First published in 1983. Leisure has too often been approached as a set of activities that people do when everything important has been completed. This text provides a different analysis demonstrating the centrality of leisure to human development and to important relationships. In Leisure Identities and Interactions the author analyses leisure in the context of role changes through the life course, but also as a social context in which we work out the identities that express who we really want to be. His focus is on the kinds of leisure that are both most common and most significant face-to-face encounters, family interaction, and episodes found in the midst of our roles and routines. Varieties of leisure styles are found to be developed out of available opportunities and in relation to cultural values, but also are chosen to express and negotiate our self-definitions. Leisure is both social and existential and can best be understood in the dialectic of role expectations and decision. Kelly utilizes symbolic interaction, interpretive, and dramaturgical metaphors to develop a different sociology of leisure one that brings together the concepts of role and identity. Expressive identities and intimate communities are as essential to leisure as they are to life.

This book examines identity theory’s centrality within social psychology and its foundations within structural symbolic interaction, highlighting its links not only to other prominent sociological subfields, but also to other theoretical perspectives within and beyond sociology. The book provides a synthetic overview outlining the intellectual lineage of identity theory within structural symbolic interactionism, and how the “Indiana School” of identity theory and research, associated especially with Sheldon Stryker, relates to other symbolic interactionist traditions within sociology. It also analyses the latest developments in response to the push to integrate identity theory, which initially focused on role identities, with the study of personal, group and social identities. Further, it discusses the relationship between identity theory and affect control theory, providing a sense of the many substantive topics within sociology beyond social psychology for which the study of identity has important, sometimes underappreciated implications. The book concludes with a chapter summarizing the interrelated lessons learned while also reflecting on remaining key questions and challenges for the future development of identity theory.

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A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and cotnrol the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction is an invaluable reference work featuring contributions from leading global scholars, available both online and as a three-volume print set. The definitive international reference work on a topic of major and increasing importance, in a new series of sub-disciplinary international encyclopedias Provides state-of-the-art research for scholars in a highly interactive and accessible format, available both online and as a three-volume print set Covers key research topics in the field with contributions from a team of experienced, global editors Successfully brings into a single source, explication of all of the fascinating and ground-breaking Language and Social Interaction work developing globally and across subjects Part of The Wiley Blackwell-ICA International Encyclopedias of Communication series, published in conjunction with the International Communication Association. Online version available at www.wileyicaencyclopedia.com

Alphabetically arranged entries offer a comprehensive overview of the definitions, politics, manifestations, concepts, and ideas related to identity.

Narrative research is frequently described as a diverse enterprise, yet the kinds of narrative data that it bases itself on present a striking consensus: they tend to be autobiographical and elicited in interviews. This book sets out to carve out a space alongside this narrative canon for stories that have not made it to the mainstream of narrative and identity analysis, yet they abound as well as being crucial sites of subjectivity in everyday interactional contexts. By labelling those stories as 'small', the book emphasizes their distinctiveness, both interactionally and as an antidote to the tradition of 'grand' narratives research. Drawing primarily on the audio-recorded small stories of a group of female adolescents that was studied ethnographically in a town in Greece, the book follows a language-focused and practice-based approach in order to provide fresh answers and perspectives on some of the perennial questions of narrative analysis: How can we (re)conceptualize the mainstay concepts of tellership, structure and evaluation in small stories? How do the participants' telling identities connect with their larger social identities? Finally, what does the project of storying self (and other) mean in small stories and how can it be best explored?