The Production of Reality

Jodi O’Brien is Professor of Sociology and Women and Gender Studies at Seattle University. She is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Gender and Society and co-editor of the “Contemporary Sociological Perspectives” book series. Her books include The Production of Reality, Social Prisms, and Everyday Inequalities. Her courses and research focus on difference, power and discrimination, and religion and sexuality.

Prologue: What is Real? - Jodi O’Brien
Part I: Introduction
Essay: The Nature of Humanness - Jodi O’Brien
Reading 1: Our Permanently Plastic Brains - Gina Rippon
Reading 2: What Do Memes Tell Us About Self and Time During the Pandemic? - Michael Flaherty and Cosima Rughinis
Part II: Language and Social Development
Essay: Shared Meaning as the Basis of Human Development - Jodi O’Brien
Symbol Use, Language, and Development
Reading 3: George Herbert Mead’s Self and Mind - Bernard N. Meltzer
Reading 4: Final Note on a Case of Extreme Isolation - Kingsley Davis
Language and Culture
Reading 5: Metaphors We Live By - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
Reading 6: Translating Indigenous Sexualities - Manuela L. Picq and Josi Tikuna
Part III –Learning Social Identities and Social Scripts
Essay: Learning the Script: Socialization
Socialization and Reference Groups
Reading 7: Reference Groups as Perspectives - Tamotsu Shibutani
Reading 8: We Don′t Sleep Around Like White Girls Do - Yen Le Espiritu
Naming and Feeling Experience
Reading 9: Becoming a Marijuana User - Howard Becker
Reading 10: The Development of Feeling Norms Underlying Romantic Love - Robin Simon
Part IV: Producing Social Selves
Essay: Who Am I? Developing Character - Jodi O’Brien
Significant Others, Social Context & Self Development
Reading 11: Looking Glass Self - Charles Horton Cooley
Reading 12: Why Do Teens Seem So Strange Online? - Danah Boyd
Reading 13: Life as the Maid’s Daughter - Mary Romero
Essay: Self as a Process of Contradiction and Conflict - Jodi O’Brien
Contradictions and Conflict in Self Development
Reading 14: Double Consciousness and the Veil - W.E. B. DuBois
Reading 15: A Reflection on Studying White Identity as a Native Person - Sofia Locklear
Reading 16: Queer Negotiations of Identity and Social Group Membership - Carla Pfeffer
Part V: Producing Social Life Through Interaction
Essay: Meaning is Negotiated through Interaction - Jodi O’Brien
Self-Presentation and Projecting the Definition of the Situation
Reading 17: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life - Erving Goffman
Reading 18: Death as Theatre - Ronny E. Turner and Charles Edgely
Identity Work, & Emotional Labor
Reading 19: The Managed Heart - Arlie Hochschild
Reading 20: From Prowar Soldier to Antiwar Activist - David Flores
Reading 21: Panhandling Repertoires and Routines for Overcoming the Nonperson Treatment - Stephen E. Lankenau
Part VI: The Social Production of Reality
Essay: Building and Breaching Reality - Jodi O’Brien
Constructing Realities
Reading 22: Five Features of Reality - Hugh Mehan and Houston Wood
Reading 23: A Conception of and Experiments with “Trust” as a Condition of Concerted Stable Actions - Harold Garfinkel
Reading 24: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies - Paul Watzlawick
Maintaining the Status Quo and Constructing Change
Reading 25: The Persistence of Gender Inequality in Employment Settings - Cecilia Ridgeway
Reading 26: Bathroom Battlegrounds - Kristen Shilt and Laurel Westbrook
Reading 27: Challenging Racist Nativist Framing - Lindsay Pérez Huber
Epilogue