Scott R. Harris

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Saint Louis University

Acceptance of family diversity has increased. However, families that differ from the standard North American family (SNAF) are still confidently portrayed as the cause of numerous social problems, even when evidence may be lacking or mixed. This article describes and critiques five assumptions that inform advocates' claims: the belief that the hete...

https://www.routledge.com/An-Invitation-to-the-Sociology-of-Emotions/Harris/p/book/9781032474151

https://www.waveland.com/browse.php?t=761&r=a|1040

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Social+Self+and+Everyday+Life%3A+Understanding+the+World+Through+Symbolic+Interactionism-p-9781118645338

Unique in its approach, Invitation to the Sociology of Emotions treats neophytes as its primary audience, giving students a brief, but thorough, introduction to the sociology of emotions. Including research examples, exercises, and lists of further reading, this text explains as clearly as possible some of the most interesting theoretical concepts...

The sociology of fame and celebrity is at the cutting edge of current scholarship in a number of different areas of study. Stargazing highlights the interactional dynamics of celebrity and fame in contemporary society, including the thoughts and feelings of stars on the red carpet, the thrills and risks of encountering a famous person at a conventi...

This article differentiates two ways of studying equality in marriage: as an objective entity or as a socially constructed interpretation. Objective and interpretive researchers adopt divergent stances toward defining, measuring, and explaining marital equalities and inequalities. However, they also employ similar terms and methods, as well as exhi...

Over the past three decades, research on the social dimensions of emotions has grown exponentially, particularly in the area of “emotion management.” In this project, we will attempt to add to this body of research by studying the social aspects of labeling or “instantiating” feelings. The data for the project come from televised red-carpet intervi...

This chapter summarizes and explicates the work of Kenneth Liberman, an exemplary but underappreciated practitioner of ethnomethodology for the past 30 years. Four paradoxes or tensions organize the discussion. First, Liberman is highly confident that confidence is almost always unwarranted. Second. Liberman is extremely skeptical yet respectful of...

This article differentiates two ways of understanding family diversity— objectively and interpretively. The search for objective diversity is rooted in the assumption that there are many different kinds of families in the United States and around the world; the search for interpretive diversity is rooted in the assumption that any given “family” ma...

Personal or practical experience is often touted as a uniquely valuable source of knowledge in academia, as in everyday life. Assumptions about the necessity, superiority, or insightfulness of “first-hand familiarity” with a phenomenon (such as working as a police officer or suffering discrimination) can shape hiring decisions, influence how facult...

This article highlights two major trends in the social sciences: an increasing concern with inequality and a growing interest in interpretive variability and the creation of meaning. Despite these trends, not enough research treats inequality itself as a meaning that is socially constructed. The article proposes a list of ten ideas useful for guidi...

The conventional wisdom among many sociologists is (1) that it is their prerogative to define, document, and explain the inequalities that exist in society and (2) that there are two general theoretical perspectives useful for studying inequality: functionalism and conflict theory. Some scholars have recently challenged the latter portion of this v...

This article compares naturalist and constructionist approaches to the qualitative study of equality and inequality, and encourages more ethnographers to adopt the latter. Focusing on the subfield of marital equality, three areas of divergence are explored: sampling, interviewing, and the analysis and presentation of data. In each area, naturalists...

Many sociologists appear to assume that there are only two broad approaches to the study of inequality: functionalism and conflict theory. Textbooks on introductory sociology and social stratification frequently compare the two theoretical camps by distilling and juxtaposing their contradictory premises. In this article, I argue that a third altern...

The equality/inequality dichotomy is a central concept in sociology and in the study of marriage. Almost all researchers, though, use their own preconceived definitions and measurement strategies to identify equal and unequal states of affairs. An alternative approach, one that better accords with interactionist principles, is to privilege people's...

This article proposes "equality" as a topic for interactionist research. By drawing on the perspectives of Herbert Blumer, Alfred Schutz, and Harold Garfinkel, an attempt is made to lay the theoretical groundwork for studying the interpretive and experiential aspects of equality. Blumer's fundamental premises of symbolic interactionism, Schutz's an...

Equality is described in the literature as a prerequisite to satisfying close relations, but research has not seriously grappled with how a sense of equality is created or how inequalities might be overcome. This paper uses an interactionist perspective to explore how individuals maintain or repair a close social bond when a perceived difference in...

Abstract ,This short article discusses a form for streamlining the frequently onerous task of writing letters of recommendation. Students,who,seek recommendations,often do not know,(and are not asked,to consider) how,they could help their professors,write more effective letters. Professors tend to dislike writing letters, in part because they have...