Abstract
Micro-sociological theory has traditionally stressed interactional pressures towards alignment: actors’ attempts to co-construct a shared definition of the situation. We argue that this model provides an insufficient account of the coordination of action and of the emergence of intersubjectivity among actors. To complement the focus on alignment, we develop a theory of disruption—a perceived misalignment of the dramaturgical structure of interaction in coordinating expected lines of action. We develop a theory of the interaction order that takes the interplay between interactional alignment and disruption as a foundational challenge both for sociology and for actors in their everyday lives. We focus on the practical ways in which actors negotiate both interactional breaches and wider relational ruptures, and how they differentiate between disruptions-of relations and disruptions-for them. By doing so, we connect the interaction order to a wider relational order, providing a bridge between micro-level interactionism and the sociology of culture.
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Notes
This term trades on the breaching experiments of Harold Garfinkel (1967) that remind us of the confusions and interpretive struggles that occur when basic interactional assumptions are dissolved. Garfinkel finds that participants make every effort to resolve breaches rapidly, even when the original breacher rebuffs the attempts.
Another mode of disruption is evident in communal breakdowns. However, communal breakdowns as special cases of relational disruptions are a topic for future analysis.
This brings us back to the issue that Tannen (1981) raises in discussing New York Jews’ conversational style. One reason that Jews become uncomfortable when no one is arguing is that, given this cultural model, it is unclear if anything is “happening.” Arguing, as an embodied normative strategy, demonstrates what is at stake and removes oneself from the limits of a surface performance (see also Schiffrin 1984).
We note that this also leads to a more structural question: how the possibilities of disruption and alignment are shaped by the structure of ties. As Padgett and Ansell (1993) show, the “robust action” Cosimo de’ Medici constructed was effective precisely because, given his knowledge of the local structures of ties in Renaissance Florence, his moves to amass power were not interpreted at disruptive. Both initiating and recognizing disruption, then, are not only interactional accomplishments, but are also shaped by contextual and structural conditions (see also Thomas and Thomas (1928).
We note that such appreciation of the importance of power in interaction also means that we cannot always analyze interaction as a series of punctuated equilibria (see Vollmer 2013).
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Acknowledgments
We thank Daniel McFarland, Paul DiMaggio, Nina Eliasoph, Thomas Gieryn, Jeff Guhin, Colin Jerolmack, Steven Lukes, Dan Menchik, Christopher Robertson, Claire Sieffert, and the participants of the 2018 ASA theory session on interaction for their comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. We also thank Lior Gelernter, Mike Hout, Robin Wagner-Pacifici, and Hannah Wohl for helping us crystallize some of the ideas that ended up in the paper.
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Tavory, I., Fine, G.A. Disruption and the theory of the interaction order. Theor Soc 49, 365–385 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09384-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09384-3