instead well into the conversation he notes that Bonnie’s call has come after he and his wife have gone to bed. Bonnie treats this statement as presaging an unstated discontent— a complainable— and immediately apologizes. Her father accepts her apology, then mitigates the complainable (“No problem,” followed by an account for why a late call might be worrisome), and receives a second apology from his daughter. In this way an intonation of discontent foreshadows a possible complaint, but does so in modulated and conciliatory fashion. In other circumstances, discontent may be alluded to by means of ostensibly “neutral” reports expressing concern for the other’s interests. In one instance analyzed by Schegloff (2005:457–58), a neighbor told the mother of a family that their dog barked incessantly when no one was at home. But the mother noted a fundamental ambiguity here: “He has a way of telling you things that— it’s kind of like he wants to complain but he doesn’t come right out and tell you . . . He was saying it as if you know he wanted me to know that she was lonely . . . but at the same time he is complaining about the noise” (emphasis added). Was this report simply passing on a disinterested

participants can know where to look, to see whether it is so that such a complainable occurred, i.e., in this case, to the immediately last utterance, such that if they don’t find it there they may say ‘No I didn’t’ or ‘No he didn’t,’ though he may have made some interruption somewhere. That is to say, they use the complaint to locate the complainable” (1992: vol. 2, 46–47).

Remedial Complaints / 107

worry about the dog’s loneliness during the family’s absence? Or was it a complaint expressing discontent about the noise from the dog’s barking? Or both simultaneously? This ambiguity allows allusion to rather than a direct statement of a (possible) discontent. Minimizing Responsibility and Blame. Troubled parties may directly express discontent to the other, but do so in ways that minimize or avoid direct accusations of wrongdoing. One key practice here is to present the discontent as an “unhappy event” without directly attributing responsibility for this event to the other (Pomerantz 1978). Consider, for example, the following account written by a roommate who returned to her apartment around 9:30 a.m. from a weekend away to find dirty dishes in the living room, the trash overflowing in the kitchen, the oven left on all night, and the bathroom door in her bedroom locked from inside while her roommate was first in bed and later showering with a visiting boyfriend: I hear Serena and her guest in the shower, and then chatting in the bedroom for a while, and I expect them to notice that someone has come home. . . . So I sit in my room and begin writing this paper. I leave my bedroom door open in order to force an interaction with Serena. I intend to tell her she left the oven on and request that she unlock my door so that I can use the bathroom when it is unoccupied. . . . They remain in the bedroom until 1:15pm when Serena finally walks out, passes by my bedroom and realizes that I am home. She pauses at my doorway in the typical, friendly way she usually does. I look up from my computer in a purposefully casual manner (I intend to confront her about the oven and locked door but don’t want to be perceived as antagonistic), we make eye contact, and she smiles, seemingly unaware that she has done anything that could have upset me the past four hours. We say “Hey” to each- other in a characteristically friendly manner and moments later she introduces me to her visitor. . . . Then she asks, “Did you just get back from Paul’s [my boyfriend]?” I look away from her and say, “Actually, I got back this morning at like 9:30.” I don’t see her response because I am looking down at my computer, but I feel awkward because this information allows her to realize I was home and therefore possibly aware of the fact that she was showering with her visitor. She says “Ohhh . . .” which seems to confirm my belief. I take this lull in the conversation as an opportunity to tell her about the oven. I use a neutral tone and tell her I found the oven on when I came home this morning. She says, “My friends were here yesterday and we were drinking.” I am annoyed at her lack of apology and at the fact that she seems to think this excuses the indiscretion. I push the subject by telling her that I think it was on

108 / Chapter Four all night and that when I walked in I thought the heater had been left on. Then she half laughs at her stupidity and says “I never do that.” I don’t know how to respond so I half- smile and look away. Then I ask her, “Would you unlock my bathroom door?” and simultaneously gesture to the door in my room that was locked. Her eyeballs expand and she feigns surprise: “Oh! Is it locked?” I confirm that it is so she quickly walks through her bedroom into the bathroom to unlock it. In response to her action, I add a brief explanation of why I want her to unlock my door to the bathroom: “Just so I can use it when you leave,” in a voice loud enough that it is audible through the walls. (ID 7; emphasis added)

Here a severely inconvenienced roommate waits hours to set up a situation in which she can register her complaints without intruding on the other couple; she sits at her desk with her door ajar, allowing the other to initiate contact. When the latter does so she carefully selects and sequences two complaints. She self- consciously frames the first as a “neutral” report that she “found the oven on when I came home this morning,” implying rather than directly attributing responsibility for this act to the other. When the roommate responds with a comment that both implicitly blames others (“My friends . . .”) and accepts minimal responsibility by offering an excuse (“we were drinking”), the complainant simply upgrades the problem (the oven had been “on all night,” warming the living room to such an extent that she thought “the heater had been left on”), but still does not directly blame the other. She presents her second complaint as a simple, nonevaluative remedial request (“Would you unlock my bathroom door?”), again taking care to not to attribute responsibility and blame. She also presents this request not as an expression of the considerable irritation she felt from having been locked out of her bathroom, but as a matter of future convenience, taking care to ensure that this “explanation” will also be heard by the boyfriend in the adjacent room. The thought and planning the troubled party gives to when and how to make these remedial complaints are striking. She makes no mention of the living room mess and the unemptied trash, limiting her complaints to the oven and locked bathroom. She consistently avoids dramatizing her discontent and explicitly blaming the other, framing the troubling incidents as “unhappy events” without identifying causal agents. These complaints display strategic forethought and careful presentation of self, reflecting deep concern with how the other might react. In particular, she takes great pain to not act in ways that she anticipates the other might view as “antagonistic.” She mutes direct expression of her anger and frustration in face- to- face contact with the other (while vividly venting these feelings in her written

Remedial Complaints / 109

account), but still manages to effectively register her discontent and to present her complaints. Strategic Targeting. Troubled parties may try to modulate the alienating tendencies of remedial complaints by strategically manipulating the acts and actors targeted by such complaints. One practice of strategic targeting is simply to limit the number of troubling issues complained about. In the following case, for example, a roommate self- consciously brings up only one issue from her “whole list” of complaints about the other: I talked to her about the cleaning but not about the food. I didn’t want her to feel like I had a whole list and she wasn’t pulling her weight at all. She’s a good roommate other than that and I don’t want her to feel that I’m totally attacking her. I don’t feel like that. We still do things together and I don’t want that to interfere with our relationship. . . . To me the main problem was how to tell her without hurting her feelings. . . . [I did not want] to constantly remind her that she has to do her dishes or pitch in with the food or something like that. (RM 26a)

Here a roommate tones down her complaint by focusing on a single issue, expressing concern about not coming off as “totally attacking” and seeking to avoid “hurting her feelings.” A second approach is to address a complaint ostensibly to a broad audience while intending it for one particular other. Troubled roommates in multiparty suites, for example, sometimes sought to minimize the sense of attacking another by presenting a generalized complaint that did not identify a specific target. Thus a woman upset because one of her apartment roommates “never washed her dishes” recounted: I avoided the situation at first, but that did not remedy the problem much. Then I left friendly notes, never directing it to Gail but to the “girls.” For example I’d write, “Hey Girls! I know we’re all busy at times but let’s try to wash the dishes after we eat. We are starting to attract bugs. Thanks a bunch!” (RM 136)

A third strategy is to address a complaint ostensibly about or to one party while intending it to be heard by another who is its actual target. One party in a couple, for example, may complain about something another couple does in order to feel out and make an indirect complaint about their own relationship. Similarly, one adult roommate recounted dramatizing a direct complaint to a neighbor about his loud music to indirectly register a com-

110 / Chapter Four

plaint to her own roommate about the latter’s loud, late- night TV watching (pers. comm.). This device may be used even more strategically, by directing a complaint to an “innocent” party in ways calculated to bring the troubled situation to the attention of a targeted other. A student sharing an apartment with her boyfriend and another woman recounts: This morning I went into the kitchen to throw something out and found that the garbage can was completely full. I became irritated immediately, as I had just emptied the can several days earlier. I felt offended that my roommates had noticed that the can was full and just left it that way. . . . I became particularly annoyed with my female roommate because she has only taken out the garbage once since we moved into the apartment (ten months ago). I walked toward my room and sighed loudly when I came to the end of the hall where both bedroom doors are located. I opened my bedroom door, but made a point of standing in the hallway. Addressing my boyfriend who was reading his email in the room, I sighed again and said, “I am really tired of taking out the garbage. It’s full again. Can you please take care of that later today?” I intentionally made myself sound more exasperated than I actually felt. I then entered the room and closed the door behind me. Although I had been speaking directly to my boyfriend, I wanted my other roommate to hear me. I stood in the hallway, spoke louder than I naturally would and emphasized my tone of voice so that she could hear my annoyance through her closed bedroom door. This was a successful technique. My boyfriend had agreed to take out the trash later, but he made no effort to do so right away. My other roommate had overheard the interaction and gotten the message. Within five minutes she went into the kitchen and took out the trash. (ID 44)

Humor. Complainants may use humor to simultaneously express and distance themselves from a statement of discontent. Humor, of course, provides an extremely useful device for these kinds of communications, allowing a troubled party to lightly bring up a serious issue (J. P. Emerson 1969). Kaufmann (2009:33) provides this example of a Parisian husband’s response to his wife’s failure to turn off the lights and heating: The thing is that for the last two or three years now, I’ve been really keen on saving energy, and what I find most irritating about my partner is the fact that she “forgets” to turn off the lights— or the heating— whenever she leaves a room. So I let slip a little comment along the lines of: “Hey, this isn’t the Palace of Versailles!”

Remedial Complaints / 111

Similarly, troubled roommates commonly reported trying to lace complaints with humor: I try to make light jokes about things. There were some dishes in the sink and they were growing some mold because they had been there like a week. So I said, “Are we ever going to clean these or are (we) doing an experiment because if we are I’d really like to write down my hypothesis and watch it grow.” I don’t think it really worked. (RM 20)

And in some situations, humor may be used to dilute very direct and forceful complaints about recurrent problems: I am periodically travelling and away from my apartment. When I return this week I find that my roommate Peggy has opened yet another one of my packages. I periodically have packages come in from Amazon, almost exclusively having to do with furnishing and decorating the still semi- bare apartment. When they look particularly intriguing to her (at least that’s my read), she opens them before I arrive, so that when I show up and look through the mail I’m re- opening packages she’s already examined, that are addressed me .

to

The last instance of this was place- mats my mother sent. In that instance

I didn’t mention it but added it to my list of gripes. Today she’s sitting on the couch watching TV (as usual!) and I ask if any packages came, and she says no, and then she says, “Oh wait, on the table there, I think it’s like a flask or something.” “Oh!” I say, “it’s going to be a vase for those yellow buds.” “Oh, that’s nice,” she says, “that makes sense. I couldn’t figure out what it was for.” Then, in a very warm and jokey tone, I say: “You gotta stop opening my mail, Peggy. It’s a federal offense.” She instantly comes back with: “I didn’t even realize it was addressed to you. It just came to the door so I opened it, I just assumed it was mine.” We are all still in a very nice tone here. Then I repeat: “Federal offense, Peggy!” and she laughs. (Pers. comm.; emphasis added)

Here the troubled party practically orders the other not to open her mail by jokingly exaggerating the seriousness of the (mis)conduct. Personalizing. Complainants may frame their disturbed feelings as a product of ingrained, idiosyncratic personal habits, preferences, or sensitivities that conflict with those of the other (Emerson 2011). The trouble, then, is presented as the result of differences in personal proclivities, not as a matter involving in- principle moral or normative differences, as in the following examples:

112 / Chapter Four In terms of the kitchen, [our] timing is different. For me, if you use it, then you wash it right away and put it away whereas for him, he’ll let it soak and whenever he has time, he’ll wash his dishes. He doesn’t have the same timing as I do. . . . It’s not a violation really, if anything it’s a violation of my expectations. (RM 33) (Did you ever talk directly to your roommate about her open sexuality?) Ya I did and she told me that it was my problem and that she was free to be the way she wanted to be in her living situations and that I needed to deal with it. She apologized for me having walked in but she didn’t apologize for what she was doing in my living room while she wasn’t paying rent and while my other roommate was sleeping in the other room. (RM 27)

In these instances the discontented party makes no claim that the behaviors at issue are always, invariably, or even deeply problematic, only that at this time and place she or he experiences them as disconcerting or upsetting. In the first case the discontented party reports and honors the other’s competing version of how to handle dirty dishes— rather than wash right away, soak and wash when convenient. The difference is then not a principled one, a matter of violating some sort of “clean up” rule, but an optional matter of the “timing” of when to do so. In the second case the other maintains that the discontented party’s annoyance at her sexual activities is her “problem,” a product of her own distinctive sensitivities. “It’s Our Problem” Framings. Garcia (1991:832) found that some complainants in mediation sessions place part of the “blame” for a problem on themselves, thereby effectively urging a “collective representation of the agent” of the trouble. One party to a dispute, for example, commented, “Since the beginning of the year we’ve been harassing each other” (emphasis added). A similar process occurs in a variety of interpersonal troubles: the troubled party specifically seeks to incorporate self into the trouble, thereby framing the proposed remedial action as a collective enterprise. For example, in the following case, a barista frames a needed cleanup as a shared problem rather than complaining directly to a distracted coworker to clean up his mess: I was working with my male coworker when it got really busy and we were both too busy to clean up after ourselves after each drink was made. When I finally had some free time, I immediately began cleaning up the mess I had made. But instead of cleaning up his mess, my coworker decided to go to the back room and begin text messaging. I got frustrated, thinking “Are you

Remedial Complaints / 113 serious? You left a big mess and you’re not going to clean it up?!” So in an attempt to suggest to him that he should clean up I let out a big groan and said “Oh my goodness, that was a lot of people! What a big mess we made! We definitely need to clean up.” After saying this, I had hoped that he would say something like “Oh yeah! Let me help!” but instead he just agreed and continued to text and talk about how busy it got all of a sudden. I grew even more frustrated and upset so I asked him to hand me the spray bottle hoping that he would help me out, but instead he handed it to me and continued to text. (ID 13)

Unfortunately the coworker failed to respond to either of these two attempts to draw him into a collective cleanup. In a similar vein, troubled parties may frame complaints by suggesting that they may have done something to upset the other. Consider this example from a roommate account of directly “confronting” the other: Well, long overdue because I hate conflict. I went up to him and said, “Look David I don’t like how it’s been lately, I don’t feel comfortable here. If I did something to upset you please let me know what it’s about. I like you as a friend and I’d like to work it out.” He very quickly, without looking at me said, “I don’t want to talk about it” and left. He actually took his bike and left the apartment. . . . That was pretty much it. (RM 156; emphasis added)

Here the complaining roommate does not specify a particular disturbing behavior, but alludes to the trouble in highly general terms (“how it’s been lately”), and then suggests that the problem may be at least partly his fault. He makes no specific proposal about changing the other’s behavior, only that they talk about what was taking place and try to “work it out.”9 As these instances suggest, “It’s our problem” framings try to express understanding, sympathy, and support of the other and his or her situation. Similar processes of invoking sympathy and concern for the other are evident in the following roommate account: So one day I sat him down and we had a talk . . . I said, “Look, I understand that you are having problems with your relationship with Allison, but you have to understand that relationship is affecting our relationship as room-

9. Despite the care and caution taken here, this complaint fails, at least immediately, as the other walks out. Note also correction is sought by means of a metalevel communication focused on the nature of the relationship itself.

114 / Chapter Four mates. So in order for this relationship to work between you and me, you need to make a concerted effort to leave those feelings aside.” And he said something to the effect that it was a difficult time for him and asked me to sympathize with him. He also said that he would try his best not to come home pissed off all the time too. (RM 15)

Here the complainant frames the encounter not as an occasion for expressing his upset and frustration but as a heart- to- heart appeal to save their relationship. He alludes to his discontent in general terms as something that is “affecting our relationship as roommates,” avoiding reference to the other’s specific misbehaviors and possible attributions of blame. He locates the primary cause of the trouble outside their relationship in the other’s bringing home “problems” with his girlfriend; he offers this cause as an excuse, diluting fault and responsibility. Finally, he proposes a change in the other’s behavior— to “make a concerted effort to leave those feelings [from his problems with the girlfriend] aside”— in neutral, therapeutic- like terms, focused on what can now be done rather than on past fault and wrongdoing. Finally, troubled parties may present a remedial complaint by expressing sympathy for the situation and priorities of the other. Consider this account of dealing with a neighbor’s loud music: I went over there and what I said was, “do you have a couple of minutes?” I decided that it was important for him to know that it was loud all the time and it wasn’t just these times that I’d asked him to turn it down. So he said, “Oh yeah, come on in.” And I went in and it was blaring out there on the big TV and I said, “You know I feel bad about this cause I feel like I’m infringing on your right to enjoy your life and your entertainment system but it’s never quiet in our apartment. . . . I wonder if we can rearrange the speakers, [so] that they don’t shout into our living room. . . . It’s a constant problem, it’s not just these times that I’ve come and told you about it.” (Rivera 1991:23)

In framing this account to show how she acted politely and reasonably in confronting her neighbor about a noise problem, the complainant describes initiating her complaint by expressing concern for “infringing on your right to enjoy your life and your entertainment system.” But then insisting that the noise is a “constant problem” for her and her partner, she moves on to propose a comprehensive and permanent remedy—“rearrange the speakers.” And she justifies this proposal by emphasizing that despite prior complaints and despite not having complained on yet other occasions, she and

Remedial Complaints / 115

her partner continue to be disturbed because “it’s never quiet in our apartment.” In sum, remedial complaints may generate emotional upset, contentious problem formulations, and unsettling behavior- changing corrective proposals. Troubled parties often avoid making complaints in a manner that would accentuate these reactions. In so doing they seek to minimize arguments and open hostility by modulating the oppositional implications of a complaint. Doing so allows troubled parties to enlist the active cooperation of the other, to “awaken corrective action from within” the other (Goffman 1971:347), in order to try to develop some mutually acceptable bilateral response to the trouble.

Mutually Constructing Complaints To this point I have focused on how troubled parties make remedial complaints. Yet when and how a complaint is made, and indeed whether or not what was said or done should be interpreted as a complaint, depend on how both the troubled party and the other act in the matter. That complaints are actively co- constructed is highlighted when the troubling party actively engages with the troubled party to mutually produce explicitly recognized discontents, either by taking the initiative to forestall or solicit complaints about looming troubles, or by taking up and acknowledging the discontent and/or remedial proposal that the troubled party has advanced. Forestalling and Soliciting Complaints An incipient troubling party may anticipate a complaint and act to forestall this possibility. One way of doing so, as Goffman (1971:114) emphasizes, is to make a request in advance of engaging in possibly complainable behavior. Requests “typically occur before the questionable event, or, at the latest, during its initial phases,” and seek to diffuse the potential offensiveness of the forthcoming behavior: A request consists of asking license of a potentially offended person to engage in what could be considered a violation of his rights. The actor shows that he is fully alive to the possible offensiveness of his proposed act and begs sufferance. At the same time he exposes himself to denial and rejection. The recipient of the request thus clearly is presented with the possibility of making an offer, one that would allow the supplicant’s needs. An offer, in short,

116 / Chapter Four is stimulated. The value to the potential offender of doing this is based, of course, on the character of offers. (114)

While requests are usually made before a potentially troubling act occurs, the troubling party may employ accounts and apologies after such an act has occurred to forestall or deflect complaints (Goffman 1971:114). A classic instance is the telephone caller who anticipates discontent and complaint for having rung at an early hour or from receiving a sleepy hello from the recipient. Such a caller may then ask, “Did I wake you?” If answered yes, the caller may then offer an apology (“Sorry”), a good reason for having called at an inconvenient hour (“Eva just had her baby!”), and a possible remedy (“Should I call back later?”). In these circumstances, “the potentially ‘guilty’ party takes the initiative and inquires about the possible occurrence of a complainable” (Schegloff 2005:465), then follows up to diffuse the other’s discontent. Similar processes may occur in face- to- face exchanges where one party recognizes that he has acted in ways another may want to complain about, initiates talk that effectively formulates that complaint, and then responds with an apology, an account, and a remedial proposal: An apartment resident had become irritated because a visitor’s car had been parked in one of the two spots assigned to her unit on two prior occasions. Now as she drives into her spot, she sees the same car in the other spot, its driver standing beside it. “As I put the car into park, I see the man walking toward my car. As I’m getting out of the car, I see him back up. I think he was trying to make sure that I knew he wasn’t trying to make me uncomfortable or anything. As he points to his car, he quickly asks, ‘Is that one of your parking spots?’ I looked at his car, and said, ‘Yes it is.’ He let out a deep breath, smiled a little and said, ‘Thank goodness, I’m sorry I have been parking here. Me and my wife just had a baby and we have been visiting my grandparents a lot lately, and they live in this complex. The only problem is that the visitor parkings are so far from their unit, and we have all of this baby stuff. I noticed no one was using this spot on a regular basis, so I started just parking here, and I’m glad you’re out here, I should have asked first. We are willing to pay to use this spot when we come if you don’t have anybody in it.’. . . I tell him that I’m glad we were able to talk, and that whenever they need it, they can use that parking spot.” (ID 34)

Here a visitor, knowing he has parked where he should not, asks another driver if in fact he is in her spot, thereby in effect identifying (formulating) what is a complainable matter for her. When she answers yes, he apologizes,

Remedial Complaints / 117

provides an account for why he has been using that space, and as a remedy offers to pay for doing so. Co-constructing Complaints Expressing a discontent or making a complaint to the other is only the first move in a developing interactional exchange to which the other responds (or does not, itself a significant act), the initial party responds in turn to this response, and so on. As a result, whether or not there turns out to be a complaint, and if so just what kind of complaint, are outcomes determined by the actions of both the troubled and troubling parties. How the other initially responds provides a key juncture here, as this response may confirm, modify, reject, or disattend a complaint and remedial proposal (Mandelbaum 1991). Indeed, analytically “a complaint (is) anything the speaker said that the hearer took to be an expression of dissatisfaction with his/ her behavior” (Laforest 2002:1597). And conversely, there is no complaint when the hearer takes what a speaker has said as an expression of something other than dissatisfaction. To begin with the latter: troubling parties may fail to recognize discontent, or not accept it as “serious,” as a result not picking up on and responding to even direct and seemingly unambiguous complaints. Vaughan (1986:63) provides two examples of women who repeatedly made what they felt were obvious and insistent complaints about their discontents with their marriage that were not “heard” by their partners: I tried early on talking about breaking up. It’s amazing. We would sit down and I would say to him, “I don’t think this is going to work. I think we’re just too different and I’m going to have to go one way and you’re going to have to go another way.” He would counter with things like, well, he never reacted much. He would say, “I think we can work it out,” or something like that. “You couldn’t make it on your own anyway,” he would say, or “You don’t mean that,” things like that. [Actor, age 32, separated after living together for 5 years; emphasis added] And I told my husband, I said, “now, why don’t you take this seriously? I’ve said this a hundred times. What do you think this is, I’m feeling unhappy today or something?” When I told him I wanted a divorce, he said, “What do you mean?” He was shocked. And I had been yelling and nagging and complaining about the quality of the marriage for years. It’s like he didn’t have ears. [Seamstress, age 36, divorced after 16 years; emphasis added]

118 / Chapter Four

In these instances, expressions of discontent were not heard, but rather were dismissed as unwarranted exaggerations and perhaps as meaningless products of temporary moods. Of course, such dismissive responses frequently characterize men’s treatment of women resisting their intimate advances. In one instance, a woman who had been on an awkward date at a restaurant reported this incident on walking back to his car: It was windy and foggy that day and I was wearing shorts and t- shirt. I was shivering and I used my hands to rub my arms. He saw what I was doing, and suddenly put his hands around my shoulders and rubbed and said “I’ll give you warmth.” I was shocked by his action and I tried to get rid of his hands from my shoulders. I said “no thanks” and tried to push him away. Perhaps he thought that I was playing or joking with him and that’s why he put his hands again and again on my shoulders after I got rid of them. Fortunately before I really got mad, we arrived at the parking lot and he finally let go his hands and the “fight” ended. (ID 54)

In other situations relational others may be unable to decipher whether or not there is discontent, and if so, exactly what it is. In some cases, one party may find in the other’s expression or manner a complaint that is not there or that is subsequently disavowed, as when the recipient of a complaint about having interrupted another responds, “No, I didn’t” (Sacks 1992: vol. 2, p. 47). In other cases, differences in personal styles may make it difficult to “read” discontent in a complainant’s actions and expressions. Note in the following how a fraternity brother has come to realize he has been misreading his roommate’s mild complaints and seeming lack of upset about his care of their room:10 While Dan described deep- seated resentment toward Pete for his slovenliness and failure to clean up their room, Pete offered this view of Dan’s concerns: “Every once in a while, he mentions that some of the things that I do are bothering him, but he doesn’t really seem to make a big deal about it, and lately he seems to have been even avoiding me. (Has Todd [third roommate] ever mentioned anything to you?) A couple of times he said that Dan thinks I’m a slob, and that he was upset with me, but Dan is pretty quiet and reserved so I never know when he is or isn’t upset. He is so easy going that I didn’t even think he could get upset, so I didn’t know that these things were really bother10. In this case both parties were interviewed separately.

Remedial Complaints / 119 ing him that much. I thought he didn’t mind just like I don’t. . . . I thought if he was really that upset he would eventually bring it up so we could discuss it instead of him just mentioning things every once in a while.” (RM 75)

Here, despite information from a third roommate, Pete failed to appreciate the degree to which his messiness was upsetting his roommate. In contrast, an incipient troubling party may interpret seemingly innocuous utterances as expressions of discontent, thereby explicitly reformulating what had previously been said or done as a complaint. Consider this exchange: My roommate Peggy comes into the kitchen around 6 pm and takes two lemons out of a shopping bag. She says: “I’m just putting these lemons here in the front of the fridge” and does this. “Oh Peggy! I’m so sorry, I used the lemon the other day and didn’t replace it.” “Oh that’s fine hon. Anything here (you can use).” “No no, I meant to replace it.” “I just started this new regimen where you drink hot water with lemon in the morning— it’s supposed to be a good cleanser.” “Oh, that’s cool” I say. “Yeah, I figured I’d try it at least. So I’m just letting you know I’m putting these two here.” “Okay.” (Pers. comm.)

Here a roommate does a pointed but seemingly neutral self- report announcing her action—“I’m just putting these lemons here in the front of the fridge.” This statement does not overtly express discontent or make a complaint, although it clearly distinguishes these lemons from other food items in the refrigerator, while also implying that these objects should be exempted from the standard local practices for sharing food. The other immediately responds with an apology—“Oh Peggy! I’m so sorry.”— followed by an explicit formulation of what she has to apologize for—“I used the lemon the other day and didn’t replace it.” In this way the “putting these lemons here” statement is marked as an expression of an unstated discontent and is constituted as a complaint. The complaint plays out from this point, with the troubled party now explicitly acknowledging her complaint by offering “relief” for this “delict” (Goffman 1971), providing an account of the special status of these lemons as part of her new cleansing regime, and blocking out a future course of desired action; so “I’m just letting you

120 / Chapter Four

know I’m putting these two here” comes to be understood as a remedial proposal— please make sure there are lemons available for me in the morning. Through these exchanges, then, a highly indexical incipient complaint has been collaboratively produced, a future remedy has been agreed to without a specific proposal to change local practices, and the relationship between the two parties has been recalibrated without having been directly called into question. Finally, in formulating a troubled party’s prior utterance as an explicit complaint, the complaint recipient may induce a would- be complainant to back off and treat his or her own prior expression of discontent as simply a “joke,” a “put- on,” or a misstatement. Through these coordinated moves, a “complaint” may not simply be “retracted,” but also dissolved. Consider this instance cited by Schegloff (2005:462), where Bonnie has invited Jim to a New Year’s Eve party being organized at the last minute, but he has been hedging about coming : bonnie .

Okay, okay well you call me tomorrow so I can think about that tomor-

row cuz I- right now got a party on my mind. jim .

heh

bonnie .

Cuz I’m not even sure if we’re gonna have it yet. Cuz a bunch of people

say maybe, maybe. It’s buggin me. jim .

Well, ah I’m sorry I ah

bonnie .

No, that’s okay I mean you know I can understand cuz this is just a late

idea that me and Barb had

Here, Jim’s apology (“I’m sorry”) treats Bonnie’s expression of discontent toward people saying “maybe” as a complaint that includes him and his noncommittal response about coming to the party. Bonnie’s “no” response in turn is not rejecting this apology, but rather is accepting it; and the rest of this utterance is in fact “denying or rejecting the complainability of the conduct about which she has complained” (463). In sum, the meaning of an utterance as an “expression of discontent” and as a “complaint” is contingent on the other’s response to this utterance. Some responses acknowledge and hence confirm the expression of discontent, sometimes by accepting, apologizing, or accounting for the behavior problematized by the complaint, at others by denying, countering, or rejecting the substance of the complaint (but still accepting it as an expression of negative feeling). But in other instances the other may reformulate what would have seemed to have been an expression of discontent as something

Remedial Complaints / 121

else again; if the initially dissatisfied party goes along, the earlier complaint is dissolved or redefined.

Remedial Complaints in Stratified Relationships Remedial complaints take on a very different character in interpersonal relationships marked by radical disparities in status, power, and authority. In these instances, a troubled party may use complaints to try to enforce a remedy in one- sided, top- down ways, relying on threats, positive and negative sanctions, implicit exchanges, and perhaps even physical restraint and force. In many nonequalitarian relationships, for example, remedial complaints take the form of orders, backed by authority and perhaps the threat of punishment. Consider this dinnertime exchange between a parent and a six- year- old child: father . son .

father . son .

Chow down on them beans. They’re good.

Uh uh. Yes.

I don’t like ’em. That’s why.

father .

Well, they’re there. You eat ’em.

mother . father . son .

Has he eat a lot of ’em?

No. He hasn’t eat but maybe one of ’em.

Uh hum.

father .

EAT. (6.1) Or you’ll go back to your room when you get done. (10.5)

(Son begins eating food and cutting meat.) (Vuchinich 1990:124)

Family members caring for a person with Alzheimer’s in the home may resort to similar types of orders to correct problem behaviors. One wife described her reaction when her Alzheimer’s afflicted husband removed his dentures in a restaurant: I got up real quick and stood in front of him and [said], “Get your teeth in your mouth.” I felt I had to protect him— what if the waitress came? You’re thinking embarrassment: “What will other people think?” (Blum 1991:272)

In these instances the troubled parties issue commands (“EAT”; “Get your teeth in your mouth”), ordering the other to correct behavior formulated as a problem; indeed in the latter example the complaint is conveyed entirely by the wife’s order, the use of the imperative here signaling how deeply

122 / Chapter Four

upset she is with her husband’s behavior. In the first case the son initially resists, but eventually complies; in the second compliance seems to have been immediate. In other cases, as with parents whose authority over teenage children may be contested, resistance may be elaborated and less easily overcome (Kurz 2006).11

Complaints, Responses, and Outcomes Making a complaint to the other begins a process of back- and- forth exchange that shapes trouble outcomes. In many instances, efforts to engage the other instantly fall flat: the latter may refuse to discuss the matter or to acknowledge trouble, or immediately withdraw from discussion and negotiation after hearing the initial expression of discontent. In these circumstances bilateral processes are momentary and short- lived. But in many cases expressing discontent to the other does lead to “joint decisions” (Black 1998:83) involving both the immediate outcome of the complaint and the longer- term outcome of the trouble within the relationship. Immediate Outcomes A specific complaint may lead to one of the following outcomes. Acceptance. The troubled party acknowledges or confirms the complaint in any number of ways, including by agreeing, apologizing, providing an account of why the unhappy incident occurred, immediately remedying or rectifying the trouble, and/or proposing to remedy it in the future. Consider this example: A woman and her friend shared a bottle of tanning lotion, leaving it at the tanning salon. When she came to the salon, she was irritated to find almost no lotion left, especially when her friend had not warned her. “I texted her asking if she knew we were out of lotion. She replied saying that yes she knew 11. Among most roommates, giving orders led to strong resentment and overt resistance. Consider this example: “He would come home all pissed off and start yelling at me to wash the dishes or clean the house. I guess he thought that he could tell me what to do and I would listen. . . . But when he yelled at me to clean up and shit I just stared at him like he was stupid and kept on doing what I was doing. . . . It wasn’t my job. . . . Sometimes I would look at him and say ‘whatever’. . . . Other times I would try to lighten up the situation and make a parody of it by standing up to him, saluting him and saying ‘Yes Sir!’ But I still didn’t do what he asked of me. I did it when I felt like doing it” (RM 159). Indeed, it can be suggested that giving orders and getting another to follow them characterize the processes whereby equalitarian relationships devolve into stratified ones involving overt differences in power.

Remedial Complaints / 123 and she was getting us more that day. After she said this, I felt slightly bad about being upset with her. She didn’t know what time I was going to go and she was getting us more. I just agreed and said thank you, and did not bring up the fact that I was irritated initially.” (ID 42)

In this and many instances, the recipient of the complaint combines several of these responses; for example, apologies and accounts may be supplemented by offers of remedy, so that a common sequence of response is some version of “I’m sorry” followed by “Can I fix it by doing x?” or “Can I fix it in the future by doing x?” Rejection. The complained- to party rejects the complaint. In some cases this may involve a refusal to respond at all (e.g., “I don’t want to talk about it”). In others, rejection targets some specific component of the complaint: its factual accuracy (“I never did that”), the negative evaluation (“I don’t see it like that”), the proposed remedy (“That’s not fair”), or the legitimacy or “seriousness” of the discontent (“You’re overreacting because you had a bad day at work”). Or again, the troubling party may dismiss the complaint as trivial or not serious. One woman, for example, reported this response to a complaint to her roommate about the latter’s “cute” duck alarm clock: I have been subtly telling her about the issue of noise in the apartment and suggested her to change her alarm clock for a less noisy one but my claims were in vain. Her rebuttal would be, “Oh you are such a drama queen, it is nothing, don’t you think it is cute, the way it sounds?” The second part of the sentence is what makes me more frustrated, because sometimes I feel that she is purposely using her alarm clock to annoy me; but she would not do that, I know she is not that kind of person. Therefore, this troublesome routine has persisted over a couple of months. (ID 2)

As in the instance just quoted, troubling parties may reject complaints by means of counterassertions (Garcia 1991; citing Coulter 1990) or even counterdenunciations (R. M. Emerson 1969:155– 66). Indeed, as Sacks (1992: vol. 2, p. 48) emphasized, recipients of complaints about having interrupted another may offer countercomplaints: “One thing that a complained- to person can do . . . [is to] return a complaint: ‘You interrupted me’ ‘Well you interrupted me in the first place,’ or ‘Well you never give me a chance to talk.’” Matoesian (1993:43) provides an instance in which the return- complaint is about the complaining done in the first place (hence, a “complaint about complaining”):

124 / Chapter Four a.

You can’t ever make up your mind and you DO this all the time.

b.

All you ever do is BItch all the time— you

a.

ME

b.

bitch at me about everything and you like to bitch, bitch, bitch (mimicked) 12

Equivocation. These responses accept parts of a complaint and reject others, or accept the complaint in principle but resist the desired corrective action, as in this example: I was washing dishes after returning from surfing earlier that morning. I had taken a shower and washed off my wetsuit in a hurry on my way to class. Over the sound of the sink water and clatter of dishes I hear Chloe yell out in a panicked tone from the bathroom, “APRIL!” Chloe storms into the kitchen in nothing but her towel and greasy hair. Her eyes are huge and distressed. “YOU, left YOUR, sand all over the shower . . .” without hesitation she orders me as if she were my mother, “. . . go clean it up NOW.” I look her up and down, thinking to myself, can she actually be serious? I calmly reply, “I’m sorry, growing up we always had sand in our showers since we lived by the beach, I’ve never considered it as a problem before.” Chloe blows out her breath and lowers her voice, “Well it’s not acceptable to me. Can you PLEASE just go clean, it, up.” Her last few words drawn out with brief pause over a period of five to ten seconds. I counter, “I’ll do it, but since you’re going to take a shower anyways just turn the water on and push it down the drain with your foot, it’s not that big of a deal.” Her face falls, and she says, “Okay, but please just clean up your mess next time.” She exits the room and I hear the shower water begin to run. (ID 29)

It is important to emphasize that the response terminating any particular complaint interaction may well not end the matter. Some problems may be 12. Indeed, troubled parties may prepare complaints by trying to remove any grounds for a counteraccusation. For example, the man sharing an apartment with his sister, having failed to get her to empty their common laundry basket by indirect signaling (see chapter 2), then employed this tactic: “Since I was having no success with passively trying to get my sister to return the laundry hamper to its rightful place, I figured I would have to muster the courage to tell her I want her to fold her clothes. So I washed the dishes, took the trash and recycling out, fed our dog, walked our dog, and then finally walked into the room where she was watching television. I was feeling annoyed because I do most of the chores always, and so I felt justified in telling her to please put her laundry away. I sat down and avoided all eye contact and said, ‘I had nowhere to put my socks tonight. Can you put your clothes in the closet?’ She immediately stood up, said nothing and went into the bedroom. She had put away all of my dirty socks into the laundry basket, returned it to the bathroom, and then came back and sat down guiltily as if she thought that I was still angry. I said, ‘Thank you’ and she still didn’t respond” (ID 8; emphasis added).

Remedial Complaints / 125

“resolved” almost immediately with the expression of discontent; a grimace, raised eyebrow, or direct complaint is enough to get the disturbing party to cease and desist. In these instances, trouble is momentary and fleeting, assuming, of course, that the disturbing party sustains the change over time. Yet many troubles persist: an initial acceptance or rejection may be qualified or backed away from; the troubled party may modify the initial complaint to take the grounds for the rejection into account; equivocators may be pressed to take a definite position, and so on. In these circumstances, troubles move through multiple episodes, such that the conclusion of a particular complaint interaction represents only a temporary outcome or “resolution” of the trouble. However, many troubles do eventually culminate in a more or less stable, longer- term outcome. Longer-Term Outcomes As distinct from the ending of any particular complaint sequence, some outcomes involve a more or less explicit resolution of the trouble, although this “resolution” may turn out to constitute a momentary pause in the continuing contesting of the trouble. These outcomes may take one of the following three ideal- typical forms. In some situations, the troubling party ceases the problematic behavior or corrects the disturbing situation, and avoids these behaviors and situations in the future. Indeed, in everyday life people experience a multitude of discontents and worries that are “resolved” almost immediately, and hence fail to generate recurrent, persistent trouble. For example, an irritated newlywed complains to her husband that he leaves the toilet seat up after peeing; he changes his ways, making it his routine practice to put the toilet seat down after use. In these situations the preference of the troubled party prevails. In other situations, the person to whom the complaint is directed rejects the discontent and the related proposed course of action, in whole or in part, and the irritated party abandons further requests for change, coming to accept and live with the original situation. Rosenblatt (2006:19) provides an example in his study of couple bed sharing: a ngel a .

Before we got together I would normally fall asleep with the TV on,

and he did not do that at all, and so when we moved in together, that was something that we had to overcome. . . . It made him uncomfortable and he couldn’t sleep so I was sympathetic to that need. And so I’ve taught myself to go to sleep without it.

126 / Chapter Four

Similarly, one bedmate complained that he could not sleep without an open window, but faced with the other’s deep concerns about drafts, noise, visibility, and vulnerability to intruders, agreed to a routine in which the window is closed. And in the case of a complaint about a roommate’s open sexual activities described earlier in this chapter, the complainant dropped the issue when the other responded “that it was my problem and that she was free to be the way she wanted to be in her living situations and that I needed to deal with it” (RM 27). In these instances the preference of the party held responsible for the discontent or irritation prevails, and the initially discontent party abandons her/his prior position. Finally, in certain situations complaint making leads to a series of backand- forth discussions that eventually produce a compromise agreement about how to deal with the discontent. That is, the parties negotiate a resolution that incorporates at least some of each of their concerns (Gulliver 1979:77–79). The agreements that parents negotiate with their teenagers facilitate the process of “letting go” (Kurz 2006) as children claim greater autonomy. As one mother noted, What you have to do is compromise. So if you daughter’s curfew is 10:30, but she really wants to stay out until 11:30, I say all right, you can stay out to 11:00 and then you can be out on the porch until 11:30. So we both win. Except it’s me, I’ve really won. Because I got her here on the porch. She’s not down on the corner. (Kurz 2006:94)

Some compromise outcomes may be proposed by a complaining party who continues to push for change or remedy in the face of an initial rejection of the complaint, or by the other in response to a complaint. The following roommate conflict provides an example of the latter: Lynda complained that when her boyfriend calls in, Annie should get off the phone. Annie said no, that she wasn’t going to do that. If her parents called, then, that was different and she would get off the phone. (RM 13)

And in yet other cases, the two parties to the trouble may mutually negotiate a compromise outcome. Sometimes these negotiations are relatively simple and straightforward, as in this disagreement between college roommates: The window being opened and closed was like a, like a thing that came up really early. He wanted to leave it open and I just wanted it closed. I just said,

Remedial Complaints / 127 “All right, we’ll just compromise. Leave it open some of the time. You know, it’s no big deal.” (RM 40)

Similarly, a couple who disagree about whether or not to open a window at night might agree to open a window only on hot nights, or only two inches, or to have the disturbed party sleep on the side of the bed away from the window. But in many instances the negotiations leading to a compromise outcome are extended and more complex. Kaufmann (2009:17–18) provides this example of the process whereby a newly married couple moved through a series of adjustments and accommodations about how frequently they would go out: [When single, Eline went out with friends or to activities every night; Jack rarely went out, preferring to spend his evenings at home.] When we first started living together, he started out trying to do things my way. For three months it was a real struggle for him. In the end he called a halt, and for the next three months we did things his way. At the end of those three months it was my turn to beg for mercy. After that we tried alternating for six months while we sorted things out. In the end we gradually reached a compromise: I often go out more than he does (evenings with girlfriends, activities of various sorts), and often during the week, and we go out together at weekends, but without trying to do four different things. . . . Sometimes I still go a bit over the top: there are months when I tend to play too many nights out, meetings with friends, etc. Which, of course, Jack finds extremely irritating. So then we go back to a radical method (we don’t go out at all for two weekends on the trot), to help us get back to a “normal” rhythm.

These negotiations eventually produced a set of practices that both parties could accept (or at least acquiesce to), practices that comprised one central part of the couple’s distinctive “domestic system” or idio- culture. Contingencies and Variations The outcomes just discussed represent ideal types; real relationships are much messier, rarely so simple and clear- cut. Consider some variations that may arise due to contingencies in responding to remedial complaints about relational dissatisfactions. In one variation, “outcomes” are not guaranteed and self- enforcing, and hold only “until further notice.” The troubled party may come to feel that the

128 / Chapter Four

earlier “resolution” is not effective or does not go far enough; the troubling party may find that his initial resolve to accommodate the other weakens over time. Discontent may resurface, leading to further discussion, confrontation, and new responses, sometimes producing a resolution, sometimes leading to surface accommodations marked by continued tensions and episodic sniping. Consider Kaufmann’s (2009:40–41, 158) account of the continuing struggles between a couple over the proper temperature for washing their laundry: Anais washes everything at 30°. Pat is of the opinion that things need to be washed at a much higher temperature: a minimum of 60°. . . . [Pat] has taken to storing his own laundry separately, perhaps with the intention of washing it himself, but more likely in the hope that Anais will do two separate washes. Alas, as soon as she turns up, infuriated by the sight of this separate little pile, she snatches it up and with a liberating fury, adds it to hers and washes the whole lot at 30°. . . . Pat is extremely irritated that Anais refuses to do the washing at 60°. On some days, however, . . . he says nothing and lets her get on with it; waiting until Anais has dried, ironed and put away his clothes. Then he takes them out discreetly, crumples them up a little and puts them back in the washing machine.

Here, while accepting a routine in which his wife is responsible for all laundry, the husband disagrees with and criticizes the temperature that she selects. He continues to signal his upset by putting his dirty clothes in a separate pile, and on occasion directly takes revenge by putting his clean clothes back in the washing machine, presumably then rewashing them at 60° and then expecting his wife to iron and put them away once again. This trouble, then, is not so much “resolved” as it is transformed into a continuing if somewhat subterranean conflict between the couple. In a second variation, a negotiated outcome produced by a remedial complaint may take very different forms. One or the other party may agree to change his or her behavior or to be more sensitive to the other’s needs and feelings. Or the parties may mutually implement a management practice to prevent the trouble from occurring, or to reduce its frequency, as in the following case: [A wife described how one of her husband’s initial problems with Alzheimer’s was forgetting to close the outside doors, allowing the family dogs to get out. She brought this problem to him.] Walter said, “I guess we’re gunna have to

Remedial Complaints / 129 uh”—He said, “you know those devices they put on doors that make them close, ya know in markets?” I said, “that’s a really good idea.” And so we marched over to Capital Hardware . . . and bought, three automatic door closures. That solves the problem. (It shuts as you go out the door). And he suggested it. . . . So then we hired someone to come out and install them and, end of problem. (AFC 301)

While the remedy here is mutually negotiated, the negotiation does not proceed on a strictly equalitarian basis, as indicated by the further comments of the wife- caregiver: “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Or I guess if I’d thought of it, he’d have said, ‘we’re not gonna do that, that’s ridiculous.’ But he thought of it. And I thought that was remarkable that he thought of it and he thought it was a good idea.”

In a third variation, a previously accommodating party may experience actions by the other as “crossing the line”— that is, as too upsetting or egregious to be treated as similar instances had been in the past (Denissen 2010). Sometimes the presence of an audience makes a critical difference in this regard. For example, while unhappy with many of her partner’s eating habits, Zoe becomes particularly upset when they are eating with others, particularly her children: If he licks his knife when someone else is there, I could die of shame and sometimes I can even get quite aggressive. I couldn’t bear the thought that my own children might behave like that. (Kaufmann 2009:29–30)

In an additional variation, negotiations may occur not just in troubles resolved by compromise outcomes, but also in troubles that are eventually settled in one- sided fashion. And such negotiations may be less or more explicit. For example, the troubling party may accept the need for change only after hearing how upset the disturbing behavior is to the person expressing discontent. Or the troubled party may abandon a request for change only after recognizing how deeply rooted the problematic behavior is in the character or habits of the other. Angela, for example, came to accept her husband’s special “need” (his inability to go to sleep with the TV on) as grounds for accommodating to his preferred outcome (Rosenblatt 2006:19). Similarly, after a series of discussions, troubled parties may accept the other’s

130 / Chapter Four

apology or accounts for disturbing behavior, perhaps deciding that the issue is just not important enough to instigate further hassles, and perhaps concluding that change is unlikely or impossible. In a final variation, discontents and troubles need not be settled on an individual case- by- case basis, but rather may be settled through trade- offs and compromises involving a broader set of troubles (see Emerson 1983). Sometimes notions of reciprocity directly link the outcomes to two discontents: a roommate may put up with another’s working on a term paper late at night in their dorm room in anticipation that she will be accorded the same consideration when she has a paper due. Or it may be a matter of accommodating different discontents/troubles: reluctance to clean up common living areas may be accepted as fair return for assuming major responsibility for preparing meals. In these and other ways, then, we can begin to see how the simple threesome of win, lose, or draw oversimplifies, distorts, and neglects many of the complexities that arise in responding to troubles in ongoing relationships.

Conclusion In contrast to low- visibility unilateral responses, direct complaints express discontent and/or remedial possibilities to the person seen as the source of trouble. Existing analyses have given limited attention to such complaints. As noted previously, sociolinguistic and conversational analyses of complaints often examine troubles- tellings— that is, complaints to outside parties. Similarly, the dispute transformation approach has neglected the dyadic processes of complaining directly to the troubling other, focusing instead on “claiming” directed to authoritative third parties such as lawyers and judges (Conley and O’Barr 1998), a framework that marginalizes complainants’ concern with getting the other to change his or her troubling behavior. Particularly early on in the development of troubles, complaints made to a troubling other apply pressure on the complaint recipient to correct some behavior that disturbs the complainant. Considerations of such remedial complaints in particular, and of remedial responses as a general form of informal social control, have been few in number and limited in scope. Goffman (1971:347), following Parsons (1951:303), does emphasize “corrective feedback” as the core process in the ideal model of informal social control: “When the individual begins to offend, the offended parties may warn him that he is getting out of line, that disapproval is imminent, and that deprivations for continuation are likely. As a result of this more- orless subtle warning, amplified and sustained until the offense is corrected,

Remedial Complaints / 131

the offender is brought to his senses and once again acts so as to affirm common approved understandings.” But his interest veers from corrective actions per se to the “ritual remedial work” whereby an “offender” tries to reestablish himself within the moral order violated by his “offense” (Goffman1971:350). And while Black (1998) has highlighted remedial processes as one form of bilateral control, his approach has several limitations. First, it emphasizes confrontational and violent episodes of such control, giving more attention to vengeance (interpreted as aggressive, bilateral self- help; 5–6) than to the calmer processes of negotiation involving “talk” and “joint decision.” Second, he identifies only two remedial processes— conciliation and therapy (6–7). While some complaints may be framed in conciliatory or therapeutic terms (e.g., expressing a willingness to work out a compromise agreement, or to “talk to” or “help” the other), many seek other kinds of change by the other (e.g., ceasing the troubling behavior entirely, apologizing and acknowledging fault) and by other means (e.g., by emphasizing the depth of one’s dissatisfaction). However, making direct complaints in interpersonal relationships, particularly remedial complaints, is a risk- filled process in several respects. Making a direct complaint to the other is a distinctly self- revealing act, showing just what kinds of things— often seemingly petty and inconsequential— we find personally disturbing enough to throw ourselves off balance. Direct complaints may also involve unpleasant emotions— anger, frustration, resentment— emotions that, even if more or less held in check in our dealings with the other, may contradict our inner sense of who we are or want to be. And making a complaint may make a statement, both to ourselves and to others, defining how we handle relational problems: do we come across as excessively rigid or overly accommodating, relationally oblivious or hypersensitive, aggressively demanding or afraid of conflict? Troubled parties are deeply if often implicitly aware of these self- defining possibilities tied to decisions about remedial complaints. It is no accident, then, that complainants routinely elaborate accounts that not only explain and rationalize why they were disturbed by what the other did, but also provide “good reasons” for reacting as they did. Direct complaints are also risky in that they raise fundamental questions about what a relationship is and what it will look like in the future. Will a complaint alienate the other, increasing anger and resentment? Or can the complaint lead the other to change a disturbing behavior, or at least to agree to some kind of compromise that both parties can live with? Sociologists have long recognized that processes of conflict and deviance shape the moral boundaries and sensitivities of large- scale groups and collectivities:

132 / Chapter Four

Simmel (1955) and Coser (1956) provided classic statements of cohesive effects of conflict within groups; and Erikson (1966:11), citing Durkheim’s argument that “deviant forms of behavior are a natural and even beneficial part of social life,” has argued that in identifying deviants “official agents of the community” were engaged in a process of “locating and publicizing the group’s outer edges.”13 Similar processes routinely occur within that smallest of informal social groups, the dyad relationship, when direct complaints expressing discontent lead those involved to reconsider, reaffirm, or revise what might be termed the internal boundaries and structure of their relationship. Of course relational reconfigurings may also occur with the use of the more extreme and highly confrontational responses to troubles analyzed in chapter 6, but can be initiated more easily and with greater chances of success through remedial and other direct complaints. Given the risks inherent in complaining, troubled parties generally opt for softer approaches, particularly early on in the emergence of a trouble. They raise concerns cautiously and indirectly, modulate displays of discontent and blaming, propose remedies carefully and obliquely. But as argued in chapter 3, this preference for nonconfrontational responses is not primarily a matter of “moral minimalism” (Baumgartner 1988), a fear of expressing emotion and a moral stance that might rile the other. More fundamentally, nonconfrontation often reflects a distinctly moral sensitivity to preserving an existing relationship (Gilligan 1982) by trying to persuade another to change their troubling behavior. For in informal relationships, changes desired in another’s behavior can rarely be ordered or imposed by the disgruntled party. Change rather requires the active participation of the troubling party (Goffman 1971:347).14 It is in this way that remedial complaints, initiating a series of distinctly bilateral processes that minimize blaming and alienating the other, are so useful. Relatedly, because remedial complaints usually seek to elicit rather than impose change, responding to informal trouble is not a fundamentally moralistically driven process of dispensing “sanctions,” but rather a matter of devising practical actions that will involve the other in “dealing with” or 13. Looking specifically at the reactions to religious “deviants” in seventeenth- century Puritan Massachusetts, Erikson (1966:11) noted: “The deviant is a person whose activities have moved outside the margins of the group, and when the community calls him to account for that vagrancy it is making a statement about the nature and placement of its boundaries. It is declaring how much variability and diversity can be tolerated within the group before it begins to lose its distinctive shape, its unique identity.” 14. Specifically, Goffman (1971:347) argues that “the efficacy of informal and formal social control depends to a degree on personal control, for control that is initiated outside the offender will not be very effective unless it can in some degree awaken corrective action from within.”

Remedial Complaints / 133

“doing something about” discontents and upsets. To this end troubled parties often advance complaints as appeals to the goodwill or concern of the other, as holistic plans to restructure daily routines, as practical proposals about what might be done in the future. Remedial negotiations thus involve give- and- take exchanges in which abstract standards of fairness are regularly ignored or compromised. The parties seek something that “works” for them; “what works” reflects their perceived needs, practical concerns, personal preferences, and everyday priorities. It is not a matter of “should the window be open at night,” but rather of who can live with what, what can we agree on, and so forth. Daily life is marked by a myriad of troubles that arise quickly and are just as quickly “solved” by means of remedial complaints and subsequent negotiations. We can then put these relational matters on the shelf, so to speak, taking them for granted and moving on with our lives. But other relational troubles develop slowly, appearing, waning, and then reemerging as the parties clarify their own and the other’s feelings and positions, working through a variety of responses until they come up with a mutually acceptable, practical way of handling the trouble. Making and working out remedial complaints, then, may generate a series of “accommodations” or “solutions” to troubles, working agreements that shape the relationship and the selves of those involved in it, incrementally establishing bits of the distinctive “idiocultures” that characterize interpersonal relationships (Fine 1979, 2012). However, since remedial “solutions” often incorporate compromise and acquiescence, they can be partial, temporary, and differentially appealing to the parties involved. As a result, troubles and discontents may persist and fester below the surface. Even a seemingly solid “resolution” may cloak unexpressed, reactive resentment. Accommodating to another’s discontent or worry, abandoning one’s own, or working out a compromise may itself produce lingering, secondary irritations and discontents. The husband who routinely puts down the toilet seat, for example, may resent doing so, developing a reactive (if usually unexpressed) irritation toward both himself and his wife. Parties may experience some discontent or irritation with another but not say or do anything about it, because the matter is considered too minor or unimportant to risk making an issue of it in the relationship. Or they may say or do something on some occasions, but not others, in this way practicing what Sellerberg (1994) has termed “restrained expressivity.” Indeed, there may come a point where the troubled party avoids further expressions of discontent on coming to feel that the other is not going to change, or is incapable of change, and/or that the matter is not worth the risk of making it a regular issue in the relationship. Kaufmann’s (2009)

134 / Chapter Four

recurring “irritations” in ongoing couple relationships involve these kinds of festering troubles that persist for years with frequent bickering and an occasional flare- up of “liberating” anger. Minimizing open confrontations, acquiescing and working out acceptable compromises, then, create a kind of relational conundrum: the things people do to deal with troubles in accommodating ways in fact often work, allowing the relationship to continue on a more or less even keel; but at the same time accommodations may allow problems to fester, grow, and become much bigger than they might have otherwise. And at later points, especially during crises, such problems may pop out in exaggerated and highly damaging forms.

FIVE

Informal Others

It is probably impossible for action to continue among three persons for any length of time without collusion occurring, for the tacit betrayal of the third person is one of the main ways in which two people express the specialness of their own relations to each other. —Erving Goffman, Relations in Public (1971:339–40)

To this point I have treated the development of interpersonal troubles as a fundamentally dyadic process, focusing specifically on the relationship between a troubled and a troubling party. Yet many troubles involve multiple parties. Some are nevertheless organized into two sides right from the start, as in neighbor disputes that pit couples or households on one or both sides against one another (e.g., Merry 1990:38–47).1 In many cases, however, parties outside the troubled relationship become involved as the trouble develops. Particularly early on, troubled parties tend to seek the involvement of informal others— friends, peers, family, those with whom they have personal relationships— asking such outside parties for support and assistance in dealing with the trouble. At later points, or with more serious troubles, troubles tend to expand with the intervention of official outsiders: troubled parties may call in a local authority such as a resident director in a campus dormitory, complain to the police, or go to a lawyer or court. This chapter will focus on the processes whereby such informal others are in-

1. As Black (1998:23) has emphasized, “A ‘side’ in a conflict may be an individual, a group, or an aggregate.” Similarly, in analyzing social control Gibbs (1989:52) explicitly recognizes that “parties” can involve collective units as well as individuals. Gulliver (1971:23–26) specifically examined the process of creating sides in analyzing how “action sets” of supporters are mobilized in disputes in an African society.

136 / Chapter Five

volved in previously dyadic relational troubles. Chapter 7 will consider the processes of official third- party intervention. Most socio- legal analyses conceptualize outsider involvement in troubles as matter of third- party intervention, focusing on whether that intervention produces a one- sided, partisan outcome or a more neutral or balanced settlement (Aubert 1965; Black 1998). This focus on static, fixed outcomes slights the processes whereby informal outsiders become involved in relational troubles. Two critical processes mark the dynamics of such involvement: a troubled party tells an outsider about the trouble, seeking clarification, support, or validation; and an outside party directly intervenes in the trouble. This chapter examines these processes in detail. In troubles- tellings a troubled party fills in an outsider about the trouble situation, giving vent to feelings of upset and frustration, asking for feedback and advice, seeking sympathy and support. Troubles- tellings occur in interactions that include only the troubled party/teller and the outsider/ recipient— that is, a third party either not involved in the trouble or not aware of recent developments.2 In the troubles- telling the troubled party presents an indirect complaint against a relational other who is not present, at some point providing a more or less elaborate description or report of the trouble. The outsider then faces the immediate issue of how to affiliate within this report/complaint— where and when to sympathize with, question, or disattend the troubled party’s claims and concerns. In many situations affiliation is simply a matter of acknowledging that “the complaint teller’s (negative) feelings are justified, i.e., that her/his situation is complainable” (Traverso 2009:2386). But often the third party/outsider moves beyond simple affiliation to align more deeply with a troubles- teller whose complaint blames the relational other, clearly taking the complainant’s side against the other, making suggestions about what might now be done, helping analyze what motivates the troubled party, and so on. Taking up and elaborating supportive stances toward the troubled party by means of affiliation and alignment are central interactional contingencies in responding to troubles- tellings. In contrast, in trouble- interventions informal outsiders enter directly into the fray, having contact with and perhaps undertaking some specific action involving both parties to the trouble. The outsider, for example, may privately “talk to” the troubling party about the troubled party’s concerns, ac2. Following the socio- legal tradition, I refer to “third parties” as outsiders who are told about or otherwise brought into a troubled relationship. In contrast, those analyzing indirect complaints in ordinary conversation frequently identify the person who is not present and who is complained about as the third party, using the term “third- party complaints” with this referent.

Informal Others / 137

tively “confront” the former on the latter’s behalf and in his or her presence, or try to encourage dialogue and compromise on both sides. Of course as the process unfolds or at later points as the trouble continues, the outsider may take a neutral position after having first supported one party, or may shift allegiance from one party to the other. Thus a key issue for the outsider is deciding whether to take one or the other side in the trouble, or to stay neutral by avoiding taking either side. Furthermore, whether as a partisan ally of one side or a neutral settlement agent, the outsider must decide just what actions to take in intervening in the trouble. The nature, direction, and extent of the outsider’s direct involvement are thus the key issues in troubleinterventions. This chapter analyzes these processes of third- party involvement in troubles, considering both the involvement entailed by aligning in a troubles- telling and that arising from direct intervention in the trouble whether in partisan or settlement fashion. A key concern throughout the chapter is how these different processes of outside involvement transform interpersonal troubles.

Troubles-Tellings and Alignment Informal others may become involved in dyadic troubles on their own initiative: a friend may notice another’s upset and ask what is going on; a neighbor may hear arguing and banging in an adjacent apartment and knock on the door to see if everything is okay. But more commonly one or the other party to a trouble takes the initiative to reach out to involve someone outside of the troubled relationship. In many cases this outsider— a friend, a family member or intimate, a more distant acquaintance, or perhaps even a complete stranger— has no knowledge of or contact with the troubling party. In other cases the troubled party turns to someone previously uninvolved but who has some contact with the other party to the trouble— in- laws or children of couples, apartment or suite mates of a troubled roommate dyad, colleagues and peers in work settings. Troubled parties rely on troubles- tellings to inform outsiders about the problematic situation (Sacks 1992; Jefferson and Lee 1981; Jefferson 1988). At the core of such troubles- tellings is a report or announcement of the trouble, shaped to reflect the third party’s familiarity with the trouble and/or the troubling other. At times the report presents the current issue in a nutshell, at other times it simply recounts the “latest incident,” and at still others it outlines the history of the problem leading up to some current crisis. This description of the trouble expresses the teller’s upset and discontent with

138 / Chapter Five

the troubling party and highlights particular reasons why he or she feels this way, thereby delivering an indirect complaint about the troubling party to the outsider. The outsider in turn is put in the position of having to respond to the claims and implications of the troubled party’s report and complaint. The following sections will examine these processes, first looking at the contingencies of selecting an outsider to hear one’s troubles, then presenting a case study of the interactional features of one troubles- telling, and finally examining the problematics of aligning in troubles- tellings. Selecting Others Relating an interpersonal trouble to an outsider can be deeply revealing, exposing embarrassing or humiliating information both about oneself and about the intimacies of a troubled relationship (Heinemann and Traverso 2009:2381). Talking about a relational trouble, for example, may involve disclosing that one has not dealt effectively with recurrent frustrations and mistreatment, that one has suffered repeated humiliations or insults, that one’s marriage is less than ideal, or that an intimate is deeply faulted. Hence the self may be exposed in ways that are discrediting and disconcerting. As a result, at least early on, troubled parties are usually cautious in telling an outsider about a current trouble and careful in selecting another to confide in. Troubled parties tend to seek out those they anticipate will be sympathetic to and apt to affiliate with their concerns about the trouble. In her analysis of uncoupling Vaughan (1986:34) found that the dissatisfied partner often turned to a “confidant” to share “in- depth disclosures about the partner and the relationship . . . [in working] through doubts, ambiguities, and disappointments aloud.” In selecting a confidant, the dissatisfied partner “is pulled toward people who are likely to be supportive, avoiding those with a vested interest in the relationship’s continuance” (e.g., not a motherin- law or a friend who is also a friend of the other) (34– 35). Such support may be sought from a close friend, although sometimes this option is precluded if this friend is also close to or even simply acquainted with the other. Similarly, roommates typically take their troubles to those they expect to be sympathetic— close friends, trusted parents, and so on. Black (1998:101; citing Schulman 1979) reports that “intimates are especially likely to be called upon for advice and moral support when trouble arises.” Yet in some situations intimates may be disqualified because of prior ties with the troubling other, or precluded because the trouble involves matters

Informal Others / 139

that the troubled party is reluctant to divulge to them.3 Disclosing intimate aspects of couple and family troubles even to those who are close, for example, may represent a betrayal of the sanctity of those relationships.4 In these circumstances, confidants may be drawn from more distant connections. In some cases, troubled parties find unaligned parties by turning to strangers encountered on a chance basis to discuss their relational problems. Thus Vaughan (1986:35–36) reports: Some initiators may feel more comfortable soul- searching with a stranger: the passenger sharing the adjoining seat on a bus, the receptionist at the doctor’s office, the person on the next bar- stool. Some initiators may feel safe only with someone who is outside their everyday social setting and therefore doesn’t know the partner. Other initiators [in the business world] . . . may exchange their innermost thoughts with a business contact or a friend across the country.

In addition to turning to the extremely close or safely distant, the troubled member of a couple may also seek out those who have themselves experienced similar relational difficulties. Vaughan (1986:35) reports, for example, that “some initiators choose a person whose relationship is also in trouble— a comrade in suffering— in whom they suddenly discover previously unrecognized compatibilities. They may renew or strike up acquaintance with single, separated or divorced friends, whom they now see as having relevant expertise.” But relevant experience provides only part of the appeal of such third parties. Since talking about a relational trouble may expose the self, disenchanted partners may deliberately seek out confidants whose relational troubles are at least as bad as and sometimes much “worse” than their own. Zerilli (2006:134) provides a case in point where a wife who experienced frequent spells of “not getting along” with her husband reported confiding these matters to an office mate whose marriage was even more problematic than her own:

3. In this vein Cressey ([1953] 1971: chap. 2) identified “non- sharable problems” (usually financial) as the common factor leading to “violations of trust” and embezzlement; thus, some men did not talk about financial reversals to spouses and other intimates who had previously opposed an investment, or about the financial burdens of a wife’s illness to family members who had opposed the marriage. 4. Thus Goffman (1971:363) has argued: “The fund of private information about the family possessed by the members is preserved, and a united, somewhat false front is maintained before the world— as if there were a family information rule.”

140 / Chapter Five I think the reason I feel like I can tell, say something to Raquel, is because I know how bad her relationship is, so she’s not going to be like, “What’s that like?” You know? If anything, she goes through it way more than I do. . . . She’ll kind of listen, but I don’t need to explain every detail to her, because she’s in a marriage and her particular marriage is actually kind of volatile, so I think I can share things with her and still not feel really bad about my own relationship. (Emphasis added)

This office mate provides a useful confidant, then, partly because she is outside the couple’s social world, partly because of her own experience with relational difficulties, but also because her own relationship is so troubled that the confider does not feel inadequate or one- down in revealing her problems. In sum, telling another about a relational trouble may expose both the self of the teller and the intimacies of a troubled relationship. As a result such tellings may become delicate matters requiring careful consideration of just who can be trusted to respond with understanding and sympathy. But in addition these complexities lead troubled parties to tell outsiders about the trouble in distinctive ways, organized to elicit the latter’s sympathy and alignment. The following section turns to this process. A Case Study of a Troubles-Telling In an extended telephone conservation recorded in the 1970s,5 early one morning in Thanksgiving week Emma called her sister Lottie to discuss what had happened the previous evening while she and her husband, Bud, were staying at a vacation home near the Southern California coast. The call begins (lines 1–19): lot tie . emm a .

lot tie . emm a .

Hello,

Are you awake? YEAH. I JUST GOT UP.

Oh, DID YOU?

lot tie .

Yeah.

5. I want to thank John Heritage for providing the complete transcript of the telephone conversation examined here— designated NB:IV:4:R. This transcript is one of fifteen conversations involving Emma originally recorded and transcribed by Gail Jefferson. At many places I draw heavily from Jefferson’s (1984b, 1988) analyses of portions of this transcript. Edwards (1994, 1995) also provides a helpful treatment of the Emma-Lottie conversations.

Informal Others / 141 emm a .

Well GOOD. I’M ALONE. (0.2) Bud left me last night. (1.2) He got mad

and went off u- heh- heh (0.4) lot.

Did he really?

emm a :

Yeah (0.2)

Jefferson (1988:420–28) has analyzed the sequential organization of the opening of this troubles- telling as follows. Once initial greetings have been exchanged, and the recipient has assured the caller that she did not wake her up,6 Emma’s utterance “I’m alone” provides an approach to the troublestelling. She follows up with a concise announcement of the trouble: “Bud left me last night. He got mad and went off . . .” Lottie’s response to this trouble announcement, “Did he really?,” requests further talk about the trouble. In response Emma provides this detailed delivery of how and when the trouble occurred (lines 20–48): emm a .

We were supposed to (have) gone out to dinner with Bill and Gladys. We

were over there watching the game and he had a beer and I had a martini. And then we came over, and we—I had ( ) thing thawing out you know, that rice stuff and I thought if we don’t go out I’ll have that. And he says, well you know, you’ve gotta put that back in the re—You don’t put it back in the freezer, when you take (it) out. And I said, well I know that, you know. (0.2) And then when he came in . . . from fishing and I said gee, look at I did all the things with vacuum cleaner, I’ve been all over the ( ). Well he says well how could you do it? . . . Did you do a good job? Well that teed me off. lot tie . emm a .

hkhh hhuh huh he:h, So HE PACKED HIS CLOTHES AND HE WENT. And he says he won’t

even be down for Thanksgiving. So I think I’ll call Barbara and cancel the whole thing. (2.2) ( ) this ridiculous. And BILL AND GLADYS WAITING OUT THERE (TO) GO TO DINNER AND I had to go tell them. Isn’t he ridiculous? (1.0) lot tie .

He’s cra:zy. (0.4)

Examined in terms of content, this troubles- telling involves two critical processes— presenting two (indirect) complaints against the husband, and eliciting alignment and sympathy from the recipient of the telling. 6. The timing of the call— early in the morning, seeming to catch Lottie just as she was getting up— suggests important news, and/or a pressing need to talk to someone (Jefferson 1984a:367–68, n. 2; citing Sacks 1984).

142 / Chapter Five

Troubles-Telling as Indirect Complaining

In providing Lottie with a detailed report of just how Bud came to leave, Emma formulates two complaints about her husband’s behavior toward her. In the first she tells of anticipating eating at home rather than going out to dinner by taking “that rice stuff” from the freezer to defrost. The domestic savvy displayed in this preparatory act sets up Bud’s comment, “You don’t put it back in the freezer,” as gratuitous and patronizing. And in reporting her own retort to Bud, “And I said well, I know that,” Emma not only makes this point explicit to Lottie, but also shows that she did not passively accept this insult to her competence at the time that it occurred. In a second complaint Emma recounts a troubling incident that had occurred earlier in the day when Bud came in from fishing. She reports calling his attention to the vacuuming work she had done in his absence, alluding to the effort she put into it (“all the things . . . all over the ( ),” seemingly seeking praise for her efforts. But she reports Bud’s response as a suspicious, critical questioning, “Did you do a good job?” The insult here, then, is framed both as questioning her competence in basic cleaning and as failing to appreciate the effort she has put into this task. At several later points Emma replays these complaints in ways that elaborate their demeaning, transgressive character. Thus at lines 54–57 she says: Lottie I can’t do anything right honest to God I can’t. Here I worked hard vacuming and he got up and felt it to see if there was any dust

This utterance not only reports a previously unmentioned insult—“he . . . felt it to see if there was any dust”— but also frames this act as a recurrent pattern in their relationship—“I can’t do anything right.” Similarly, at lines 226–38: emm a .

. . . like when he came in and saw that on the sink, he says, you know you

don’t put that back in the freezer, when it’s been out. And I said I know that, what’s the matter with you? You know I don’t put things back in the freezer, I put em in the refrigerator. lot tie .

Well sure. (0.2)

emm a .

And did I do a good job. (0.4) Crymuhneh I went all around the God

damn w(all). I don’t know.

Here Emma emphasizes that not putting food back in the freezer when it has been left out is an elementary kitchen skill, hence feeling deeply insulted

Informal Others / 143

on being treated as if she did not know this. And she again insists that she did a “good job” with the dusting, going “all around the God damn wall,” thereby providing explicit grounds for framing Bud’s treatment of her as insensitive wrongdoing. Furthermore, for the first time Emma provides some detail about how she responded to Bud’s actions at the time they occcurred—“I said I know that, what’s the matter with you—You know I don’t put things back in the freezer I put them in the refrigerater” (emphasis added). That is, she formulates his statement as explicitly (and presumably knowingly) contradicting what he knows (or should know) about how she handles defrosted food items. And in her next utterance, Emma again voices her husband’s question about cleaning, highlighting its inappropriate, patronizing quality through contrast with her actual effort. Emma’s descriptions of the trouble to Lottie, then, provide repetitive, detailed accounts of the circumstances of husband’s words and actions, explicitly framing these actions as personally insulting and demeaning. In contrast, her descriptions offer only highly summarized or scattered, incidental reports of her own responses to these actions. In particular, she follows up her initial recounting of the “Did you do a good job?” question with the brief, unelaborated comment, “Well that teed me off,” without indicating whether or not she said anything to him about this at the time. Similarly, her initial accounts provide only a passsing reference to what she said in response to Bud’s left- out- food- in- the- refrigerator directive—“I know that.” In the subsequent account at lines 226– 38, she elaborates slightly on her response, for the first time directly quoting her reply: “I know that, what’s the matter with you—You know I don’t put things back in the freezer I put them in the refrigerater.” This account begins to fill the previous void in the action between Bud’s critical comments and his getting “mad” and leaving. There is one earlier indication in Emma’s account of what she said to Bud that might have made him angry and leave abruptly. Consider the dialogue that occurred immediately after Lottie’s “He’s crazy” remark at line 48: lot tie . emm a .

He’s cra:zy. (0.4)

Oh God dammit. I said it’s too bad the boat didn’t sink yesterday and that

m- guh thah- I shouldn’a said that. (1) (Emphasis added)

Almost in passing Emma recounts this rather extreme statement she made to her husband, presumably in response to the food- in- the- refrigerator comment that preceeded his leaving, but then immediately expresses regret

144 / Chapter Five

about having said this. In bits and pieces, then, she alludes to and reports some of her response to her husband’s words and actions.7 Circumscribed description of her own words and actions in response to her husband’s insulting actions, combined with the detailed circumstantial account of how her husband’s transgression(s) occurred, minimizes the teller’s involvement in the events being recounted. That is, her accounts highlight the mistreatment she received from her husband, in some sense presenting herself as victim (being insulted, being left), without having done anything significantly blameworthy to warrant such treatment. This done- to victim stance is prefigured right from the start in Emma’s initial announcement of the trouble: “Bud left me last night. He got mad and went off.” This framing of the trouble recounts Bud’s action and mental state; it makes no reference to how and why he got mad and left, and does not even allude to the disagreement between the couple that clearly precipitated this leaving.8 Producing Affiliation and Alignment

In addition to depicting herself as unappreciated and a victim of insensitivity, Emma makes several other moves to elicit Lottie’s sympathy and to get her to align with her complaint against Bud. Her initial report—“I’m alone. Bud left me last night.”— focuses on the consequences of her husband’s troubling act for her. This is the first of a variety of subtle ways of framing the conversation as an occasion to deal with the “troublesomeness” of what has happened for the teller (Jefferson and Lee 1981), rather than as, say, a denunciation of Bud for his insensitivity, or a plea for help in keeping her marriage together. And indeed, after some initial hesitancy (“Did he really?” at line 17), Lottie consistently affiliates with Emma, providing encouragement and sympathy in working through the troublesomeness of Bud’s having left. Consider these moves on her part:

7. Indeed, at two later points Emma expresses self- doubt while acknowledging her role (but in abbreviated fashion) in the trouble with Bud. At lines 364–69: “But you know he does this so many times. He packs up and leaves, you know, he did it up to me in the ( ) . . . he gets ( ) doesn’t like something I say. And I’m bitchy hhhhh.” And at lines 542–43: “You know then so what, there’s an argument . . . hh.hh.hh.hh But it’s me too.” 8. However, on a later occasion, in encouraging her daughter Barbara to try to get Bud to come down for Thanksgiving (NB:IV:7:R:2; from Edwards 1995:322), Emma did frame the trouble as a two- sided dispute, explicitly acknowledging her part in the exchange: “He just walked out on me. Yes we had a little disagreement. He’s getting kinda hard to live with and so am I. I mean I can’t say anything and he jumps down my throat. And vice versa. Two to tango. (0.2) Would you call Dad tonight (Yeah?) and do me a favor (Yeah?) and tell him to come down (for Thanksgiving)?” This balanced formulation to a person with strong ties to both parties grounds and supports her request “to intervene with Bud on her behalf” (Edwards 1995:323).

Informal Others / 145 •

When Emma wonders what she will now do during the day since she is by herself— read the newspaper and wrap Christmas presents— adding “I’ll get along,” Lottie projects an optimistic outcome (Jefferson 1988:431–33)—“He’ll probably be down tonight” (lines 146–51). Similarly, at a later point, when Emma worries that it will be “so embarrassing” if her husband is not there when Barbara comes for Thanksgiving, Lottie again insists: “Oh he’s gonna come down. He’s a nut if he doesn’t” (line 351).

•

Emma notes of her husband: “He gets so MAD at me Lottie. . . . He gets so mad. And then he won’t speak you know for hours and hours. . . . Just because I say gee, it looks like rain, well it isn’t gonna rain. How can it rain and he goes to the barometor what the hell. You know, then so what, there’s an argument. But it’s me too. (0.3) Lottie: Yeah, but you hate to be put down all the time. Emma: I know it (lines 535–46).

At other moments, Lottie moves beyond expressions of sympathy for Emma’s situation to explicitly take her side against Bud: •

When Emma seems to apologize for Bud’s having left both now and before the prior Christmas by saying, “Oh well, it’s me too Lottie, you know I’m no bottle of milk,” Lottie shifts the onus back to the husband: “Oh well you’re easy to get along with b’d I know he’s that way. Ohf God just to go out fishing with him would drive me up a wall” (lines 162–66).

•

When Emma insists that she “did do a good job” in cleaning, Lottie offers this formulation of the reason for Bud’s criticism: “Well he was mad cos he didn’t catch any fish, that’s a whole size of it” (lines 239–40).

This rather lengthy troubles- telling conversation, then, stays tightly focused on the meaning and implications of the troubling event for the teller. As Jefferson (1988:428) contends, a collaboratively produced troublestelling shifts the talk from a mutual conversation about everyday events and routines “to a focusing on the trouble in its own right” such that the participants “can mutually achieve a locking in, to the trouble and to each other, and likewise a disengaging from the topical and relational properties of business as usual.” In this sense the troubles- teller is given the floor, with talk directed to “the troublesomeness to teller of a circumstance or event” (Jefferson and Lee 1981:404). The recipient is expected to be “otherattentive” rather than “self- attentive,” keeping the focus of the talk on the troubled party, not intruding her own pressing concerns and circumstances into the talk. In this excerpt, for example, Lottie does not talk about her own life and circumstances, except to propose to resolve one effect of Bud’s

146 / Chapter Five

leaving that particularly bothers Emma— how to get Barbara to and from Thanksgiving dinner if Bud is not going to be there to drive her— by offering to do this driving despite her own busy schedule. Conversely, while recipients of troubles- tellings proceed very cautiously in changing topics from matters related to the trouble (an abrupt shift of topic away from the trouble would appear insensitive), the troubles- teller can reiterate and reintroduce accounts of the trouble even when the topic of the conversation has been moved in other directions (e.g., Emma’s replay of her husband’s freezer comment beginning at line 226 follows her talking about how she will spend her day and her embarrassment over having left Bill and Gladys in the lurch). Finally, Jefferson (1988:430) suggests that as troubles- tellings are gradually moved toward closure participants begin to make “a rearticulation of the trouble with the world at large, a reengagement with the proprieties of business as usual.” Here either teller or recipient may move to “ancillary topics” slightly different from but related to the trouble, and eventually through a series of such “step- wise” moves may shift to topics (and conversational tones) unrelated to the trouble. In this way what starts out as a troublestelling can end with talk about very different matters with a very different tone. The Problematics of Affiliating and Aligning In going to friends and others outside the troubled relationship to complain, troubled parties expect this other to be sympathetic to their upset or angry feelings, and to take their side against the other in the trouble. Troubled roommates, for example, frequently took for granted a friend’s supportive affiliation when venting their frustrations about continuing troubles: I talk to my girlfriend about it all the time. I complain to her every day about it. She always tells me to do something about it. I don’t, but I do sometimes and nothing really happens so I’ve just kind of given up. (RM 176)

However, affiliating with the troubled party’s account of a trouble can be a delicate and problematic process. Uninvolved parties, for example, may be leery of offering unequivocal support because they fear that a strongly favorable response might encourage escalation of the trouble, suggest commitment to directly intervene, or imply they are taking the side of one or the other party to the trouble. For these and other reasons, friends, peers, colleagues, and other outsiders do not invariably affiliate with the troubled

Informal Others / 147

party. Lack of affiliation may be signaled early on when a trouble announcement is met with some expression of hesitancy or doubt: “Well . . .” often conveys and projects this stance. Third parties may be tempted to affiliate by giving advice. However, advice giving easily takes on a critical and demeaning edge, implicitly suggesting that the person either does not know what to do or has been doing something wrong (Heritage and Sefi 1992). Offering unsolicited advice early on in the troubles- telling in particular threatens to break the implicit affiliation between recipient and teller, casting the former as an advice giver and implicitly faulting the latter as someone needing to change how they are understanding and dealing with the trouble (Jefferson and Lee 1981:410). Under these circumstances “the trouble becomes a source of contention,” with the person being told about the trouble “declining to properly align as a ‘troubles- recipient,’” an action often leading to “the onset of dispute” (405). Advice giving will proceed more smoothly when the troubled party solicits advice, particularly from someone regarded as knowledgeable and trustworthy. In the following case, for example, a college student uncertain about how to deal with her roommate’s seeming unwillingness to talk to her received detailed instructions from her mother about how she might proceed: I asked my mom and she told me to sit down, as to present myself in a nonthreatening body position, and ask her if she was ok, just to open up a general dialogue after she walks in with a bad look on her face. My mom told me that this will show her that I acknowledged that she was in a mad mood and I cared enough to ask and hopefully open up to me and tell me what was going on. Mothers are always right, seeing as after I asked, “Are you ok, you look upset?” she sat down, sighed, and told me about her awful day. She has problems at home with her mom being sick, which I would have never known about if I didn’t ask, and then she wasn’t doing well with her boyfriend and she was able to go into detail about all of the fights they had been having. This all came as such a surprise to me especially that she had been keeping all of those problems inside for so long. Then I felt better because I could listen to her and know that her mood had nothing to do with me. (ID 25)

Here the mother does not identify faults in how her daughter has been relating to her roommate, but rather outlines in detail a response that would be sensitive to the roommate’s emotional concerns and worries. Outsiders may avoid aligning with the troubled party’s complaint against another in at least two distinct ways— by disattending the complaint or by di-

148 / Chapter Five

rectly challenging it (Traverso 2009:2392). Mandelbaum (1991/1992:118– 19) provides an example of the former; in telling a friend about an outing to San Francisco, a woman offers a negative assessment of her husband in setting up an account of getting lost on the drive home: “He really doesn’t know where he is— he always gets mixed up.” The friend responds by disattending the assessment, beginning a report on her own day, in effect treating the wife’s account not as a complaint but as an update on her day. This allows her to avoid the dilemma of choosing to side with the wife and hence disaffiliating with the husband, also her friend; or vice versa, to side with the husband by disagreeing with the wife’s assessment. (See also a complaint not followed up on in Traverso [2009:2392].) In other instances, the third party will directly disagree with the troubled party’s statement of the trouble and allocation of blame to the other. For example, a friend and suite mate told a roommate deeply upset at walking in on another’s sexual activity with a boyfriend in the common living room that she was “overreacting” (RM 27). Similarly, a student reported these reactions to her complaints about a clingy roommate: I could not take it anymore, I would tell my friends about how my roommate went everywhere I went and they just brushed it off as me being very petty towards my roommate. (RM 85)

In both these instances friends resisted aligning with the complaining parties, discounting their upset as inappropriate personal reactions. Such nonalignment will at least make troubled parties aware that their feelings are not shared by others, and may well lead them to begrudgingly reshape how they assess and respond to the trouble. Such responses may well nurture rather than dissolve self- doubt. In other cases, friends’ responses may reverse self- questioning, leading a troubled party to take a more assertive stance in dealing with the trouble. Consider this example: The first time I saw her getting all sexed out with people was when I opened my [bedroom] door and I saw her friend, or the guy who is supposed to be her friend, lying naked in her bed [in the living room] all his clothes were on the floor. I totally thought she was a whore. It made me feel really uncomfortable. I mean, she says she has a boyfriend and you find some other dude in her bed. There were a couple other times I saw her with other guys, too. I remember, one night I came back to my place and she was kickin’ it on the couch with this guy, and they were playing slow music and the lights were dim. Shit, who

Informal Others / 149 knows what they were doing. . . . At first I just thought it’s something that I would just have to live with. I guess her sex life is her business and all, but after I started to talk to my friends and roommate about it, it started to bother me more. They told me that I shouldn’t have to be uncomfortable in my own place, and they’re right. (RM 76)

Here a male informant reported upset about his female roommate’s sexual activities, but initially reacted to these activities as “something I would just have to live with” on the grounds that “her sex life is her business.” His peers rejected this accommodating stance on the grounds that he had a “right” not to feel “uncomfortable” in his own place. In so doing, while disagreeing with his analysis of his rights in the trouble, they supported and aligned with his deeper feelings about the trouble. Outsiders may also provide only partial alignment by treating the trouble as a situation in which both parties are partially right and partially wrong. This both- right/both- wrong framing often occurs when others put pressure on the troubled party to settle or resolve the trouble through negotiation and compromise, as in this example: I remember telling Natalie, “Don’t make me live with her next year. I cannot live with her next year, I can’t take it.” I don’t even know what the reasons were, it was like not a good feeling, like she was making me crazy. . . . And she’s real moody, she’s super super moody and sometimes she’s real fun and sometimes she’s not and I just couldn’t take it. . . . They [my other roommates] were pissed. They didn’t like it [my feuding with her]. They wanted me to talk to her. They were like forcing me to talk to her. They were gonna set it up so I had to talk to her. They were like, “This isn’t fair, we pay rent, you’re ruining our senior year. You guys have to stop this.” I think they pretty much took my side, because they knew she was being a rager bitch to me but they weren’t totally— it was not like we were ever gonna kick her out or anything. (RM 158; emphasis added)

Here the troubled roommate expected strong support from her other roommates. But the latter were not “totally” supportive, agreeing only in part with her complaint about the other, and forcefully pressed her to try to resolve their differences. In sum, recipients often experience conflicting pressures in responding to troubles- tellings. On the one hand, they are expected to offer support and sympathy to the troubled party by affiliating with the key components of the latter’s account and by aligning in a broader sense with the latter’s

150 / Chapter Five

position. Expressing too much disagreement too openly and failing to take a stance that ultimately supports the teller’s side in the trouble may feel like disloyalty and threaten the relationship. On the other hand, recipients may be leery of being misinformed, manipulated into expressing sympathy and support they do not feel is warranted, or drawn into private matters in ways they want to avoid. Thus recipients often respond with a degree of caution and “common sense” despite being only indirectly and tangentially involved in another’s interpersonal trouble.

Trouble-Interventions: Taking/Not Taking Sides In many situations, outside parties become directly involved in relational troubles. Such direct involvement may take the form of partisan intervention on one side of the trouble, or of more neutral intervention at least partially balanced between the two sides. Partisan Intervention Outside parties are often recruited into interpersonal troubles in distinctly partisan fashion. In some cases, a troubled party will have urged an outsider with some connection to the troublemaker to “talk to” that party. Consider this case of a husband ultimately hospitalized as mentally ill: About two and a half years before admission, Mrs. F began talking to friends about her husband’s actions and her lack of success in getting him to a doctor. “I got disgusted and said if he didn’t go to a doctor, I would leave him. I got Bill (the owner of Mr. F’s cab) to talk to him. . . . I begged, threatened, fussed.” After that, Mr. F went to a VA doctor for one visit, overslept for his second appointment and never returned. He said the doctor told him nothing was wrong. (Yarrow et al. 1955:14; emphasis added)

In other instances, having heard a partisan account of the trouble by one party, a previously uninvolved other may take the initiative to talk to or otherwise contact the other on behalf of this party. Consider the following roommate trouble: When several delinquent notices came in the mail Linda learned that her roommate Cheryl was not paying her portion of the rent. “I was very upset, and I tried to confront her about it and she just went off and said that it was none of my business and that she’d handle it. . . . She was all upset and I was

Informal Others / 151 all upset and I had to vent my anger, so I talked to my friend Doreen. Not expecting her to do anything about it, just an outlet, so you know, I wouldn’t beat Cheryl up or something. So I told Doreen about it . . . and I guess she decided that she was going to take matters into her own hands, so she confronted Cheryl about it. Cheryl got all upset, cause she thought it was none of Doreen’s business to get into it, and she was upset with me for telling Doreen. I think I had every right to tell her because I needed someone to talk to. And a couple of days ago she came in and said ‘I paid the rent.’ And she sounded all upset and I, we sat down and talked about it, and we found out that she was upset about Doreen and that I was upset about her not telling me.” (RM 149)

In both situations the outsider becomes involved as a partisan, acting on behalf of the troubled party. Note that in the second case the outsider’s intervention became a matter of contention within the trouble: the troubling party not only denied “standing” to this previously uninvolved other, but also criticized her roommate for having told her friend about what she viewed as a private problem. In trying to involve outsiders as partisan allies to bolster and support their position in a trouble, troubled parties tend to turn first to others who have some direct, regular contact with the troubled party: family members (children, parents, relatives) in the same household; suite mates or apartment mates in multimember roommate situations; neighbors or coworkers who talk and coalesce in reaction to the activities of a local troublemaker or aggressive colleague (Lemert 1972). We may think of those who have some preexisting connection to the troubled relationship as an “inner circle” of candidate allies, composed of those directly or indirectly tied to or implicated in the trouble. The problem for the troubled party is to turn these candidate allies into partisans taking their side in the trouble. If successful, the troubled party creates an action set (Gulliver 1971)— that is, a more or less unified alliance of parties who develop a common position and hence constitute a collective “side” in a trouble. Partisan action sets may be comprised of only two persons, the troubled party and an inner circle ally. In three- person roommate situations, the party not initially or centrally involved in the trouble becomes a critical ally. For example, Julia, one of three apartment roommates, recounts how she and Maria coalesced into an action set allied against a new roommate, Vickie (note her use of “we” and “us”): Yeah, Maria and I would discuss it a lot . . . she’d borrow our clothes without asking us and stuff like that. We told her we didn’t like it. You know just

152 / Chapter Five simple things like she’d use our eyeliner which you don’t do. And just things like that and she was taking us for granted in many ways both Maria and I agreed on it. (RM 12)

At times a troubled party may seek to prod a previously uninvolved party to actively support his or her position. In the following case a troubled roommate gets a third roommate to act as an ally to go to the troubling party to discuss the problem: Kenneth became increasingly angry with Paul, feeling that this roommate was picking on him, complaining that he did not do chores and wash his dishes when he in fact did so as conscientiously as others in the suite. “Eventually I confronted my other roommate about the trouble, Alejandro, and told him that I was thinking of moving out because of Paul. This bothered him and he said he would talk to Paul. Both had a talk when I was not around and apparently, he told Paul to leave me alone and Paul said he was sorry and that he realizes now that he was being a dick. I felt a lot better after that.” (RM 135)

Apparently spurred by the troubled party’s distress and threat to move out, the complained- to roommate convinces the troublemaker to apologize (indirectly) and to change his behavior (at least temporarily). Other action sets may involve broader collectivities coordinating efforts as a team to present a common front against the identified troublemaker. Among roommates, such action sets could quickly emerge when a new roommate moved in and antagonized a cohesive group of existing roommates, as in the following instance: Three women sharing an off- campus house agreed to have a fourth roommate, Carol, move in with them on a trial basis. Alice explained that Carol quickly put off the three original roommates by leaving her towel on the bathroom floor and not helping with clean up while not paying rent. The three deliberately excluded her: “We would go to the movies and eat dinner before she got home so that we didn’t have to include her.” A major incident occurred one day when “Jane and I came in with our boyfriends and the house was a complete mess. And what made it worse was that her towel had mildewed because she would never hang it up to dry. So later on that night Jane, Sally and I basically cussed her out. We told her that if she wanted to stay she would first have to pay rent, help clean up, and if she wanted to eat with us she would have to pitch in for groceries. There was a lot of crying that went on that night

Informal Others / 153 but everybody got what they wanted to say off their chest. From then on we never had any problems with Carol, and she stayed with us until graduation. And to this day we are best of friends.” (RM 142)

Here an alliance of three organized in response to shared discontents with a new roommate became an effective action set, sharing and coordinating their complaints and then forming a united front to confront her with a specific set of agenda items. Similarly, in Alzheimer’s family caregiving, the primary caregiver often forms action sets with other family members to manage the troubling behaviors of the person with dementia. Such partisan actions sets frequently involve what Goffman (1971:338) termed a collusive coalition—“a collaborative arrangement” used to control the environment of another, usually by manipulating that party’s definition of the situation, “the arrangement itself not being openly established and recognized in these terms.” Blum (1994:31) provides several examples of family caregivers’ uses of coalitions and collusion to manage troubled behaviors of a person with Alzheimer’s. The first instance involved “the collusive passing off of the ride over to the day care center as a sort of family outing”: I couldn’t get Bill to go to the Fellowship Center with me for a while, so I would call my brother and his wife, and they would come over and ride out with us. He would get in the car then, when they came. Then we’d drop him off.

In another situation a family developed a “trick” to rescue a mother from her father’s agitated state: When he starts rambling on and on and on, when he’s on one of his tirades, my girls know how to go and make the phone ring. They go in and push all the buttons down and make the phone ring. And they’ll call out, “Mom, telephone,” and I’ll say, “Excuse me Dad, I have to go to the phone.” That is a lifesaver, it honestly is.

As Goffman (1971:339) emphasizes, such collusive coalitions “may be quite benign, may in fact be in the best interests of the person conspired against.” Shifting Partisanship On some occasions, alliances change over time as the third party’s support of one party shifts to the other party. In the case considered earlier in this

154 / Chapter Five

chapter, friend and roommate Charlotte not only supported the person Lila considered at fault for engaging in more or less public sexual activities, but subsequently also affiliated with this person in rejecting Lila’s request to move out together: The only thing that I wanted to do was move out with my other roommates and leave Chloe alone so she would have to find her own roommate. But that came down to Charlotte and Sonia and they chose to move in with Chloe. . . . It hurt me a lot. I went through all the emotions. I was very angry that Chloe broke up a friendship that was very important to me cause Charlotte and I were almost best friends for two years. She helped me through a lot and she was there for me a lot. I felt like Chloe stole her from me. (RM 27)

Here an expected supporter sided with the accused troublemaker in choosing not to move out with the complainant, a decision that broke up a friendship of several years. Indeed, the shift to provide partisan support to the other can be extremely upsetting to the party who now faces an alliance composed of the troubling other and their prior ally. Consider this extended account of the dramatic transformation of a strong, long- term roommate relationship when a third roommate moved in: Julia and Maria shared a two bed- room apartment. They had been “best friends” for some time and “did everything together,” and had previously roomed together in the dorms for two years. Julia reported: “We didn’t have any problems, not even minor things. We were just really good friends, like sisters. . . . Then . . . one of our friends (Vickie) wanted to move in because her apartment had gotten broken in to. I didn’t have a problem with it. . . . In the beginning [we became] closer because we were both against this person. . . . We were both like, ‘We want her out. We don’t get along with this person. We need to have her move out.’ . . . Both Maria and I agreed on it.” But Vickie continued living with them, and Julia grew increasingly upset because she “was living for free and wasn’t paying, didn’t have a job, stayed home all day, didn’t clean. . . . Basically in a nutshell she was taking advantage of us.” When Julia confronted her about these issues, Vickie “went as far as telling me she wasn’t my maid and I told her, ‘Well, I’m not your boarding house either.’” Problems began to develop in Julia’s relations with Maria. The bills were not paid on time, the phone was disconnected, and Maria did not help with the cleaning. “I told them that I needed that place clean cause it was really a pig pen. I mean it was disgusting and I needed to have the place clean. So then

Informal Others / 155 they started telling me that I was neurotic, you know, and I don’t think I am cause I’m just clean. . . . But they thought I had a problem with that. So Maria and her started to get really close.” Soon Vickie did find an apartment and move out, but continued to come hang out with Maria. Then this critical incident occurred: “Vickie came to the apartment and I approached her again about the bills. I told her, ‘you need to pay them’ and she just was really, I don’t know, really immature about it. She said something to the effect of, ‘well, life is hard Julia, and I’m not going to give you the money.’ And I thought— that made me really upset, so Vickie grabbed me and she was like about to hit me and Maria just stood there and didn’t do anything . . . and ran out of the room. . . . It was just really upsetting that Maria took her side over mine . . . Maria used to complain about her being so, you know, dirty and unkempt and everything and then all of a sudden she just became her best friend. And I remember telling her, ‘Well Maria, remember when we both were upset over that fact that she’s so messy and she didn’t clean up after herself? What happened to that?’ And she said, ‘well, everyone’s different and we should accept their differences.’ I was like wow, I couldn’t believe she was saying that. . . . It was very upsetting.” A brief time later, when Maria insisted that she and Julia trade bedrooms during finals week, Julia moved out and lost contact with Maria. (RM 12)

In this case, Julia and Maria initially coalesced against the new resident, covertly agreeing on her faults (“taking our stuff”) and deciding “we need to have her move out.” But Maria and Vickie, reacting in part to Julia’s continuing criticisms, grew closer. When Vickie did move out but continued to visit Maria, Julie distanced herself from Maria, spending more time with an outside friend. Maria’s failure to intervene on her side during a physical confrontation with Vickie marked a last straw for Julia, signaling Maria’s strong attachment to Vickie. Symmetrical Intervention Some outsiders avoid partisan intervention, instead staking out a more or less symmetrical position between the two parties. By not overtly siding with either of the parties to the trouble, this response structures the trouble in triadic form: the outsider articulates a third position that is not congruent with that of either of the original parties to the trouble. A loosely triadic structure may arise when an outside party, urged to intervene in an overtly one- sided way, pressures the complaining party to compromise. Consider this example:

156 / Chapter Five Her roommate told Roberta that “I had said something about her that offended her” several nights earlier when they had been talking. “She wanted an apology and an explanation for what I said. So I apologized and I tried to explain that I was just joking and not to take any offense, but she did. I knew that I wouldn’t get through to her so I just gave up. I always felt that she wanted to put me down, and I guess this was her way of doing that.” When tensions persisted and a pattern of mutual avoidance developed, “I talked to both my other roommates and they were kind of shocked to find out what had happened. They did not understand how one little comment could be taken so out of context. They wanted me to talk to her but I told them it would not work. I know they want us to work it out especially since we are all graduating in June.” (RM 166)

Here, despite aligning with the troubled party’s complaint that the other was overly sensitive about a “little comment,” other roommates pressured the complainant to negotiate and “work it out” to bring peace to the apartment. In the same way, a loosely triadic situation may develop when uninvolved others privately express sympathy for the troubled party, but fail to provide overt support in actually dealing with the trouble. Here is one example: A woman became upset because she had been sleeping in the living room for more than a week while her roommate and her visiting boyfriend occupied their bedroom. “One day I just started crying because I was stressed, and just felt so overwhelmed with the problem. I didn’t want to be crying over something so trivial, but I also didn’t want to be walked all over. So, I went to my other two suitemates, and we decided to have a house meeting about what to do about the guy situation. But we still haven’t had it. The other suitemates were very cordial and agreed I needed to talk to her, but that I should wait until Darrell has gone because it wasn’t his fault.” (RM 62)

Here the others’ affiliation with the troubled party turns out to be quite limited: they acknowledge that there is a problem, but are unwilling to say or do anything themselves to address it. Outside parties, caught between competing allegiances, often try to strike a delicate balance in avoiding too much attachment to either side, as in the following roommate situation: In a four- person apartment, Ryan grew increasingly upset when Kevin did not clean up after himself in the kitchen, leaving spaghetti- covered pots and other dishes “sitting out there for twenty years that I want to use.” In response

Informal Others / 157 he “talked to Nat and Bill (their two other roommates), saying, ‘Hey, what do you guys think, does it bother you also?’” Both Nat and Bill emphasized that although Kevin regularly left dirty pots and dishes, they were able to work around it and were not “bothered” as much as Ryan was. But when Ryan subsequently began making regular jokes about Kevin’s dirty dishes, they joined in and participated. Bill: “A lot of it is just joking, saying ‘God, Kevin never does the dishes.’” Nat: “It’s not really that somebody’s upset about it. I’m not.” Bill: “Yeah, I’m not either. . . . It’s just like a big joke in the apartment. When there’s dishes left out we all say, ‘They’re Kevin’s dishes!’ Or something like that. Sometimes they’re not even Kevin’s dishes.” (RM 143)

Here the two uninvolved roommates provide only lukewarm support for Ryan’s upset and complaint about Kevin’s leaving dirty pots in the kitchen, indicating that they feel comfortable dealing with the dirty pots problem on an ad hoc, as needed basis. However, they do incorporate Ryan’s complaint into the micro- culture of the apartment, regularly referring to any unwashed dishes as “Kevin’s dishes” (prefiguring the kind of accommodative practice Lynch [1983] refers to as treating a troublemaker as a local “character”). Humor and exaggeration facilitate this delicate balancing act. Troubles take a strongly triadic form when outside parties directly intervene to pressure both sides of the troubled relationship to work out their differences. Baumgartner (1988:28–29) provides this example involving a married suburban couple and their teenage children: Mr. and Mrs. Hauser, a middle class couple, quarreled when the wife’s attempts to get her husband to accompany her to a party were unsuccessful. After declining to attend the event several times, Mr. Hauser became annoyed at being asked repeatedly and accused his wife of nagging. An argument ensued, after which the couple began to avoid one another. Since both worked during the day, this was relatively simple; during the evening, each relaxed and watched television in separate rooms, then slipped into their common bedroom late at night while ignoring the other. The two prepared and ate meals separately. This lasted one day and into a second, at which time the couple’s teenaged daughters intervened. They began to upbraid both parents for being “childish” and threatened to leave home for the weekend— though where they might have gone they never said— unless normality were restored. After several exchanges with each parent separately, they pursued the matter when the two happened to be in the same room. By the evening of the second day, the parents were interacting amiably again, having decided to end their avoidance.

158 / Chapter Five

Here the couple’s daughters, originally mere observers of the trouble between their parents, actively intervene to press for conciliation, eventually getting the disputing parties to work out a practical accommodation. In sum, outside parties, particularly those having direct ties to and regular contact with both sides of a trouble, are often drawn toward balanced, symmetrical styles of intervention. They may proceed by talking privately with one or both parties, offering limited partisan support and sympathy on a particular issue while insisting on compromise as the ultimate outcome. Or they may meet directly with both sides, displaying an even- handed approach in order to negotiate some kind of settlement. In neither situation can outsiders impose outcomes; rather they have to entice the troubled parties to cooperate in working out some kind of agreement. To do so requires developing and maintaining positions that avoid strong affiliation with either side, yet that can move the disputing parties toward compromise and settlement.

Conclusion This chapter has examined two distinct types of involvement by unofficial outsiders in interpersonal troubles— aligning with one party in a troublestelling, and intervening directly in the trouble in ways that involve contact with both parties. Both forms of involvement may produce significant changes in the trouble. While receiving a troubled party’s account of trouble with another may initially appear a minimal or even inconsequential form of involvement, how one aligns in the troubles- telling may affect how the trouble develops. On the one hand, alignment may confirm and strengthen the teller’s interpretations and preferred ways of handling the troubled situation. Doubts about the validity of one’s position may be alleviated; hesitancies about the reasonableness of turning to surreptitious, confrontational, or extreme responses may be dissolved. If the account explicitly blames the other for wrongdoing, alignment reinforces this asymmetrical understanding of the rights and wrongs of the trouble, legitimating the troubled party’s claims and solidifying definition of the other as wrongdoer. On the other hand, nonalignment may lead the teller to question prior assumptions and claims, perhaps suggesting alternative interpretations and responses. Even if resisting these divergent views, the troubled party may begin to examine whether feelings of upset and dissatisfaction are indeed justified, and perhaps to consider other responses to the trouble. And clearly accepting a contrary viewpoint drastically transforms the troubled party’s

Informal Others / 159

interpretation of the trouble. In a few cases this transformation may involve exonerating the other and taking blame for the trouble on oneself. But more commonly, the transformation involves according some legitimacy to the other side, coming to see both oneself and the other as partially right and partially wrong. In this way the troubled party moves from framing the trouble as one- sided wrongdoing to viewing it as a two- sided disagreement involving some right and some wrong on both sides and hence amenable to negotiation and compromise. If the effects of alignment in troubles- tellings on the troubled relationship are usually subtle, the consequences of drawing an outsider directly into an interpersonal trouble may be dramatic. For the involvement of an outside party may change a relatively simple two- person conflict into a twoon- one struggle, or give the trouble a triadic structure when the outsider advocates positions and concerns differing from those of both the original parties. And such outside involvement may not only affect how the trouble is understood and what is done about it, but may also fundamentally reconfigure the relationships of all those now involved in the trouble. Indeed, socio- legal and anthropological analyses emphasize the critical importance of third parties both in transforming two- party conflicts into public disputes and in shaping the outcomes of such conflicts.9 However, the positioning of informal outsiders as third parties is contingent and often ephemeral. For some informal outsiders come prealigned as an ally of one of the parties to the trouble; others sooner or later take up such a partisan position. In both cases support of one or the other side collapses a potential or momentary triadic structure into a dyadic one— but with that side now comprised of multiple members.10 To constitute a third side, then, an unofficial outsider must either be initially unaligned with either party to the troubled dyad, or move to a nonaligned position in the course of involve-

9. A number of socio- legal researchers (e.g., Gulliver 1979: chap. 3; Black 1980:119 n. 6) follow Nader and Todd (1978:14–15) in arguing that a grievance becomes conflict “if the aggrieved party opts for confrontation— if he throws down the gauntlet— and communicates his resentment or feeling of injustice to the offending party,” while a dispute “results from escalation of the conflict by making the matter public”— that is, by bringing in third parties. 10. The effects of outside intervention by officials are fundamentally different, in that their independent authority accents and helps sustain their involvement as a third side. Most relevantly, formal third parties intervene on the basis of official or professional status rather than any personal relationship with the parties to the trouble; they typically are not prealigned with either party to the trouble; and they act on the basis of interests and priorities that differ from those of either of the two original parties. Such officials thus do indeed represent “third parties” when they intervene reactively in two- party troubles, but not necessarily when they intervene proactively on their own initiative (e.g., when stopping a suspicious person).

160 / Chapter Five

ment in the trouble by adopting a position different from those of both of the two original sides. These considerations also suggest the need to move beyond viewing third- party involvement simply in terms of dichotomized partisan and settlement modes of intervention (Black and Baumgartner 1998). Such an approach tends to reify the problematic and shifting processes whereby unofficial outsiders come to position themselves in troubles.11 Analysis of unofficial intervention in interpersonal troubles must also examine processes of involvement in their own right—taking or forming a side as a partisan or ally, and staking out and maintaining the stance of a neutral third side as a settlement agent. With regard to the former, a partisan of one side on one issue may support the other side on another issue. Or a partisan may shift support entirely to the other side, as when a mother, initially critical of her daughter’s angry and demeaning treatment of her son- in- law, learns of the latter’s physical violence toward his wife and immediately takes her daughter’s side in confronting the abusive husband. We also need to appreciate the varied, ongoing processes of bringing multiple parties together as partisans on one side in the first place, processes that go unappreciated when we depict outsiders as partisan right from the start. For example, a wife is upset by a neighbor’s loud TV, but her husband is not. While he will side with her in any confrontation with the neighbor, this partisan teamwork results from his wife’s lobbying efforts to get him to support her. Finally, in addition to examining the work of creating and sustaining partisan teams, analyses of the trouble involvement of outside others should also consider when and how such parties adopt and sustain neutral or uncommitted stances, acting as independent third parties even in the face of substantial pressure to intervene on behalf of one side and against the other. As Black and Baumgartner (1998:96) recognize, initial partisan commitments may be entered into cautiously or weaken as the trouble develops, moving third parties toward settlement stances: People who intervene as supporters rarely if ever do so without first assessing the merits of a case. Lawyers, for instance, do not automatically accept the

11. While Black and Baumgartner (1998) recognize the blurring of partisan and settlement modes of involvement, this recognition is partially blunted by treating partisan “support” as a quantifiable, nonproblematic given; thus they approach “taking sides” not as an issue of whether to take a side and which side to take, but rather of “how much” support will be provided and the risks and consequences of doing so. As a result, their approach neglects the shifting, evolving patterns of informal support and involvement that occur in actual disputes and troubles (see Emerson 1992a).

Informal Others / 161 business brought to them by potential clients, but first evaluate the issues in question much as would a judge or arbitrator. . . . The same applies to kinfolk and friends who come to the aid of their fellows. There is a limit to the conduct they will defend, and there are people they may be reluctant to oppose. . . . There is a point beyond which any group will refuse to be identified with one of its wayward members.

In the latter circumstances, previously supportive allies desert the “wayward member,” increasing the likelihood that compromise settlement rather than one- sided partisan outcomes will be pursued.

SIX

Accusations and Extreme Responses

At some point in the chain of interactions, a new configuration takes place in the perceptions others have of the individual, with shifts in figure- ground relations. . . . From a normal variant the person becomes “unreliable,” “untrustworthy,” “dangerous,” or someone with whom others “do not wish to be involved.” —Edwin M. Lemert, Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control (1972:253)

In many cases managerial responses and modulated complaints succeed, leading troubling others to change their behavior, or at least allowing troubled parties to live with or around it. But in other cases initial responses provide neither solution nor respite: the trouble persists and perhaps festers, heightening emotions and tensions within the troubled relationship. Under these circumstances troubled parties may well decide to end the relationship, or resign themselves to staying in a difficult, perhaps unsatisfactory relationship. But they may also continue the relationship by implementing new, more severe responses. Troubled parties frequently turn to two such responses: explicit accusations that frame troubling others’ behavior as moral infractions or wrongdoing, and relationally extreme responses that minimize or abandon outright efforts to convince troubling others to mend their ways. In many cases accusations and extreme responses represent distinct escalations in response severity relative to prior efforts to deal with the trouble. This chapter initially considers how troubled parties experience and frame new responses as escalations. It then analyzes how accusations and extreme responses are organized and implemented. It concludes by examining the ways in which these responses extend and elaborate trouble response cycles.

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 163

Escalation Faced with especially serious troubles, troubled parties may respond right from the start by making explicit accusations of wrongdoing and/or by taking openly punitive or restrictive actions toward troubling others. But relational troubles tend to develop gradually from small beginnings, and here troubled parties usually turn to such severe responses when prior, milder responses have failed. Under these circumstances troubled parties understand their responses as escalations, as conscious increases in the severity, seriousness, or consequentiality of the responsive actions. In this sense escalation is not simply an objective increase in the severity of responses, but an oriented- to feature of trouble responses produced by framing the increased “severity” of some current response by contrast with the failure of some prior “milder” response. Indeed people construct their “next” response as an escalation exactly by contrasting a (more severe) current response with some (less severe) prior response, and by linking the two responses in some kind of sequence, such that the failure of the latter requires the turn to the former. Escalation is frequently built into the accounts troubled parties provide both to troubling others via direct complaints and to outsiders (including the researcher). In establishing that a current response represents an escalation by reference to milder responses that have failed, troubled parties show that the more severe response is reasonable, necessary, justified, and orderly.1 To make a “severe” response without establishing this link risks having others question that action as avoidable or unjustified, or even as an extreme and vindictive “outburst.” Furthermore, escalation not only provides a way of justifying more severe responsive actions to others, but also structures the experience and self- understanding of the troubled party. For in framing what one is now doing as escalation, the troubled party assumes the stance that “before I acted with reserve, but now I have to abandon at least some of that reserve to deal with this trouble.” Indeed, framing the use of a more severe response as a necessary but reluctantly employed escalation allows the troubled party to identify as a certain kind of person— one who is restrained, sparing, and thoughtful in dealing with even persisting and frustrating trouble. These processes underlie the framing of accusations of moral wrong-

1. Here I draw on my earlier analysis of three necessary conditions for justifying “last resort” decisions in official agencies of social control (Emerson 1981:10–17): establishing that appropriate, less serious responses have been tried, that these responses have failed, and that some further action now needs to be taken.

164 / Chapter Six

doing as escalations. Accusations typically reference the failure of some prior response, particularly a modulated complaint or a tolerant “live and let live” acceptance of the troubling behavior. In some instances this reference may be implicit, invoked by the tacit contrast between the severity of the current response and an implied more laissez- faire earlier response. Consider the following account of one woman’s accusation of wrongdoing by her disorderly roommates: There were a few times when I come back to the apartment, the dishes would be piled up in the sink, the area around the stove is a mess, the trash is not taken out. . . . Why should I have to come home and live under these conditions? For the past two months, every time I go back to the apartment, it is a mess. I pay one fourth of the rent, too, and these are spaces that we share together. I find it to be intolerable to the point where I can’t seem to bear standing in the kitchen or the living room for more than twenty minutes. They can just make a mess and expect that there will be someone to clean up after them. I don’t know if any of them mind the mess but I sure as hell mind. The other morning, I wanted to get a glass of water. Out of the million cups that we have in the kitchen, I couldn’t find one clean cup. I don’t think that any one of us should have to go through that. Tell me if I’m being unreasonable. I don’t think so. I’m not the perfect roommate, but at least I can say that none of the shit in the sink and maybe 1/1000 of the shit in the trash is mine. [In response she then left a letter for her roommates, part of which read:] “I work three jobs and I have 16 units and I have a boyfriend— if I can find two minutes of my time to put my shoes away, clean my dishes, even take out the trash before I leave the house every day, surely you can, too. I am not an animal, yet we live like animals in this nice apartment. . . . We were all brought up in decent households and I’m sure we all know what it is like to be clean and tidy. None of us should be excused from cleaning up after themselves.” (RM 72)

Here, urging her roommates to change their ways, the frustrated resident makes an accusatory complaint explicitly faulting these others for the messy “conditions” of the apartment and framing this failure as a moral shortcoming. Invoking her “right” as an equal renter to come home to a “clean and tidy” environment, she emphasizes their transgression by noting that she takes care of her messes despite an extremely demanding schedule. She further highlights the morally offensive character of their behavior by invoking a stark contrast between their currently living “like animals” and the

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 165

“decent households” in which they were raised. But in all this she implicitly acknowledges that for the past two months she has more or less tolerated these messes, or at least had not made the strong, focused, and moralistic complaint she reports she has now delivered. And in making this complaint she presents herself not as someone who is “unreasonable” and overly demanding about her living conditions, but as a person who conscientiously does her part and only reluctantly has come to speak out against others who are failing to do theirs. In other situations, troubled parties may frame a current response as an escalation by explicitly referencing the prior use (and failure) of a less severe response. Again, consider how a troubled roommate organizes this accusatory complaint to deal with messes left by another for intolerably long periods: It had been about two weeks since she had cleaned up her mess in the kitchen. It was disgusting and about ten flies were flying around our living room along with numerous gnats in the kitchen. It was embarrassing too when friends visited and would comment on what a mess it was. I couldn’t even find a clean pot to cook in, so I ate every meal out which was getting very expensive. . . . I felt like she was being rude and uncaring by imposing her mess into our lives. I certainly didn’t care how she kept her room or anything. But her mess in the kitchen disrupted my life daily and made me terribly unhappy. . . . Even if now at the end of our lease she is trying to wash her dishes more regularly. I feel like this is way too little too late. Cleaning up after oneself is just something one must do when you have roommates. She made this big chore out of it by not doing it for so long. . . . I had a right to ask that someone pick up after themselves. But I wasn’t after her every day or even every week. I tolerated it until it was clear that she had no intentions of ever doing it. She didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let her intimidate me into not asking for what was only basic and standard. I didn’t care about anything else. I just wanted to feel safe to leave my food in the kitchen and to be able to cook and clean my own dishes without having to use the bathroom sink! (RM 21; emphasis added)

Here the troubled party’s account contrasts (and justifies) her current strong complaint by explicit reference to her previous “tolerating” actions and their failure to get the other to correct the problem. Again the complainant invokes her “right” to request others to clean up after themselves in the kitchen, presenting herself as reasonable in seeking not an immaculate

166 / Chapter Six

apartment but only what is “basic and standard” with regard to food and kitchen use. Troubled parties may draw on a number of contrasts to frame a response as “severe” or “serious” relative to prior responses, and hence as an escalation: •

As noted, accusatory complaints may be framed as escalation through contrast with prior use of the kinds of unilateral responses and modulated complaints previously analyzed. As emphasized below, accusations explicitly present the other’s behavior as an infraction or transgression, accenting moral evaluations of the troubling act and actor that are avoided or subordinated in modulated complaints.

•

Responses that diminish or abandon efforts to remedy the troubled relationship may be framed as escalations through contrast with earlier responses that tried to engage the other in discussions seeking some kind of compromise agreement about how to handle the troubling situation. This disregard for enticing the other to undertake corrective action characterizes extreme responses.

•

Troubled parties may escalate their response by drawing in others previously outside the troubled relationship, as examined in chapter 5. A distraught parent may ask a relative or older sibling to become involved in trying to impose effective limits on an out- of- control teenager. A spouse may solicit the help of her husband’s friends or even the bartender at his favorite drinking spot to try to limit the amount of alcohol he can obtain (Wiseman 1991:51). A roommate may ask a third party in the suite to talk to a chronically irresponsible other about cooking, cleaning up regularly, or contributing a fair share to the food budget.

•

Escalation may involve troubled parties investing more time, energy, and calculation in responding to the trouble than they had previously. Roommates, for example, may move from spontaneous expression of irritation in the troubling moment to a “serious complaint” involving strategic forethought and careful presentation of defensible grounds for one’s upset, along with a detailed remedial proposal. At an extreme, troubled parties may decenter their everyday lives, devoting significant mental energy and personal effort to planning how to deal with the matter.

•

New responses may seek to impose greater restrictions on the troubling other. Prized possessions subject to wanton borrowing, for example, may not simply be hidden, but locked away. Similarly, in Alzheimer’s family caregiving, dead bolts and hidden keys may replace a warning system of string and bells at the top of the stairs to keep the afflicted family member from wandering off in the middle of the night.

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 167 •

New responses may have greater visibility to the troubling party. Managerial responses may be employed openly rather than surreptitiously. Unilateral and nonconfrontational responses may be abandoned entirely in favor of direct and insistent urging that the other cease or modify the troubling behavior.

•

Commitment to indirection, politeness, and modulation in making complaints may weaken, with the troubled party now directly confronting the other with the discontent and explicitly demanding a change in behavior. Such stronger and more explicitly remedial complaints often involve forceful expressions of irritation, upset, or anger to underline the insistence that something be done about the trouble.

•

Remedial proposals may be specified, or made more complex and elaborate, with the troubled party pressuring the other to make an explicit agreement or abide by a “rule” that delineates particular rights and wrongs and that specifies exactly how the matter is to be dealt with in the future.

Of course, these options are not mutually exclusive, and particular understandings and accounts may combine several of these contrasts to frame some current response as an escalation of prior responses. The following sections examine the detailed ways in which troubled parties organize two common severe informal responses often framed as escalations— making accusations of wrongdoing and implementing extreme responses.

Accusations Complaints necessarily involve “moral work” in that some normative standard is invoked to characterize another’s behavior (Drew 1998). In the modulated complaints typical of many initial efforts to respond to relational troubles, however, this moral work (although explicit) is neither prominent nor strident; the troubled party identifies but does not accent the morally offensive character of the other’s behavior. In particular, assertions of explicit wrongdoing by the other tend to be minimized or decentered, as troubled parties present complaints in a variety of ways that submerge or play down moral evaluations of the other’s behavior (chapter 4): they emphasize the personal upset, distress, or inconvenience in their daily lives arising from this behavior rather than keying in on issues of right and wrong; they frame the trouble as a product of personal preferences and sensitivities, not of some universal moral principle; they focus on proposing and implementing corrective measures to remedy the trouble, effectively subordinating issues of fault and blame to working out pragmatic solutions. However, when re-

168 / Chapter Six

peated complaints and other initial responses fail to produce lasting change, modulated complaints tend to give way to explicit accusations— that is, complaints that accent negative moral evaluations of troubling behavior, placing wrongdoing at the center of the now- escalating trouble. Against this background, consider some of the varied methods troubled parties may use in framing accusations of wrongdoing to accent the morally transgressive character of the other’s behavior.2 Formulations of Wrongdoing Accusations may be delivered as straightforward formulations that name and accent the wrongful character of another’s behavior (Garfinkel and Sacks 1970). Stokoe (2003:328– 29) provides several instances arising during a neighbor mediation in the United Kingdom; the excerpt below begins with the mediator, Lucy, summarizing the grievances of the complainant, Mary, against her upstairs neighbor, Gilbert: lucy.

you had the garden looking very pretty at one time and you don’t want to

stop anybody coming down. But nobody else does use it. You feel aggrieved that you can’t get out into the garden very much because you’re not comfortable being out there. And then you said that you can hear Gilbert walking around upstairs and that is disturbing. And that last night there was an argument because of his ripping plants up. If you could leave tomorrow you would or you would like the garden paved over m ary.

also: add when I go out there he shouts abuse at me out of the window

when he has been drinking gilbert. m ary.

rubbish

I can’t well (.) if you didn’t (,) I’m sorry but it happened yesterday it’s hap-

pened before [A second mediator tries to silence Gilbert for talking out of turn, saying, “Try hard try hard” not to interrupt Mary’s talk; here Gilbert interjects, “It’s deliberate lying”] m ary.

I mean that makes me sick. In fact I feel sick to my stomach with this whole

thing. 2. Popular psychology and the human potential movement have given close attention to many of these methods in seeking to discourage “put- down messages” in interpersonal communication. Gordon (1975:113), for example, identifies four categories of such messages: “1. Judging, criticizing, blaming. 2. Name- calling, ridiculing, shaming. 3. Interpreting, diagnosing, psychoanalyzing. 4. Teaching, instructing.” The techniques of “active listening” and using “I messages” explicitly seek to eliminate such put- down messages.

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 169 lucy.

So that’s the position with you at the minute?

m ary.

well that’s I’m being harassed. And that’s what I feel and

lucy.

that you feel you’re being harassed

m ary.

yes I am being harassed. (Emphasis added)

This exchange involves two formulations of wrongdoing. First, Gilbert’s unauthorized comment “It’s deliberate lying” formulates what Mary has said as knowingly and purposefully false. Second, when the mediator checks the adequacy of her statement of Mary’s claims, Mary formulates her treatment by Gilbert as “being harassed”; this formulation unifies a series of discrete acts (ripping up plants, shouting abuse at her out of the window) under one rubric, and explicitly names it as a specific kind of wrongdoing. Framing the Other’s Behavior as Heinous and Intolerable Some accusations are built around more elaborate depictions of the other’s behavior as distinctly offensive, heinous, or intolerable. In the cases of escalated accusations of wrongdoing for leaving messes leveled against roommates considered previously, troubled parties abandoned a tolerant “different strokes” stance toward the problem and instead came to treat the other as someone who was violating a basic ethic of living together. The problem was no longer framed as simply the inconvenience of not being able to find a clean pot to cook in, but of having to live in a filthy and repulsive environment because of the other’s misconduct in cleaning up. These accusatory complaints highlight the extreme and “disgusting” consequences of the messes the other left, in the last case framing that other as directly responsible for these conditions and hence as someone who is “rude and uncaring by imposing her mess into our lives” (RM 21). In these cases troubled parties formulate strong and explicit grievances against others. The grievances invoke general moral principles and normative standards— the “basic and standard” right to live in clean and orderly conditions, recognizing obligations to those you live with, taking responsibility for one’s household actions. In this sense, accusations specifically formulate and invoke norms that often previously were assumed or implicit; for example, in the last instance, the accusing complainant insists that everyone “pick up after themselves” in a timely fashion, at least in the kitchen and other common rooms, providing an explicit moral standard to take the place of previously looser and more easygoing practices. Furthermore, announcing grievances through accusations implicitly delegitimates the other’s defensive claims and interests; for example, to frame leaving

170 / Chapter Six

kitchen messes as a normative violation dismisses possible counterassertions that cleaning up is a matter of personal timing or can be subordinated to the demands of a pressing schedule. In making accusatory complaints troubled parties often convey negative moral evaluations by using morally framed “extreme case” formulations to characterize the disturbing behavior of the other (Pomerantz 1986; Drew and Holt 1988; Edwards 2000). We have seen the idiom “live like animals” in an earlier roommate case. Similarly, another roommate provided this graphic description of the effects of the other’s chronic messes: Also my room is right up against the kitchen as it is a converted breakfast nook. There is only a glass door in between my room and the kitchen which allowed the dirty smell of the kitchen to come into my room. Also I was afraid that gnats or larvae or ants or something would start to come into my room and it bothered me. (RM 21)

“Live like animals,” “dirty smell,” and possible invasion by “gnats or larvae or ants,” of course, not only provide highly negative evaluations of these troubled situations, but also graphically convey the complainant’s personal disgust at what the other had done. As Drew (1998) notes, accusations accentuating the offensive character of the other’s action are frequently accompanied and furthered by overt and forceful expression of moral indignation about the other and the other’s troubling behavior. In the following case, a woman described a confrontational exchange with her roommate in which she accused the latter’s boyfriend of having taken her pager: Megan was upset when her roommate Anne gave her boyfriend keys to their apartment, and was convinced that the boyfriend had taken her pager and surreptitiously returned it. “When I spoke with her, it wasn’t on friendly terms. It was more businesslike . . . very cold for the both of us actually. . . . I told her, ‘Anne, I don’t like this and I don’t like that.’ And she said, ‘Well, I don’t like this and I don’t like that.’ Finally that’s how it ended. She basically said she didn’t know anything about it and that she would talk to Gabriel and I told her well, it’s really no use because . . . I saw him put the pager in the laundry basket and that I didn’t trust him and that I wanted the keys back from him.” (RM 173)

Here the troubled party reports confronting her roommate in a “cold,” “businesslike” exchange. But when the latter denies knowing anything about the

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 171

problem, the complainant indignantly accuses the boyfriend of having hidden the missing pager, expresses her deep distrust toward him, and demands that he no longer be given open access to their apartment. Discrediting Motives and Character Accusations may (re)frame the troubling party’s behavior as purposeful acts of malfeasance (see Austin 1966), in contrast to prior treatment of these troubling acts as “normal” or unintentionally harmful. As discussed earlier, initial troubles are often understood as the product of another’s different preferences and habits. But the repetition of troubling behaviors, perhaps time and time again, tends to undermine these understandings: troubles now come to be interpreted not as “particular, one- off occurrences or items . . . [but as] instances of a more generalized pattern” of troublemaking (Edwards 1995:319). Particularly when trouble recurs in the face of direct complaints, complainants’ understandings of what is going on are likely to be recast: acts previously attributed to the other’s lack of awareness or insensitivity are now interpreted as knowingly and pointedly unresponsive to articulated discontents and to direct appeals to change. In short, the troubled party now begins to entertain increasingly unfavorable versions of the other’s immediate intentions and deeper motives. This process is clearly revealed in the following account of the changes in interpreting another’s actions after Carol, the troubled party, had registered a strong, direct complaint to her roommate Jean for interrupting her sleep in order to work on a paper late at night in their dorm room (see chapter 4): The next Sunday night she did the same thing. I had a midterm that Monday again, it was a couple weeks before finals. I couldn’t believe she would choose doing it again, but that night I didn’t say anything to her. . . . I was really angry at her but I decided just to keep quiet— because if she had cared, I thought she should have been considerate enough not to do that. I thought she should have had enough respect and common courtesy to not do what we had just discussed earlier. She didn’t even tell me that she was going to come in and work on her computer. I don’t think I’d ever been so frustrated because we had discussed it earlier and I didn’t know how to get through to her. (RM 70; emphasis added)

Here, the troubled roommate abandons her earlier “unintentional” interpretation, for the other must/should now realize that working on a paper in their room late at night upsets and disturbs her. In so doing she abandons

172 / Chapter Six

the prior normalizing assumption that the other’s troubling behavior was unknowingly and unintentionally disturbing; she purposely “chose” to do it again. Carol also begins to typify her roommate as someone who is uncaring, inconsiderate, and lacking “common courtesy.” As she maintained, She hasn’t been considerate towards me! You know if you were to type a paper at night and your roommate’s sleeping, you would at least not print it out until the next day. Well, she had printed it out and she’d printed it out a few times and if she didn’t like what she’d printed out she’d rip it up and put it in the trash can and you know tearing paper makes noise. You just don’t do that when someone next to you is sleeping! I just could not understand why she was doing these things. (RM 70)

While Carol does not completely abandon her earlier assumption that Jean is pursuing legitimate interests, she begins to entertain fundamental doubt and suspicion about her motives and character. Indeed, implicit in these comments is the possibility that Jean acted as she did not simply from lack of consideration, but also to deliberately provoke and “pay back” Carol for her earlier complaint. Similarly in a variety of other troubled situations, with the recurrence of a troubling behavior after a series of strong complaints troubled parties come to understand the others’ seemingly commonplace actions as intentional provocation, undertaken purposefully to upset and disturb: a neighbor repeatedly asked not to play loud music late at night does so specifically to annoy the complainant; a boyfriend’s hourly telephone calls to the apartment reflect not devotion to the other, but complicit acts specifically intended to harass the roommate; taking over the bathroom and shower at a time that disrupts a known, early morning prework routine is not just chance but an expression of some built- up resentment. Furthermore, as direct complaints fail and motives become suspect, the troubled party recognizes new flaws in the deeper ontological character of the troubling actor (Katz 1975). In general, those who value some feature or aspect of their relation with the other tend to isolate troubling behaviors from fundamental character, in this way avoiding deeply negative understandings of the troubling other. A number of roommates echoed the sentiments of a young man deeply frustrated by his roommate’s failure to wash dishes and clean up: “I love my roommate. We’ve been friends a long time and [that] makes it even harder. He’s like a brother but he pisses me off” (RM 25). Under these circumstances, even when trouble recurs after promises to cor-

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 173

rect the problem, the troubled party may retain faith in the basic character of the other, attribute failure to correct the problem to situational quirks and contingencies, and continue to expect that the other will eventually undertake effective corrective action. But with repeated remedial failure, troubled parties tend to depict the other’s character in increasingly negative terms. Sometimes these character defects are seen as unconscious but nonetheless deeply off- putting: She thinks that she does not eat a lot but she does. She doesn’t spend any money on food and I spend a lot, feeding her as well as me. . . . I don’t think she does it consciously but I think that the problem is something that should be thought of because if I took someone’s food I would think I should replace it. But something like that does not come to her. It’s definitely not conscious and that’s the main reason I try not to get really mad about it because it’s not like she is consciously trying to take advantage. (RM 26a)

In other cases faulted character is tied to deep- seated “bad habits”: He keeps doing the things he does, doesn’t apologize any more, and worst of all, I honestly feel as though he doesn’t even try to change. His attitude sucks, and I was beginning to think that he does these things without giving them or me a second thought. It’s natural for him to be ignorant, selfish, and selfcentered. He is spoiled as hell because he was a pampered only child, trust me I know, and that’s why I call these incidents “bad habits,” because he does them almost subconsciously. (RM 74)

In some instances, the troubled party comes to doubt the other’s fundamental trustworthiness and honesty. Among roommates, this sort of basic distrust often builds up when a number of different troubles are not effectively resolved and when the other consistently acts in questionable ways: Jane recounted a series of problems with her roommate Pam that eventually led her and a third roommate, Sheri, to move out before the end of the spring term: (1) During the prior summer Pam had begun dating Sheri’s boyfriend but early in the fall had Sheri co- sign the lease on the apartment and move in without telling her about this arrangement. Pam resisted Jane’s persistent efforts to have the three of them sit down and “just get all this out in the open and figure it out.” (2) Jane became increasingly aware that Pam “was talking behind everybody’s back,” in particular telling her friends that Sheri was a “slut.” (3) The three women kept spare car keys in a kitchen drawer so that

174 / Chapter Six they could all get out of the apartment’s parking space. Complaining that paint had been chipped on her car, Pam removed her key from the drawer. Jane and Sheri felt this action was motivated by Pam’s resentment toward their developing friendship, but Pam consistently denied any upset. “She was denying that there were any problems, so I said screw it. It’s not that she’s in denial, it’s just that she doesn’t want to deal with any of the shit, and she doesn’t care about anyone but herself.” (4) Pam put locks on her bedroom door, explaining that “there’s some cigarette holes in my comforter.” Jane and Sheri saw this as an act of anger “because we were having parties . . . and we never told her.” Jane summed up her feelings about Pam in these words: “It’s an irritating, aggravating situation, but I don’t really (feel upset) besides the fact that I just dislike her and I care never to see her again. She’s irritating, she is selfish, and she is not worth the time of day.” (RM 10)

Here attributions of inconsiderateness and disrespect expand into active dislike and deep suspicions about what kind of person the troubling party “really is.” In some instances, character is discredited when the other comes to be seen as overly aggressive, as someone whose extreme volatility has to be placated at any cost. Thus one woman provided this account of accommodating to the insistent, harsh demands of a problematic roommate: If I came home late I would have to tiptoe around. In the morning I would never, never hit the snooze on my alarm because she is such a sensitive sleeper and I would never do that to her as a courtesy. I was kinda afraid of her, she was psycho . . . . I would keep my things on my side of the room. God forbid if one of my things would wander over to her side; I would find it the next day shoved somewhere. I would have to study out in the living room as opposed to my own desk. Just not being able to study at night in my room too. My computer was in my room so whenever I had a paper to write I would have to haul my entire computer out into the living room. And even then I would hear about it the next day, about printing something in the middle of the night or early in the morning. She would always let me know that that bothered her and toward the end I would just laugh about it cause I really didn’t care. But it still hurt me. (RM 26; emphasis added)

This, of course, is an account of someone who feels overrun and mistreated by the overzealous complaints of the troubled party; this leads her to characterize her roommate as a scary “psycho.” In sum, early on, troubled parties’ sense of suffering wrongdoing is

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 175

limited; the words and actions that chafe involve “little problems” and are often offset by positive actions and attributes. Troubled parties continue to separate troubling acts from the deeper character of the person committing them, if only as a means of maintaining minimal harmony in the relationship. But the repeated failure of direct complaints increases the aggrieved party’s sense of suffering deliberate offense; after all, the other continues to engage in the troubling behavior despite having been repeatedly asked not to do so. In extreme instances troubled parties come to understand the troubling behavior as driven by specifically malevolent motives, as something the other does despite being able to do otherwise (McHugh 1970). Under these conditions, normalizing understandings of the trouble, while not necessarily completely abandoned, become problematic and uncertain, and troubled parties increasingly see and characterize the other as the kind of person who purposefully harms or wrongs others. Casting Self as a “Victim” of Wrongdoing In framing the other as a transgressor, troubled parties may reciprocally cast themselves as a victim, as someone who has been “unjustly harmed or damaged” by the other’s misconduct (Holstein and Miller 1990:105). Often this framing involves a fundamental retrospective recasting of the history of the troubled relationship, as well as of the fundamental character of the other. Reconsider Joel’s account of his problems with his roommate William from chapter 1 (RM 40). When Joel realized that in the latest incident William had left clean underwear on his bed, he reinterpreted not only William’s motives, but also his fundamental character. He came to see that William had not been leaving his underwear on his bed negligently in the course of changing clothes, but “on purpose” to stress and provoke him, to “see how far I would go.” Joel thus interpreted these actions as the product not of the peculiarities of “an unresponsive slob,” but of a systematic manipulator who had been deliberately playing with and deceiving him from very early on in the relationship. He thereby characterized William knowingly and persistently doing wrong— in short, as “the first true asshole I have met in my entire life”— and himself as the victim of this offense. Creating Rules and Agreements When troubles persist despite frequent and sometimes strident complaints, troubled parties may try to highlight the wrongful character of the other’s behavior by formulating rules that specify proper procedures or boundaries.

176 / Chapter Six

In many cases the troubled party will directly negotiate a rule with the other. In other instances the troubled party will proclaim a rule as a unilateral demand, assuming that the other will accept or at least acquiesce to this demand. For example, in the incident described in chapter 1, having regularly complained to his roommate about the messes he left at their common sink, Joel sought correction by specifying an explicit rule, dividing the sink in half: And so I’d tell him that. It never seemed to sink in.3 And he’d do it over and over again. Then I said, “Okay, I guess we’re going to have to split the sink down the middle.” So I said, “This side of the sink is my side. This side is your side. You can keep your side any way you want. Just keep like your gross oatmeal stuff all on your side of the sink.” (RM 40)

The specification of a rule makes an immediate statement that the troubled party evaluates the acts that the other has been engaging in as transgressions, in this way dramatizing their wrongful character. And not only does formulating an explicit rule constitute an escalation over prior responses, but the rule lays the groundwork for further escalation in the future. In the current case, for example, from this point forward any mess left by William on Joel’s side of the sink will stand as an obvious and explicit infraction. In this respect establishing a rule sets parameters of right and wrong around future occurrences of the trouble. Similarly, when the troubled party has complained to the other and negotiated some agreement to control or end the troubling behavior yet the trouble recurs, this very process can be invoked to highlight the deliberate and informed character of the wrongdoing by the other and to justify turning to more serious responses. Consider the following account provided by a woman upset by her roommate’s persistent sleeping with a boyfriend in their dorm room: Once I had the talk with her and she said “I understand, sorry for being rude.” And she said he won’t come sleep anymore and what happened the very next week, he came over and he slept over for the next three nights consecutively. After the first night I thought, it’s only one night; after the second night, I thought, he better not be sleeping over or I’ll be very upset. And so he slept over the third night and I was very upset and the fourth night, I usually go to sleep first because they stay up late, so I didn’t realize he slept over until 3. Sacks (1992: vol. 2, pp. 420–24) explored the occurrence and significance of such unremarked, naturally occurring puns in everyday talk.

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 177 the next morning. So that night, I couldn’t sleep and I knew he was staying over so when they were sleeping, I kind of left the room because I was kind of infuriated and I went over to my neighbor and just talking to her and letting out my frustration and I slept in her room. And what happened was that my roommate woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that I wasn’t in my bed and she went looking for me and found me in my neighbor’s room. And she felt really bad and then she told her boyfriend to go home at four o’clock in the morning. And I remember after that we had another talk and she was again sorry for being inconsiderate. That was one big incident that sticks out in my mind. (RM 174)

Here, when the problem arises anew, the troubled roommate upgrades her response by vacating her bed rather than making another direct complaint the next day, in this way tacitly highlighting the other’s transgression of their prior agreement. Focusing on Deceit and Denial to Accent Wrongdoing Troubled parties may escalate their response on concluding that the other is lying in denying responsibility for a troubling act. Consider this example: My roommate Lisa continually would take my clothes and jewelry without asking and then never return it unless I noticed it missing and asked if she knew where the items were. She would return them dirty and smelling like sweat. One time she even denied taking one of my new outfits and when I was distraught looking for it she helped me look through my things and pulled it out of my closet scrunched up behind some clothes. She called me a bitch for thinking she borrowed it and slammed the door as she left. I noticed the next day that it smelled like her BO [body odor], so I went downstairs to her boyfriend’s apartment and asked if I could talk to her. I asked her if she could come outside in the hall. I said gently, “I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your boyfriend, but I know you wore this outfit it smells like you, see.” And I pulled it out for her to smell but she declined. I said, “I know you’re not trying to hurt me and you know I care about you. Please just let me know if you are going to borrow something and if you do return it as you found it because you know I don’t have any extra money to dry clean my clothes all the time.” She said she was sorry and told me she would dry clean it for me and she gave me a hug and said she wouldn’t borrow anything again. This lasted about a week before she began borrowing my things again without asking. (RM 21)

178 / Chapter Six

Discovering the disappearance of a new outfit after earlier confrontation and denial, the troubled party explicitly accuses the other of lying, confronting her with empirical “evidence” of her “guilt”— the outfit “smelled like her BO.” These actions not only make clear that she is deeply upset about the other’s denial of having taken and worn her new outfit, but also involve a face- to- face accusation that the other has been lying to her. She thus presents the other as having doubly wronged her— first by taking, soiling, and surreptitiously returning the outfit, second by denying that she had done so.

In conclusion, accusations moralize troubles by placing wrongdoing clearly and centrally at the core of complaints. In this sense they frequently represent escalations relative to prior responses and increase the possibilities of alienating the troubling other. However, accusations may nonetheless receive a remedial twist intended to get offending parties to correct their misconduct. Rather than being framed simply to discredit a wrongdoer as a moral being, then, accusations may be delivered in ways that discourage outright rejection of the complaint and deep alienation of the other. These framings are less matters of playing down wrongdoing and more matters of adding supplementary appeals to try to mend and preserve the relationship. For example, in the confrontation just discussed where a roommate denied having taken the accuser’s outfit, the complainant relied on a number of devices to counter the alienating effects of her accusation: she limited blame (“I know you’re not trying to hurt me”), proclaimed that she continued to “care about” the other, and offered an accommodative proposal for future situations— ask before borrowing and “return it as you found it.” And indeed these placating moves succeeded, at least temporarily, as the troubling party admitted having taken the outfit and apologized, offering to have it dry cleaned and promising not to “borrow anything again.” Even in making a strong and emotional accusation, then, the troubled party took care to present her complaint in a way that would encourage the other to accept rather than reject it, and hence to end rather than exacerbate the trouble. In general, such remedially themed accusations attribute blame or fault to the other, but in ways that discourage denial, disagreement, and resistance, and hence that still attempt to move the other toward participating in efforts to work out a solution to the trouble. In this respect such appended appeals seem intended to minimize the structural tendency noted by conversational analysts for accusations to “engender return accusations, counter-

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 179

assertions, or denials,” in these ways promoting disagreement rather than solidarity between the parties (Garcia 1991:821).4 However, such conciliatory concerns are abandoned entirely when troubled parties turn to openly antagonistic and knowingly polarizing extreme responses.

Extreme Responses Faced with continuing resistance, the troubled party may come to experience frustration, and despair of getting the other to change the troubling behavior. Of course in some cases at this point the troubled party exits the relationship. But in many circumstances, exit is not pursued and the relationship continues without resolution of the trouble. Experiencing the trouble as intractable, troubled parties forsake efforts to enlist the other’s participation and cooperation in handling the trouble and increasingly turn to severe responses that tend to further alienate the other. Unilaterally implemented and maintained, such extreme responses openly communicate distrust and subordinate or abandon entirely any commitment to pursue mutual resolution of the problem. As a result these responses are frequently vehemently oppositional and antagonistic in character. Extreme responses take a number of different forms. First, troubled parties cut off contact with the troubling other, creating situations of systematic distancing and even separate worlds. Second, troubled parties lose control over feelings, words, and actions in sudden, emotional “blowups” directed at the other. In these instances, opposition is intense and sometimes violent. Third, troubled parties undertake deliberate, carefully planned, punitive actions intended to hurt or harm the other, sometimes in the hope of deterrence, but often without weighing the future implications of such actions. Finally, troubled parties employ a variety of measures involving restraint, threats, physical force, or violence in order to directly control the behavior and situation of an uncooperative and perhaps resistant other. In the following pages I analyze these extreme responses. It should be emphasized that these actions often lead to dramatic and violent confrontations, and hence in many cases to calling in official third parties, itself a further extreme response that will be considered in chapter 7.

4. Denials, while usually the least directly oppositional of such responses, in fact involve “direct disagreement with the prior speaker, putting him or her in a position of either backing down (which is face- threatening) or defending him or herself,” thereby tending to generate continuing argument (Garcia 1991:821).

180 / Chapter Six

Systematic Distancing In contrast to occasional avoidance (Felstiner 1975; Black 1998), systematic distancing involves minimizing or cutting off contact entirely with the troubling other for long periods of time. Such responses evolve as troubled parties despair of getting the other to address the problem, are unable or unwilling to end the relationship, and yet continue to have regular contact with the other. For many roommates such distancing provides a temporizing response to irremediable troubles with another; unable to move out immediately, roommates work out ways of systematically avoiding the other in order to get through to the end of the term or the expiration of a lease. Two examples follow: There were points where I just didn’t want to deal with her, so I just wouldn’t come home. I’d be gone all day, all night . . . I would go out of my way to, like, get out of the house as early as possible so I didn’t have to see her, and come back as late as possible. And then other times, it got to the point where, if she was in the living room watching TV, I would just stay in my room, I’d stay in my room, close my door, and was practically a prisoner in my own room because I didn’t want to see this girl. (RM 73) I started to act differently towards her. I didn’t invite her anywhere with me, I locked my bedroom every day when I left and took the spare key with me; and I asked my supervisor to schedule me on days I knew she wouldn’t be working. (RM 160)

Similarly, Baumgartner (1988:24–25) described how a married couple systematically avoided one another for a period of six months: The Morans are a middle- aged, middle- class couple who live alone. . . . For some years the Morans have quarreled frequently, most often over Mr. Moran’s drinking, which Mrs. Moran views as excessive. Another source of annoyance for Mrs. Moran is what she perceives as her husband’s inattentiveness. Mr. Moran seems to have fewer problems with his spouse’s behavior and initiates fewer arguments. After verbal altercations— or sometimes with just a new annoyance and no discussion—Mrs. Moran inaugurates a state of avoidance. On one occasion, the couple persisted in this state for about six months. Mr. Moran went to work daily, while Mrs. Moran continued to care for the house. Mr. Moran deposited his checks in the couple’s joint checking account, and his wife drew

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 181 on them for household expenses as usual. She continued to prepare and serve meals which the couple ate together, silently. During their time together in the house, the pair exchanged no words and usually withdrew to separate rooms (each had a private bedroom). Each also maximized time outside the home during the evenings and on weekends; they went nowhere together. This state of affairs persisted until an adult child visiting from a distant residence learned of the extent of the situation and successfully intervened.

As this example suggests, systematic distancing often provides an openended and relatively long- term rather than a temporary response to troubles. Sampson, Messinger, and Towne (1962) found that some couples where husbands eventually had their wives committed to mental hospitals had lived together for long periods of time by each creating their own separate world. As they describe this relational process, The husband became increasingly involved in his work or in other interests outside the marital relationship. The wife became absorbed in private concerns about herself and her children. The partners would rarely go out together, rarely participate together in dealing with personal or family problems, and seldom communicate to each other about their more pressing interests, wishes, and concerns. The marriage would continue in this way for some time without divorce, without separation, and without movement toward greater closeness. (90)

In many cases couples sustained these patterns of mutual withdrawal and separation for months and even years (see also Warren 1987).5 In addition, while systematic distancing frequently relies on physical and spatial avoidance, it also requires distinctive interactional practices to limit or neutralize contact with the troublemaker. Thus Lemert (1972:253) found that in organizational settings coworkers came to deal with preparanoid, troublesome others through informal exclusion achieved by means of “spurious interaction.” Such interaction was marked by “patronizing, evasion, ‘humoring,’ guiding conversation onto selected topics, underreaction, and silence, all calculated either to prevent intense interaction, or to protect individual and group values by restricting access to them” (253). Again, such patterns of distancing and exclusion could be sustained for long periods of 5. Hospitalization occurred when these separate worlds collapsed, either because the husband’s “tolerance for deviance” shifted, or because the wife sought increased attention from the husband (Sampson, Messinger, and Towne 1962:91–92).

182 / Chapter Six

time before being ruptured by an “organizational crisis” leading to formal exclusion through transfer, encapsulation, or dismissal (254–57). Distancing and exclusionary practices reflect a conviction that any relationship with the other, beyond incidental and perfunctory contact, is hopeless and impossible. In these ways such distancing differs from situational withdrawal (chapter 3): rather than a limited response to a specific tendency or trouble, distancing involved multifaceted responses implicating a variety of relationships (friends, intimates, family, work) sustained over a period of time. Furthermore, while situational withdrawal is generally isolated to one specific trouble area, leaving the overall relationship with the other more or less intact, systematic distancing involves persistent tension and controlled resentment pervading all aspects of the relationship. Finally, sustained distancing entails significant costs, not simply from the shrinkage of the relationship (Felstiner 1975), but also from the care, effort, and planning that has to go into maintaining social separation in the face of physical proximity: comings and goings have to be carefully calibrated, alternative places to hang out have to be found and cultivated, strategies and tactics have to be developed for managing moments of contact and copresence that cannot be prevented. In this respect distancing is neither low- cost nor easy to implement, and thus while it may appear to be a form of “inaction,” it in fact involves substantial management work and effort (Emerson 2008:507–8). Blowups and Physical Outbursts In contrast to the cold practices of systematic distancing, blowups are heated and confrontational; the troubled party suddenly directs anger and frustration specifically at the other. In some cases, for example, a troubled party put up with the trouble for some time but eventually ran out of patience: My boyfriend was in between leases and needed a place to stay. I asked Cheryl if it was okay, if he could stay with us for two weeks at the most and she said okay. Even if it bothered her she would not have said no. . . . (But) it started to get on her nerves and she kept it all bottled up until she exploded. She got really angry and when someone called for him at 7 in the morning she got really really mad. . . . We talked about it and she was crying and I told her I was sorry and that I thought it was okay with you and now it’s not so he won’t stay here anymore. . . . From then on we started to get on each other’s nerves all the time. (RM 26)

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 183

Here the blowup occurs with a “last straw” incident— a 7:00 a.m. phone call for the visiting boyfriend— that left the accommodating roommate in tears. Although this blowup led to a resolution of the immediate problem when the visiting boyfriend was made to leave, in the long term it marked a negative turning point in this roommate relationship. Similar processes occur in intimate relations. A spouse will tolerate another’s troubling behavior until some recurrence, perhaps no worse than prior incidents, leads to an angry, “emotional outburst” (Kaufmann 2009:143–45). Melody, for example, regularly expresses discontent with her husband’s lack of table manners, insisting that “there’s no way I’m going to put up with things that really offend me; so I never suffer in silence.” Her discontent with his behavior erupts in emotional blowups that she relies on to periodically remind him about how he should behave: When things have just built up to the point of explosion, I’m certainly not going to try and stop it. It takes a huge amount of energy and total conviction to argue with him and persuade him to change his behavior (the insincerity he’s capable of at times makes me lose my temper very quickly). So it’s in my interests to let anger get the upper hand. It’s the quickest way of getting him to change his ways. (2009:144)

In other cases as well, troubled parties employ blowups self- consciously and strategically. Particularly where prior troubles have been tolerated without significant response, a dramatic blowup may be necessary to communicate the degree of upset: He’d do something and I’d ignore it, he’d do something and I’d ignore it and it builds up to a point where one day he’ll do something that would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I would totally blow up, recap all these instances and I’d tell him what effect it has on me and how it makes me feel and what I expect from him from this point on, what I’ll do to change and want him to change in regards to this situation. And he’ll usually buy it, sit there and listen take all these words in and think about it. Or he’ll just sit there and ignore me for all I know. But he’ll sit there quietly until I’m done and that will be it. Then either he or I will leave the room. (RM 23)

Or where prior responses have not had lasting effects, a blowup will dramatize the depth of upset:

184 / Chapter Six A young man living with his family in a Latino area of Los Angeles grew increasingly irritated by the late- night weekend partying and loud music from his neighbor’s back yard. He complained a number of times (the first time, “they cooperated and turned down the volume a little”) and once anonymously called the police, who broke up the party that night. Usually he tried to spend the night at a friend’s house when he saw party preparations. But one night he decided he was not going to leave. After a few hours he put his brother’s 9mm handgun in his belt “so that everyone could see it,” walked over to the party with his brother and “exploded,” making an angry complaint to the DJ witnessed by many of the party goers. “They knew I was upset and turned the music completely off.” (ND 1)

While blowups may bring immediate strategic advantage to the aggrieved party, as in the situations above, the uncontrolled expression of strong negative feelings toward the other may severely damage the relationship. Kaufmann (2009:144) concludes, for example, that “anger, deliciously liberating as it can be, is . . . seldom effective,” making parties less open and more defensive, and tending to provoke more anger in turn. As one woman reported, “Voices are raised and things end up being said which are not easily forgotten.” Indeed, blowups often generate an immediate response from the other, producing animated arguments and perhaps pushes, shoves, or punches between the parties. Recurrently contested issues of control often move quarrels beyond words to such physical exchanges, although the latter seems more commonplace in family and couple relationships than among roommates. Physical violence among roommates usually involved single incidents of brief duration. Consider the following account of a continuing confrontation that eventually led to a physical exchange and a call to the police: Angie shared an apartment with Brenda and two other women. Their relationship had been marked by continuing problems: Angie was regularly upset with Brenda for letting her dishes accumulate in the kitchen for several weeks before cleaning up, while Brenda criticized Angie for not paying her share of the telephone bill on time. The two had had several screaming arguments marked by personal insults and obscenities and the slamming of bedroom doors. Angie gave the following account of their final “fight”: “She had already demolished the kitchen again and had filled the sink with dishes and had others all over the stove and continued for days not to clean it up. There was no way I was going to wait another two weeks to be able

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 185 to cook in the kitchen yet I was afraid to talk to her. So in an attempt to remind her in a discreet and diffusing way (I thought) I wrote a couple of small notes that said, ‘Roommates: Please put your dishes in the dishwasher every day. Be considerate of others.’ And I taped one on the refrigerator and one above the sink. . . . (Later) when I went out to the kitchen to get some water, the notes were gone. So I put up a couple more notes in the same places . . . Brenda saw them and became furious. She called her sister up and told her that I put notes on the refrigerator and that if I did it again she would shove them down my throat. She then cleaned up the kitchen and went to bed. I was pissed off. I put the note up for everyone and I felt like she was trying to intimidate me in my own home. I decided to put up the note again and would continue to do so, I decided, until a week went by without a pigsty kitchen. I went to sleep. “The next morning at 8 am Brenda slammed my door open while I was sleeping, breaking some pieces of wood off my door. She came in screaming, ‘DON’T PUT ANY MORE NOTES UP,’ crumbling and throwing the note on my bed. She continued screaming at me at the top of her lungs as she went into the kitchen. . . . I just pulled my comforter over my head and tried to block out her voice as she was screaming, ‘you’re a deadbeat, a bitch. . . .’ I don’t even know all that she said, my heart was pounding so fast. “When she stopped screaming I decided to stand my ground. I picked up the note and went into the kitchen and said calmly, ‘I can put a note on the fridge if I want to. It’s for everyone.’ As I went to tape it to the fridge, Brenda slammed me against it with both hands and grabbed the note out of my hands and started to shove it in my mouth. She was screaming at me, ‘You can’t harass people like this!’ I was scared so I grabbed the phone right next to me, said ‘I’m calling the police,’ and dialed 911. I told the operator what was happening and Brenda stood there shocked.” [The police came an hour later and wrote up a “preliminary investigation” report alleging battery against Brenda. Angie did not pursue the complaint.] (RM 21)

A struggle for control propelled this confrontation. Angie would not accept a dirty kitchen, and self- consciously resisted being “intimidated” by Brenda’s negative reaction and screaming accusations, reposting her notes two times after Brenda had angrily taken them down. When she did so for a third time, Brenda screamed, “You can’t harass people like this,” and slammed her into the refrigerator. Frightened, Angie immediately called the police. A similar struggle for control underlies the following brief violent exchange between male roommates:

186 / Chapter Six A student described David, one of his apartment mates, as “emotional” and “controlling.” “It got personal, when he told me what to do and when he wanted to know about my family life and personal things; then it got kinda scary.” David would frequently “barge” into his room and refuse to leave. “Okay, so what happens is (laughs)—I know it sounds petty and ridiculous, but it was really heart- wrenching for me. . . . He came in the room and we were exchanging words and finally he went out and slammed the door and he just decided, well, if we’re not gonna cooperate and do what he wants, then he’s gonna do what he wants. So he turned on the radio full blast and then we went in the living room and we turned it off. And then he turned it up again. So that went on like two or three times— cuz I wanted to step out, to show my confidence, show I can stand up to this guy, that it’s not gonna work, what he’s tryin to do. It made me feel better when I stood up to him correctly, cuz that was my problem and I felt that if I just tackled it head on that would end it. As I turned down the radio we exchanged some words again. And then he pushed me or something so I turned around and socked him in the shoulder. And he backed off.” (RM 28)

Here, as the argument develops, the troubled party comes to feel that he must “show I can stand up to this guy,” does not back off when this other continues to act in antagonistic ways, and ups the push he received by throwing a punch. This incident, combined with his subsequent retaliatory behavior, eventually led the other roommates to “kick out” the offending other. In these situations we see one- shot violence as growing out of perceived threats to “face” or “honor.” Indeed, the escalation of troubles can generate tremendous frustration, anger, and ill will on both sides, leading not only to violence, but also to killings. Luckenbill (1977:179) found that encounters that ultimately led to criminal homicides involved “character contests” that typically began with a “disparaging and interactionally disruptive” act performed by the eventual “victim” and defined by the “offender” as an intentional offense to “face.” The latter then issued a “retaliatory challenge,” which the former accepted, leading to a “working agreement” to use violence to settle the matter, the violence then leading to the death of the victim. Katz (1988:18–19) has analyzed hot- blooded, “righteous” killings as beginning with the killer interpreting another’s behavior as “attacking what he . . . regards as an eternal value,” and framing the situation as “a last stand in defense of his basic worth.” While in both of the above instances the troubled parties came to see personal necessity in standing up to the other, the violence that resulted

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 187

was brief and contained— a single shove or punch to which the other did not respond with further violence. If and when the other does respond in kind, the violence can lead to a two- sided “fight.”6 Indeed, some physical confrontations and emotional outbursts between male roommates were mutually escalated into planned “fights”: He was going away for the weekend and I was sleeping when he was going and he took some of my stuff. He took my hairbrush, my cologne and my hat and he didn’t even ask. So as soon as he came back I pushed him and I said, “I’m tired of this shit, when’s it going to stop?” And he was grumpy so, he pushed me back and said, “Look, if you want to fight let’s go, right now.” I said, “Okay.” So we threw a couple punches and that was it. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word no and I hate it. (RM 6)

In these situations, brief physical violence seems to serve as a way of dealing with pent- up resentments and frustrations. The violence is mutual, confined within definite limits, and ends quickly; the relationship picks up without serious consequences. Similar patterns mark what has been termed “common couple violence” (M. P. Johnson 1995; Collins 2008). As Michael P. Johnson (1995:286) emphasizes, this form of violence “is an intermittent response to the occasional conflicts of everyday life, motivated by a need to control in the specific situation.” Collins (2008:141–42) observes that such violence may occur fairly frequently, is not usually very severe, and involves “routine quarrels, raised voices, and heated expressions, escalating to slapping, shoving, and grabbing”; “severity does not rise over time, implying that it is routinized, something that happens repeatedly without destroying the relationship”; it “implies a balance of power between the parties.” National surveys have found that women use such violence against their spouses as frequently as men do, that the frequency of such violence is low, and that “minor violence against women does not escalate into more serious forms of violence” (Collins 2008:285–86). Common couple violence, then, arises out of the “range of conflict and control tactics” developed by specific couples rather than as a mechanism to enforce “general control over one’s partner” (291, 287).

6. Jackson-Jacobs (2013:31) analyzes how fights between white, suburban males are organized, locating the initial step in a “provocation challenge” to “one’s body and identity” that led one party to propose a fight, often followed by “several turns of challenge and counterchallenge,” referred to as “talking shit,” with the other eventually agreeing to this proposal.

188 / Chapter Six

Punitive Actions Troubled parties who feel wronged may turn to actively punitive responses. Punitive responses involve unilateral actions intended to injure or harm the other, and while in some instances such actions may be seen as possible deterrents to further wrongdoing, this is often only a secondary consideration. In many cases troubled parties undertake punitive actions secretly, leaving open the option of official denial. Hiding responsibility in this way may allow the troubled party to combine punishing the other with efforts to unilaterally correct the trouble, as illustrated by this account of a neighbor dispute: In a suburban Californian hillside neighborhood, where a covenant prohibited building or planting that would mar any neighbor’s view, Keith planted three small peach trees next to the fence separating his property from that of Susie and her husband. A year or so later the trees had begun to block Susie’s view, and she went to Keith and complained. Keith responded that he had planted the trees for privacy, and for him this had priority over their view. But “he promised not to let them grow any taller.” By the next summer the trees completely obscured their view, and although the couple “in turn begged, pleaded, brought up the covenants, and threatened law suits,” Keith still refused to trim the trees. When Susie confronted him about his promise to keep the trees at a low level, he responded: “that’s the way you perceived it.” One night, her husband, looking out their bedroom window and seeing absolutely nothing through the trees, “went berserk; he drove to the all- night drugstore, bought poison, and poured it all around the three bushy trees. It worked! One month later, one of the trees died and the other two didn’t look so good.” (ND 2)7

In other cases the troubled party’s action tries to mirror the other’s misconduct, seeking deliberate “payback” to a reprehensible wrongdoer in a way that combines punishment with the possibility of correction. Consider the later stages of persisting trouble between Alice and Janelle, who roomed together in a suite with two other girls. Alice described in detail how Janelle had hostilely rejected several polite requests to be quieter and more considerate about going to bed at night and getting up in the morning, then 7. The account continues that word got back to Keith about the poisoning; he called the police and filed a complaint in the local family court.

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 189

avoided meeting with the dorm resident assistant to discuss the problem. Alice continued: Since I couldn’t get the RA to come over or intervene, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I started being really, really loud. Where I used to be considerate . . . like planning out what I was going to wear, putting it into the bathroom so that I would make less noise in the morning . . . I would make these processes so noisy that I would awaken her. I would actually keep making noise until she said something to let me know she was awake. I got great satisfaction from this. After all, she was keeping me awake all night so I would wake her up extra early. Then I would turn on the overhead light and blowdry my hair in the room instead of in the bathroom. This really pissed her off! I went all the way. I bought an outlet for my phone and talked on it all night. I would ask my friends to call for no reason, just to tie up the line so that she couldn’t talk to her boyfriend. (RM 48)

Here Alice uses the failure of the dorm official to handle the problem to justify her decision to “take matters into my own hands,” deliberately making noise and disturbing her roommate in the mornings. She presents these actions as tit- for- tat retribution for her roommate’s offensive behavior, morally justified on the grounds that “I’m not doing anything to her that she had not already done to me.” And although Alice emphasizes the punitive intent of her actions and the “great satisfaction” she experienced in doing them, on their surface the acts are deniable as wrongdoing and perhaps might have a remedial effect. Unilateral payback also marked an ongoing dispute between neighbors in a suburban community. A neighbor who lived next to a house undergoing extended remodeling had filed multiple complaints with the city planning department, zoning commission, animal control agency, and police. In response the ex-Marine boyfriend who had come to live with the daughter of the remodeling family surreptitiously sabotaged the neighbor’s swimming pool. As the neighbor reported, Six weeks later [after a near- violent confrontation with the boyfriend on the street in front of the houses] I come out to my pool and it’s completely green! At first I figure that some kind of rain or something from the plants got into the pool and screwed up the water, but it was just too green. (You think the neighbors had something to do with it?) Oh yeah, I found out later that the punk was in the military. When I had the pool drained, the pool guy told me

190 / Chapter Six it was a sea dye marker used by the Marines and Navy. . . . That cost me $200 to clean the pool and another $250 to have the walls scraped and resurfaced. (Did you call the cops?) Oh yeah, they came out and questioned him. They even looked through the garage for anything incriminating. The kid’s a real good fucking actor because they left with just a report. (ND 11)8

Other punitive responses abandon concerns about correcting or even preserving the relationship and instead seek solely to put out or harm the other, sometimes by obscuring responsibility for the act, sometimes overtly proclaiming it. Consider, for example, the disguised, covert retribution reported by a student who had been unable to remedy the use of Rogaine and a series of other offending smells produced by his roommate: We had a class together at 8 am and Mike couldn’t ever wake up to his own alarm. He relied on mine and the noise I would make to wake him up. So since I always seem to wake up before my alarm, I would turn it off and quietly slip out to class. I would laugh later when I would see him come into class a half hour late knowing that he hadn’t showered or Rogained. (RM 138)

Here a grievance with a roommate led to an act intended to deliberately inconvenience him— a response motivated by feelings of frustrated ill will and revenge (yet feelings still hidden from the other). In most of the instances considered to this point, intentionally punitive responses were carried out either secretly or under the guise of normal activities. Although the other either came to know or strongly suspect who was responsible, or sensed the hostility behind ostensibly normal inconveniencing, the punitive party publicly maintained a stance of innocence. In contrast, some troubled parties engage in punitive acts that can be unequivocally connected to them; in so acting the troubled parties abandon entirely any concern to avoid antagonizing the other and to mend the troubled relationship. Consider the denouement of the trouble between Alice and Janelle:

8. The daughter of the other family described this encounter with the police: “The cops pulled Bill aside and questioned him for about twenty minutes, then they searched the garage with his permission. He was smooth . . . I still didn’t know what was going on. . . . But they explained it to all of us and Bill just kept a perfectly calm and straight face. When they left I let him have it. I knew he did it and I knew what it was, he had mentioned it before and I told him absolutely not, this was not a solution. Get this, not only did he admit it to me, he told me that he had a whole plethora of tricks planned. Revenge he called it. I just wanted him to stop, I didn’t want to see him go to jail” (ND 11).

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 191 In response to Alice’s pay- back lack of consideration, Janelle had sex with her boyfriend on Alice’s bed one weekend when Alice was away, “leaving behind the evidence of what they had done.” “It was so disgusting, I had to get my comforter dry cleaned. Why in and on my bed? Now she was being destructive to my things . . . I went to my RA and then to the RD. She thought that Janelle had indeed gone too far. So an appointment was set up for the four of us to talk, but Janelle never showed up. Then she went home after the Christmas vacation, and I guess as far as the RA and the RD were concerned it was over. They never made efforts after that to talk to her, so this problem is mine to deal with. I think I got her pretty good though because now when I leave for the weekend I leave painful reminders on my side of the room . . . like putting needles in my bed. I took my sheets home, but I put needles in my mattress in case she decides to get it on over in my bed again. When I came back the first time, I noticed a big scratch on her arm so I don’t know if I can take credit, but I haven’t seen any evidence of her being on my side of the room anymore.” (RM 48)

Here Alice begins by recounting Janelle’s new offense— leaving traces of having had sex on Alice’s bed in her absence. Alice interprets this act as deliberate wrongdoing directed at her; why else use her bed, and why else leave the resulting mess? She supports her sense of outrage by citing the RD’s comment that Janelle had “gone too far.” Citing continued official inaction, she moves to the deliberately punitive strategy of sticking needles in her mattress to injure the other when going away. Sticking needles in a mattress can be intended not simply to harm, but also to deter the other. And indeed, in many situations there will be no clear distinction between punishing as an end in itself and punishing with some hope that the other might change their behavior. But often such hopes seemed incidental to the unrestrained expression of frustration and anger. In this respect punitive actions involve an essentially different dynamic than accommodative and corrective responses: punitive responses are driven by openly moralistic concerns and employ relationship- denying actions intended get back at and harm a “wrongdoer” (Emerson 2011). Overt Control, Restriction, and Violence Finally, under some circumstances troubled parties act in openly controlling ways, imposing one- sided restrictions and using deceit, threats, and coercion to restrain the behavior and situation of an uncooperative and perhaps

192 / Chapter Six

resistant other. In these cases the troubled parties experience the trouble as uncorrectable by all available “normal remedies” previously attempted, this intractability seen as necessitating and justifying the use of more severe but deeply problematic responses (Emerson 1981). Here I first consider trouble responses that use restraint, augmented on occasion by physical force, as situated, focused control devices. I then turn to more systematic uses of restraint and force in controlling troubles. Focused Restraint and Coercion

Some troubled parties come to rely on restraint and coercion as control mechanisms for dealing with specific situations where the other refuses to act in desired ways. Troubled parties turn to such instrumental uses of restraint and force if and when the other resists pleas and moral suasion to abandon his or her troubling ways and refuses to cooperate in some kind of compromise arrangement. These responses involve clear- cut acts of unilateral control, marked by open assertions of power and authority to prescribe or limit the behavior of the other. Restraint typically involves unilateral changes imposed on the environment of the troubling party. In some cases the troubled party controls the other’s physical environment by means of locks and keys: separating couples who continue to live together in circumstances of deep distrust may place padlocks on their refrigerators, bedroom doors, and storage cupboards to deny the other access to their space and possessions. Parents of children with eating disorders like the Prader-Willi syndrome may similarly place locks on the family refrigerator and all other places where food is stored. Teenagers and family members with Alzheimer’s may be restricted to a bedroom or dwelling by dead bolts or padlocks. Driving may be prohibited by limiting access to car keys. Clearly all these measures reflect fundamental distrust— the troubling other, despite assurances of good behavior, cannot be counted on to honor announced limits and restrictions, and must be restrained in nonnegotiable, physical, and one- sided ways. One result, of course, is frequent evasion or manipulation of these restrictions. Teenagers seem particularly adept in these areas: climbing out of bedroom windows, finding hidden car keys or making copies of keys, and not returning home after school or from authorized outings are common ways of avoiding parental efforts at restraint. Similarly, in the following case, a sixteen- year- old girl ultimately incarcerated as incorrigible describes how she worked around the restrictions imposed by her grandmother, who routinely locked all the doors at night and kept the keys on a chain around her waist in order to keep her home:

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 193 m ar a .

I would sneak out of the house . . . she [grandmother] watches movies

on the floor on the mat, and she falls asleep . . . she likes holding me when she sleeps— like I’m her teddy bear . . . when she fell asleep . . . I acted like I had fallen asleep . . . I pushed the hook, and I pulled it off . . . I held the keys with me . . . I wiggled away from her . . . and she just turned back over. I had the keys and I ran to the back door, and I unlocked the door, and I came running back and I um I slipped them on her and . . . I’ll just act like I’ll turn on my t.v. in my room . . . and I’ll go to the back door, and I’ll just leave for like two or three hours and she won’t even know I’m gone, she’ll be asleep, and I’ll come back— and I’ll— get the keys again and lock the door, and she’ll still be asleep. (C. P. Davis 2007:418)

Under some circumstances troubled parties will go beyond such physical restraints to employ direct physical force to control the troubling other. Of course using force in this way requires that one have some sort of physical superiority over the other, who may well respond in kind. Thus parents can use physical force to restrain and control small children— an approach that becomes less of an option as children grow and become stronger. But as Goffman (1971:368–69) emphasizes, home situations do not easily allow for the use of physical force as a routine mechanism to control another’s behavior. One adaptation is to mobilize a number of family members to physically control the behavior of the troubling other, as in the following account from a seventeen- year- old teenage girl whose family attempted to blockade her in the house to keep her from going out at night: monica .

I remember one night, they [friends] came to pick me up and—I

was— running down the stairs to go out of the house— my aunt was blocking one door, my dad was blocking the other, and my grandma was blocking one—I said okay, you know, who do I go for— so, I went—I went to try to go through the door my grandma was at— and it ended up—I didn’t hit her, but it ended up, I pushed her— out of the way— to go out there, because they’re [friends] honking, I’m like “shit, I wanna get high, oh my god,”— next thing I know, my dad has me by my hair on the floor, “you fucking little bitch— don’t you ever hit my mother,” you know— so it was really bad— so I ended up not going out that night. (C. P. Davis 2007:417)

The use of physical force often elicits force in return, a process that, as in this case, can quickly escalate the seriousness of the trouble: here the father called the police, who reframed the push as a “battery” that eventually led to reform school incarceration.

194 / Chapter Six

Monica’s account suggests an important but often blurry distinction between instrumental and punitive uses of force: the family’s blocking efforts were instrumental, using force for a specific control purpose— keeping Monica from going out with her friends. Her father’s subsequent knocking her down and grabbing her by her hair is both instrumental— a threat to keep her from hitting her grandmother in the future— and punitive— payback for having done so on this occasion. Instrumental uses of force are typically planned and are justified by the change in behavior that they achieve; they are not intended to hurt the other, although of course harm may occur.

Systematic Restraint and Force It is difficult for families and households, let alone for those in more diffused interpersonal relationships, to systematically use restraint and force as means of controlling another. As Goffman (1971:368) has argued regarding the family’s response to mental illness, The simple fact is that when an offender is disapproved of and punished, and warned what will happen if he persists, it is tacitly assumed that he will be sufficiently committed to the life of the group, and to sustaining those who presume authority in it, to voluntarily take the sanction to heart and, whether in good grace or bad, desist from the particular offense. If the family offender elects not to heed the warning, there is then really nothing effective that can be done to him. Sheer manhandling that is not responded to by tacit cooperation requires the full effort of at least two strong adults and even then can only be managed in brief spurts— long enough to remove someone from a house, but not much longer.

However, in addition to the situations of small children who if need be can usually be manhandled by available adults, there are a number of exceptional trouble situations that are more or less systematically controlled by unilateral force. First, some couple relationships generate the distinctively asymmetrical and systematic regimes of intimate violence that Michael P. Johnson (1995) terms “patriarchal” or “intimate terrorism,” which are marked by serious physical injury and/or an ongoing atmosphere of threats. As Johnson (1995:287) notes, “In these families the beatings occur on average more than once a week, and escalate in seriousness over time. The violence is almost exclusively initiated by the husband, most wives never attempt to fight back, and, among those who do, about one- third quickly desist, leav-

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 195

ing only a small minority of cases in which the women respond with even self- defensive violence.” Patriarchal terrorism thus represents a sustained effort employed by men, using threats, intimidation, and force to impose domination and control over their wives.9 These practices can produce sustained compliance and cooperation, in this way overcoming the difficulties Goffman noted in using force as a primary control mechanism in intimate relations ordinarily based on trust. Second, a radical decline in a troublemaker’s cognitive capacities may allow troubled parties to implement more or less systematic restraint, backed by occasional use of physical force, as a means of routine control. The management regimes of Alzheimer’s family caregivers— that is, the regularly used and coordinated sets of family practices for responding to and controlling known, anticipated troubles— provide a case in point. While caregivers’ preferred responses to such problematic behavior involve immediate correction, “reminding,” “talking to,” and other forms of moral suasion (Blum 1994), more direct and systematic control measures are implemented as troubles proliferate. In particular, the family member’s behavior comes to be constantly and closely monitored: I have my system. I have an electronic eye that goes off when she moves out of bed. And Neddy put a peep- hole in the bathroom, that was when she could be in the bathroom by herself, and we would see what she would do. . . . So I had the electronic eye, and the intercom, one in her room, one in the kitchen, and one out here. So I’ve moved that around with me a lot, that’s been very helpful. (AFC 313)

Such monitoring allows the caregiver to keep abreast of what the person with Alzheimer’s is up to, but assumes that the caregiver has time and means to intervene quickly should something go wrong. Where the person with Alzheimer’s cannot be trusted to stay put, monitoring practices will be supplemented by physical restraints. For example, a spouse may use childproof door locks to make sure the other does not leave the car at inopportune moments during outings, or install dead bolts in order to keep the other who gets lost from getting out of the house in the first place: I noticed, he was going to the mailbox in the mornings 3 and 4 times, within 10 minutes of each other. So I’d watch him and I’d catch him at it, so I put the 9. Collins (2008:141–48) distinguishes two additional subtypes of patriarchal terrorism— “severe forward panics” and “terroristic torture regimes.”

196 / Chapter Six locks on the door. I felt, well, ambivalent, but I felt better having the locks on the door. I could relax then, he wasn’t going to get out. He ran off and fell by the mailbox once, because there’s that little dip in the driveway. (AFC 309)

Finally, management regimes may ultimately depend on the instrumental use of force, not on a continuous basis but as a last resort backup measure when persuasion fails and the troubled party resists cooperating in actions that the caregiver desires. Although reported by a number of Alzheimer’s caregivers, the use of force was most common among men caring for their afflicted wives, as in the following case: And uh— but then getting her dressed— you ever try to put pantyhose on a lady that didn’t want ’em on (both laugh)? (I: Can’t say I’ve done that!) . . . I use (Depend) and there’s three tapes on each side that have to be taped and I had to chase her all over the house! She wouldn’t stand still so I could fasten these tapes! And it’s pretty hard to fasten them when she’s runnin’ away from you! Sometimes I could force her into a corner, get my shoulder against her and hold her in a corner long enough to fasten the tape, and uh, then didn’t have too much trouble. . . . Many a time I’ve pinned her to the wall with my shoulder, and boy she’d scream and, I’d scream but— she called me dirty names and everything trying to get loose and I wouldn’t let her. (AFC 116)

Here force is presented as the only— or at least as the most effective— way to overcome the implacable resistance to an essential act of bodily care. The resulting action is nakedly one- sided and aggressive, a coercive, unilaterally imposed control that often turns the relationship, at least at that moment, into open one- on- one warfare. In sum, restraint and overt control may well encounter resistance by the other and require further escalation, including the use of physical force in ways that increase the likelihood of violent reactions by the other. Troubled parties justify these distinctly unilateral and restrictive responses on the grounds that the other will not (or cannot) participate in cooperative processes for dealing with the trouble.

Response Cycles Interpersonal troubles develop not simply through particular episodes of trouble, response, and reaction by the other, but also through a sequenced series of such episodes extending over time. However, these sequences do not necessarily involve regular and distinct progressive stages. Troubles do not

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 197

invariably move from milder to more serious interpretations and responses. Troubled parties may not only resolve or accommodate to troubles, but also shift back and forth between different framings and responses— for instance, implementing unilateral managerial responses after direct complaints and corrective appeals have not worked. Furthermore, some troubled parties immediately frame troubles in terms of rules and infractions, and/ or directly confront the other with accusations of misconduct as a first response, in these ways treating the trouble right from the start as a matter of wrongdoing; these initial responses, however, may subsequently lead to joint discussions to resolve the trouble. Yet overall, parties in relational troubles display a preference for initial responses that avoid or minimize direct blaming, moralistic and rule- oriented framings, and highly confrontational accusations. In most cases the turn to these more relationally risky responses follows the failure of efforts to deal with the trouble in modulated, nonconfrontational, and nonevaluative ways. Thus I am not proposing a natural history of relational troubles marked by regular progression and distinct stages; rather I seek to highlight the relational significance of trouble interpretations and responses that are conciliatory in implication, and to appreciate the ways in which distinctly accusatory and punitive responses often grow out of the failure of efforts to deal with troubles in conciliatory fashion. In these terms, it is helpful to reconstruct the long- term movement of troubles through distinct response cycles, using this concept as an ideal- type analytic device to facilitate analysis of how troubles emerge and are transformed over time.10 Response cycles involve sequences of trouble, responses by the troubled party and some reaction by the troubling party, then renewed or continuing trouble generating further responses and reactions (Emerson 2008:500). The concept of “response cycles” is particularly useful for analyzing how the long- term trajectories of troubles and responses vary in direction and pacing: some response cycles 10. I use the term “response cycle” rather than Goffman’s (1971:348–51) term “corrective cycle,” since not all trouble responses are corrective (i.e., aimed at changing the other’s troubling behavior). As an analytic device, “response cycle” both mirrors and differs in several significant ways from how troubled parties themselves understand and talk about these matters. A response cycle reconstructs in a sustained, coherent manner the understandings of and responses to a trouble; troubled parties, in contrast, tend to depict changes in responses in partial and occasioned ways keyed to a current trouble situation. Troubled parties, for example, may identify a current response as “escalation” by contrasting it with a specific prior response, or buttress a direct complaint by “recapping” for the other several prior occasions on which the troubling action had been ignored (see the roommate account of a “last straw” incident above, RM 23). Furthermore, since what the trouble is, how it first appeared, and what has been done about it are reinterpreted over time, troubled parties’ notions of how they initially understood and responded to the trouble are also subject to change.

198 / Chapter Six

are marked by rapid and continuing escalation; in others troubles persist and fester in more or less stable fashion; and yet others eventually end with some kind of resolution. In what follows I examine these variations and the transformations in interpersonal troubles they involve. Troubles escalate rapidly in serious and sometimes violent directions not simply because of the failure of prior responses, but also and often more critically because of overt resistance to new, more serious responses. Such resistance renders the trouble intractable to routine, preferred responses, increasing pressure to turn to more extreme responses. For example, an apartment resident who had made modulated complaints about loud music a number of times previously knocked on the door of the offending unit and offered an indignant complaint, only to be told: “It’s my place and I can play my music!” Faced with this intransigent position, the troubled party abandoned hope that informal responses would have any effect, and instead complained to the landlord and ultimately to the police. Of course, there were other options— accepting noise disruption as part of one’s daily life, or looking to move; but escalating to accusatory complaints to outsiders offered a more active response. Or resistance in the form of a countercomplaint may expand the boundaries of the trouble: in a student apartment, repeated requests to be compensated for overdraft charges arising when roommates failed to provide their share of the utility bill were countered by refusals to pay based on the complainant’s regular failing to clean the kitchen (RM 19). In this way two previously separate issues become joined, adding depth and complexity to efforts to work out the trouble. As troubles escalate through a number of rounds as more serious responses are attempted and resisted, several further changes occur that reinforce hostility and opposition. First, troubled parties may come to feel that the other does not share their taken- for- granted intersubjective world. The failure of repeated, explicit complaints to produce change in the other’s behavior, for example, may well promote a sense that the other does not even notice one’s presence: With music . . . he plays the guitar and sometimes I would be studying in the living room and he would come out during his study break and play and it seems like he doesn’t seem to notice that I’m there. . . . Regardless of what other people are doing in the apartment, he’s pretty much there to do what he has to do: study, take his break and then go back to studying. Regardless of whether you’re there or not, he’ll just do it. Sometimes this creates conflict because I may be studying and he would come out and grab the electric guitar and turn up the volume decently high. . . . To me there’s no call for that and

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 199 sometimes, it just gets on my nerves. That seems to occur over and over again. I guess it just never occurs to him that I may be studying or that someone else may be studying for that matter. (RM 23)

In other instances the sense that one is not there for the other arises specifically from the latter’s failure to respond to or even acknowledge persistent complaints. Edwards (1995:340), for example, presents this complaint from the wife of an English couple about her husband: He just doesn’t ever listen to me. He laughs or he says, oh don’t be so stupid, or that’s nonsense. And I say if I don’t wanna do something I don’t wanna do it. I don’t wanna. Or he’ll say, of course you like it. No, I don’t. Well of course you do, that’s stupid if you don’t like that.

Second, frustration may take on an increasingly angry edge. Sometimes these feelings lead troubled parties to imagine elaborate revenge fantasies focused on the other. For example, a roommate reported: The first two weeks after this event I had such rage that little ideas kept popping into my head about how I could get back at her. Like swish her toothbrush in the toilet bowl, or hide her drivers’ license. Once when she was eating I thought, “I wish she would just choke then I wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore.” I kind of laughed off these thoughts with a sense of humor. I knew I definitely had reason to be extremely angry. I think these fantasies helped to disperse the anger I felt for Brenda until it was nearly completely gone. I still don’t like her too much but we’ve been getting along alot better lately. (RM 21)

Similarly, an apartment dweller recurrently bothered by a neighbor working with power tools in a backyard plastic tent at all hours of the day and night reported: Well, if he really really messes with you, god, it takes just a little knife to cut plastic. You can do stuff about it. Yeah, but at least you know you could do that. But if it came really down to it, yeah you do something. You can throw something on top of the tent and watch it fall. The room is plastic so it can be easily damaged so you throw a two by four up there and watch it come down. Who’s going to see you, you in your backyard basically so you go out there at 2 in the morning and you kind of whip it over there. [Having those options available] makes me feel better. (Rivera 1991:28)

200 / Chapter Six

These feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment, while not acted on, may eventually take responses cycles in extreme, explosive directions. One such direction is toward strongly accusatory complaints, which may qualitatively change the response cycle. Response cycles, of course, do not inevitably escalate toward more serious responses and outcomes, as an upward trajectory may well be shortcircuited, either early on or even after a series of response efforts. Shortcircuiting takes a variety of forms. First, it may occur because a new, more serious response goes unrecognized and hence unappreciated as an “escalation” by the other. Among college roommates, hiding objects so that they cannot be borrowed or used, more sustained or strategic avoidance of the other, and collusive arrangements with friends to exclude an unwanted roommate from the evening’s social plans often involve escalated responses that go unnoted by the troubling party. Troubling parties may also fail to recognize new responses as significant changes from past ones. The barely suppressed anger and frustration underlying a renewed complaint, for example, may not register with the other as something qualitatively different from prior complaints. Consider again this slovenly student’s discussion of his difficulties in reading how upset his roommate has become, discussed earlier in chapter 4: Dan is pretty quiet and reserved so I never know when he is or isn’t upset. He is so easy going that I didn’t even think he could get upset, so I didn’t know that these things were really bothering him that much. I thought he didn’t mind just like I don’t. . . . I thought if he was really that upset he would eventually bring it up so we could discuss it instead of him just mentioning things every once in a while. (RM 75)

One consequence, of course, is that troubled parties may need to dramatize to the other the increased significance they accord to a new response (see the strategic use of blowups above). Second, short- circuiting of the response cycle occurs when the troubled party gives up and decides to live with the trouble, abandoning further response efforts— at least for a while (see chapter 4). Third, if disturbing behavior continues in the face of expressed disapproval, with neither party backing down, the response cycle sometimes stabilizes into a form of ritual relational conflict. Here the parties incorporate both the disturbing behavior and the standard responses to it into their relational routines. Kaufmann (2009), for example, found that some couples fix and regularize mutual expressions of irritations into an enduring “reper-

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 201

toire” that is for the most part “carefully kept under control.” I have already examined the persisting, usually tacit struggles between a married couple over the correct temperature for washing clothes (see chapter 4). Leon and Madeleine provide a further example, reenacting this battle every night for several years: They have two chairs, one on either side of the bed, on which they each put their clothes once they have got undressed. The result is a similarly untidy heap of clothes on each side. This irritates both of them, but for different reasons. When Leon looks at his wife’s chair, it reminds him of the general state of untidiness of the house and therefore irritates him. Madeleine finds her husband’s sidelong glances and cutting comments extremely annoying. She can put up with them as long as they remain general, but she regards her chair as her personal space. “It’s none of his business.” Leon is also irritated by his own chair, entertaining secret fantasies that Madeleine will suddenly turn into a domestic goddess. But the distinctly undomestic goddess Madeleine resents this and finds it intolerable. “If he doesn’t like it, why doesn’t he do something about it himself?” A rebuff which reminds Leon of the contradiction in his own mind, torn as he is between wanting everything to be neat and tidy and not wanting to do anything about it himself. . . . Yet the ritual endures. “We get it off our chests” (Leon). Some evenings it veers toward light comedy. Leon and Madeleine exchange their usual replies in a good- humored manner, without paying too much attention to each other’s remarks, ready to laugh at the situation themselves. On other evenings, passions run deeper and things can take a more dramatic turn, though without ever degenerating into tragedy or being dragged out into endless angry exchanges. (Kaufmann 2009:97)

Similar ritualized, mutual conflict may become established among roommates: It seemed like he always had to have his way. He probably says the same thing. He says that I’m too opinionated and he’s right but I can say the same thing about him too. The only thing I remember was when he was studying and I came in. I shut the door a little too hard and he said, “Can you shut the door like a normal human being?” And I said, “If you can act like a normal human being.” We just exchanged comments like that. (RM 24)

In these instances the response cycle in effect becomes stuck, as mutual recriminations occur again and again.

202 / Chapter Six

Finally, response cycles may come to a temporary or permanent halt when some resolution for the trouble situation is produced. New responses, particularly upgraded ones, may succeed and end the trouble, as stronger displays of upset may ultimately prove effective. Consider the following example: Two women students had been recurrently bothered by a neighbor playing his guitar loudly at late hours. For several months they responded by banging on the wall, which led the neighbor to lower the volume. Dissatisfied, they eventually complained directly to the neighbor, who agreed to play at a lower volume and not to play after 10 pm. “For a while this seemed to work and then eventually he reverted to his former ways.” Up late one night to study for mid- term exams, they were distracted by his loud music, but received no answer after knocking on his door to complain. The next day they went with another neighbor to complain to the owner of the building. Under pressure from the owner, the musician agreed not to play after 9 pm. “And he has kept his promise.” (ND 5)

With this “successful” outcome the response cycle reaches at least a temporary conclusion. However, many “resolutions” prove to be only temporary, producing what turns out to have been only a momentary pause in the response cycle. The troubling party, for example, may verbally accept a complaint and agree to change, but then fail to follow through. This was a common outcome for many noise complaints: a promise to play music at a lower volume is honored for a while, but then the noise level begins moving up again. Similar problems may arise with agreements not to wear a roommate’s clothes without permission: At the beginning she complied with our agreement, but later on she’d take things without asking and she’d even sometimes hide my things from me when she’d wear them— and it really irritated me. Once I bought some new stuff, and even hid it; she found the new things, took the tags off them and wore them, then denied doing so when I confronted her about it. (RM 9)

Unless the troubled party decides to accommodate or to end the relationship, these responses leave the trouble unresolved and festering. Response cycles, then, allow us to represent the broader movement of troubles in different directions and at different tempos through a variety of transformations. While we are particularly drawn to more dramatic trans-

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 203

formations and more serious outcomes, it is important to also consider the ways in which response cycles may get stuck or even peter out as troubles are stabilized, resolved, or avoided.

Conclusion This chapter has analyzed how interpersonal troubles move toward more severe responses. Failure of prior responses to handle the trouble propels this movement, which accelerates if these responses are met with open and sustained resistance. From the point of view of the troubled party, response failure and explicit resistance to remedial efforts reduce options for dealing with the trouble: cooperative and conciliatory responses lose viability, and ending the relationship or implementing measures of systematic avoidance may be considered. But more frequently, troubled parties respond by turning to more confrontational responses— direct accusations or openly punitive or restrictive responses— that increase the risk of alienating the other. Accusations offer a pointed and forceful condemnation of the other’s behavior. While earlier responses generally minimize confrontation, treating troubles as normal differences between people, accusations attempt to reframe the trouble as a matter of wrongdoing by the other. In reversing prior practices of normalizing and accommodating, accusations intensify the moral accent given to troubles, and indeed moralize troubles by explicitly blaming and condemning the other. Accusations elaborate explicit moral evaluations of the other’s actions, framing these actions as normative violation and oneself as a victim of these transgressions. In this fashion accusations not only delegitimate the other’s claims or interests, but also transform the vocabularies of motive used to characterize the other’s actions (Mills 1940), recasting these actions not as unintended or incidental but as products of deliberate ill will.11 Extreme responses move beyond simply increasing the risk of alienating the other to implement actions that are directly oppositional and/or openly restrictive in character. These responses abandon the concern with “fixing” the relationship by getting the other to change the troubling behavior and 11. In contrast to the processes of gradual moralization depicted here, some troubles may be moralized almost immediately; rule- oriented and/or highly moralized responses may occur with little or no prior remedial efforts, as in “hot blooded” homicides (Katz 1988; Luckenbill 1977) and violent expressions of road rage (Katz 1999). But even these dramatic and often violent events, where issues of “honor” become primary, are marked by distinctive sequences of confrontation and escalation; each has a “history” of interpretation and attempted response, although one compressed into a single, often brief interactional occasion.

204 / Chapter Six

are distinctly unilateral in focus and action. Openly punitive actions are likely to antagonize the other and generate hostile reactions in response. While controlling and restrictive responses are often presented as in the best interest of the other, they tend to generate at least occasional resistance and heightened hostility. Troubled parties turn to extreme responses on experiencing a trouble as intractable— that is, as irresolvable through the use of “normal” remedial measures. Troubles are not inherently intractable, then, but take on that quality with sustained resistance to corrective measures by the troubling party. In some cases such resistance involves failure to acknowledge and change offensive behavior and is interpreted as wrongdoing. In other cases resistance is viewed as a product of dementia, limited mental capacity, mental illness, and the like. Here troublemakers come to be viewed not as wrongdoers but as disabled or incompetent in some basic fashion and hence needing to be directed, controlled, and restrained, sometimes by force. Intractability— sustained resistance to fixing the trouble— not only generates a deep sense that more extreme and one- sided responses are necessary and appropriate, but also leads the troubled party toward increasingly negative assessments of the other’s ontological character. In many cases, the troubled party comes to experience the other not simply as someone who acts badly on occasion but as a person who is fundamentally a wrongdoer. This perception, of course, justifies turning to extreme responses; the goal is no longer fixing a problematic relationship but preventing oneself from being insulted, harmed, or dominated by a transgressing other. In other cases the troubling party comes to be defined as someone lacking in the basic ability or inclination to behave appropriately in everyday matters; as a result their daily routines have to be supervised, manipulated, and restricted. Intractable wrongdoers deserve harm or punishment; the intractably disabled are not generally seen as deliberately offensive, but as needing close supervision and control. Relying on responses that attempt to punish or control an intractable other has another significant consequence— an increase in the use of physical force and the likelihood of violence. While a number of analyses of violence focus on single, dramatic acts growing out of the situational contingencies of a particular encounter (Luckenbill 1977; Katz 1988; Collins 2008), violence may also grow out of the longer- term back- and- forth remedial efforts and resistance to such efforts between contending parties in a troubled relationship. While situational contingencies are certainly critical in igniting frustrated feelings into overt acts, violence often represents an extreme response

Accusations and Extreme Responses / 205

to an ongoing trouble, a response that must be understood in relation to the prior history of a trouble, including its initial uncertainties and false starts, the changing meanings and interpretations of both parties’ behavior, and the range of response options available to the respective parties. Increased use of extreme responses fundamentally transforms interpersonal relationships. Using accusations to moralize troubles as fundamentally matters of wrongdoing tends to polarize responsibility for the trouble, shifting blame to one side while exonerating oneself. And if, as commonly happens, the accused denies the accusation and makes a counteraccusation in turn, the trouble is reciprocally moralized, each party now contending that they are right and the other is wrong while attributing both blame and faulted character to the other. In these cases, even without official intervention, interpersonal troubles begin to take on many of the “one- sided” qualities that Aubert (1965) identified as characteristic of “deviance”— the other is blamed or judged in the wrong and becomes the object of openly punitive actions. Yet in most cases these polarized positions result in a standoff, as neither party is able to impose on the other the “dichotomous view” of the rights and wrongs of the matter in which the other side is “defined as guilty, liable, or responsible” (Aubert 1965:102). As a result, accusations of wrongful conduct proliferate, but remain contested and indeterminate. These standoffs are often broken only by authoritative third- party intervention that supports one side, condemns the other, and thereby produces an official definition of deviance— processes that will be examined in chapter 7. However, Aubert also identified a second, less common process that produces clear- cut deviant outcomes in interpersonal troubles and does so without official intervention— the creation of an extreme power imbalance between the parties, such that one side comes “to carry the total loss involved in the case, that is, conform completely to the demands of other party” (1965:102). This kind of power imbalance marks some troubled relationships characterized by high levels of inequality right from the start; parents dealing with young children provide one example. But in other cases power imbalances are created over time exactly as the result of defining and responding to relational troubles. For example, as persons with Alzheimer’s gradually lose physical and mental capacities in ways that make them dependent, relational power shifts to the family caregiver who increasingly “takes over” the person’s care and responsibilities. In general, controlling and restrictive responses to the intractably disabled both reflect and sustain radical differences in power within a troubled relationship, thereby producing situations of one- sided “deviance” without official intervention.

SEVEN

Authoritative Involvement

In a modern society, the socially significant differentiation of deviants from the non- deviant population is increasingly contingent upon circumstances of situation, place, social and personal biography, and the bureaucratically organized activities of agencies of control. —John I. Kitsuse, “Societal Reaction to Deviant Behavior” (1964:101)

When troubles escalate and differences solidify, parties may turn to extreme responses such as fighting or expelling the other from the premises. In many of these cases, some outside authority may well get involved. Indeed, calling in an official third party in a relational trouble is itself a common extreme response. The involvement of such third parties, however, differs significantly from the involvement of unofficial third parties— friends, peers, relatives, and so on— examined in chapter 5. Official third parties possess authority independent of the parties to the trouble to intervene in and respond to the troubled situation. Independent authority allows third parties to handle troubles in ways that reflect their distinctive work and organizational concerns, concerns that often diverge from priorities of the troubled parties. In examining these issues, I focus on the distinctive processes that mark decision making when official third parties intervene in interpersonal troubles. These processes begin with exchanges with those involved in the trouble in which officials assess what is going on and identify possible response options. These assessments lead to negotiations with the troubled parties over what they desire and will accept by way of response. Ultimately the third party comes to a decision about how to handle the matter. In many cases these decisions radically depart from the positions advanced by

Authoritative Involvement / 207

the parties to the trouble. After laying out some of the basic parameters of official third- party intervention, this chapter will analyze how the police, psychiatric agents, and mediators intervene in relational troubles.

Variations in Authoritative Third-Party Involvement A variety of authoritative third parties may become involved in interpersonal troubles: legal agents, such as the police, courts, lawyers, probation and parole officers; professionals, including psychiatrists, therapists and counselors, social workers, child protection workers, mediators, physicians, and religious leaders; local community and political agencies, such as neighborhood associations, members of city councils, and other elected political officials; and a wide variety of private third parties with local or institutional standing that gives them some (often limited) authority with regard to specific troubles— school counselors, campus ombudspersons, college dormitory supervisors and resident assistants, apartment managers, landlords, and homeowner associations. While the mandates, commitments, and work circumstances of these troubleshooters vary widely, legal authorities in particular have recognized authority to intervene in many interpersonal troubles. Such legal troubleshooters usually deal with troubles involving unknown parties with whom no further contact is anticipated. In contrast, third parties who become involved by virtue of their local or institutional standing tend to have had prior contact with one or both parties and some familiarity with their general situations; school counselors, resident assistants, and family physicians typically have had contact with and hence “know” one or both parties involved in trouble complaints. Furthermore, in- house third parties expect to have continuing contact with those involved in the trouble, and in this sense deal with complaints that are typically not “one- shot” matters. Authoritative third parties intervene in interpersonal troubles either proactively or reactively. While the police do both, their proactive authority is distinctive: officers decide on their own initiative to stop, question, and deal with people or situations they observe in the course of patrol work. Other officials with patrol responsibilities may also on occasion intervene proactively in interpersonal troubles: RAs patrolling dormitory corridors may encounter roommate and other squabbles; mall security officers may intervene between fighting couples, or between arguing customers and store employees. But most interpersonal troubles get to official third parties either by means of calls or reports of a problem from someone not immediately involved in the trouble, or through a complaint, often made by a party to

208 / Chapter Seven

the trouble.1 Reports of trouble may either express alignment against those called about— for example, calls to the police reporting suspicious or dangerous persons in the neighborhood— or seek help on behalf of a troubled other, as in this call requesting police assistance for a neighbor who had encountered untoward circumstances: “My neighbor up the street— thirty one forty five— has locked herself out. (I was just) wondering if you could send a man up to help her get in; she’s an old lady over eighty” (Sharrock and Turner 1978:177).2 Calls, complaints, and requests for help in interpersonal troubles empower legal agents to determine if, when, and on what terms intervention will be forthcoming. Moreover, officials makes these decisions in ways that reflect their distinctive organizational and work priorities; thus what had been a private matter is brought into an institutional arena where it is subject to processing by outsiders with distinctive institutional commitments and work routines. These commitments and routines are often unknown or opaque to the troubled parties. Against this background, we can turn to the contingencies of authoritative third- party intervention in interpersonal troubles. I concentrate not only on third parties who deal with interpersonal troubles on the front lines through direct contact with “clients” and others seeking official help (Lipsky 1980), but also those who go out to the actual settings in which such troubles arise, in order to respond. Such third- party intervention takes place not in remote

1. Calls to the police in particular typically request intervention either by reporting problems or by making complaints (Whalen and Zimmerman 1990). Black (1980:116–17) notes that the police refer to complaints “initiated by someone not involved in the dispute itself” as “outside calls.” In his four- city study Black found that 12 percent of the calls police responded to involved interpersonal troubles, i.e., “a conflict between two or more people who were related in some way prior to the matter that resulted in the call to the police” (112). Of those conflicts in which both parties were present when the police arrived, 30 percent involved complaints of some kind of “disturbance” (primarily neighbor complaints about noise), 38 percent involved husband- wife or boyfriend- girlfriend conflicts, 10 percent troubles between estranged couples, 11 percent parent- child disputes, 10 percent disputes between relatives, and 15 percent disputes between neighbors (121). 2. In these reports callers depict the problem as something that is happening to another and in which they are only indirectly involved; in this sense they avoid asserting direct “ownership of the problem” (Whalen and Zimmerman 1990:475), but align with the person called about in seeking some response ostensibly in the interest of this party. Similarly, Potter and Hepburn (2003:204) show how callers to a child protection hotline in the United Kingdom formulate early on the reason for their call as “concern” or “worry” about possible abuse of a child not their own; e.g., “I’m concerned about a child that lives next door to me.” Such “concern constructions” “do not start with a definitive claim about the status of the putative abuse,” in which case the police rather than a child protection agency should have been called, but convey uncertainty about a possibly serious problem that projects “unpacking” by the agency.

Authoritative Involvement / 209

offices but in local communities, in homes, and on streets, and is subject to the unpredictability and “wildness” of encounters on trouble’s home turf (Pollner and Emerson 1994). The police provide one such third party, distinguished, as Bittner (1970) has emphasized, by their ability to impose one- sided outcomes in the face of resistance, by means of physical restraint and coercion. Psychiatric emergency teams, organized in the 1970s to go out into the community to deal with interpersonal troubles in situ, provide a second case study. Such teams responded to complaints about troubling behavior involving allegations of another’s mental illness; while not authorized to make arrests, these teams were able to initiate involuntary mental hospitalization, by force if necessary. Finally, by way of contrast, I will briefly examine mediation and relational counseling as office- based interventions requiring the prior agreement of both parties to a trouble to participate, and without authority to impose solutions in the face of resistance.

Police Involvement in Interpersonal Troubles The police receive complaints about two major types of interpersonal troubles, neighbor disputes and domestic disturbances. Most neighbor complaints involve noise problems— loud music, parties, and “disturbances” (Black 1980:135). But neighbor problems may also involve allegations of threats and violence: an apartment manager, for example, called the police to deal with a dispute raging between two of her residents, which she described in the following terms: The two women who were fighting lived in apartments that were across from one another. They had been fighting all day and things had gotten more violent as one woman had gotten progressively drunker and about 30 minutes before the call to the police had broken the window of the other’s apartment. The latter had then apparently threatened the window- breaker with a knife. (Fieldnotes from Ride-Along, Sheriff’s Department, Lennox, CA, 1983)

The police are typically called into domestic troubles when a conflict cannot be resolved by informal responses or mutual agreement, or when the trouble produces unacceptable levels of threat and violence. With regard to the former, Black (1980:129, 135) found that unresolved disputes about property, including money, rights or access to an apartment, or child custody or visitation comprised a significant portion of complaints to the police. In the same study Black found that physical fights, injuries, or threats, often by a man against a woman, comprised about one- third of all calls to

210 / Chapter Seven

the police (119–20). As Black summarizes these complaints, “In the typical wife- beating case, the woman seems to want the police to define her husband as a wrongdoer, to admonish him and to warn him that further action will be taken if he repeats his misbehavior in the future” (157). In many instances the call is generated not by violence per se, but by violence that exceeds what has been accepted as “normal” or “routine” in the past. Processes of Police Response Police responses to complaints about interpersonal troubles are shaped by distinctive organizational practices and legal concerns. Consider the process by which the police handle a domestic violence complaint: A woman called the police saying that her husband was breaking into her house; the call was cut short when the phone was pulled away and screams were heard in the background. At the address given the officer found the man heavily drunk but cooperative when handcuffed and confined to the back seat of the squad car. He then asked the woman “exactly what happened.” She reported: He knocked on the front door first and told me to let him in. I went to call you guys and while I was talking, he came busting through my bedroom window. He grabbed the phone away from me. I told him I was talking with the Sheriff’s Department and that he’d better get out before you guys get here since he already has a warrant out for his arrest. (What’s the warrant for?) For the last time he beat me up. So anyway, he says, “Well, I’m here motherfucker. What are you going to do about it?” . . . Then he came in here and sat down on the couch. So I came in too, sat on the other couch and started to smoke a cigarette. Then he jumped up, grabbed me and took me into the bedroom. He threw me on the bed and started to choke me. Then he said, “I’m not a pussy like your new boyfriend. I’ll sit here and wait for the police to come and get me.” I got away and then you guys drove up. (Fieldnotes from Ride-Along, Sheriff’s Department, Fresno, CA, 1983)

Police handling of this trouble situation can be broken down into the following stages. Meeting the Complainant/Determining the Relationship between the Parties. Here the officer came to the scene informed by the dispatcher’s report that the complainant had called about violence involving “my husband.” Thus the officer approaches the situation as a troubled domestic relationship. In general, just how a complainant and the other are related is critical infor-

Authoritative Involvement / 211

mation for the police. In many cases troubled parties explicitly characterize this relationship in making their complaint— here “my husband,” in other cases “my boyfriend,” “a neighbor,” and so on— or describe the troubling event in a way that implies a particular relationship— for instance, “There’s a loud party next door” indicates that the trouble involves a neighbor. In cases where the relationship remains ambiguous the police will ask complainants directly about their relationship with the other. In the current case, the complainant not only identified the other as her husband, but also accused him of “breaking in” to her house, thereby indicating that he did not currently live with her. Further specifying their current relationship subsequently became a major focus of police attention in deciding how to handle the complaint. Establishing Immediate Control. In some cases the police find only the complainant on arriving at the scene. But in many instances, the police encounter both parties to the trouble, often in states of upset and turmoil marked by threats and actual violence. In such circumstances the police seek to establish immediate control in the situation, either by physically separating the disputing parties or by physically restraining one party. In this case, when the officer arrived, the man came out on the porch with his hands on his head; when asked if he was armed, he replied, “No, I’ve got a belt buckle that looks like a gun, but that’s it.” The officer asked him to turn around slowly, handcuffed and searched him, and put him in the back seat of the patrol car, all prior to any inquiry into the details of the complaint. In effect he treated the complainant’s allegation as valid (in part because of the man’s obviously drunken condition)— at least for the moment. Eliciting the Complainant’s “Story.” Once some kind of basic order is established, the police seek to determine why the complaint was made, here by asking the complainant “exactly what happened.” In response the complainant “tells a story” that provides a detailed account of the sequence of events that led her to call the police (P. W. Davis 1983:264). One key component of this story is a narrative describing actions of wrongdoing by the other. Here the complainant graphically described her husband’s violent behavior as specific, crime- like offenses: “busting through” her bedroom window after she had denied him access at the front door, and then grabbing and choking her on the bed. She presented these actions as unprovoked and unjustified by anything she had done (other than legitimately refusing to let him into the house). In this way she allocated the role of aggressive wrongdoer to her husband and that of innocent, acted- on victim to herself. A second component of complainant stories involves a request for some

212 / Chapter Seven

particular form of police intervention against the troubling other. Black (1980:129) found that in 71 percent of “active disputes” (i.e., where both complainant and the other were present) “the complainant . . . makes a request for a specific action that he or she would like the police to take against the party defined as an offender.” The kinds of actions sought varied widely: “36% want [the police] to order or remove an alleged offender from the setting (usually a dwelling), 25% specifically ask them to make an arrest, and 22% want them to order the alleged offender to alter his or her conduct or to take a positive action of some kind (e.g., to unlock a door or to lower the volume of music being played). A few others (6%) want nothing more than a police escort while they are in the presence of another party, such as when they enter an apartment to retrieve their personal belongings” (129). In this case, while the complainant did not request that the police take a specific action, she structured her complaint in ways that pressured the police to intervene on her “side” against a violent offender. Probing Key Elements of the “Story.” The police tend to approach complainants’ stories of “what happened” with a degree of skepticism, using these stories as points of departure for directing their own inquiries into the trouble. In the current case, following the woman’s narrative of what happened, the officer focused on clarifying the relationship between the two parties and hence on whether the man had any legitimate claim to come into the home: o.

Are you two married?

c.

Yes, but we’ve been separated for about two years.

o.

He doesn’t live here?

c.

No, he hasn’t live here in those two years.

o.

Why haven’t you gotten a divorce?

c.

I started the proceedings, but I didn’t go through with them because I couldn’t afford it.

[In the car, the husband told the officer that his wife always accuses him of assault and battery, but “it is all a bunch of lies.”] o.

Why don’t you do yourself a favor and shut up. Just answer my questions.

h.

Here.

o.

She says you haven’t lived here in two years.

h.

She lied just like she always lies. If you don’t believe me, look on my driver’s

o.

You mean your expired driver’s license?

h.

Well, I do live here.

Where do you live?

license.

Authoritative Involvement / 213

Here the police ask the complainant if she is married to the other; she responds that they are but have been separated but not divorced; the officer asks why she did not get a divorce, and she pleads lack of money to follow through. He then checks with the husband, who asserts that he in fact “lives” at this house.3 This claim sets up a key issue in dispute in the relationship— does the husband have a “legal right” to be there? When the man strongly asserts that he does live there, the officer returns to the house to requestion the complainant. (When we walked in, she was on the phone laughing.) o.

He says he lives here.

c.

That’s not true. Look around you. Search my house. There’s nothing in here that belongs to him. No clothes, no nothing! He just stays the night here every once in a while to see his daughters. They’re at my sister’s right now.

o.

When was the last time he stayed here?

c.

About a week ago. I just don’t know what gets into him sometimes. He just gets on that heroin and crank and doesn’t know what he’s doing. He put his old lady in a hospital in Reno. She was in that hospital for three months. She wouldn’t press charges so the state did.

Negotiating and Weighing Response Options. In identifying the parties’ claims and versions of what is going on, the police move toward determining how they can deal with the troubled situation. One key factor here is assessing the character and credibility of the parties. In the current case the husband’s initial words and behavior showed he had prior experience with the police. The wife confirmed this by telling of warning her husband that he had better leave before police arrived because “he already has a warrant out for his arrest.” The officer immediately asked what the warrant was for, learning that it had been issued “the last time he beat me up.” The officer now knew that he was dealing with a situation of recurring trouble and perhaps serious violence. At a later point, the wife informed the officer that the husband uses drugs, and that he had also seriously injured his current “old lady.” All in all, the police came to view the husband as a person who chronically abused his wife; when a second officer showed up at the scene and had been filled in on the situation, he responded, “We just ought to get a brick wall, tie this guy to it, get a firing squad and let them go to it.” With this assessment, the police felt it necessary to “do something” to prevent further violence by the husband. One tack employed early on in3. See Becker’s (1998:130–32) discussion of the problematics of determining what it means to “live somewhere.”

214 / Chapter Seven

volved trying to shift responsibility for dealing with the trouble to the wife and other legal agents: when the officer asked the wife why she did not have a restraining order against her husband and she replied that she had one earlier but “it didn’t work,” the officer urged her to pursue this option again and more persistently: “You should think about doing it again. Judges don’t take too lightly to their orders being disobeyed.” But in addition, the police sought to determine what kind of legal action they could take against the husband. The second officer took pictures of the broken window and examined the wife’s neck for red marks, but did not find any. He then advised her to go stay at a friend’s house, since it was possible that her husband would be out of jail within four hours. Soon thereafter the first officer started driving the handcuffed husband to the station, but suddenly turned around and went back to the house, brought the wife out to the car to have her announce to her husband, “You’re under arrest.” As the officer explained to the suspect and observer on the subsequent drive to the station, “You just witnessed my very first citizen’s arrest! You see, you can arrest someone on a felony charge without witnessing the crime, but to arrest someone on a misdemeanor charge, you have to witness it. At first, I figured I would arrest him for assault, which is a misdemeanor, and for robbery, which is a felony. Then I decided to change it to just the assault charge, so I had to get her to make a citizen’s arrest. You getting all this, guy?” The suspect answers “yep.”

The officer, then, did have the husband arrested, but in a way that minimized his future involvement, pressuring the wife to sign a complaint for assault if she wished to pursue the matter. In sum, in intervening in this case and in other troubles between acquainted parties, the police exhibit concern both with bringing some kind of pragmatic order to volatile situations of dispute and with the legal implications of the claims and actions of the parties involved. In the following section I will analyze the difficulties the police encounter in balancing these sometimes conflicting priorities in handling interpersonal troubles. Order and Legality In trying to establish some kind of basic order in conflict- ridden and often violent situations, the police orient to the trouble more as a dispute between people who know one another than as a matter of legal violation. The practices they employ in this regard have been variously termed “order mainte-

Authoritative Involvement / 215

nance” (Wilson 1968), “peace keeping” (Bittner 1967b), and “conciliatory” social control (Black 1998). In pursuing order the police subordinate or ignore possible legal offenses and evidentiary concerns in taking courses of action that will facilitate settlement. In this respect producing order in interpersonal troubles involves what Bittner (1967b) termed “the restricted relevance of culpability”: in routine patrol work on skid row, the police do not arrest those seen as doing wrong if by so doing they could more effectively establish order in troubled situations.4 Similarly, in handling domestic disturbances, police often disregard claims of culpability in order to work out some practical ordering of the immediate troubled situation. Of course, in situations involving “serious” rather than “minor offenses,” the police routinely focus on the illegality and culpability (Bittner 1967b). Thus Moskos (2008:113) reports that the police almost invariably arrest where the offense is a felony, although these comprise an extremely small portion of the arrests made in the course of ordinary patrol work. Similarly, the police do make arrests in interpersonal troubles without regard to the dynamics of order maintenance: in domestic disputes arrests are more likely (although hardly inevitable) when there is a serious injury, the use or possession of a weapon, or repeated calls (Parnas 1967). Black (1980:161) provides an instance illustrating several of these concerns: A black woman who had stabbed her common- law husband was arrested for “aggravated assault,” though the victim wanted nothing more than to be taken to the hospital. Soon after arriving at the scene, one of the officers declared to the other, “that bitch has to be locked up. That’s the third time she’s stabbed him in 2 months. Let’s bullshit [talk] him into signing a complaint.”

Domestic violence arrests propelled by culpability and legal requirements have undoubtedly increased because of statutory and police changes mandating such action where there is visible injury. In contemporary policing in Baltimore, Moskos (2008:61) reports that in calls classified as ”domestic”

4. Police concerns with creating order are reflected not only in the practice of not arresting the most culpable party, but also in not arresting people “even though all the legal grounds for an arrest are present.” As Bittner (1967b:710) emphasized, “Whenever such persons are encountered and can be induced to leave, or taken to some shelter, or remanded to someone’s care, then patrolmen feel, or at least maintain, that an arrest would serve no useful purpose. That is, whenever there exist means for controlling the troublesome aspects of some person’s presence in some way alternative to an arrest, such means are preferentially employed, provided, of course, that the case at hand involves only a minor offense.”

216 / Chapter Seven

as opposed to “non- domestic related,” “the police are virtually required to arrest for all assaults, no matter how minor,” and in addition can “arrest for a misdemeanor they did not witness.”5 In many domestic dispute situations, however, the police place priority on establishing some sort of local order, although these efforts often involve little more than trying to produce an immediate cessation of conflict and hostilities. As Phillip W. Davis (1983:265) noted, the police focus on “managing the call” and the specific situation that they enter as a result of the call, in this sense not seeking “order” per se but rather the “semblance of order.” That is, the police are rarely concerned with providing deeper, longer- term settlement of the dispute, with working out deeper issues that might prevent recurrence of trouble. Instead “establishing the semblance of order” is present oriented, focused on creating signs of order in the policecitizen encounter so that the police can leave the scene and not expect to be asked to return. To produce a “semblance of order” requires managing “the disputant’s definition of the events, . . . the disputant’s definition of police action, and the disputant’s definition of remedy” (P. W. Davis 1983:265). Toward this end the police routinely pay less attention to complainant “grievances” and reports of misdeeds and focus instead on managing the demands of complainants and others. As Davis emphasizes, [For the police] the grievance of a complaining party (beatings, drunken husband, disobedient children, philandering spouse, etc.) is either irrelevant or secondary to the [complainant’s] demands or wishes. . . . Attending to the grievance would be doing something for the person (see Hughes 1971). But the officer’s concern for the citizen’s demand reflects their interest in doing something to the situation. (275)

5. Since the statutory definition of “domestic” in Maryland refers to “disputes involving people who had had sex,” officers concerned with legal niceties must determine whether relationships involve sex. Moskos (2008:61) describes the dilemmas of dealing with this issue: “The best question to ask is, ‘What is he [or she] to you?’ But that requires the person to know what I’m really getting at. If the answer is ‘a friend,’ one had to be more direct. ‘Fuck’ gets to the point but is too crude. ‘Have you ever had sex?” sounds like you’re blaming the victim. ‘Have you two ever been romantically involved?’ would get laughs and implies a level of romance that may be inappropriate. ‘What kind of relationship do you have?’ borders on psychotherapy. Slang words abound, but ‘tapping it,’ ‘touching it,’ or ‘spanking it’ (‘it,’ of course being ‘that ass’) are too informal and somewhat gender specific. To tactfully and efficiently learn a couple’s sexual history is a minor art. The best phrase I used was, ‘Have you two ever hit it?’” Here Moskos provides one of the few accounts of how police actually determine the nature of the relationship between troubled parties.

Authoritative Involvement / 217

Toward this end the police often deflate complainant accusations of wrongdoing and culpability. One way to do so is to frame the trouble as a “civil” rather than a “criminal” matter, and hence as something that is appropriately pursued in civil court. Another tactic noted previously is to refuse legal jurisdiction on the ground that the officer did not witness the alleged wrongdoing, then shifting the burden of responding to the complainant by suggesting that the latter file a criminal complaint. For example, consider the police response to this call about a neighborhood “assault”: An officer responds to a call concerning an “assault— assailant unknown.” The complainant, waiting on the sidewalk, says she was trying to break up a dog fight; one of the dogs has been a continual problem in the neighborhood. A guy came walking up the street with the dog, but he’s not the owner. The dog attacked a smaller dog and she was kicking the bigger dog to get him to stop. The guy punched her, slapped her, and then kicked her. After hearing her story, the officer drives the complainant to the nearby house where she thinks the attacking dog lives. The alleged offender comes out of the house and talks to the officer while the complainant waits in the car. Officer asks him what happened. Guy says he was just trying to break up the dogs; if he hit her he didn’t mean to. Officer tells the guy he’s going to give him a chance to work it out with the lady. He then gets the complainant and tells her he wants to give the guy a chance to talk to her; he’s not going to let it continue if it starts to turn into an argument, because he’s not going to referee. She says fine. The guy apologizes; he didn’t mean to do it. Officer then says he is going to make a recommendation: He won’t arrest the guy, but he’ll take a report and she can pursue it with the DA if she wants. She says that’s fine, and walks back to her house. When she left the officer tells the guy that what will probably happen is tomorrow the whole thing will be dropped but right now her pride is hurt. (Fieldnotes from Ride-Along, Sheriff’s Department, West Hollywood, CA, 1984)

Here, the complainant characterizes the other as a “guy” walking in the neighborhood; she does not know his name but does know the dog. When his dog attacked a smaller dog, she intervened to stop the fight. She implies that the dog walker misinterpreted her intervention— perhaps because he misread and underreacted to a potentially harmful canine situation— and “punched,” “slapped,” and “kicked” her. The officer seems to accept the gist of this version of “what happened,” and on talking to the accused learns that the latter was also simply trying to break up the dog fight and did not mean to hit her. The officer then brought the parties together to try to settle their

218 / Chapter Seven

differences informally, explicitly refusing to make an arrest but informing the woman that she was free to pursue a complaint on her own with the DA.6 While the police try to negotiate an orderly settlement with both parties, they often rely on one- sided authoritarian responses— arrests, threats of arrest, removing one party from the setting, and scolding one party (Black 1980:138)— as tools to produce such settlements. As Black argues, “The police make an effort to find a solution satisfactory to both parties, but at the same time they relate to the conflict partly in terms of who is to blame, such as by noting that one of the parties could be arrested if his or her conduct recurred or simply by admonishing one of them for what allegedly happened” (131). In some situations, the police see arresting the person causing the trouble as the quickest, easiest, and most efficient way to produce order. Consider the following case involving an arguing couple met on the street by responding officers. “Officers spoke with the woman and her husband on the street corner, finally understanding that the relationship was, as one officer put it, common law. One officer spoke with the husband”: officer . m a n.

officer . m a n.

Whose car is that? Is it hers?

No, she’s going to buy it; it’s not hers. Then it’s yours?

No, it belongs to a friend of mine; she’s going to buy it from him.

officer .

So then it’s going to be hers, it’s sort of hers. Who owns the house? (An-

other officer nodded towards the woman.) Then she owns the house, and the car is hers, so you really don’t have any right to stay. (P. W. Davis 1983:269)

Here the police inquire into the respective “legal rights” of the conflicting parties, asserting that both car and house belong to the woman as a way of pressuring the man to leave the scene and hence to settle the trouble. In sum, while the police attend to both the legal parameters and trouble dimensions of interpersonal complaints, they frequently prioritize the latter in trying to bring some kind of ordered settlement to the situation. Particularly when this emphasis on settlement conflicts with complainant demands for some specific action, outside intervention may transform troubles in ways that the parties involved did not anticipate. I consider the tensions pro-

6. Ironically, after the complainant left, the officer did end up arresting the man when he ran his driver’s license and found an outstanding traffic warrant. He did so very apologetically, emphasizing that he had to take him in because of the warrant, then gently cuffing him and putting him in the car while informing his girlfriend she could come down to the station and pick him up as soon as he paid for the warrant.

Authoritative Involvement / 219

duced by these disjunctures between complainant expectations and police responses in the next section. The Transformation of Troubles Authoritative third- party intervention brings a personal, often intricate and disturbing trouble into an institutional system, subject to assessment and processing by outsiders with their own distinctive organizational commitments and work routines. Official intervention thus fundamentally transforms interpersonal troubles. Complainants produce one series of such transformations as they seek to draw officials into the trouble on their side. But once involved, officials treat troubles as institutional cases, leading to a number of further transformations. These transformations arise from officials’ allocation of time and energy to different cases; from officials’ understanding and treating particular troubles as instances of known types of “normal cases”; and from decisions about whose side to take or whether to avoid taking a side. In the following I consider each of these transformations. Accenting Wrongdoing in Complaints

As noted, in complaining directly to the other, troubled parties often come to frame the trouble as wrongdoing; in seeking the intervention of authoritative third parties, they amplify this framing, presenting the trouble as an explicit and egregious offense in need of redress. This exaggerated, asymmetrical framing is undertaken to convince the police to take the complainant’s side against the other— to “do something” to or about this now- flagrant wrongdoer. One way to highlight wrongdoing and the need to “do something” is to foreground violence, harm, or injury suffered at the hands of the other, while at the same time presenting oneself as “acted on” rather than “acting,” hence as a “victim” of the other’s aggression. Successfully claiming the victim role is often difficult, as the police routinely expect complainants’ allegations of wrongdoing to be exaggerated or even deceptive. In these circumstances the police may inquire closely into the immediate circumstances of the trouble and into claims of violence or harm by the other. Complainants who admit to having actively initiated what turned into a violent encounter face special problems in this regard, and must take care to present their own actions as appropriate and legitimate under the circumstances. In the dog fight case considered above, for example, the complainant admitted that she had initiated the intervention in the dog fight and that she had been

220 / Chapter Seven

“kicking the bigger dog” to stop the fight. But by asserting that this dog was “a continual problem in the neighborhood” and had “attacked a smaller dog,” she framed her intervention as an appropriate reaction to potentially seriously aggressive behavior by a problem dog. The canines’ size differential was critical because the complainant does not claim that the smaller dog belonged to her; hence her intervention was not personal but altruistic, intended to prevent injury to a smaller animal by a larger one. Furthermore, by noting that the man walking this dog was not the dog’s owner the complainant suggests the possibility that he may have been unprepared or ineffective in controlling this dog. All this justifies her apparently violent act of “kicking the bigger dog to get him to stop.” Another way of accenting wrongdoing is to highlight the other’s failure to respond to persistent efforts to remedy a troubling situation that is unbearably irritating or threatening. But it is often difficult to get the police to take actions on one’s side without allegations of harm or violence. Handling Troubles as Routines

As Hughes (1971) long ago emphasized, professionals process the pressing emergencies of lay clients as routine and ordinary matters. With regard to interpersonal troubles, what complainants experience as unique and compelling problems in need of immediate attention institutional agents like the police handle as routine instances of known, regularly encountered “cases” (Yngvesson 1988; Merry 1990; Emerson 1992a). This results in a series of tensions and disjunctures between the priorities and concerns of the troubled parties and those of the police; in particular, officials question and frequently reject complainants’ claims that their problem is unusually severe and in need of urgent attention, especially when they have a close relationship with the other. With regard to “seriousness,” police assessments of the severity of particular complaints are made relative to the kinds of cases frequently encountered in that particular setting; that is, such assessments depend in part on the makeup of that official’s overall “case set” (Emerson 1983:428– 36). Complaints of battery, for example, tend to be treated as “little cases” by detectives in major crimes units, which regularly deal with a stream of violent situations, but as “big cases” by police officers working in juvenile units, which rarely encounter violent matters (Sanders 1977:95). Assessments of complaints as “minor” or “routine” rather than “serious” are consequential for how officials respond. Officials come to deploy delimited and conventionalized sets of alternative responses to particular complaints. These sets of “normal remedies” (Emerson 1981:5) are often hierarchically ranked and

Authoritative Involvement / 221

sequenced, with those regarded as milder appropriately used first and for minor cases, with the more severe reserved for serious irremediable cases.7 Institutional decision- makers are accountable to superiors and coworkers primarily by reference to these institutionally delimited sets of normal remedies; in minor cases officials need not “try everything,” only those actions that are locally recognized as appropriate for that type of case. Complainants may, of course, specifically and vociferously seek an extreme response, but are likely to be turned down or deflected if this requested course of action does not accord with the prescribed normal remedy in such a situation. Similarly with regard to urgency: having experienced and handled a wide range of crisis situations, officials will often have a different sense of what is urgent than complainants. Indeed, in some circumstances officials will deliberately delay a response, reasoning that if it is a real emergency the complainant will call back.8 But in addition, while laypersons can give their troubles as much time and attention as they can free up in their daily lives, officials have limited time, energy, and commitment they can devote to handling particular cases.9 These resources have to be allocated across and within overall sets of cases, such that the demands of handling other cases may affect the decision in a current case. Hence “in distributing time, commitment, special options, and other organizational resources, a worker has to decide any instant case with an eye toward what that decision implies for other cases” (Emerson 1983:439). As a result, complainants’ insistence on the seriousness and urgency of their troubles may have little effect on official assessments of these qualities. Of course, complainants may be aware of these tendencies of officials and respond by framing their complaints in exaggerated ways in order to obtain 7. Thus in the 1960s in juvenile court the sequence of normal remedies included “informal probation without a finding of delinquency, routine probationary supervision, more intensive probationary supervision, probation while on a suspended sentence, and incarceration” (Emerson 1981:6). 8. Moskos (2008:96), for example, reports that in policing the East Baltimore ghetto in the first decade of this century, despite an official policy of “rapid response,” officers did not rush to most calls, preferring to take their time in order “to let people tire themselves out or to resolve their petty problems on their own.” Similarly, community- based psychiatric emergency teams frequently waited for several days and repeated calls before responding to complaints, anticipating that many requests for evaluations for mental hospital admission involved “overreaction” by the complainant (see particularly PET handling of the case of Chris Alford, below). 9. Heumann (1978:49) points out that a key element in the socialization of novice defense attorneys is learning that they cannot “have a romance with each case” as they did in law school— taking one case, giving it most of one’s time, honing a polished brief with great care and deliberation. Official third parties, with the partial exception of those working “special” as opposed to routine cases, must always juggle time, energy, and commitment between cases.

222 / Chapter Seven

desired responses. Citizen callers, for example, may report the presence of a weapon or a “gang,” or the occurrence or threat of serious violence, in order to increase the likelihood of prompt police response to their complaints (Rubinstein 1973:98; Meehan 1989:128). The police may in turn, of course, routinely discount such reports.10 Where the latter occurs, officials often devote a good deal of effort to trying to talk complainants into accepting something less than their preferred outcome. In examining police handling of domestic disturbances, for example, P. W. Davis (1983) found that officers routinely pursued a strategy of “dissuasion” in dealing with complaints they regarded as minor or not meriting arrest. He provides this instance: The wife sat at the dining room table sobbing and rubbing her bruised elbow from the beating she said she received from her husband as he grabbed the daughter and fled from the house. She said that her lawyer had told her to get a restraining order if her husband caused trouble as they planned on a divorce. She did not have the order yet. ‘. . . I guess I should get one.’ ‘Yes,’ the officer told her, ‘. . . that would be the thing to do here.’ The officers turned to leave but the wife said, ‘But he’s got my little girl, and he’s drunk. She could be hurt or killed. And he beat me up, and now you’re telling me there’s nothing you can do; now what are you going to do about this?’ The officer told her that there was nothing they could do about the daughter since the husband was entitled to have her. The beating could be a criminal matter however; that was assault. A report could be taken and she could press criminal charges. The wife paused and said, ‘Well, I guess there’s nothing else I can do. I’ll have to press charges on him.’ One of the officers said, ‘But if you do that mam, you’ll have to go to court and testify on this. Are you sure that’s what you want to do?’ The other officer told her that often people change their minds on these things and later wish they hadn’t filed charges. ‘We can’t take the report if you don’t prosecute. Are you willing to do all that?’ Outside, one of the officers said, ‘Report! I’m sure we’re going to take a report on that!’ (What do you make of all that?) ‘That, that was all horse(. . .)! It was just nothing; they’ll get over it or get divorced. (265–66)

The officers assessed this complaint as a minor, routine domestic dispute that the parties would either “get over” or settle by divorce. They initially

10. Moskos (2008:97–102) notes that 39 percent of the more than 100,000 calls requesting police intervention in Baltimore in 2000 turned out to be “unfounded”; many of these involved what the police termed “bogus” or “bullshit” calls made for illicit reasons or involving situations in which the police could not “do anything.”

Authoritative Involvement / 223

tried to dissuade the complainant by agreeing that she should have gotten a restraining order as advised by her divorce lawyer, depicting this as the appropriate action and making ready to leave. But when she protested that they were doing “nothing,” the officers denied criminal jurisdiction, insisting that the issue of the daughter and her safety was a civil matter, since “the husband was entitled to have her.” With regard to the reported beating, they acknowledged that legally it was an “assault,” but discouraged her from taking formal action by highlighting the burden this would place on her of going to court and testifying. Finally, they obscured the option of making an arrest and then turning the matter over to the prosecutor to handle by insisting, “We can’t take the report if you don’t prosecute.”11 In handling interpersonal troubles, then, the police frequently counter complainant claims of seriousness and urgency, often acknowledging that the complainant has been treated badly or unjustly but denying the appropriateness of criminal sanctions. In these ways, troubles that the complainant presented as dire emergencies requiring immediate police action are transformed into minor, routine squabbles undeserving of legal action. Finally, there are a handful of cases to which the police allocate special time and energy, eliciting information, weighing conflicting reports and claims, and trying to work out solutions to complex problems. Black (1980:143) provides this example: A white landlord called the police, very upset because his wife had been “taking” money and jewelry from the bedroom of one of their tenants. In relating the details to the police, he alternated between crying and raging about his wife’s behavior. What might have been treated as a “theft” under other conditions was in this case treated as a tragedy or burden for the alleged offender’s husband. The observer mentioned that the police stayed with the man “longer than was officially necessary” and that “during this time [one of the officers] was exceedingly friendly and provided a great deal of emotional support.” The officer handling the incident “went out of his way to avoid any official action . . .” The possibility of an arrest was never mentioned, and the

11. While many jurisdictions formally require the police to have witnessed the criminal act in order to make a misdemeanor arrest, officers exercise considerable discretion in classifying acts, particularly those involving some kind of physical force, as misdemeanors or felonies. Black (1980:71–72 n. 7) describes this instance: “A woman complained that two young men in an automobile had made obscene remarks to her as she walked along the street near her residence. She insisted that she was prepared to press charges. After leaving the scene, the officer filled out an official report classifying the incident as an ‘aggravated assault,’ the felonious level of assault.”

224 / Chapter Seven woman was not treated as an offender or criticized in any way. She was simply a “problem,” and her husband deserved sympathy.

Not only did the police invest more than usual time and energy in working out a settlement of this case, but they also ignored conventionally criminal acts in order to pursue such settlement. Black (142–47) argues that the police are more likely to give such special effort and in this case “therapeutic” attention to troubles involving upper- middle- class complainants. Processing “Normal Cases”

A related series of organizational and processing commitments arise from routine police reliance on locally known “normal case” categories (after Sudnow’s [1965] more specific consideration of “normal crimes”) to process complaints. Normal case categories are learned through work experience, reflect and express organizational competence, and comprise a core part of the local “stock of knowledge” of frontline officials. Such categories are typifications, incorporating local knowledge of typical “kinds of cases,” including typical origins, circumstances, actors, and outcomes (Sudnow 1965; R. M. Emerson 1969; Hasenfeld 1983). Normal case categories often involve distinctions between the “seriousness” or “deservingness” of cases, between cases that should receive close attention and persistent effort and those that can be dealt with perfunctorily.12 Normal case categories frame the terms within which processing decisions are approached, and inform and justify the decisions ultimately made. As Hasenfeld (1983:192) has argued with regard to people- processing institutions generally, “officials assemble, screen, and package the information gathered about the client” in ways guided by their working normal case categories. In particular, normal case categories provide organizationally sanctioned devices for determining “what is going on” in new cases, implicitly guiding officials’ inquiries into the relevant “facts” and circumstances of particular cases. Phillip W. Davis (1981:11), for example, described the following features as typical of the police “working concepts” for dealing with

12. While typifications identify particular substantive attributes of cases, they are better understood processually as institutionally produced mechanisms for sorting and processing cases (Emerson 1992b). In this respect, any particular “normal case” category collects cases that have been “equalized” for some practical organizational problem at hand, on the basis of attributes relevant for that particular purpose. Thus the concept of “typification” does not require the pressure of large numbers of cases, emphasizing instead the practical, organizational problemrelevance of locally employed types. The key is to identify the organizational problem-relevances or immediate purposes at hand that underlie and are furthered by any particular typification.

Authoritative Involvement / 225

“normal calls” involving domestic disturbances (termed “318: Family” cases in the jurisdiction he studied in the 1970s): Officers tend to believe that the 318: Family is a more or less natural outgrowth of the condition of marital intimacy. Squabbles, disputes, fights, and arguments are viewed as normal aspects of any marriage and any attendant violence is, similarly, “natural” and unsurprising. . . . For the most part, officers tend to view the disputants as unworthy of police sympathy and support . . . [They are viewed as] likely to be unstable and possibly assaultive during the handling of call itself . . . [and as] unreliable and capricious complainants should an arrest be made.

Officers not only approached complainants on the basis of these “working concepts,” but also relied on them to develop, implement, and justify specific tactics to try to settle such cases without making arrests. Central to many normal case categories are suspicions about complaints and those who make them. These suspicions reflect an “awareness that allegations may be distorted or false, that the proposed allocation of blame and responsibility may be misleading or invalid, that the remedial action sought may be exploitative, subversive, or illegitimate” (Emerson and Messinger 1977:130). Particularly in handling interpersonal troubles, the police routinely entertain such suspicions about complainants’ motives. As P. W. Davis (1983:264) reported, “The aggravation or grievance which lies behind a complainant’s possible demands for arrest are likely to be viewed as inappropriate and organizationally unrealistic. Officers believe that disputants’ stories are likely to be contrived and self- serving. Perhaps prompted by the wish for vengeance in a fight which they may have originally started, disputants who demand the arrest are thought to be subject to sudden changes of mind. In short, it is thought that because of the family’s emotional and economic ties grievances will quickly evaporate.” Such suspicions arose in the domestic violence case examined earlier in this chapter. After delivering the husband to jail on a citizen’s arrest, the officer privately commented to the observer: “I have a feeling that he has been living there on and off for the last two years.” In addition, he expressed more general doubts and uncertainty about the complainant’s stance and comportment toward her husband: “If she was so upset, she wouldn’t have just sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette when he had just broken into her house. Also, she sure was having a good time talking on the phone. She was laughing up a storm. And I thought that was a pretty low blow when she was talking about his heroin and crank!” In this way, the wife’s com-

226 / Chapter Seven

plaint of wrongdoing against her husband, while not wholly discredited, is understood as possibly exaggerated and self- serving; the trouble is in effect transformed into a matter in which both parties may bare some fault. While normal case categories often exert significant influence over subsequent case handling, they do not mechanically determine case outcomes. Rather they tend to guide initial inquiries, with specific categories providing “patterns” used to anticipate and elaborate the “relevant” facts and parameters of specific cases; yet these very facts and case circumstances can modify, play back on, and transform these patterns in the manner of the documentary method of interpretation (Garfinkel 1967). Thus, normal case categories need not rigidly predetermine “the facts” or the ultimate course of handling. And indeed, empirical studies of the details of case screening suggest, for example, that initial inferences drawn from normal case categories can be subject to testing and hence to revision (e.g., Peyrot 1982:163). Initial types can be sustained but after lines of inquiry that do seemingly allow for other outcomes (Emerson 1992b). Taking and Not Taking Sides

Intervening in interpersonal troubles confronts authoritative third parties with a distinctive problem— which side, if any, to take in how they respond. As Aubert (1965; see chapter 1 above) has framed this dilemma, does the third party intervene asymmetrically in the trouble, throwing authority behind one party and against the other, accepting and legitimating the claims of the former while treating the party sided against as a wrongdoer? Or does the third party intervene symmetrically in the trouble, staying more or less neutral and according some right and some wrong on each side? Aubert represented several possible outcomes of authoritative intervention by C in any generic conflict between A and B (see fig. 2). Complainants alleging wrongdoing in particular pressure the police and other third parties to “do something” about the troubling other by intervening on their side. Third parties, of course, do not have to accede to these expectations, but they do have to deal with this pressure in one way or another. In Aubert’s terms, the police may respond to a complainant’s request for action by supporting the complainant’s position, by supporting the position of the other against the complainant, or by intervening somewhere in between the positions of the two parties. Supporting the Complainant’s Position. While the police do not automatically act as the complainant requests, they often do (in 52 percent of the dispute interventions Black [1980:129] observed). In so doing they often

Authoritative Involvement / 227

Fig. 2.

rely on the threat of arrest, sometimes by provoking behavior for which an arrest for a minor offense can be made. Moskos (2008:117–18) illustrates the use of such tactics in police responses to nonviolent domestic disputes in Baltimore: A woman calls police because she is sick of her baby’s father coming home and being rowdy after a night of drinking. An officer wants the drunken man to spend the night elsewhere. The girlfriend is not afraid of the man. Though the officer believes this argument will continue and perhaps turn violent, there is no cause for arrest. Police may not order a person from his or her home. But an officer can request to talk to the man outside his house. At this point the officer might say, “If you don’t take a walk, I’m going to lock you up.” The man, though within his rights to quietly reenter his house and say goodnight to the police, is more likely to obey the officer’s request or engage the police in a loud and drunken late- night debate. . . . If a crowd gathers, or lights in neighboring buildings turn on, he may be arrested for disorderly conduct.

Although they do not necessarily act as complainants wish, the police may still take their side in the trouble: they may arrest the other despite no such demand from the complainant; they may make the other leave the setting, give up possession of a disputed child or a piece of property, or deliver warnings, threats, or lectures that support the claims and concerns of the complainant. Supporting the Other’s Position. The police may reject the position of the complainant, in whole or in part, and instead side with the other. Black (1980) reports this incident illustrating the former: A black woman complained that her common- law husband had locked her out of “her” apartment, but he said that it was “his” apartment. The man

228 / Chapter Seven was able to convince the police that it was his alone, and they arrested the complainant for “drunkenness” when she refused to leave the setting. The observer added in his report that there was no evidence that the woman had been drinking. (151)

In other instances the police may discredit but not arrest the complainant: A black woman wanted her husband removed from the house or arrested because he was “beating on her.” She was supported by her son, but her husband denied the charge, saying that he had “done nothing but yell at her for getting drunk again.” The police refused to take action against the man, and later said to the observer, “What the fuck did she expect us to do, kick a man out of his own house on the say- so of a drunk?” (149)

In this case the police refuse to intervene against the husband, accepting his version of what happened (yelling) and upgrading his description of the complainant “getting drunk again” to a discrediting character type—“a drunk.” Finding/Creating Middle Ground. The police may intervene by enforcing an outcome that falls somewhere in between the positions of the two parties.13 Consider this example: A [white] woman explained that a man she “dated” 7 years before had contacted her at the beginning of the year to renew their relationship. At that time he gave her a check for $600, but now that they had broken up again the man wanted his money back. He said it was always meant to be a loan, whereas she claimed that it was a gift that she did not want to accept in the first place. In any event, the man had been making threatening phone calls, demanding an immediate return of the money. The woman told him that she would not be able to get the money until next week, but he was not satisfied. . . . One of the officers called the man and told him that he should stop making threats, that the woman said she would return the money, and that if she did not do so he should take her to court. Apparently he accepted this resolution, and the complainant also seemed satisfied that the police has settled the matter as well as they could. (Black 1980:136–37)

13. Black (1980:129) found that in 80 percent of the cases in which the police did not comply with the complainant’s requested action, they did so “not because they take the side of the alleged offender or because they side with one party in a cross- complaint, but because they remain neutral, siding with no one.”

Authoritative Involvement / 229

Here the police offer support to both parties (although not absolutely evenly): they take the side of the complainant by ordering the other to stop making threats and to rely on legal remedies if he is not repaid, but accept the other’s version of the money as a loan, not a gift, while pressuring him to be patient about getting the money back. In this way the police work out a settlement that both parties accept. Producing a more or less symmetrical outcome is not simply a matter of acting in ways that gives something to each party, but also of validating at least some of the claims made by the respective parties. Consider the police handling of this neighborhood dispute involving two young boys: The officer spent 45 minutes handling a variety of minor matters before driving to the address listed by the dispatcher for “boy with slingshot, investigate.” After gently rebuking the caller, a 12–13 year old white boy for calling the police,14 the officer asked: “So, what happened?” The boy, Jimmy, told a long story accusing a boy across the street, Jesus, of shooting rocks at his house and his father’s van with a slingshot, and breaking a window in the house, although he (Jimmy) “wasn’t doin’ nothing.” We walked across the street to talk with Jesus, a Mexican-American youth around 10 or 11, who had been watching us talk to Jimmy. He told us that Jimmy was a bully, always starting trouble with him and his younger brothers. Jesus’s father came out of the apartment with three other children in tow. He appeared very agitated, pointing to Jimmy across the street and speaking quickly in Spanish, with Jesus translating. Both the boy and his father asserted that Jesus never owned a slingshot, or used one on Jimmy’s house. We then traipsed over to the Jimmy’s house and spoke with his father, who was unaware that Jimmy had called the police, or that he had been having an incident with Jesus again. The officer then took both boys and made them stand together facing him. Looking at Jesus, he lectured: “Now you, I don’t ever want to hear your name mentioned with a slingshot again.” Jimmy looked smug as Jesus protested, “But I don’t!” Raising his hand, the officer replied “I’m not done. I don’t ever want to hear of trouble between you two again. And that means (turning to Jimmy) that you stay on this side of the street and quit bothering 14. The boy was waiting in the street at the address given, and welcomed the officer by commenting: “Boy I’m glad you’re here! Gosh it took you long enough, didn’t it? (pointing to the student ride- along) Is he a cop too?” “He’s my college student? Anybody killed?” “Huh?” “Anyone killed? “No! Not even.” “Well, see? If somebody was hurt or killed, you’d see a lot of us here real quick. You’ve gotta think about why you’re calling the police, when you call, and then you make sure it’s worth it, ok?” “Ok.”

230 / Chapter Seven Jesus and his little brothers. You’re two years older than him.” Jimmy began to protest; “No” the officer said before he could start, “I know you’ve been bothering them. If not, it shouldn’t be a problem to stay on your side of the street. Jesus’s gonna stay on his, right?” Jesus shook his head yes. Jimmy definitely did not look satisfied. “I mean it Jimmy. Your father says there’s no damage to the house like you said, and I’m sure (looking at father) that you’ll get a talking- to for calling out the Sheriff’s Department because you don’t like the kid across the street.” Making eye contact with each boy, he continued: “I don’t want to have to come back because of you two. If I do—I’ll be mad. You got it?” Both boys nodded yes. “Okay. Then go back home, and I don’t want to have to come back. You men be good, okay?” Both answered okay. But as he jogged across the street, Jesus added, “He started it.” “Not even, Jimmy,” the officer said as Jimmy began to protest. “Just let it be.” Back in the squad car, the officer commented: “You get one of those pretty much every shift.” “One of what?” “Ah, kids mad at each other, domestic dispute, something. It’d be stupid to arrest anyone. They don’t need the cops, they just want somebody to figure it out for them, and I get to be the one to do it.” (Fieldnotes from Ride-Along, Sheriff’s Department, Lennox, CA, 1992)

Here the officer quickly and pragmatically assessed the relevant “facts,” making little effort to parse conflicting claims or to determine underlying causes; rather he chastised both boys in transparently evenhanded fashion, validating both the complainant’s slingshot allegation and the younger boy’s charges of having been bullied, then offering pat instructions about how to avoid future troubles. In so doing he transformed the trouble by selectively rejecting and validating claims and allegations made by both sides.

In sum, the police deliberately seek some transformations in situations where they resist complainants’ demands that the other be treated as a wrongdoer and punished by legal sanctions. Other transformations arise almost incidentally, as by- products of organizational and processing priorities that characterize police intervention in troubles involving parties in ongoing relationships. Furthermore, how the police ultimately take sides may fundamentally transform interpersonal troubles; asymmetrical interventions restrict or limit the party sided against, and/or invalidate that side’s claims about what the trouble is; symmetrical interventions may involve the rejection of at least some of the positions and claims of both sides, in this way producing deeper and more upsetting transformations.

Authoritative Involvement / 231

Authoritative Interventions in Psychiatric Troubles The police typically intervene in interpersonal troubles in response to complaints of wrongdoing; their concerns with dealing with such complaints center on whether to order the trouble or to invoke legal sanctions. I now want to examine the somewhat different third- party intervention carried out by mobile psychiatric emergency teams (PET). Like the police, these teams were reactive, responding to local complaints about interpersonal troubles, but troubles attributed to some form of mental illness. PET went out to people’s homes and apartments to deal with these troubles in situ, backed by the authority to order the involuntary mental hospitalization of a person assessed as mentally ill. As in the case of the police, specific organizational and practical concerns shaped how these units responded, sometimes taking these responses in directions neither requested nor desired by the original parties to the trouble. As part of the movement toward community mental health in the early 1970s, regional mental health centers in Los Angeles organized two- person PET teams to go out into the community in response to calls for crisis intervention and mental hospital evaluation. These units functioned as psychiatric gatekeepers under California’s Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act passed in 1969 upon the closing of many of the state’s mental hospitals. In the field the team would contact the person who had called their community clinic requesting psychiatric evaluation of a “candidate patient” for hospitalization.15 Candidate patients rarely called PET about their own problems; in most cases a family member or neighbor requested PET’s presence, often against the wishes of the proposed patient. While occasionally staff members were able to convince callers to pressure the person called about to come into the clinic where therapeutic resources were available, in most cases they were not. As a result, PET dealt not only with troubles involving close interpersonal relations, but also with troubles marked by disagreement and sometimes heated opposition between the caller and the person called about. PET teams regularly included social workers, public health nurses, and psych techs, although on occasion MDs, psychiatrists, and psychologists would go out. In the home the team would try to talk with the candidate 15. I take the term “candidate patient” from Holstein (1993), who used it to characterize already hospitalized mental patients seeking release through a habeas corpus proceeding. This term is particularly appropriate in PET calls, where the team faced the task of converting the person called about into a patient under conditions where that person might well refuse to comport him- or herself as a patient.

232 / Chapter Seven

patient about current problems or the allegations of misconduct that had been reported. When PET decided that hospitalization was necessary, the team called an ambulance service to restrain and transport the unwilling and sometimes violently resistant patient. Hospitalized patients could be held for an initial period of seventy- two hours, extendable for another fourteen days at the discretion of hospital staff. Complaints to PET differed from complaints to the police in several important ways. Perhaps most critically, callers seeking PET intervention presented themselves as concerned parties seeking help on behalf of a troubled other rather than as victims of another’s wrongdoing. In this respect, calls typically provided reports of behaviors indicating mental disorientation or instability. The following comments by two PET workers on the drive to evaluate Rosemary Alberts, a young housewife, illustrate the kinds of situations PET could be called in to: The husband called in, asking PET to do something, as “he can’t control his wife. She runs away from the phone.” The last time the husband came home from work she ran out of the house. There is a four year old child. “She’s doing bizarre things. . . . She burnt herself. She rants and raves. She smashed her car into another.” The husband is panicky himself. He said she won’t talk on the phone. . . . And he can’t get her to come down to the Clinic.” [Later, after an aborted interaction with Rose, the PET workers elaborated on their initial phone conversation with the husband.] He was agitated. “He’s very excitable— very panicky.” He wanted us to call the police and the hospital. I asked him why don’t you call them? He said I can’t, that’s my wife. I told him, well, they can do what I can do. (PET Fieldnotes, Los Angeles, 1973)

In this case PET understood the husband’s call as motivated by “panic” about his wife’s “bizarre” behaviors, his fear heightened by the presence of a young child. His request for a psychiatric evaluation for hospitalization, then, was viewed as a product of deep concern for his wife and child, as a plea to “do something” about a situation beyond his control. While most callers emphasized that they were calling out of concern for a candidate patient’s mental state and disordered behavior, some additionally framed themselves as injured or harmed by the other’s disturbed behavior. Typically they did so by reporting that the candidate patient had threatened or committed violence against them. Indeed, PET intake workers picked up on and recorded reports of threats and/or violence as evidence of possible “danger to others” (one of various LPS criteria for involuntary hospitalization), as in the following call concerning a single man, living alone:

Authoritative Involvement / 233 Initial call on Chris Alford, from mother, a resident in a board and care home: “Threatened to kill mother. Wanders streets.” Second call from mother, one day later: “Has attacked the mother in B & C home. Walks around in rain w/ no shoes on and in tee shirt. Has threatened to kill mother if she puts him away. City and Westchester [two mental hospitals, indicating prior hospitalizations].” Call one week later from apartment manager: “Violent. Beats up mother. Threatened to kill her.” (PET Fieldnotes, Los Angeles, 1973)

Complaints alleging violence increased the likelihood of PET intervention. Organizational Concerns and the Avoidance of Hospitalization Decisions to hospitalize candidate patients were shaped by PET workers’ distinctive organizational and professional commitments. In the first place, PET was subject to legislation specifying limited legal grounds for involuntary hospitalization: LPS provided that a person could be hospitalized against the person’s will only when the person’s mental illness created a danger to self, a danger to others, or left that person gravely disabled (specified to mean unable to provide for one’s own food, clothing or shelter) (Warren 1982; Holstein 1993). Of course, PET teams had fairly wide discretion in actually applying these criteria to particular cases: one psychiatrist, for example, invoked professional knowledge to discount the likelihood of “danger to others” in the case of a seventeen- year- old boy who was reported as “moody” and “depressed” after having “threatened to kill mother and sister,” commenting, “So far, it could be just an adjustment reaction or something like that” (Emerson and Pollner 1978:80–81). But nonetheless, PET decision making was fundamentally framed by LPS’s restricted criteria for involuntary hospitalization. Second, PET workers evaluated requests for hospitalization in light of personal and professional understandings of the value of mental hospital treatment. Many PET workers had had direct experience with the range of mental hospitals in the region, and had come to hold strong views about the effects of hospitalization on different patients. PET considered mental hospitalization, particularly in a heavily treatment- oriented private hospital, desirable for candidate patients undergoing an initial, serious, “acute” psychiatric crisis. But with respect to the more typical “chronic” patients who comprised the majority of their cases, PET workers viewed hospitalization as a custodial and coercive response that rarely served any therapeutic purpose. As a result, in accord with priorities of the community mental health movement, PET routinely sought to manage most calls without hospitalizing,

234 / Chapter Seven

and often devoted time and effort to working out outpatient arrangements that would allow these persons to stay in their homes, even if only on a temporary trial basis. PET, then, did not avoid hospitalization because they evaluated candidate patients as not “seriously” or “really” mentally ill. Rather, PET assumed that most if not all the candidate patients they encountered were psychologically disturbed, often obviously and seriously so. But such diagnostically framed judgments were of restricted relevance in actually deciding what to do in particular instances. Indeed, in the field PET workers devoted less attention to the nature or severity of psychological symptoms than to the possible consequences of disturbed behavior in that person’s living situation. Thus PET attended to mental condition and psychiatric symptoms as part of a broader project of determining whether that living situation was “manageable” or “tenable” (Emerson 1989). In cases where PET evaluated candidate patients as “crazy” but living in tenable circumstances, PET often refused to order hospitalization. In cases that involved chaotic, out- of- control tendencies, PET would still try to avoid hospital commitments by trying to make those situations tenable, by either developing a minimal therapeutic relationship with the candidate patient, or establishing informal caregiving arrangements. However, when efforts to establish tenable circumstances in these ways did not work out, PET could well decide that hospitalization was necessary as a last resort for lack of a feasible alternative (Emerson 1981).16 In these ways, despite regularly assessing most candidate patients as psychiatrically disturbed and some as “really crazy,” PET frequently responded to requests for psychiatric intervention in interpersonal troubles by trying to avoid hospitalization. In so doing PET could transform interpersonal troubles in several distinct ways: by rejecting callers’ characterizations of the other’s psychiatric troubles, by invoking LPS criteria to deny the need to hospitalize the other, and by making disordered living situations manageable. Transformations from Suspicions about Callers’ Motives and Requests In deciding to go out on a call, PET implicitly prealigned with the caller, accepting at least for the moment the latter’s depiction of the candidate patient’s problems as serious enough to merit evaluation for involuntary hos-

16. Thus “hospitalization might occur in situations where serious disturbance was not really at issue. In homes in which a young child was present, for example, PET workers were inclined to hospitalize much more readily than in home situations without such children, often pointing to the high vulnerability of the youngster to harm by the parent” (Emerson 1989:221).

Authoritative Involvement / 235

pitalization. But PET could quickly become skeptical about callers’ claims and allegations; indeed, PET workers anticipated that many claims that another needed to be hospitalized would prove to be wrong, incomplete, or distorted. As one psychiatrist described the problem of accepting callers’ accounts at face value, “Sometimes it’s just a family crisis and all of this information is nothing. In fact, that’s the only way I can justify going out. Otherwise we could just send an ambulance to pick up the person.” When doubt did arise, PET workers denied callers this implicitly collegial status and resisted their demands for hospitalization. Such doubt, weakening the validity of complaints requesting psychiatric intervention, arose when PET came to interpret calls for their intervention as an overreaction, a symptom of the caller’s mental illness, or manipulation. Overreaction. PET workers frequently came to assess a reported psychiatric trouble as less serious than the caller made it out to be. Judgments of “overreaction” occurred in a variety of ways. The caller’s tone and demeanor could suggest that the caller was “a worrier” whose projections about the potentially violent behavior of a family member were questionable. Or information gleaned from the intake slip might seem contradictory or incomplete, as when, for example, a PET worker dismissed the claim that an individual had not left his room for weeks and had been drinking wine continuously with an “Oh yeah? Then how did he get the wine?” Or typical knowledge of mental patients and their caretakers might be elaborated to cast doubt on the face validity of reported information, as when a PET worker discounted the seriousness of a report that a patient had been directing traffic in the streets with the following: “It all depends on what you call ‘directing traffic.’ I mean, I’ve seen a lot of people cross the street and wave cars on.” Symptoms of the Caller’s Mental Illness. In requesting psychiatric intervention some callers behaved in ways that PET read as indicating that the callers themselves had serious mental problems. One woman, for example, gained a budding reputation as a problem by virtue of her demeanor on the phone and the fact that she had called PET regarding her son several times and then called an equal number of times to tell PET to disregard the earlier calls. In these circumstances PET often described the caller as “crazier than the patient,” or at least suggested that “both are crazy,” coming to view “craziness” as the product of the interaction between the family members. Consider this example: One worker commented on a 60- year- old man previously hospitalized by PET: “Everybody’s made calls on Jake. He’s really crazy. He really does have deterioration of the brain from syphilis. She’s [Jake’s wife] nutty, too. I mean,

236 / Chapter Seven it’s like a sick, sick relationship. . . . Either he throws her out or she throws him out, depending on who’s the more violent one. They go up and down in terms of violence.” (Emerson and Pollner 1978:80)

The decisional implications of a “both crazy” situation for PET were not clear- cut. On the one hand, the fact that the caller was neither believed nor trusted might not stop PET from going out on the case. In some instances, for example, PET anticipated that even while the caller was “crazy,” the patient sound crazier still and might need to be hospitalized. Further, the issue of which party was more disturbed might recede in importance before the immediate need to respond to an unstable, perhaps violent living situation. Here PET might feel some— any— intervention would do, and the party hospitalized might not be the one who was more crazy but the one who was more tractable. Manipulation. In a number of instances PET workers came to suspect that their intervention was being requested for questionable or even illicit purposes. In some such cases, PET felt it was being used to try to influence the behavior of a problemed other in devious but ultimately acceptable ways. One example follows: Returning from an attempted call on a woman described as “extremely depressed” on the crisis evaluation slip, Art commented that it didn’t seem too serious, since her husband was concerned and there were also “private doctors involved.” He continued: “They probably want to use us as a threat.” He speculated that she had been refusing to take her medications, or something like that, and the doctors had told the husband about PET. Husband then would want PET to come and tell his wife to “take her medicine or else.” (Emerson and Pollner 1978:85)

Here PET came to see the request for hospitalization as pretense, but one intended to further the best interests of the disturbed other. In other instances, callers might be seen as manipulating PET for reasons other than concern for the welfare of the candidate patient. Calls from landlords, for example, were suspect as efforts to get troubling tenants evicted. Some family calls came to be attributed to simple malice, as when a wife’s complaint was dismissed as an act of “striking out” or “getting back” at her husband. In another case, a wife’s claims that her husband was disturbed and violent came to be counted as a tactic to have him put in a day treatment program “so she could keep receiving his ATD check.”

Authoritative Involvement / 237

In sum, suspicions about callers’ claims that the other was mentally disturbed and that psychiatric hospitalization was necessary led PET to reevaluate and redefine the troubled situations they encountered. In some such cases PET concluded that reports of psychiatric trouble were exaggerated; in others that the candidate patient did indeed need professional help; and in yet others that the caller was trying to exploit PET intervention for ends that had nothing to do with the best interests of the candidate patient. In these ways, suspicions about callers could lead to very different responses than those initially sought by complainants, and in some instances to radical transformations of PET’s interpretation of the trouble. “Crazy but Not LPS” While complainants usually called PET citing troubled others’ disturbing mental symptoms, PET workers frequently responded that mental illness per se did not provide sufficient grounds for involuntary commitments. They invoked LPS criteria to resist caller pressure to hospitalize and hence to transform the trouble into a nonactionable matter. Consider, for example, how PET handled the complaints alleging violent behavior and mental problems received about Chris Alford (on whom, see above): PET took no action on the call from Chris Alford’s mother until a week later, when, in a period of three hours, PET received nine calls about Chris from an apartment manager, neighbors, and the office of the local city councilman, among others. Most of the calls reiterated the earlier claims, that Chris was “violent,” “beat up mother,” “threatened to kill her.” One caller noted, however, that the police had seen Chris. Shelly, the PET coordinator found this information particularly significant: “The police have the same power to hospitalize as we do. And if they didn’t feel he could be hospitalized, I have some question about it.” When Ted, a social worker, arrives for the 1pm shift, she tells him: “Ted, I don’t usually ask this. If this guy is sick or isn’t sick, please do something!” Ted agrees to go out that afternoon with Rosanne, another psych tech. While he is temporarily out of the office, Shelly fields another call from the mother, and after hanging up, tells those in the office: “I’ll bet you he isn’t even that bad. . . . It’s just a bunch of anxious people, that’s all. That’s what it sounds like to me.” I accompany the team to the apartment building. The father is not there to meet us as arranged, but Ted proceeds anyway. On the way in he checks with the wife of the apartment manager, who lives on the first floor, and asks: Can

238 / Chapter Seven we come down and use your phone if we have to? The woman readily agrees, and as we start up the stairs asks: “You all come to get him?” Ted: “We came to talk to him.” Upstairs we find the right apartment and knock. A thin young black man cracks open the door and sticks his head out. Ted checks to confirm that he is Chris Alford, then explains that we are from Mental Health and would like to talk with him. Chris nods his agreement, but makes no move to open the door. Ted asks: Can we come in? Chris, looking at the two PET workers and me, responds: “How many does it take to talk?” Ted replies that it will only take about five minutes, and makes a move toward the door, which Chris now opens, allowing all of us to move into his small one- room apartment. Rosanne sits in the only chair, the rest of us remain standing. Ted begins by asking: “How’ve you been?” Chris does not reply at first, but then answers “Ok” when Ted repeats the question. Ted: How long since you got out of the hospital? Chris: A long time. Ted: How long? A couple years. Did they give you medicine? Yes. Have you been taking it? Part of the time. Does it help you? Yes. Ted then continued, Chris, we’ve had calls that you’ve been bothering people. Chris: I haven’t been bothering nobody. Ted: We’ve had calls that you have. No. What about your mother? Did you threaten her? I have trouble hearing the soft- spoken man as he recounts talking to his mother and poking her on the chest to emphasize a point; she then got upset and said he hit her. A silence ensues, as Ted seems at a loss about what to ask next, and turns to Rosanne and me, asking if we have any questions. We do not, and after a somewhat embarrassed but brief silence, Ted concludes, “Thank you. That’s all.” Returning to the clinic, Rosanne comments: “To me he looks like he’s been smoking weed.” He seemed a little spaced out to me. Ted responds that he seemed a little crazy, but he wasn’t bothering anyone. Rosanne reiterates this theme: “He’s got a right to be crazy.” He’s not hurting anyone, no reason to put him in the hospital. A bit later Ted characterizes Chris as harmless, kind of into his own world, but not looking to hurt anyone, then exclaiming: “a harmless, little impotent schziy kid!” (PET Fieldnotes, Los Angeles, 1973)

Very little seemed to happen in the interaction between candidate patient and PET in this encounter: Chris offered minimal responses, denying any upset or problems, and appeared to be quiet and passive. Furthermore, he lived alone, so that whatever he did at home would trouble no one; his mother was the primary complainant, but she lived elsewhere and could be presumed not to make frequent contact. Furthermore he provided an al-

Authoritative Involvement / 239

ternative version of the episode with his mother that diminished its alleged “violent” character. All in all, PET could read this candidate patient’s living situation as tenable, even if he were psychotic: both PET workers felt that he was “crazy,” but not dramatically so, and more critically, not in ways that posed any danger to himself or others. However, the case had generated a series of complaints, to which PET responded by specifically invoking LPS: After spending approximately 10 minutes talking with Chris in his room, the team leaves the apartment and goes downstairs. On our way out to the car the apartment manager’s wife intercepts us to say that the father wants to talk with us on the phone. In their apartment, Ted’s side of the conversations includes the following: “. . . We did an evaluation. We cannot hospitalize. [pause] I understand how you feel, sir. But we can’t break the law. [pause] Sir, we didn’t observe any of this behavior when we saw him. We can’t do anything here. We have to go by the law.” He then reviewed the specific criteria required by the LPS— danger to self, danger to others, gravely disabled— for involuntary mental hospital commitment and insisted that they had seen nothing indicating their presence. (PET Fieldnotes, Los Angeles, 1973)

Indeed, PET saw Chris as exactly the type of person LPS was intended to keep out of mental hospitals, and walked away from situation without taking any action, invoking their understanding of his condition as “not LPS” to resist the demands to hospitalize from a number of upset and aggrieved parties. In not hospitalizing candidate patients assessed as “crazy but not LPS” PET of course refused to take a responsive action expected and often demanded by callers. Furthermore, responding to calls about psychiatric troubles in this way effectively rejected lay understandings of mental illness in favor of a narrower, specifically legal- professional one— that mental illness, however upsetting and bizarre the other’s behavior, did not necessarily warrant involuntary hospitalization. Creating Manageable Situations Finally, PET workers transformed psychiatric troubles by seeking to establish caregiving and therapeutic arrangements that would order chaotic living situations and draw the candidate patient into outpatient therapy. Consider PET’s encounter with a classically paranoid patient, Jo Sherman, in the following extended account:

240 / Chapter Seven PET had been contacted by Mr. Sherman who had called several times saying that his wife was disturbed and should be hospitalized; he was unable to convince her to go to the hospital, and he would like PET’s assistance. The PET team, composed of Art and Bea, a psychiatric social worker and psych tech respectively, arranged to meet him at the apartment where Ms. S had moved after leaving the family home some 10 days previously. On the street outside the apartment, located just off one of the main entertainment districts of the city, Art talked briefly with the husband, asking how his wife has been and whether she had been taking her medications. No. Why not? Because she thinks that the doctor is against her, that he’s a Nazi. . . . Almost immediately upon the entrance of the PET team and the husband, Ms. S. initiates a loud tirade against her husband denouncing him as a dupe, a dope addict, a ring leader of the Communists and as trying to kill her. Reacting to the building intensity Art says to Ms. S: “We really don’t know what’s going on here. We got a call and we came out and we wanted to see what we can do to help. Like are you having problems?” To which Ms. S responds: “No. No problems.” Intermittently, she stops to talk to the PET team about how she had moved out and is living on ATD which is adequate to her needs. Ms. S. subsequently resumes her denunciation of her husband interspersed with remarks about her position “with Intelligence” in the State Department. When asked whether she had seen her doctor with regard to her medications, Ms. S said that she wouldn’t go to him because he is a Nazi. Art says: “We’re from the clinic, we’d like to get you some more medicine, and we’d like to help you there. Would you come to the clinic?” Ms. S replies that “I can’t get in there and I don’t want to bother.” Art then offers: “Well, what if I drive you down and drive you back?” Ms. S. replies “No thanks,” following that with “I’m not crazy.” She becomes more angry, and eventually threatens to call the police to remove her husband, the PET team, and the sociologist. At another point, when husband and wife are momentarily alone in the apartment while PET confers outside, Ms. S seems to try to forcibly eject her husband from the apartment, raising considerable concern lest Ms. S lock herself inside. Eventually Art and Bea confer outside the apartment and decide to hospitalize Ms. S. While Bea stays with Ms. S in the apartment I leave with Art and the husband to find a phone to call the ambulance. (PET Fieldnotes, Los Angeles, 1973)

In this case the PET team prealigned with the caller, agreeing to the husband’s request to evaluate his (separated) wife and accepting his reports about her behavior as factual background information. And indeed when PET met Jo face- to- face her extreme volatility and classically paranoid talk

Authoritative Involvement / 241

immediately validated these reports. Nonetheless, Art made a therapeutic overture to the woman, offering to get her more medicine and to drive her to the clinic to do so. But the candidate patient not only rejected this offer, but also became angrier and more resistant, threatening to call the police to have her husband, the PET team, and the sociologist thrown out of her apartment. With these developments, the team members agreed early on and with very little consultation to hospitalize Jo, one leaving to find a telephone to call the ambulance to take her to the hospital, the other staying in the apartment to assure access when the ambulance attendants arrived. However, on our way out Art suggests trying to use the phone of the apartment manager rather than walking several blocks to the nearest pay phone. We find the man who manages the apartment, who responds to a question from Art by reporting that he hasn’t had any trouble from Ms. S and that she has been quiet since moving in. In the course of the exchange, Mr. S. tears into the manager: “Let me just ask you something. How come you’d let her in here? How come you rented her that room? How come you’d rent her a room when she came without a suitcase?” The manager responds that the owner who lives in the building rented the apartment to Ms. S. Without asking to use the phone to call the ambulance, Art leads us to another unit to talk with the owner. As soon as we meet the owner, the husband complained that she should not have rented a place to someone with no clothes like that. “You know she’s a run away.” The owner replied that the other owner made the decision to rent to his wife, and went on to describe Ms. S as “very quiet and very nice.” Art asked: “No one’s complained?” To which the owner responded: “No one’s complained.” The owner continued that Ms. S was sick with the flu for the first few days. They had been worried about her and took some food over for her. When she did she noticed that Ms. S had the place “all straightened up” and that had impressed her. The owner reiterated that Ms. S seemed “very sweet, very nice.” From this point on, Art is committed to keeping Jo out of the hospital. As we walk back toward her apartment, he whispers to me so the husband cannot hear, “Maybe even if we could get her to take some medicine and check on her.” (PET Fieldnotes, Los Angeles, 1973)

Note the effects of local contingencies here: Art dropped in on the apartment manager as a practical convenience— to avoid having to walk down to the corner to a pay phone to call an ambulance. But he immediately picked up the manager’s favorable attitude toward a woman who moments earlier had been screaming wildly paranoid accusations. Moreover, the owner’s subse-

242 / Chapter Seven

quent remarks revealed a similar sympathy with Jo, and her report of having taken her food during her illness indicated that she had already provided some practical care to her new tenant. Art’s instant reorientation, of course, drew on his recognition of the striking contrast between Jo’s angry and paranoid actions when her husband was involved and her generally quiet and modulated responses to his questions. Leaving the husband outside, Art finds Bea and Ms. S talking in the apartment, the latter having made the bed/couch and applied some make- up. He explained to Jo that he wanted to talk to her without her husband present, since he seemed to upset her. He then launched into a long talk to Jo, emphasizing “We want to help you, we’re trying to do what we can to help you. We‘ll do our part and we expect you to do your part.” He pressed Jo to take her medications, and eventually she agreed to do so, although she refused to do so then and there in front of him. Art then found the manager and asking him to “call us if anything goes wrong,” gave him his name and phone number. Finally, he arranged with Jo and the manager to check back personally after several days. (PET Fieldnotes, Los Angeles, 1973)

Here PET seized on the support expressed by both manager and owner to develop a series of practical caretaking arrangements: they eventually got the former to agree to check up on Jo and “tell us if anything goes wrong,” and discouraged the husband from making future contact with her. They extracted Jo’s agreement to take her medications, and, more implicitly, her cooperation in their helping efforts. And finally, Art arranged to return in a few days to follow up and keep an eye on the situation. Again, this ad- hoc therapeutic and caretaking regime had a very practical and even minimal character. PET did not press for active support of and deep commitment from any of the parties. Art, for example, accepted Jo’s simple promise to take her medications in the future. Similarly, the husband’s agreement to stay away even for several days was extracted with obvious reluctance and seemed extremely tenuous. Nonetheless, Art seemed to feel that the situation was stable enough to be sustained for a short period. His plan to come back in several days would allow him both to see how these arrangements had worked and to try to implement something more viable and permanent with Jo and/or the others. In working out these arrangements PET abandoned courses of action that would have supported the husband and instead came to side with the concerns and desires of the candidate patient. As the call unfolded, PET

Authoritative Involvement / 243

concluded that the husband’s presence exacerbated Jo’s upset and paranoia, responding by keeping him in the background and by presenting themselves as simply trying to find out what was going on in order to provide “help” if she were having any “problems.” At the same time PET began to entertain suspicions about the husband’s motives and concerns. Initially they attached little significance to his depictions of his wife as an irresponsible mother and homemaker who had abandoned him and their children. But in the discussions with the manager and owner, the husband showed no concern for his wife’s condition, instead launching angry attacks against both for taking in an obvious “runaway.” Indeed, the husband consistently opposed any outcome other than hospitalization, including Art’s announcement as we returned to the apartment: Art indicates that he is going back to talk to Ms. S about medications. Mr. S. is distressed by this new turn (away from hospitalization) and talks about the possibility of Ms. S overdosing on her meds, which he says has been one of his major worries. Nevertheless, Art continues to the apartment and asks the husband to stay outside. (PET Fieldnotes, Los Angeles, 1973)

Thus, initially treated more or less as a colleague, the caller was progressively marginalized and excluded as PET recognized discrepancies between his concerns and those of the candidate patient and increasingly supported the latter. In these ways, PET intervention radically transformed this psychiatric trouble, by coming to identify divergent interests between the caller and the candidate patient and shifting sides from the former to the latter. In this process PET remained convinced that Jo was seriously mentally ill, but came to interpret the husband’s pursuit of hospitalization as an effort to restore a disrupted marriage rather than as the product of concern about his wife’s disturbed condition. PET came to view the husband, in other words, as self- interested, suffocating, and exploitative, pressing for hospitalization in order to get his spouse back on medications and returned home to a marriage she clearly wanted out of. Indeed, after the husband left he was further discredited by Jo’s report he had a gun in his car, raising some fear he might turn to force and violence to get his wife to come home. In sum, claims of seeking intervention on behalf of another could begin to erode, particularly when callers’ motives emerged as narrowly selfinterested. Indeed, suspicion begins to attach to callers who attribute threats and acts of violence to disturbed others, in this way combining pleas to intervene on behalf of the proposed patients with explicit complaints of

244 / Chapter Seven

wrongdoing leveled against these others. This combination creates a tension between the stance of a party concerned with the well- being of another in light of the latter’s bizarre behavior and the stance of a victim making complaints about behaviors that directly harm or threaten the victim. In these circumstances PET responses might transform the nature of the trouble in radical and dramatic fashion, with PET now dismissing callers’ claims as illegitimate and coming to side with the candidate patient in rejecting hospitalization as an option. But more commonly, PET responses, while accepting and validating callers’ claims that a relational other was mentally ill, transformed calls in more subtle and indirect ways, by resisting callers’ expectations that candidate patients be removed from the home and hospitalized; by invoking definitions of mental illness that incorporated a range of disabling conditions, some of which did not justify involuntary hospitalization; and by questioning and sometimes rejecting callers’ framings of others’ problemed behaviors, and their motives for seeking psychiatric intervention.

A Note on Mediation and Relational Counseling The police and PET have authority to impose outcomes on relational troubles in the face of open resistance, and to do so on the home ground of the troubled parties; both officials routinely went out into homes, streets, and communities to respond to interpersonal troubles in the settings in which they arose. Such authoritative, mobile responses are rare in contemporary societies: those engaged in interpersonal disputes may of course turn to a variety of legal channels in seeking an authoritative outcome to their troubles, but typically official third parties require troubled parties to come to them, then dealing with these troubles in offices once removed from the social and relational settings that produced them.17 Handling interpersonal troubles in an office has its own distinctive problems. In many instances one party alone seeks official or professional help, seeing a physician, therapist, minister, or lawyer without the other being present or perhaps even informed about the visit. The other party may be pressured or manipulated into coming, and in some cases attendance may be enforced by the threat of legal or other sanctions, as in notices and sub17. A variety of other agents of social control, including social workers, case managers, probation and parole officers, public health visitors, and so on, also routinely go out to visit clients in their homes and living situations. But these instances of official fieldwork involve matters that have already been identified and treated as institutional cases and do not ordinarily involve the kind of first- line response to interpersonal troubles provided by the police and PET.

Authoritative Involvement / 245

poenas to appear in court. However, there are occasions when both sides to an interpersonal trouble will agree to take their problem to the office of an authoritative third party; the primary instances in Western societies involve going to mediation or to relational counseling. These forms of third- party intervention not only require prior agreement by both parties to participate, but also cannot enforce outcomes in the face of opposition from one or both parties. As a result outcomes require agreement by both sides, and hence if achieved tend to take compromise, symmetrical forms. These differences from police and PET responses make it worthwhile to briefly examine how trouble intervention is organized in these circumstances. In order to produce agreements, both mediation and relational counseling seek to minimize and diffuse direct opposition between parties in interpersonal relationships. To do so these third parties rely on a variety of techniques that diffuse and redirect one- sided blamings of the other side. One set of techniques used in mediation sessions, for example, seeks to eliminate “the type of arguing that occurs in ordinary conversation by participants in informal disputes” (Garcia 1991:818). Mediation does so, Garcia continues, “by implementing an interactional organization that constrains the presentation of accusations and denials, provides opportunities for disputants to respond selectively to accusations, and provides for mitigated formulations of accusations and denials” (818). This interactional organization gives the parties an extended turn in which to tell their story, prevents or at least discourages responses by the other during the current speaker’s turn, and requires the speaker to address accusations to the mediator rather than directly to the other. As a result, Garcia found that in the mediation sessions studied “attributions of blame are typically formulated in the third person” rather than in the second person (829); “only 8 percent (25 out of 321) of the accusations in the nine hearings had second- person attributions of blame” (826), and these were typically immediately sanctioned by the mediator. Edwards (1995:339) has identified a second technique that can be used to substantively dissolve blaming and promote agreement in mediation and relational counseling sessions: reformulating acts of wrongdoing identified in accusations as normal, “genuine and understandable reactions.” Examining a series of counseling sessions involving a married Irish couple living in England, Edwards showed that while Jimmy, the husband, felt that his wife was “an incorrigible flirt,” the wife, Connie, complained that “my Jimmy is extremely jealous,” citing an instance in which Jimmy criticized her for talking causally to “three blokes” in a pub while he was getting drinks from the bar, but contending: “I’m not the type that’d turn around and ignore

246 / Chapter Seven

somebody. Regardless who they are. I just can’t do it” (336). The counselor formulated the differences between the couple in these terms (338): You had used earlier the word flirting; you’re saying being normally sociable. You don’t think you’re doing anything. But it’s upsetting Jimmy. And I’m saying that you can see how those two things are connected. And . . . you understanding what Jimmy is seeing and feeling might help you. And Jimmy understanding about your need to be sociable.

In this way the framings of behaviors as “jealousy” and “flirting” are recast, not as matters of wrongdoing, but as natural dispositions or “needs” that should be recognized and honored by both parties. As Edwards summarizes the counselor’s framing of the troubled relationship, Rather than treating this as some kind of concerted disagreement, or as one person suffering unduly the unreasonableness of the other (or any other blame- locating gloss), the counselor frames it all as a matter of honest perspective (what Jimmy and Connie “think,” “understand,” “see,” and “feel”), what they “need,” their genuine and understandable reactions, and their lack of mutual understanding. (339)

The problem is framed as failure both to understand the “normal,” “natural” character of these behaviors for the other and to appreciate the ways in which one’s own actions strengthen or elicit these behaviors on the part of the other. Again, mediation and relational counseling cannot impose outcomes in the face of the opposition of either party, but instead deflect and dilute blaming in order to promote mutual agreement and hence compromise, symmetrical outcomes to troubles. Mediations in particular seek formal “settlements” or agreements that both parties accept. The demands of working out forward- looking agreements on future actions deflect attention from past behaviors and transgressions. Of course, in a number of cases mediation cannot produce a mutually acceptable agreement, the troubles remaining unresolved and perhaps being moved to court settings that can imposed one- sided solutions.18

18. This appears the likely outcome of the divorce mediation analyzed by Greatbatch and Dingwall (1989:635–36), which ended without resolution, the husband declining to agree to the division of property sought by the wife and “selectively facilitated” by the mediator, and expressing a preference to take the dispute to a solicitor.

Authoritative Involvement / 247

Conclusion Authoritative third- party intervention may transform interpersonal troubles in different ways. In many cases, seeking official intervention on one’s side may in itself transform relational troubles: how the troubled party frames and formulates a complaint or report to officials, for example, may differ significantly from earlier troubles- tellings to friends and sympathetic others. Thus complaints to the police frame some specific act as culpable wrongdoing in detailed and unequivocal terms, often by highlighting harm or injury as intentionally caused by the other. Reports to PET teams collect a variety of “bizarre” words and deeds committed by the other and link them together to suggest that the candidate patient no longer inhabits a predictable and “normal” mental world and hence needs to be hospitalized. Furthermore, official third parties’ decision- making mandates and priorities fundamentally shape trouble outcomes, as responses to interpersonal troubles are filtered through the lenses employed by these third parties. For both the police and PET, the authority to pursue outcomes contrary to the wishes of one or both parties to the trouble give these lenses particular salience. Yet it is striking that in handling most interpersonal troubles both the police and PET routinely use this authority as a broad resource to respond informally rather than officially, pressuring those involved to accept outcomes that fall short of what they had initially sought: the police prefer to handle interpersonal troubles by working out informal solutions that establish order at least for the moment; PET prefers not to hospitalize but to leave candidate patients in tenable living situations or to develop minimal, informal therapeutic or caregiving relationships with those involved in the trouble. In part the preference for informal outcomes reflects concerns with expediency: informal handling avoids official action that would bring the trouble to other institutions in ways that require additional time and effort. But in addition, informal responses allow third parties to address the respective concerns and priorities of the troubled parties, perhaps even to work out some kind of tolerable settlement. While I have emphasized similarities between the police and PET as third parties, it is also important to point out some key areas of difference. While both seek to establish order in the troubled relationships into which they are called, their order- establishing practices are permeated by criminal law and psychiatric commitments respectively. Thus the police tend to focus on disorder in conjunction with specific illegal (harmful, culpable) acts— hittings, threats, contested takings, and so on. PET is ultimately concerned with another’s broader mental condition rather than with specific acts, with

248 / Chapter Seven

the effects of disturbance and “acting out” rather than with culpable wrongdoing. Here the implications of complaining about wrongdoing and reporting bizarre behavior as a means of soliciting “help” for another become central. For the latter rests on an altruistic stance or premise: one is seeking outside intervention on behalf of another, not to further one’s own interests. As a result, when troubled parties make a complaint alleging harm, injury, or wrongdoing by a psychiatrically disturbed other they present themselves as at least in part a victim of the other, thereby asserting “ownership” of the trouble and tending to contradict the underlying stance of altruism. Hence complaints of the sort that routinely mobilize the police tend to discredit the person seeking psychiatric intervention on behalf of another, generating the kinds of suspicions about motives that led PET to treat the request as overreacting, manipulative, or even a product of mental illness in its own right. Finally, when judged necessary or appropriate, these third parties would invoke their authority to directly impose and enforce official responses in the face of overt resistance by one or both parties— by arrest or physical force in the case of the police, by invoking mental health laws to deny or order involuntary hospitalization in the case of PET. In many cases, actually invoking authority in these ways was the residual outcome of the inability to deal with the trouble informally, to get the parties involved to accept compromise outcomes. Those who resisted police efforts to compromise and settle, for example, were often arrested or made to do things by force. And PET typically turned to involuntary mental hospitalization only with the failure (or inappropriateness) of efforts to establish a minimal therapeutic relationship with the candidate patient or a caregiving relationship with family or others. In these instances the police and PET emerge as gatekeepers of the institutional systems tied to two major forms of “deviance” in American society—“crime” and “mental illness.” Here the police and PET have the power to treat interpersonal troubles as full- blown crime and mental illness respectively, arresting, charging, and imprisoning an intimate, and hospitalizing a disturbed other. These decisions in particular can become deeply transformative events.

EIGHT

Conclusion

Let us consider the idea of pathology in the naturalist tradition, and in the process, observe the graduate emergence of the antithetical view— diversity. —David Matza, Becoming Deviant (1969:45)

Taking up concerns of the classic societal reaction approach to deviance, this book has examined the beginnings and turning points of the informal troubles that arise in close relationships involving family members, couples and intimates, roommates, neighbors, and coworkers. In so doing it has shifted the focus from the reactions of official agents of social control to the responses of ordinary people to the routine and recurrent troubles that mark everyday relations with others, only a small minority of which develop into full- blown deviance. Such mundane relational troubles arise and develop over time in sequenced and patterned ways, some fading away or becoming incorporated into the fabric of relational routines, others persisting and escalating into bitter conflicts and accusations of wrongdoing. When authoritative agents of social control treat actors as official deviants, their actions will come after informal processes of dealing with relational troubles have failed to resolve the matter. Relational troubles begin when someone experiences another’s behavior in negative terms— as irritating, upsetting, annoying, difficult, or worrisome. Irritations and worries develop into troubles as disturbed parties begin to respond in some overt way to the disturbing situations. An overt response brings the discontent explicitly into the relationship and may well elicit some reaction from the other, hence beginning to crystallize and elaborate the trouble.

250 / Chapter Eight

Initial responses usually involve either unilateral actions by the troubled party or complaints expressing discontent and seeking to get the other to correct the problematic behavior. While the former are usually invisible or of low visibility to the troubling other, remedial complaints must strike some balance between the alienating implications of expressing discontent and demanding change and the need to bring the other on board to acknowledge a problem and make a good- faith commitment to change it. In these ways, both unilateral responses and remedial complaints are distinctly relationally sensitive in character, ordinarily minimizing confrontation and modulating explicit moral evaluation in seeking the agreement and cooperation of the other. In this respect, minimally confrontational responses to troubles involve a distinctive form of moral work, work in which the troubled party persists in finding ways to define the other as someone worthy of a continuing relationship, as essentially decent and trustworthy, despite the other behaving (on occasion) in irritating or worrisome fashion. In so doing the troubled party accepts the other’s immediate intentions and deeper motives (even if they differ from his or her own). This moral work is embodied in remedial practices that avoid confrontation, mitigate direct accusations, appeal to the goodwill or concern of the other, offer corrective proposals about what might be done in the future, and so on. These informal conciliatory responses are not oriented to another’s behavior as a matter of moral wrongdoing and are not usually framed as “sanctions”— a term Kitsuse (1964:101) and others use— aimed at discrediting or punishing the other. Rather these practices place moral accent on preserving the underlying relationship through an ethic of basic but often subtle relational care— anticipating that oblique and indexical complaints will be picked up and responded to, avoiding or minimizing alienating confrontations and blaming, and coming to accept or at least live with another’s personal quirks and preferences. These practices comprise what is often termed “normalization,” and enable troubled parties to construct and maintain relational problems as matters of interpersonal differences and personal preferences. In this respect, this sort of moral work sustains definitions of troubles as products of legitimate diversity, rather than of moral or pathological wrongdoing. In contrast, if troubles persist or grow more “serious,” troubled parties turn to responses that are openly moralistic and confrontational, and that abandon concern with encouraging the other to agree to correct the problem. Such responses often involve accusations of wrongdoing, invoking explicit moral evaluations to frame the other’s behavior as offensive and the other’s character as suspect or untrustworthy. These responses too

Conclusion / 251

involve moral work, but work that is distinctly entrepreneurial in character, providing explicitly moralistic evaluations of the “wrongdoer” and his or her behavior.1 These responses, in fact, involve interactional variants of the kinds of moral enterprise that Becker (1963) argued creates official deviance when pursued by interest- group rule creators and official rule enforcers.2 Indeed, we can understand moral enterprise as a series of generic processes of invoking and elaborating moral evaluations as well as rules. As a result, we can ask not only when, how, and why moral evaluations are applied to specific behaviors by another, but also what kinds of moral evaluations or moral accents may be given to interpersonal troubles and how these differ from one another. The key processes here involve imparting a distinctive moral accent by delegitimating the other’s claims or interests, by framing the other’s behavior as intentional norm violation, by attributing motives of ill will or hostility, by formulating specific rules to try to control the trouble, and by adopting openly antagonizing and punitive stances toward the other. Through such moral(istic) work— akin to Garfinkel’s (1956) classic status degradation ceremony but without the ceremonial setting and public audience— the troubled party highlights the other’s behavior as deliberately offensive or transgressive (often invoking or formulating abstract normative understandings or even explicit rules that the other has violated) and attributes a deeply faulted or defective disposition to the other, thereby showing the need (and justification) for invoking extreme responses. Such processes of moralization, then, mark the natural history of some interpersonal troubles.

The natural history of interpersonal troubles developed here highlights the distinctive relational implications of different framings of and responses to such troubles. It focuses on critical turning points— moments when prior 1. Matza (1969:41–66) distinguished between social diversity and pathology as frameworks for understanding deviance in the work of Chicago sociologists. I am suggesting that this distinction also characterizes two contrasting tendencies in people’s everyday understandings of and responses to troubles, as appreciation of difference and diversity link to efforts to remedy and preserve stressed interpersonal relationships, while judgments of wrongdoing, deviance, and pathology arise as troubles come to be experienced as intentional and intractable. 2. Becker (1963:147–63) conceptualized moral enterprise as collective acts focused on official domains, particularly “moral crusades” carried out by social movement groups such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and by official agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. These moral crusades created legislation like prohibition and administrative rules like those criminalizing marijuana and heroin. However, the kinds of initiative that underlie collective moral enterprise are also apparent in informal reactions to interpersonal trouble within dyads.

252 / Chapter Eight

understandings of discontents and troubles are transformed and new forms of response are turned to and implemented. Such turning points include the following: •

Linking a personal negative experience to a relational other’s actions

•

Identifying and/or formulating the nature of such discontents with another’s behavior

•

Making a private discontent a relational issue on moving from “letting it go” to “doing something”

•

Linking a current irritation to other incidents

•

Turning from unilateral to openly bilateral responses

•

Turning to someone outside the troubled relationship for advice and support

•

Bringing someone previously outside the troubled relationship directly into the trouble as an informal third party

•

Shifting from attributions of “normal motives” and of unintentionally caused upset to attributions of deliberate intention to disturb or harm

•

Abandoning remedial responses in favor of overtly oppositional moralistic and punitive responses

•

Involving authoritative third parties

It is important to note that in addressing the natural history of troubles one encounters recurrent tensions between what Geertz (1983) has termed “experience- near” and “experience- distant” concepts, between identifying local or “members meanings” (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 2011: chap. 5) and more general analytic categories. On the one hand, I have sought to represent interpretive and response processes as actually experienced and recounted by troubled parties. To this end I have highlighted the commonsense understandings and practical concerns of those involved in troubled relationships, particularly noting their reliance on everyday or “folk” knowledge about how relationships and interactions work— what early ethnomethodologists term “commonsense knowledge of social structures” (Garfinkel 1967). The use of such commonsense knowledge informs and shapes the responses of troubled parties throughout the development of troubles in a variety of ways: •

When expressions of discontent are inhibited, not only does the irritated party draw on inferences about how the troubling other might react, but the latter will also have to make sense of the signs of unexpressed discontent that she

Conclusion / 253 or he picks up. For each of us knows that our relational others sometimes suppress expression of irritation, and in response each of us tries to interpret if that is occurring. In so doing we rely on a folk sociology of relational troubles. •

Troubled parties draw on commonsense knowledge about the likely reactions making a direct complaint to another. These considerations shape how they structure the timing and presentation of the complaint: Will it be more effective to complain immediately or to hold it for some later point? Alone or in front of an audience? Accent one’s own personal preferences or the negative consequences of the other’s actions? In these processes complainants rely on what they know generally about the other’s biography and character, on what has happened previously with regard to this particular matter in the relationship, and on projections of likely future outcomes. And the person complained to, of course, may read just these concerns in how the complaint has been delivered, using these interpretations to organize their own response.

•

While official third parties like the police respond to interpersonal troubles on the basis of their own work priorities, lay complainants often have local knowledge of how the police operate, and shape their complaints accordingly: a “push” may be framed as deliberately violent and hence as an “assault”; an injury may be reported as the reason for calling in the police; “guns” and “gangs” may be referenced to increase the police sense of the seriousness of the call. But again, the police come to know that complainants exaggerate, lie, or distort in these and other ways and consequently examine their claims with careful suspicion.

On the other hand, I also employ a number of general analytic framings— the natural history progression of troubles over time, response cycles, turning points, and the transformations of troubles— that depart in some ways from the commonsense understandings of parties in relational troubles. I use these analytic tools to understand troubles as sequenced series of episodes of trouble and response developing over extended periods of time and moving to a variety of possible outcomes. However, these patterns, cycles, and transitions are not the same as those understood by members, for although people know about these stages and transitions, they rarely need to represent or formulate them as such. For example, they know that things will change if they directly accuse another or if third parties are called in— maybe they don’t know exactly what will happen, but they know more or less. They also know that they may be putting off expressing irritations as someone else’s fault because they are weak, cannot bear conflict, and may be letting people trample on them; and they fight that from time to time.

254 / Chapter Eight

But members have some sense of both of these processes and of the possible outcomes, and they act on the basis of this sense, while knowing that others also have a sense of the stages, knowing the implications of going to the next stage, and so on. As a result, a natural history analysis of interpersonal troubles cannot be predictive. For troubles relate current events to prior events, and project possible future outcomes of different courses of action. As a result analysis can identify the specific stages that troubles can move through, and can suggest when and how movement to another stage will occur, but will not be able to predict the exact stages that any particular troubles go through and in what order. One consequence, of course, is the constant need to qualify statements about these stages and patterns through frequent use of terms such as “may,” “many,” “frequently,” “often,” and so on to mark the variability of these processes.

Let me conclude by suggesting areas for future research on the processes of identifying and responded to interpersonal troubles. Public Place and Institutional Troubles. It would be useful to analyze trouble processes between parties in relationships that are not continuing and marked by relative equality. Trouble in public place encounters provides one such possibility, as there is a rich tradition of research on troubles between strangers in public and quasi- public settings, beginning with Goffman’s (1963) analyses of threats to public order and civility. Much of this research addresses serious and often dramatic troubles, including fights and violence between the unacquainted (Jackson-Jacobs 2013; Katz 1999; Luckenbill 1977; Collins 2008), and gender- related and sexual intrusions in public places (Gardner 1995; Emerson and Gardner 1997; Nielson 2006). With the notable exception of Goffman’s work, less attention has been given to the beginnings of these troubles and the ways in which some are short- circuited and “resolved” without developing into clear- cut troubles. A second promising area for further research would involve the troubles that arise in continuing interactions in stratified workplaces and hierarchal institutional settings such as schools and residential treatment programs. These are also classic areas of sociological concern, and include studies of factories and other hierarchically organized places of work (Dalton 1959; Roy 1959; Morrill 1995), control processes in school classrooms (Stebbins 1975; Denscombe 1985), and a wealth of research on mental hospitals (Perruci 1974; Luske 1990), homes for the aged (Shield 1988; Diamond 1992), and group homes (Kivet and Warren 2002; Wästerfors 2009). A key process

Conclusion / 255

here involves the muted and often disguised resistance by institutional subordinates to control from above. Worries about Others. While many troubles begin with upset about how another’s behavior affects oneself, others arise from concern that the other’s behavior is in some way detrimental to that person’s well- being. My analyses have been skewed toward the former, in part because I collected most of my data by asking about troubles and irritations rather than worries, in part because existing research on the responses to another’s problems have not looked in depth at how concerned parties initially communicate with the other and try to change the other’s behavior. Here it will be important to distinguish between worries that arise within more or less equalitarian relationships (e.g., where one member of an aging couple develops concern about the other’s mental and/or physical competence), and worries that arise in interpersonal relationships between unequals (e.g., parents and children, family caregivers for the physically disabled). And with regard to children, there are important differences between families with younger children, where parental power in terms of defining issues and managing responses is relatively unchallenged (e.g., Åkerström [2004] on parents’ identification of and responses to a child’s problematic hearing), and older children, particularly teenagers, who increasingly claim autonomy to develop independent lives (e.g., Kurz [2006] on mothers “letting go”). One key issue here is whether the troubling party shares the concerns of the person who is worried and participates actively in efforts to eradicate or manage the trouble, or denies the problem and resists such efforts. Out- of- control teenagers, of course, epitomize this sort of extreme resistance and the kinds of havoc it can produce within the family. Furthermore, opposition between worrier and worried- about will tend to produce situations in which the latter does something that negatively affects the former (and vice versa), such that expressions of worry are accompanied by expressions of strong irritation and accusations of wrongdoing. This dynamic needs to be explored and analyzed more closely: When do discontents with the other arise in conjunction with worries about this other? How are they expressed? Do such personal discontents strengthen expressions of worry about another, showing that one’s concern for the other is not simply an intrusive, albeit altruistic, impulse? Or do they undermine expressions of worry, suggesting that one has some personal, selfish interest in making changes in what the other is doing? Unilateral Responses to Trouble. The use of unilateral actions to respond to irritating or worrisome behavior by another has received little research attention. There has been appreciation of exiting as a unilateral response

256 / Chapter Eight

to discontent in economic relations (Hirschman 1970), and in public place troubles with the unacquainted, whom we can leave, ignore, exit, and/or avoid in the future. But other forms of unilateral action are common responses to a range of troubles: teenagers often avoid parental monitoring and control regimes by unilateral acts, sometimes through deception and secrecy (Kurz 2006), sometimes through open defiance (C. P. Davis 2007). Alzheimer’s family caregivers come to rely increasingly on unilateral responses, actions both necessitated and facilitated by short- term memory loss (Blum 1994). Both higher- ups and underlings in work organizations rely on unilateral acts, often cloaked in secrecy, to avoid or resist the troubling behaviors of the other (Lemert 1972; Morrill 1995). Direct Complaints. How are complaints delivered directly to the troubling other organized and used in different interpersonal relationships, and in settings involving secondary and public place relationships? Direct complaints expressing worry about the other appear particularly difficult to manage in equalitarian relationships, since the expression of concern elevates the complainant and conveys some negative evaluation of the troubling other. Remedial Responses. In many interpersonal relations the preferred response to a troubling other is to try to induce that party to change the upsetting or worrying behavior, to participate in a mutual enterprise aimed at “fixing” the problem. How is this done? These processes are much more varied and complex than simply using punishments or “negative sanctions” to provide “feedback” to the troubling other, as Goffman (1971:347– 51) recognizes in critiquing Parsons (1951). For the troubling other has to be brought on board, and troubled parties attempt to do so in a number of ways: by advancing complaints as appeals to the goodwill or concern of the other, by elaborating holistic plans to restructure daily routines, by offering to do something that the other desires as a quid pro quo for the latter’s agreeing to change. Indeed, remedial complaints often lead to back- andforth negotiations and give- and- take outcomes, in which abstract standards of fairness are ignored or compromised. For the parties seek something that “works” for them, and “what works” reflects their real needs, practical concerns, personal preferences, and everyday priorities. It is less a matter of “should,” and more a matter of who can live with what, what we can agree on, and so on. It is in this sense that concepts like “negative sanctions” or “punishments” are much too specific to capture the range of alternatives in the reaction process. Informal Involvement by Outsiders. One initial set of issues here is what uninvolved parties to go to for help in dealing with troubles. One practice seems to be “tell an intimate who is trustworthy first,” but as we have seen

Conclusion / 257

(chapter 5), some problems disqualify intimates (the affair; the embezzler’s “nonsharable problem”), while “trustworthiness” depends on how we read the implications of the trouble for how others will evaluate us (some secrets are safer with strangers). A further set of underanalyzed issues goes to how people respond to being told about a trouble in ways that avoid involvement and affiliation (as in the absolutely noncommittal response I received from a dean in complaining as department chair about a senior faculty member’s minimal teaching). Private/Local Troubleshooters. We know little about how those with local authority in a particular setting or institution respond to and intervene in troubles that occur in their domain. In many cases such local troubleshooters lack the formal authority of legal officials to impose solutions— other than exclusion from the setting— in the face of resistance from the parties involved in troublesome activity. How do such figures as bartenders (Cavan 1966), hotel desk clerks (Prus and Irini 1980), apartment house doormen (Bearman 2005), resident assistants in college dorms, mall security agents, and others anticipate, identify, ignore, minimize, sweet- talk, pass the buck, and so on in dealing with local troubles? Nonstranger Official Complaints. Criminological research has established that complaints made by those who have some prior relationship with the other are treated very differently from complaints made against strangers (Black [1976] provides a general treatment; LaFree [1989] and Frohmann [1991] consider sexual assault specifically). One initial issue here is how officials determine the nature of the relationship of the parties involved in a complaint—Black’s “relational distance.” Focused attention comparing the handling of stranger and nonstranger complaints by the police would help identify processes that distinguish official intervention in relational troubles.

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

In the 1990s, having for a number of years directed my research to understanding the decision-making processes involved in official social control, I refocused my longstanding concern with the micro-politics of trouble on informal interpersonal troubles. I worked with Eric Rivera, then a graduate student, on a study of neighbor troubles for his MA paper. And with Tiffani Chin, first an undergraduate and then a graduate student, I began collecting, coding, and analyzing materials on roommate troubles. These efforts marked the effective beginnings of my current analyses of interpersonal troubles. Over the years my late colleague and friend Mel Pollner gently pushed my interest in informal troubles in ethnomethodological directions. His insights and sensitivities permeate the pages of this book. I also received inspiration, support, and feedback from Jack Katz as I worked with these ideas and materials in almost endless drafts and papers. Finally, Jim Holstein has always made time to respond to my queries about key methodological and substantive issues. Two other groups have been particularly helpful in developing and polishing the analyses presented in this book. First, the informal “social control working group” of UCLA graduate students that met in the first decade of this century provided gentle criticism and constructive feedback on my initial formulations of these ideas. The contributions of Amy Denissen, Katherine Hill, Curtis Jackson-Jacobs, Elizabeth Joniak, Noriko Milman, Leslie Paik, Julie Peggar, and Salvator Zerrilli were particularly valuable. Second, in 2011 and 2012, Brandon Berry, Alice Goffman, and I set ourselves up as an ethnographic “book club,” meeting almost monthly to read and comment on drafts of one another’s manuscript chapters. Alice’s On the Run (University of Chicago Press, 2014) is the first product of this joint effort, Everyday

260 / Acknowledgments

Troubles the second. Brandon Berry’s wonderful analyses of losing personal objects, tentatively titled Lost! The Social Psychology of Missing Possessions, will soon complete our projects. I want to thank a number of other people who have read and commented on the whole or parts of this manuscript, including Malin Åkerström, Paul Drew, Anita Pomerantz, Diane Vaughan, Carol A. B. Warren, and David Wästerfors. Again, Jack Katz provided his distinctive insights and encouragement in helping me work through the final revisions. I also want to express my gratitude to the many UCLA students who provided the rich and intriguing accounts of interpersonal troubles that make up the core of this book. Recent contributions from Tiffany Aguilar, Patricia Barragain, Kellie Cunningham, Kendall Darfler, Solimar Flowers, Daisy Gonzalez, Kate Lauer, Annamma K. Mathai-Jackson, Bryce Mills, Janet Morris, Lilianna Navarro, Sidney Overway, Long Ni Poon, Aisha Ross, Francesca Rozo, Susan Sath, Davi Jean Schmidt, Katelynn Sloss, Myungjin Song, Katie Vaught, Frances Velez, and Monica Wu have proved particularly helpful. Finally, Ginger Emerson has over the years gracefully managed her own irritations with a sometimes frustrated and impatient sociologist/husband, providing inspiration, personal anecdotes, editing help, and insights into relational processes without which this study would never have been completed.

REFERENCE LIST

Åkerström, Malin. 2004. Föräldraskap och Expertis: Motsättningar kring Handkappade Barn [Parents and experts: Controversies concerning handicapped children]. Stockholm: Liber. Aubert, Vilhelm. 1965. The Hidden Society. Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press. Aubert, Vilhelm, and Sheldon S. Messinger. 1965. “The Criminal and the Sick.” Chap. 1 in Aubert, The Hidden Society. Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press. Austin, J. L. 1966. “Three Ways of Spilling Ink.” Philosophical Review 75:427–40. Baumgartner, M. P. 1988. The Moral Order of a Suburb. New York: Oxford University Press. Bearman, Peter. 2005. Doormen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Becker, Howard S. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. ———. 1998. Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You’re Doing It. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bittner, Egon. 1967a. “Police Discretion in Emergency Apprehension of Mentally Ill Persons.” Social Problems 14:278–92. ———. 1967b. “The Police on Skid Row: A Study of Peace-Keeping.” American Sociological Review 32:699–715. ———. 1970. The Functions of the Police in Modern Society. Chevy Chase, MD: National Institute of Mental Health. Black, Donald. 1976. The Behavior of Law. New York: Academic Press. ———. 1980. The Manners and Customs of the Police. New York: Academic Press. ———. 1998. The Social Structure of Right and Wrong. Rev. ed. San Diego: Academic Press. Black, Donald, and M. P. Baumgartner. 1998. “Toward a Theory of the Third Party.” Chap. 6 in Black, The Social Structure of Right and Wrong. Rev. ed. San Diego: Academic Press. Blum, Nancy S. 1991. “The Management of Stigma by Alzheimer Family Caregivers.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 20:263–84. ———. 1994. “Deceptive Practices in Managing a Family Member with Alzheimer’s Disease.” Symbolic Interaction 17:21–36. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1978. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cavan, Sherri. 1966. Liquor License: An Ethnography of Bar Behavior. Chicago: Aldine. Collins, Randall. 2008. Violence: A Micro- sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

262 / Reference List Conein, Bernard. 2003. “Sentiments sociaux, differend et exigence de justice.” Unpublished paper, Université Charles- de-Gaulle, Lille 3. Conley, John M., and William M. O’Barr. 1990. Rules versus Relationships: The Ethnography of Legal Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1998. “A Natural History of Disputing.” Chap. 5 in Just Words: Law, Language, and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Corbin, Juliet, and Anselm Strauss. 1988. Unending Work and Care: Managing Chronic Illness at Home. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Coser, Lewis A. 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Coulter, Jeff. 1990. “Elementary Properties of Argument Sequences.” In Interaction Competence, edited by George Psathas, 181–204. Washington, DC: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis and University Press of America. Cressey, Donald R. (1953) 1971. Other People’s Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Dalton, Melville. 1959. Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration. New York: Wiley. Davis, Carla P. 2007. “At-Risk Girls and Delinquency: Career Pathways.” Crime and Delinquency 53:408–35. Davis, Phillip W. 1981. “Structured Rationales for Non-Arrest: Police Stereotypes of the Domestic Disturbance.” Criminal Justice Review 6:8–15. ———. 1983. “Restoring the Semblance of Order: Police Strategies in the Domestic Disturbance.” Symbolic Interaction 6:261–78. Denissen, Amy M. 2010. “Crossing the Line: How Women in the Building Trades Interpret and Respond to Sexual Conduct at Work.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 39: 297–327. Denscombe, Martyn. 1985. Classroom Control: A Sociological Perspective. London: George Allen and Unwin. Dersley, Ian, and Anthony Wootton. 2000. “Complaint Sequences within Antagonistic Argument.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 33(4):375–406. ———. 2001. “In the Heat of the Sequence: Interactional Features Preceding Walkouts from Argumentative Talk.” Language in Society 30:611–38. Diamond, Timothy. 1992. Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Drew, Paul. 1998. “Complaints about Transgressions and Misconduct.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 31(3&4):295–325. Drew, Paul, and Elizabeth Holt. 1988. “Complainable Matters: The Use of Idiomatic Expressions in Making Complaints.” Social Problems 35:398–417. Edwards, Derek. 1994. “Script Formulations: An Analysis of Event Descriptions in Conversation.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 13:211–47. ———. 1995. “Two to Tango: Script Formulations, Dispositions, and Rhetorical Symmetry in Relationship Troubles.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 28(4):319–50. ———. 2000. “Extreme Case Formulations: Softners, Investment, and Doing Nonliteral.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 33(4):347–73. ———. 2005. “Moaning, Whinging and Laughing: The Subjective Side of Complaints.” Discourse Studies 7(1):5–29. Edwards, Derek, and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2007. “Self-Help in Calls for Help with Problem Neighbors.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 40(1):9–32. Ellickson, Robert C. 1991. Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Reference List / 263 Emerson, Joan P. 1969. “Negotiating the Serious Import of Humor.” Sociometry 32:169–81. Emerson, Robert M. 1969. Judging Delinquents: Context and Process in Juvenile Court. Chicago: Aldine. ———. 1981. “On Last Resorts.” American Journal of Sociology 87:1–22. ———. 1983. “Holistic Effects in Social Control Decision-Making.” Law & Society Review 17:425–55. ———. 1989. “Tenability and Troubles: The Construction of Accommodative Relations by Psychiatric Emergency Teams.” In Perspectives on Social Problems: A Research Annual, vol. 1, edited by Gale Miller and James A. Holstein, 215–37. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. ———. 1992a. “Disputes in Public Bureaucracies.” In Studies in Law, Politics and Society, vol. 12, pt. A, edited by Susan S. Silbey and Austin Sarat, 3–29. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. ———1992b. “Typification and Social Control Decision-Making.” Paper presented at the State- of- the-Art Conference on Inequality, Crime and Social Control, University of Georgia, Athens, GA. ———. 1994. “Constructing Serious Violence and Its Victims: Processing a Domestic Violence Restraining Order.” In Perspectives on Social Problems: A Research Annual, vol. 6, edited by Gale Miller and James A. Holstein, 3–28. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. ———. 2008. “Responding to Roommate Troubles: Reconsidering Informal Dyadic Control.” Law & Society Review 42:483–512. ———. 2011. “From Normal Conflict to Normative Deviance: The Micro-Politics of Trouble in Close Relationships.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 40:3–38. Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw. 2011. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Emerson, Robert M., and Carol Brooks Gardner. 1997. “Bus Troubles: Public Harassment and Public Transportation.” Perspectives on Social Problems 9:265–73. Emerson, Robert M., and Sheldon L. Messinger. 1977. “The Micro-Politics of Trouble.” Social Problems 25:121–34. Emerson, Robert M., and Blair Paley. 1992. “Organizational Horizons in ComplaintFiling.” In The Uses of Discretion, edited by Keith Hawkins, 231–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Emerson, Robert M., and Melvin Pollner. 1978. “Policies and Practices of Psychiatric Case Selection.” Sociology of Work and Occupations 5:75–96. Erikson, Kai T. 1964. “Notes on the Sociology of Deviance.” In The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance, edited by Howard S. Becker, 9–21. New York: Free Press. ———. 1966. Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: John Wiley. Felstiner, William L. F. 1975. “Avoidance as Dispute Processing.” Law & Society Review 9: 695–705. Felstiner, William L. F., Richard L. Abel, and Austin Sarat. 1980–81. “The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming.” Law & Society Review 9: 95–160. Fine, Gary Alan. 1979. “Small Groups and Cultural Creation: The Idioculture of Little League Baseball Teams.” American Sociological Review 44:733–45. ———. 2012. Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Action and Culture. New York: Russell Sage. Frohmann, Lisa. 1991. “Discrediting Victims’ Allegations of Sexual Assault: Prosecutorial Accounts of Case Rejections.” Social Problems 38:213–26. Garcia, Angela. 1991. “Dispute Resolution without Disputing: How the Interactional Organization of Mediation Hearings Minimizes Argument.” American Sociological Review 56:818–35.

264 / Reference List ———. 1996. “Moral Reasoning in Interactional Context: Strategic Uses of Care and Justice Arguments in Mediation Hearings.” Sociological Inquiry 66:197–214. Gardner, Carol Brooks. 1995. Passing By: Gender and Public Harassment. Berkeley: University of California Press. Garfinkel, Harold. 1956. “Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies.” American Journal of Sociology 61:420–24. ———. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Garfinkel, Harold, and Harvey Sacks. 1970. “On Formal Structures of Practical Action.” In Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments, edited by J. C. McKinney and E. A. Tiryakian, 337–66. New York: Appleton-Century-Croft. Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Gibbs, Jack P. 1989. Control: Sociology’s Central Notion. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, Carol, and J. Attanucci. 1988. “Two Moral Orientations.” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 34:223–37. Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. ———. 1963. Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press. ———. 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Basic Books. Goldstein, Joseph. 1960. “Police Discretion Not to Invoke the Criminal Process: LowVisibility Decisions in the Administration of Justice.” Yale Law Journal 69:543–54. Gordon, Thomas. 1975. P.E.T. Parent Effectiveness Training: The New Tested Way to Raise Responsible Children. New York: New American Library. Greatbatch, David, and Robert Dingwall. 1989. “Selective Facilitation: Some Preliminary Observations on a Strategy Used by Divorce Mediators.” Law & Society Review 23: 613–42. Gubrium, Jaber F., and James A. Holstein. 1997. The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York: Oxford University Press. Gulliver, P. H. 1971. Neighbors and Networks: The Idiom of Kinship in Social Action among the Ndendeuli of Tanzania. Berkeley: University of California Press. ______. 1979. Disputes and Negotiations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York: Academic Press. Gurwitsch, Aron. 1965. “The Phenomenology of Perception: Perceptual Implications.” In An Invitation to Phenomenology, edited by J. M. Edie, 17–29. Chicago: Quadrangle. Hasenfeld, Yeheskel. 1983. Human Service Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall. Heinemann, Trine, and Veronique Traverso. 2009. “Complaining in Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 41:2381–84. Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Heritage, John, and Sue Sefi. 1992. “Dilemmas of Advice: Aspects of the Delivery and Reception of Advice in Interactions between Health Visitors and First-Time Mothers.” Chap. 12 in Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, edited by Paul Drew and John Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heumann, Milton. 1978. Plea Bargaining: The Experiences of Prosecutors, Judges, and Defense Attorneys. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Reference List / 265 Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Holstein, James A. 1993. Court-Ordered Insanity: Interpretive Practice and Involuntary Commitment. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Holstein, James A., and Gale E. Miller. 1990. “Rethinking Victimization: An Interactional Approach to Victimology.” Symbolic Interaction 13:103–122. Hughes, Everett C. 1971. The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers. Chicago: Aldine. Ibarra, Peter R, and John. I. Kitsuse. 1993. “Vernacular Constituents of Moral Discourse: An Interactionist Proposal for the Study of Social Problems.” In Constructionist Controversies: Issues in Social Problems Theory, edited by Gale Miller and James A. Holstein, 21–54. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Irvine, Leslie. 1999. Codependent Forevermore: The Invention of Self in a Twelve Step Group. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jackson-Jacobs, Curtis. 2013. “Constructing Physical Fights: An Interactionist Analysis of Violence among Affluent, Suburban Youth.” Qualitative Sociology 36:23–52. Janzen, John M., with William Arkinstall. 1978. The Quest for Therapy: Medical Pluralism in Lower Zaire. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jefferson, Gail. 1980. “On ‘Trouble-Premonitory’ Response to Inquiry.” Language and Social Inquiry 50:153–85. ———. 1984a. “On the Organization of Laughter in Talk about Troubles.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 346–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1984b. “On Stepwise Transition from Talk about a Trouble to Inappropriately Next-Positioned Matters.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 191–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1985. “On the Interactional Unpackaging of a ‘Gloss.’” Language in Society 14: 435–66. ———. 1988. “On the Sequential Organization of Troubles-Talk in Ordinary Conversation.” Social Problems 35:418–41. Jefferson, Gail, and John R. E. Lee. 1981. “The Rejection of Advice: Managing the Problematic Convergence of a ‘Troubles-Telling’ and a ‘Service Encounter.’” Journal of Pragmatics 5:399–422. Johnson, Michael P. 1995. “Patriarchal Terrorism and Common Couple Violence: Two Forms of Violence against Women.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 57:283–94. Johnson, Wendell. 1956. “Perceptual and Evaluational Factors in Stuttering.” Chap. 28 in Handbook of Speech Pathology, edited by L. Travis. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Kadushin, Charles. 1969. Why People Go to Psychiatrists. New York: Atherton. Karp, David A. 1996. Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness. New York: Oxford University Press. Katz, Jack. 1975. “Essences as Moral Identities: On Verifiability and Responsibility in Imputations of Deviance and Charisma.” American Journal of Sociology 80:1369–90. ———. 1988. Seductions of Crime. New York: Basic Books. ———. 1999. “Pissed Off in L.A.” Chap. 1 in How Emotions Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kaufmann, Jean-Claude. 2009. Gripes: The Little Quarrels of Couples. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kitsuse, John I. 1964. “Societal Reaction to Deviant Behavior: Problems of Theory and

266 / Reference List Method.” In The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance, edited by Howard S. Becker, 87– 102. New York: Free Press. Kivet, Douglas D., and Carol A. B. Warren. 2002. “Social Control in a Group Home for Delinquent Boys.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 31:3–32. Kleinman, Sherryl, Barbara Stenross, and Martha McMahon. 1994. “Privileging Fieldwork over Interviewing: Consequences for Identity and Practice.” Symbolic Interaction 17: 37–50. Kurz, Demie. 2006. “Keeping Tabs on Teenagers.” In Couples, Kids, and Family Life, edited by Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein, 84–103. New York: Oxford University Press. Laforest, Marty. 2002. “Scenes of Family Life: Complaining in Everyday Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 34:1595–1620. LaFree, Gary D. 1989. Rape and Criminal Justice: The Social Construction of Sexual Assault. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Lemert, Edwin M. 1951. Social Pathology. New York: McGraw-Hill. ———. 1972. Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Lipsky, Michael. 1980. Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage. Llewellyn, K. N., and E. A. Hoebel. 1941. The Cheyenne Way: Conflict and Case Law in Primitive Jurisprudence. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Lofland, Lyn H. 1973. A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. Luckenbill, David F. 1977. “Criminal Homicide as a Situated Transaction.” Social Problems 25:176–86. Luske, Bruce. 1990. Mirrors of Madness: Patrolling the Psychic Border. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Lynch, Michael. 1983. “Accommodative Practices: Vernacular Treatments of Madness.” Social Problems 31:152–63. Macauley, Stewart. 1963. “Non- contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study.” American Sociological Review 28:55–69. Mandelbaum, Jenny. 1991/1992. “Conversational Non- cooperation: An Exploration of Disattended Complaints.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 25:97–138. Matoesian, Gregory M. 1993. Reproducing Rape: Domination through Talk in the Courtroom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Matza, David. 1969. Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Maynard, Douglas W. 2003. Bad News, Good News: Conversational Order in Everyday Talk and Clinical Settings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McHugh, Peter. 1970. “A Common-Sense Conception of Deviance.” In Deviance and Respectability: The Social Construction of Moral Meanings, edited by Jack D. Douglas, 61–88. New York: Basic Books. Meehan, Albert Jay. 1989. “Assessing the Police Worthiness of Citizens Complaints: Accountability and the Negotiation of Facts.” In Interactional Order: New Directions in the Study of Social Order, edited by D. Helm, 116–40. New York: Irvington Press. Merry, Sally Engle. 1979. “Going to Court: Strategies of Dispute Management in an American Urban Neighborhood.” Law & Society Review 13:891–925. ———. 1990. Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Reference List / 267 Miller, Gale E., and James A. Holstein, eds. 1993. Constructionist Controversies: Issues in Social Problems Theory. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Mills, C. Wright. 1940. “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive.” American Sociological Review 5:904–13. Morrill, Calvin. 1995. The Executive Way: Conflict Management in Corporations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moskos, Peter. 2008. Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nader, Laura, and Harry F. Todd. 1978. The Disputing Process: Law in Ten Societies. New York: Columbia University Press. Nielson, Laura Beth. 2006. License to Harass: Law, Hierarchy, and Offensive Public Speech. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Olshtain, Elite, and Liora Weinbach. 1993. “Interlanguage Features of the Speech Act of Complaining.” In Interlanguage Pragmatics, edited by Gabriele Kasper and Shoshana Blum-Kulka, 108–22. New York: Oxford University Press. Parnas, Raymond. 1967. “The Police Response to the Domestic Disturbance.” Wisconsin Law Review 4:914–60. Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press. Perruci, Robert. 1974. Circles of Madness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Persson, Tove, and David Wästerfors. 2009. “‘Such Trivial Matters’: How Staff Account for Restrictions of Residents’ Influence in Nursing Homes.” Journal of Aging Studies 23: 1–11. Peyrot, Mark. 1982. “Caseload Management: Choosing Suitable Clients in a Community Mental Health Clinic Agency.” Social Problems 30:157–67. Pollner, Melvin, and Robert M. Emerson. 1994. “Psychiatric Decision-Making in Field and Office Settings.” Unpublished paper, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles. Pomerantz, Anita. 1978. “Attributions of Responsibility: Blamings.” Sociology 12:115–21. ———. 1986. “Extreme Case Formulations: A Way of Legitimating Claims.” Human Studies 9:219–29. ———. 1988. “Offering a Candidate Answer: An Information Seeking Strategy.” Communication Monographs 55: 360–73. Pomerantz, Anita, and Robert E. Sanders. 2013. “Conflict in the Jury Room: Averting Acrimony and Engendering It.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 1(2):141–64. Potter, Jonathan, and Alexa Hepburn. 2003. “‘I’m a Bit Concerned’: Early Actions and Psychological Constructions in a Child Protection Hotline.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 36:197–240. Prus, Robert, and Styllianoss Irini. 1980. Hookers, Rounders, and Desk Clerks: The Social Organization of the Hotel Community. Salem, WI: Sheffield. Riessman, Catherine Kohler. 1990. Divorce Talk: Women and Men Make Sense of Personal Relationships. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Rivera, Eric Raymond. 1991. “Identifying and Handling Neighbor Troubles.” MA thesis, University of California, Los Angeles. Rosenblatt, Paul C. 2006. Two in a Bed: The Social System of Couple Bed Sharing. Albany: SUNY Press. Roy, Donald F. 1959. “Banana Time: Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction.” Human Organization 18:158–68. Rubinstein, Jonathan. 1973. City Police. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

268 / Reference List Sacks, Harvey. 1984. “On Doing ‘Being Ordinary.’” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 413–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ———. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Sampson, Harold, Sheldon L. Messinger, and Robert D. Towne. 1962. “Family Processes and Becoming a Mental Patient.” American Journal of Sociology 68:88–96. Sanders, William B. 1977. Detective Work: A Study of Criminal Investigations. New York: Free Press. Sarat, Austin, Marianne Constable, David Engel, Valerie Hans, and Susan Lawrence, eds. 1998. Everyday Practices and Trouble Cases. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel. 2005. “On Complainability.” Social Problems 52(4):449–76. Schulman, Mark A. 1979. A Survey of Spousal Violence against Women in Kentucky. Washington, DC: US Dept of Justice. Sellerberg, Ann-Mari. 1994. A Blend of Contradictions: Georg Simmel in Theory and Practice. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Sharrock, W. W., and Roy Turner. 1978. “On a Conversational Environment for Equivocality.” In Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, edited by Jim Schenkein, 173–97. New York: Academic Press. Shield, Renee Rose. 1988. Uneasy Endings: Daily Life in American Nursing Home. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Simmel, Georg. 1955. Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. ———. 1964. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Edited by Kurt H. Wolff. New York: Free Press. Smith, Dorothy E. 1978. “‘K is Mentally Ill’: The Anatomy of a Factual Account.” Sociology 12:23–47. Spector, Malcolm, and John I. Kitsuse. (1977) 1987. Constructing Social Problems. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings. Stebbins, Robert A. 1975. Teachers and Meaning: Definitions of Classroom Situations. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Stokoe, Elizabeth H. 2003. “Mothers, Single Women and Sluts: Gender, Morality and Membership Categorization in Neighbour Disputes.” Feminism and Psychology 13(3): 317–44. Stokoe, Elizabeth, and Alexa Hepburn. 2005. “‘You Can Hear a Lot through the Walls’: Noise Formulations in Neighbour Complaints.” Discourse and Society 16(5):647–73. Sudnow, David. 1965. “Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender’s Office.” Social Problems 12:255–76. Traverso, Veronique. 2009. “The Dilemmas of Third-Party Complaints in Conversations between Friends.” Journal of Pragmatics 41:2385–99. Vaughan, Diane. 1986. Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships. New York: Oxford University Press. Vuchinich, Samuel. 1990. “The Sequential Organization of Closing in Verbal Family Conflict.” Chap. 5 in Conflict Talk: Sociolinguist Investigations of Arguments in Conversations, edited by Allen D. Grimshaw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warren, Carol A. B. 1982. The Court of Last Resort: Mental Illness and the Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1987. Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Wästerfors, David. 2009. “Trouble-Makers and Interactionism: Reconsidering Quarrels in Institutions for Juvenile Delinquents.” Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 10:18–36.

Reference List / 269 Werthman, Carl. 1967. “The Function of Social Definitions in the Development of Delinquent Careers.” In Task Force Report: Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime, Appendix J, 155–70. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Whalen, Marilyn R., and Don H. Zimmerman. 1990. “Describing Trouble: Practical Epistemology in Citizen Calls to the Police.” Language in Society 19:465–92. Wilson, James Q. 1968. Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of Law and Order in Eight Communities. Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press. Wiseman, Jacqueline P. 1991. The Other Half: Wives of Alcoholics and Their SocialPsychological Situation. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Yarrow, Marian Radke, Charlotte Green Schwartz, Harriet S. Murphy, and Leila Calhoun Deasy. 1955. “The Psychological Meaning of Mental Illness in the Family.” Journal of Social Issues 11:12–24. Yngvesson, Barbara. 1988. “Making Law at the Doorway: The Clerk, the Court, and the Construction of Community in a New England Town.” Law & Society Review 22:409– 48. Yoder, P. Stanley, ed. 1982. African Health and Healing Systems: Proceedings of a Symposium. Los Angeles: Crossroads Press. Zerilli, Salvatore R. 2006. “Contemporary Marriages as Contingent Temporal Worlds.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles.

INDEX

accusations, 30, 163, 167–79 defined, 168 complaints accenting moral wrongdoing by casting self as victim, 175 by creating rules and agreements, 175–77 by discrediting motives and character, 171–75 through explicit formulations, 168–69 by framing behavior as heinous/ intolerable, 169–71 by highlighting deceit and denial, 177–78 incompatibilities with joint efforts at correction, 166, 178–79 See also extreme responses; “moralizing” troubles “action sets,” 135n1, 151–53 Åkerström, Malin, 65, 255 Alzheimer family caregiving interviews, 20 apologies, 116, 119, 120 arguments, 93–95, 96, 179n15 asymmetrical intervention, 226, 227 (fig. 2), 230 Attannuci, J., 88 Aubert, Vilhelm, 32, 205, 226 Austin, J. L., 58n11, 171 authoritative intervention in troubles contrasts with informal intervention, 159n10, 206 “in-house” authoritative third parties, 207, 257 legal and professional third parties, 207 proactive vs. reactive intervention, 207

and the transformation of troubles, 206– 7, 247–48 See also informal intervention; police intervention; psychiatric emergency teams Baumgartner, M. P., 87, 87n9, 157–58, 160–61, 160n11, 180–81 Becker, Howard S., xxvi, 30, 213n3, 251, 251n2 Bittner, Egon, ix, 87, 209, 215, 215n4 Black, Donald, 30, 71n2, 85–86, 122, 131, 135n1, 138, 160–61, 160n11, 208n1, 209–10, 212, 215, 218, 223– 24, 223n11, 226–29, 228n13 Blum, Nancy S., 79, 121–22, 153, 195, 256 Cicourel, Aaron V., ix, xvi, 22n6 Collins, Randall, 187, 195n20, 204, 254 collusion, 81–82, 152–53 complaints defined, 91–92, 117 about self, 92 direct, 92, 92n1, 93–95, 131, 253, 256 indirect, 92, 142–44, 257 (See also troubles-tellings) modulated, 96, 97, 103–15 Conein, Bernard, 81n4 Corbin, Juliet, 81 Coser, Lewis A., 132 counter complaints, 94, 95, 123–24, 124n12 Cressey, Donald R., 139n3

272 / Index Davis, Carla P., 20, 193, 256 Davis, Phillip W., 211, 216, 222–23, 224–25 Deasy, Leila Calhoun, 62–63, 65, 150 Dersley, Ian, 93–95 deviant careers, xxix, 30 Dingwall, Robert, 246n18 discontents (irritations) dramatized, 100–101 expressed nonverbally, 47–48 irritation diaries data, 19–20 as minimal responses, 47–51 not expressed to the other (inhibited), 42–46 not recognized by the other, 117–19 reported/formulated, 102–3 specified, 100–103 and trouble beginnings, 30 See also negative experiences documentary method of interpretation, 56–58, 226 Drew, Paul, 92, 167, 170

openly oppositional character of, 166, 179, 203–4 producing informal deviance, 205 punitive actions, 188–91 hidden, 188, 189–90 as “payback,” 188–91 situational restraint and force, 192–94 systematic distancing, 180–82 systematic restraint and force, 194–96 family caregiving management regimes, 195–96 “intimate terrorism,” 194–95 extrinsic responses, 13–15, 15 (fig.1)

Edwards, Derek, 57n10, 83n5, 92, 140n5, 144n8, 171, 199, 245–46 Emerson, Joan, x Emerson, Robert M., ix–xi, xiv–xv, 40, 220, 221, 221n7, 224n12, 225, 233, 234, 234n16, 235–36 Erikson, Kai T., 132, 132n13 escalated responses, 163–67 constructed by contrast with prior, milder responses, 163, 165–67 by direct confrontation with the other, 167 by establishing agreements and rules, 167 by giving increased time and energy to the trouble, 166 by imposing restrictions, 166 by making responses more visible to the other, 167 See also accusations; extreme responses; response cycles extreme case formulations, 170 extreme responses defined, 162 blow-ups, 182–88 producing situational violence, 184– 87, 204–5 strategic use of, 183–84 with intractable troubles, 204

Garcia, Angela, 88, 92n1, 112, 123, 179n15, 245 Gardner, Carol Brooks, 40, 254 Garfinkel, Harold, ix, x, xii, xvi, 56, 168, 251, 252 Geertz, Clifford, 252 Gibbs, Jack P., 71n2, 135n1 Gilligan, Carol, 19, 88, 132 giving orders, 121–22, 122n11 Goffman, Erving, ix–x, xx, xxix, 30, 70, 71n2, 81–82, 91, 96n4, 115–16, 119, 130–31, 132, 132n14, 135, 139n4, 153, 193, 194, 254, 256 Goldstein, Joseph, 83n6 Gordon, Thomas, 168n13 Greatbatch, David, 246n18 grievances, 30, 159n9, 169–70 Gubrium, Jaber F., 23

“family information rule,” 17, 139n4 family interaction data, 20 “field” vs. office intervention, 208–9, 244– 45, 244n17 Fine, Gary Alan, 17, 133 “folk sociology,” xvi–xix, xxi–xxii, 252–54 Frohmann, Lisa, 257

Hasenfeld, Yeheskel, 224 Hepburn, Alexa, 31n2, 92n1, 208n2 Heritage, John, 140n5 Heumann, Milton, 221n9 Hirschman, Albert O., 86, 86n7, 256 Hoebel, E. A., xxviii Holstein, James A., 23, 175, 231n15, 233 Holt, Elizabeth, 92 Hughes, Everett C., ix, 216, 220

Index / 273 Ibarra, Peter R., xxviii indigenous responses, 13–15, 15 (fig.1) informal intervention in troubles, 136–37, 150–58, 256–57 partisan intervention, 150–53, 154–55, 159–60 symmetrical intervention, 155–58, 160– 61 Jefferson, Gail, 140n5, 141, 145–46 Johnson, Michael P., 187, 194–95 Johnson, Wendell, 31n1 Kadushin, Charles, 35 Karp, David A., 8, 33–34 Katz, Jack, 172, 186, 204, 254 Kaufmann, Jean-Claude, 36, 50–51, 50n8, 53–54, 56, 58, 60–61, 73, 110, 127, 128, 129, 133–34, 183, 184, 200– 201 Kitsuse, John I., ix, xxvii, xxix, 22, 22n6, 31, 31n2, 206, 250 Kurz, Demie, 84, 122, 126, 255, 256 Laforest, Marty, 30, 93, 103, 117 LaFree, Gary D., 257 Lemert, Edwin M., 1, 67, 162, 181–82, 256 Llewellyn, K. N., xxviii Lofland, Lyn H., 9 Luckenbill, David F., 186, 204, 254 Lynch, Michael, 22, 157 Mandelbaum, Jenny, 148 Matoesian, Gregory M., 123–24 Matza, David, xix, 249, 251n1 McHugh, Peter, 175 mediation, 92n1, 112, 244–46 discouraging direct accusations, 245 reformulating wrongdoing as normal behavior, 245–46 Messinger, Sheldon L., x, xiv, xxv, 32, 181, 181n16, 225 micro-culture, 17, 133 “The Micro-Politics of Trouble,” xiv, xxv– xxvii, 11–12, 13n4 Miller, Gale E., 175 moral enterprise, 251, 251n2 moral indignation, 170–71 “moral minimalism,” 87, 132

“moralizing” troubles, 169–70, 178–79, 205, 250–51 Morrill, Calvin, 254, 256 Moskos, Peter, 215–16, 216n5, 221n8, 222n10, 227 Murphy, Harriet S., 62–63, 65, 150 Nader, Laura, 30, 159n9 negative experiences, 30–32, 36, 91–92 neighbor disputes data, 20 “non-sharable problems,” 139–40, 139n3 normal case categories, 224–26, 224n12 normalization, 69, 250 Persson, Tove, 45n6 police intervention arresting with “serious” offences, 215–16 data from police ride-alongs, 20–21 in domestic disturbances, 209, 215–16, 216n5 in neighbor disputes, 209 priority on producing local order/“settlement,” 214–19 managing complainant demands, 216–17 routine use of authority and arrest, 218 in response to complaints of wrongdoing, 207–8, 208n1 in response to reports of trouble, 207–8, 208n2 stages in responding to interpersonal troubles, 210–14 determining how to respond, 213–14 determining the nature of the relationship between troubled parties, 210–11, 212–13, 216n5, 217 eliciting complainant’s “story,” 211–12 establishing immediate control, 211 probing details of the complainant’s “story,” 212–13 transforming troubles, 219–30 complaints accenting the other’s wrongdoing, 219–20 from “normal case” processing, 224– 26 from routines of handling troubles, 220–24 from suspicions regarding complaints, 226–28, 253

274 / Index police intervention transforming troubles (continued) from symmetrical intervention, 228– 30 from taking a side, 226–28 “working concepts” of domestic disturbance situations, 225 Pollner, Melvin, 21, 209, 233, 235–36 Pomerantz, Anita, 36, 102–3, 107 Potter, Jonathan, 208n2 pre-troubles, 27 private (individual) discontents and worries, 8, 31, 32–35 (re)interpreted as relational troubles, 34–35 psychiatric emergency teams (PET) data, 21 legal criteria for involuntary hospitalization, 233 preference to avoid hospitalization, 233–34 procedures for field visits, 231–33 transformation of psychiatric troubles, 231, 239, 242–44 from establishing in situ therapeutic and caregiving arrangements, 239–43 from routine application of legal criteria (“crazy but not LPS”), 237–39 from suspicions about complainants, 234–37, 243–44 public place (situational) troubles, 8, 13, 40, 51, 254 “put-down” messages, 168n13 relational consciousness, xxvii, 88–90, 132–33, 250 relational counseling. See mediation relational disfluencies, 30–31, 34–35, 36– 41 crystallizing over time, 39–41 determining who is responsible, 38–39 “irritated by” vs. “worried about,” 9, 31– 32, 31n2 relational troubles defined, 46–47 arising from discontents, 9–10, 31 arising from worry/concern, 9–10, 31–32 beginnings, 9–11, 30–32 as disputes/conflict, 13 as moral wrongdoing, 13

natural history of, xxix, 11–16, 197–98, 251–54 responses to, 11–14, 15 (fig.1) variations in relationships, 1–7, 16–18 remedial complaints defined, 96, 97 co-constructed, 115, 117–21 coming to assess another’s actions as intentional, 58–61, 58n11 in equalitarian relationships, 93, 97, 104, 256 exposing self, 45, 45n6, 103–4, 131 expressing concern for another, 92–93 expressing discontent with another, 92, 97, 98, 99 linking multiple incidents, 55–58 modulated by: accounts and apologies, 116–17 hiding discontents, 104–5 humor, 110–11 indirectly alluding to discontents, 105–7 invoking personal/idiosyncratic sensitivities, 111–12, 167 “it’s our problem” framings, 112–15 minimizing blame, 107–9 strategic targeting, 109–10 oppositional implications, 93, 95, 96, 131 outcomes holding “until further notice,” 40–41, 127–28 immediate, 122–24 longer-term, 125–27 trade-offs, 130 and personal preferences, 54–55 in stratified relationships, 121–22 (See also giving orders) remedial interchanges, 92n.4 requests, 115–16 resentments, 133–34 response horizons, 48–51, 48n7 immediate, 48–50 long-term, 50–51 retrodiction, xix–xx revenge fantasies, 199–200 Riessman, Catherine Kohler, 57n10 Rivera, Eric Raymond, 20, 38, 39, 53, 72, 114–15 roommate trouble interviews, 18–19 Rosenblatt, Paul C., 36, 71–72, 125–26, 129 rule infractions, 30, 68, 175–76

Index / 275 Sacks, Harvey, xxviii, 105, 105–6n8, 118, 123, 168, 176n14 Sampson, Harold, 181, 181n16 Sanders, William B., 220 Schegloff, Emanuel, 91–92, 105–7, 116, 120 Schwartz, Charlotte Green, 62–63, 65, 150 self-doubt, 52–55 Sellerberg, Ann-Mari, 89, 133 Sharrock, W. W., 208 “sides” in relational troubles, 135, 135n1, 151–53, 154–55, 159–60 Simmel, Georg, xxi, 89n10, 132 situational withdrawal, 74–75, 78–79, 182 Smith, Dorothy E., 22, 28, 99 societal reaction (labeling) theory of deviance, xiv, xv, xxvi–xxvii, 249 sociology in the 1960s, x–xiii Spector, Malcolm, xxix, 31, 31n2 Stokoe, Elizabeth, 31n2, 83n5, 92n1, 168–69 Strauss, Anselm, 81 Sudnow, David, 224 symmetrical intervention, 226, 227 (fig. 2), 230 Todd, Harry F., 30, 159n9 Towne, Robert D., 181, 181n16 troubles as accounts, 21–29, 43n5 reactive/situated features, 23–24 retrospective features, 22, 24–25 selective/partisan features, 26–29, 99n6 troubles-tellings affiliation/alignment with, 144–45, 146– 47, 148–49, 158 case study (Emma and Lottie), 140–46 exposing self, 138 nonalignment with, 147–48, 149, 158– 59 responding with advice, 147 selecting a recipient, 138–40 sequential organization, 141 venting to others, 76 Turner, Roy, 208 turning points, xxix–xxx, 11–13, 251–54

immediate action, 83 low-visibility, 83–85 minimizing confrontation, 83–84 and “exit” and “voice,” 86, 86n7, 86n8 as initial responses, 71 as later (extreme) responses, 71, 82, 188, 191–92, 256 managerial, 74–77 preventive disguising actions, 79–80 hiding and manipulating objects, 77–78 precluding, 80–81 situated withdrawal, 78–79, 89 taking over, 81 self change, 71–74 and “self help,” 83, 85–86 Vaughan, Diane, xxix, 8, 36, 40–41, 52–53, 84, 117–18, 138–39 violence, 15–16, 184–87, 204–5 in “blow-ups,” 184–87 “common couple violence,” 187 fights, 187 and “intimate terrorism,” 194–95 from perceived threats to “face” or “honor,” 186–87 Vuchinich, Samuel, 121 Warren, Carol A. B., 181, 233, 254 Wästerfors, David, 45n6, 254 Whalen, Marilyn R., 208n2 Wilson, James Q., 214–15 Wiseman, Jacqueline P., 8, 12n3, 64, 73– 74, 77, 81, 166 Wootton, Anthony, 93–95 worries about others, 62–67, 255 about self, 8, 31, 32–35 calls to authorities expressing “concern” about another, 208n2, 232 overlapping with discontents about others, 62–64, 255 Yarrow, Marian Radke, 62–63, 65, 150

“unhappy events.” See negative experiences unilateral responses defined, 70 appeals of

Zerilli, Salvatore R., 72–73, 78, 139–40 Zimmerman, Don H., 208n2