Michael A Katovich
Biographic Data
| ID | 123746 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael A Katovich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael A |
| FAMILY NAME | Katovich |
| SIGNATURE | KATOVICH M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Texas Christian University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 255 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Going Bad and Staying Bad
Symbolic interactionists recognize how selves transform for better or worse. When transforming for worse, or going bad, selves often stay bad, owing to societal response. In this article, we examine fictional characters from popular media (specifically, Michael Corleone from The Godfather trilogy and Walter White from Breaking Bad) and a nonfictional athlete (Lance Armstrong) to discuss staying bad as self-conscious choices made by those who go b…
The Sociology of Hypocrisy
The Bus to Mansfield
The author provides a description of a day in jail, beginning just after midnight in early December and ending about 20 hours later. The day involved many interactions with cell mates, especially eight of whom would eventually take the bus to the Mansfield prison. Among other functions, the prison serves as the designated holding place for those charged to post bail. The author's metaphorical journey from one arrested to one identified as The Pro…
Compliance Dramas in Alcoholic Anonymous Films
Purpose – I extend the discourse regarding The Days of Wine and Roses (TDoWaR) as an Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) film in particular and analyses of A.A. films in general and provide a symbolic interactionist reading of TDoWaR as involving compliance dramas.Design/methodology/approach – Borrowing from Norman Denzin's notion of a subversive reading of films, in which the author attends to the literal content of a text from a predefined perspective,…
Beyond Place
Regular participants in gaming subcultures do not seem as bound to conventional time and space anchors as other regulars (e.g., barroom habitués). This different type of regular status involves the assumption of identification in a more ethereal subculture, in the context of more rarified time and space anchors. This article examines a specific gaming culture, "Magic: The Gathering," as an emergent and structured sequence of accomplishments in wh…
Loss and Recovery
The following narrative reconstructs a five-act tragicomedy, providing details of a journey from chaos to a moment of serenity. The author tells the journey as he imagines an ongoing soundtrack to accompany themes of loss, love, dissolution, addiction, institutionalization, and codes of the street
Melodramatic and consentient images in introductory criminal justice textbooks
Hall's Hope and the Focus Next Time
Drugs and Numbers in the Reporting of American Sports
Evil as Indexical
We use C.H. Mead's perspective on the meaning of social objects and his theory of the past and Harold Garfinkel's application of indexicality to describe how people respond to social objects as evil. Mead's notion of an implied objective past illuminates how social actors not only connect objects to past evils but also invoke an objective past to index evil in the future. Focusing on guns and illegal drugs, we maintain that responses to each draw…
Media Technologies, Images of Drugs, and an Evocative Telepresence
Responding to a Traumatic Event
This paper describes reactions by regular patrons of a family restaurant to an armed robbery that occurred within its premises. One of the victims, the restaurant's co-manager, and these regulars participated in the construction of a narrative in order to restore their normal involvement within the community and to incorporate the profound disturbance of a robbery into the patrons' and manager's shared pasts. We discuss two different types of reg…
The Driver
This article explores the solidary relationships constructed between urban drivers as they take risks and experience dangers associated with pizza delivery. After one of the authors completed working as a driver and participating in drivers' backstage activities, we analyzed their arcane culture as composed of risk takers who receive minimal rewards. In this context, the world of drivers is "hypermasculine," with racist and sexist nuances, and co…
Inside the information beast
Cooperative bases of control
While control is a prominent concept in sociology—to the point that it is being considered as the central concept—cooperation has remained a basis for fundamental situated action. This article proposes a merging of cooperation and control by emphasizing the fundamental processes of various cooperative activities, ranging from the immediate face-to-face exchanges to more enduring structural and institutional relationships that encase multiple exch…
Couch theBricoleur
Carl Couch reinvigorated the Iowa School of Symbolic Interaction by combining the theoretical and methodological tenets of ethnography and laboratory science. He thus resembled abricoleur, or researcher who masters several seemingly diverse practices in order to create a seamless whole. Couch's new Iowa School also produced abricolage, or a sum total of research findings, that I call a data career. This article pays tribute to Couch thebricoleura…
Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies , by Norman K. Denzin
Humor in Baseball
Postmodern Thought in Symbolic Interaction
Perspectives in sociology are currently being reassessed in light of postmodernism, which has been associated with the abandonment of faith in the social self and scientific inquiry. As an emergent problematic, postmodernism stands in sharp contrast to a modernist pragmatic (and innocent) conception of symbolic interactionism-which is centered in the Meadian conception of prosocial selves. However, this article identifies some "late-modern" inter…
The Stories Told in Science Fiction and Social Science
We re-examine science fiction films of the 1950s (made during the cold war), and their remakes in the 1970s and 1980s (made in the post-sixties, after Vietnam and Watergate) in conjunction with stories told by social scientists during the same eras. In this light. we provide a subversive reading of social scientific data sets and science fiction films, and pay special attention to both versions of The Thing (1951, 1982) as relevant examples of co…
The Nature of Social Pasts and Their Use as Foundations for Situated Action
In this paper social pasts are considered to be foundations of everyday interpersonal life, including everyday situated action. We distinguish social pasts from culture by noting that the former involves recognition of specific joint acts and social placements while the latter involves recognition of ties to acts and placements in general. We further distinguish shared pasts-which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements tha…
Toward a Sociology of Cult Films
This article provides a sociological reading of cult films, in particular, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cult films are secular documents, celebrated as sacred texts by audiences and used as shared foci to collectively create rituals and belief systems. They differ from popular re-releases, fad films, films with cult qualities, and critical cult films in that they involve typical people in atypical situations, sympathetic deviance, challenges to…
Customizing the Body
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Supplement 2, 1986 (Parts A & B)
Untimely Acts
Interactionists and labelling theorists have made actors central to a jointly constructed process of deviance. This article extends their arguments to the deviant act itself and suggests how uses and conceptions of time and temporality distinguish deviant acts from routine or other unconventional acts. It treats time systematically in relation to designations of deviance by, first, correlating timing with temporal structures; second, comparing an…
The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead's Theory of the Past
Mead's theory of the past, which contains his theory of temporality, is scrutinizedfor its relevance to sociological concerns. His theory is described, and four analytical dimensions are identified which provide the basis for discussing that relevance. Several standard areas of sociological endeavor are briefly analyzed in terms of those dimensions, and then a detailed analysis of community power relations is provided in light of his theory. It i…
The Nature of Social Pasts and Their Use as Foundations for Situated Action
In this paper social pasts are considered to be foundations of everyday interpersonal life, including everyday situated action. We distinguish social pasts from culture by noting that the former involves recognition of specific joint acts and social placements while the latter involves recognition of ties to acts and placements in general. We further distinguish shared pasts-which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements tha…
The Regular
Untimely Acts
Interactionists and labelling theorists have made actors central to a jointly constructed process of deviance. This article extends their arguments to the deviant act itself and suggests how uses and conceptions of time and temporality distinguish deviant acts from routine or other unconventional acts. It treats time systematically in relation to designations of deviance by, first, correlating timing with temporal structures; second, comparing an…
Responding to a Traumatic Event
This paper describes reactions by regular patrons of a family restaurant to an armed robbery that occurred within its premises. One of the victims, the restaurant's co-manager, and these regulars participated in the construction of a narrative in order to restore their normal involvement within the community and to incorporate the profound disturbance of a robbery into the patrons' and manager's shared pasts. We discuss two different types of reg…
Identity, Time, and Situated Activity
This article uses the symbolic interactionist perspective to discuss situated identities as linked to the projection of shared futures. First, a theoretical discussion is provided on how interactionists have defined identities and conceptualized the future. This discussion includes definitions of identities as instrumental or categorical, and general depictions of the future as restoring or externalizing. Then a role-playing study is illustrated …
Durkheim's Macrofoundations of Time
In this article, Durkheim's theory of time will be assessed in reference to his theory of transactions (organic solidarity). Specifically, Durkheim associated time with a metaphorical conception of the transaction that separated: (1) macrofoundations from microstates, and (2) external constraints from subjective states. This separation led to a conception of time as dominated by linear, rigid sequential, and categorical images. Counterposed to th…
Postmodern Thought in Symbolic Interaction
Perspectives in sociology are currently being reassessed in light of postmodernism, which has been associated with the abandonment of faith in the social self and scientific inquiry. As an emergent problematic, postmodernism stands in sharp contrast to a modernist pragmatic (and innocent) conception of symbolic interactionism-which is centered in the Meadian conception of prosocial selves. However, this article identifies some "late-modern" inter…
Toward a Sociology of Cult Films
This article provides a sociological reading of cult films, in particular, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cult films are secular documents, celebrated as sacred texts by audiences and used as shared foci to collectively create rituals and belief systems. They differ from popular re-releases, fad films, films with cult qualities, and critical cult films in that they involve typical people in atypical situations, sympathetic deviance, challenges to…
Selling Time
Salespeople are well known for their artful constructions of strategies. They use these strategies to encase the sales transaction and assume that their success is somehow dependent on presentation of self and product. We discuss how these particular processes relate to a sociological examination of situated transactions in general; and suggest that control of these processes does transform reluctant dyads into agreeable parties to pay relatively…
Beyond Place
Regular participants in gaming subcultures do not seem as bound to conventional time and space anchors as other regulars (e.g., barroom habitués). This different type of regular status involves the assumption of identification in a more ethereal subculture, in the context of more rarified time and space anchors. This article examines a specific gaming culture, "Magic: The Gathering," as an emergent and structured sequence of accomplishments in wh…
Media Technologies, Images of Drugs, and an Evocative Telepresence
The Driver
This article explores the solidary relationships constructed between urban drivers as they take risks and experience dangers associated with pizza delivery. After one of the authors completed working as a driver and participating in drivers' backstage activities, we analyzed their arcane culture as composed of risk takers who receive minimal rewards. In this context, the world of drivers is "hypermasculine," with racist and sexist nuances, and co…
The Stories Told in Science Fiction and Social Science
We re-examine science fiction films of the 1950s (made during the cold war), and their remakes in the 1970s and 1980s (made in the post-sixties, after Vietnam and Watergate) in conjunction with stories told by social scientists during the same eras. In this light. we provide a subversive reading of social scientific data sets and science fiction films, and pay special attention to both versions of The Thing (1951, 1982) as relevant examples of co…
Hall's Hope and the Focus Next Time
Going Bad and Staying Bad
Symbolic interactionists recognize how selves transform for better or worse. When transforming for worse, or going bad, selves often stay bad, owing to societal response. In this article, we examine fictional characters from popular media (specifically, Michael Corleone from The Godfather trilogy and Walter White from Breaking Bad) and a nonfictional athlete (Lance Armstrong) to discuss staying bad as self-conscious choices made by those who go b…
The Sociology of Hypocrisy
Melodramatic and consentient images in introductory criminal justice textbooks
Couch theBricoleur
Carl Couch reinvigorated the Iowa School of Symbolic Interaction by combining the theoretical and methodological tenets of ethnography and laboratory science. He thus resembled abricoleur, or researcher who masters several seemingly diverse practices in order to create a seamless whole. Couch's new Iowa School also produced abricolage, or a sum total of research findings, that I call a data career. This article pays tribute to Couch thebricoleura…
Access to Information and Internal Structures of Partisan Groups
Michel's notion of the inevitable and ironic transformation of groups with egalitarian intent into groups with oligarchical practices is examined through an analysis of thirty-four role playing partisan groups. Each group is a triad with an extended shared history or a history of equality that comes with friendship. Each group differentiated itself by selecting a representative to confront another student who played the role of a university dean.…
Access to Information and Internal Structures of Partisan Groups
Michel's notion of the inevitable and ironic transformation of groups with egalitarian intent into groups with oligarchical practices is examined through an analysis of thirty-four role playing partisan groups. Each group is a triad with an extended shared history or a history of equality that comes with friendship. Each group differentiated itself by selecting a representative to confront another student who played the role of a university dean.…
The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead's Theory of the Past
Mead's theory of the past, which contains his theory of temporality, is scrutinizedfor its relevance to sociological concerns. His theory is described, and four analytical dimensions are identified which provide the basis for discussing that relevance. Several standard areas of sociological endeavor are briefly analyzed in terms of those dimensions, and then a detailed analysis of community power relations is provided in light of his theory. It i…
Selling Time
Salespeople are well known for their artful constructions of strategies. They use these strategies to encase the sales transaction and assume that their success is somehow dependent on presentation of self and product. We discuss how these particular processes relate to a sociological examination of situated transactions in general; and suggest that control of these processes does transform reluctant dyads into agreeable parties to pay relatively…
Identity, Time, and Situated Activity
This article uses the symbolic interactionist perspective to discuss situated identities as linked to the projection of shared futures. First, a theoretical discussion is provided on how interactionists have defined identities and conceptualized the future. This discussion includes definitions of identities as instrumental or categorical, and general depictions of the future as restoring or externalizing. Then a role-playing study is illustrated …
The Regular
Durkheim's Macrofoundations of Time
In this article, Durkheim's theory of time will be assessed in reference to his theory of transactions (organic solidarity). Specifically, Durkheim associated time with a metaphorical conception of the transaction that separated: (1) macrofoundations from microstates, and (2) external constraints from subjective states. This separation led to a conception of time as dominated by linear, rigid sequential, and categorical images. Counterposed to th…
Studies in Symbolic Interaction. Supplement 2-The Iowa School (Parts A and B)
Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Supplement 2, 1986 (Parts A & B)
Untimely Acts
Interactionists and labelling theorists have made actors central to a jointly constructed process of deviance. This article extends their arguments to the deviant act itself and suggests how uses and conceptions of time and temporality distinguish deviant acts from routine or other unconventional acts. It treats time systematically in relation to designations of deviance by, first, correlating timing with temporal structures; second, comparing an…
Customizing the Body
The Nature of Social Pasts and Their Use as Foundations for Situated Action
In this paper social pasts are considered to be foundations of everyday interpersonal life, including everyday situated action. We distinguish social pasts from culture by noting that the former involves recognition of specific joint acts and social placements while the latter involves recognition of ties to acts and placements in general. We further distinguish shared pasts-which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements tha…
Toward a Sociology of Cult Films
This article provides a sociological reading of cult films, in particular, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cult films are secular documents, celebrated as sacred texts by audiences and used as shared foci to collectively create rituals and belief systems. They differ from popular re-releases, fad films, films with cult qualities, and critical cult films in that they involve typical people in atypical situations, sympathetic deviance, challenges to…
Humor in Baseball
Postmodern Thought in Symbolic Interaction
Perspectives in sociology are currently being reassessed in light of postmodernism, which has been associated with the abandonment of faith in the social self and scientific inquiry. As an emergent problematic, postmodernism stands in sharp contrast to a modernist pragmatic (and innocent) conception of symbolic interactionism-which is centered in the Meadian conception of prosocial selves. However, this article identifies some "late-modern" inter…
The Stories Told in Science Fiction and Social Science
We re-examine science fiction films of the 1950s (made during the cold war), and their remakes in the 1970s and 1980s (made in the post-sixties, after Vietnam and Watergate) in conjunction with stories told by social scientists during the same eras. In this light. we provide a subversive reading of social scientific data sets and science fiction films, and pay special attention to both versions of The Thing (1951, 1982) as relevant examples of co…
Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies , by Norman K. Denzin
Couch theBricoleur
Carl Couch reinvigorated the Iowa School of Symbolic Interaction by combining the theoretical and methodological tenets of ethnography and laboratory science. He thus resembled abricoleur, or researcher who masters several seemingly diverse practices in order to create a seamless whole. Couch's new Iowa School also produced abricolage, or a sum total of research findings, that I call a data career. This article pays tribute to Couch thebricoleura…
Inside the information beast
Cooperative bases of control
While control is a prominent concept in sociology—to the point that it is being considered as the central concept—cooperation has remained a basis for fundamental situated action. This article proposes a merging of cooperation and control by emphasizing the fundamental processes of various cooperative activities, ranging from the immediate face-to-face exchanges to more enduring structural and institutional relationships that encase multiple exch…
Responding to a Traumatic Event
This paper describes reactions by regular patrons of a family restaurant to an armed robbery that occurred within its premises. One of the victims, the restaurant's co-manager, and these regulars participated in the construction of a narrative in order to restore their normal involvement within the community and to incorporate the profound disturbance of a robbery into the patrons' and manager's shared pasts. We discuss two different types of reg…
The Driver
This article explores the solidary relationships constructed between urban drivers as they take risks and experience dangers associated with pizza delivery. After one of the authors completed working as a driver and participating in drivers' backstage activities, we analyzed their arcane culture as composed of risk takers who receive minimal rewards. In this context, the world of drivers is "hypermasculine," with racist and sexist nuances, and co…
Media Technologies, Images of Drugs, and an Evocative Telepresence
Evil as Indexical
We use C.H. Mead's perspective on the meaning of social objects and his theory of the past and Harold Garfinkel's application of indexicality to describe how people respond to social objects as evil. Mead's notion of an implied objective past illuminates how social actors not only connect objects to past evils but also invoke an objective past to index evil in the future. Focusing on guns and illegal drugs, we maintain that responses to each draw…
Drugs and Numbers in the Reporting of American Sports
Hall's Hope and the Focus Next Time
Sociology (25 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works)