Sherri Cavan's LIQUOR LICENSE

1. Behavior settings

For the actor involved in the round of daily life, the social world is differentiated into configurations of time, space, and objects called churches, factories, restaurants, homes, parks, courts, doctors' offices, and the like. Associated with these configurations, or conventional settings, is a standing pattern of behavior, routinely expected within the setting, treated as fitting and proper for the time and place, and persistently independent of the changing populace. [1]
These standing behavior patterns associated with the conventional settings of everyday life are the taken-for-granted, common-sense features of social organization.[2] They define for the actor what activity can take place as a matter of course and without question, and for what conduct those present will be held accountable.
They may further delimit who is or is not eligible to enter a given setting, the ways the routine tasks are to be distributed, the varieties of reputations that can be accorded to those entering, the kinds of fates that can be allotted to those present, and the like. Thus for the actor involved in the round of daily life, these taken-for-granted, common-sense features of social organization are a matter of practical interest. Whatever his goals

or purposes may be, the conventional settings represent one of the environmental features available to him as a field of action; the associated standing patterns of behavior are his "predefined" possible situations.
For most adult actors, the range of accessible settings is quite extensive. The ordering of their daily round may be viewed in terms of those settings they regularly frequent, those they enter only occasionally and those they eschew. Sometimes there may be no choice to enter or not enter a given setting. Law or custom may require one's presence in one setting or exclusion from another, and what awaits him in the first instance or what he is denied in the second may be contingent only upon his biographical situation. Presence in prisons or mental hospitals may be required of those judged guilty of a crime or found to be suffering from mental illness; private clubs or turkish baths may deny entrance to those who do not possess certain social or physiological traits.
Other settings have the potential of committing those entering for a particular purpose to a regularized schedule of attendance. In such settings one's day-to-day presence eventually may be seen as outside the realm of choice as long as the purpose remains. Settings used for gainful employment have such a character. But even here occasional absences other than for vacations, illness, and urgent personal business may be maneuvered by employees,
As community members (permanent or transient) pursue their purposes at hand,[3] most Of the available settings are Possible alternatives to be taken or avoided. Furthermore, the patterns of the settings denote not only what the main activity [4] or manifest function is to be, but also what secondary or alter,

native uses are fitting and proper within the setting, providing the actor a variety of locales where he can handle effectively and acceptably most of the uneventful mundane and many of the eventful problems of social existence. The conventional settings provide the actor with the necessary stage, scenery, and props, and most of all, as a matter of course and without question, the legitimacy to sleep, be amused, earn money, make love, clear his name, daydream, or socialize. But at the same time, within any setting there are also courses of action for which he can be held accountable; some may be of little importance to him, but others may be personally costly or perhaps beyond his capabilities. The actor's presence in a given setting may require him to be industrious, run, speak softly if at all, donate money, show grief, or disrobe, regardless of his personal feelings or his abilities. Thus the stage may be set for him to be embarrassed, discredited, or degraded.
Moreover, there are settings where the possibility exists that some or all present can gain or lose prestige and other settings where the possibility exists that some or all present can set themselves up for a particular kind of fate that may be either valued or condemned. Whether such settings are to be frequented or avoided by any given actor may rest upon such questions as the kind of outcome possible with respect to the kind of person he is and the likelihood of its occurrence, and whether whatever else can be done in the setting or demanded of him while he is there is worth doing in the first place.
One can of course naively enter settings only to find them something more or something other than what one first supposed. While the patterns of behavior associated with any given setting may be, and are expected to be, characterized as "common knowledge," what is actually known in common by all about any given setting may be summary and incomplete with respect to what could be known, even though what is known may often be adequate for their purposes at hand.[5] Thus there

are times when the taken-for-granted character of the standing behavior patterns associated with the conventional settings of everyday life way in themselves become a matter of practical interest. Those whose knowledge was merely adequate, may purposely or inadvertently learn, that the nature of the standing patterns of behavior which hey took for granted is not the same as that which is taken for granted by others, and their now information may give them, and others who share it, what is commonly called an "insider’s" perspective of the setting. That there may be more to be known about the standing Patterns of behavior of one setting may be further generalized into a problems of finding out just what more can be known about the standing behavior patterns of other settings, and the taken-for-granted character of the standing behavior patterns associated with the conventional settings of everyday life may be subject to scrutiny in terms of their practical import.
The taken-for-granted character of the standing behavior patterns of any setting may also become a matter of practical interest to those who wish to exploit them, to use them in a way that is neither routine nor proper but nonetheless possible. Those who are willing to comply more or less with what is expected of them within the setting may at the same time be able to engage in other activities that are inappropriate. Stenographic pools that provide young women with a setting for earning a living may also provide lesbians with an opportunity to enjoy surreptitiously the presence of a bevy of female co-workers as well. Similarly, knowledge of what might be coed the "form" of conduct required in a given setting may permit one to engage in behavior that is inappropriate in the setting by masking it in a shape that is appropriate. The child sandwiching a comic book into his reader at school provides an example

of this kind of concealment of inappropriate activity, paying deference to what is expected in the setting without actually complying.
Settings vary not only in the kinds of improprieties that can be covertly engaged in by those present but also in the kinds of improprieties which, if observed, may be tolerated at least on an occasional basis, the kinds of sanctions that may be meted out for various offenses, and the extent to which the sanctioning of offenders is a laissez-faire endeavor or one that is both formal and formidable. The ways any given setting may be exploited, and whether this exploiting can be done with relative impunity or at least with little cost, may be a matter of casual or occasional interest to some, although to others it may comprise one of the most important features of social organization.
The focus of the present study is one type of conventional setting, the public drinking place. In American society, the specific name for such settings varies from one geographical area to another and often from one group to another. They may be called bars, taverns, cocktail lounges, night clubs, road-houses, saloons, cabarets, beer gardens, and occasionally gin mills, bistros or pubs. But in many respects, regardless of the particular term that designates them, the general category of such settings is characterized by a typical configuration of time, space, and objects and associated with a standing pattern of behavior that is both routinely expected within the setting and treated as fitting and proper for the time and place.
Characteristically those who populate the social world need do no more than name the setting to provide an "explanation" of what is taking place or what will take place. Strangers disrobing in one anothers' presence can be "explained" in this sense by the statement, "It is a gymnasium," just as a small group sitting around a table with clasped hands can be "explained" by the statement, "It is a seance." However, while the standing patterns of behavior associated with the conventional

settings of everyday life may be taken for granted by those oriented to the social world in a practical manner, for those oriented to that world in a theoretical manner these patterns have analytic significance.
Specifically, the sociological questions are (1) what are the courses of action that have the character of taking place and being expected to take place in such settings as a matter of course and without question, and (2) what kinds of assumptions would be required to generate these courses of action as regular and recurrent phenomena.[6] Stated quite simply, (1) what do such settings look like, and (2) how is it that they could look like that in the first place.
The persons present in the public drinking place customarily include many who are oriented toward the setting as something other than a place of work, and my particular interest here is with them--the patrons, for whom the setting is expected to be "unserious." It is the patrons’ expectancy of unseriousness and how this expectancy can modify the proprieties governing public conduct which are of primary concern.
In his "Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities," Garfinkel writes,

The expectancies that make up the attitude of every- day life are constitutive of the institutionalized common understanding of the practical everyday organization and workings of society as it is seen "from within." Modifications of these expectancies must thereby modify the real environments of the societies' members. Such modifications transform one perceived environ.

ment of real objects into another environment of real objects. . . . Each modification has as its counterpart transformed objective structures of the behavioral environments that each modification produces.[7]

But what exactly does the expectancy of "unseriousness" entail? When we search for an example of the unserious, that which immediately comes to mind is play. As Humiinga defines it,

Play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within carefully fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its air in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is "different" from "ordinary life."[8]

However, Huizinga clearly points out that play may proceed with seriousness:

The consciousness of play being "only a pretend" does not by any means prevent it from proceeding with the utmost seriousness, with an absorption, a devotion that passes into rapture and, temporarily at least, completely abolishes that troublesome "only" feeling. Any game; can at any time wholly run away with the players. The contrast between play and seriousness is always fluid.[9]

Implicit in this last statement of Huizinga is that the seriousness of play comes when the focus of the player moves from the out-of-the-ordinary features of play to the consequences of the events within the game. In this sense, then, whether defined as play or defined as ordinary life, activity becomes serious once the ensuing events are no longer inconsequential, are no longer matters about which one is or can be indifferent.

When the events that occur are consequential, when they can legitimately count and are likely to be counted, they require a special show of concern appropriate to the weight they carry. When consequentiality can be held in abeyance, what takes place counts minimally if at all, and the constraint and respect that are required can be correspondingly diminished. Thus, on the one hand, jokes may be used as a means of "unserious" communication, permitting the recipient to treat the information contained in the joke with a show of indifference that he might find difficult--if not impossible--to maintain were the same information to be communicated "seriously."[10] Or, on the other band, ego may bait alter by saying something that he hopes will be taken by alter as "serious"; when alter responds with the appropriate display of concern, ego can then say "I was only kidding" and thereby put alter in the position of one who has shown more concern than the situation required.
There are other forms of the relationship between seriousness and consequentiality as well. Ego may admonish alter and add a final "and I'm not kidding" to dispel any doubt alter may have about the consequences in store for him. Or ego may console alter by assuring him that be was only kidding, that the apparent consequences need not be considered.
Regardless of how the game may be set apart from real or ordinary life, the events that take place within the game are often expected to count, to be matters of consequence at least within the game and hence not to be matters about which the players may be indifferent. Yet within the game as well we encounter moments that are neither moments of the game world nor moments of the real world. In many games and sporting events there are, as either a routine feature or a possible option, time-out periods, temporary halts of the ongoing order of activity during which patterns of behavior irrelevant

or even inappropriate to the activity of the game may be engaged in without counting, In such games time-out characterizes a respite during the official activity when the rules governing play are temporarily suspended and the players permitted to show less respect to the game, when the players are granted the right to indifference even though they are officially still participants. In baseball, for example, time out may be called for a variety of reasons: when equipment must be repaired, when the manager wants to substitute a pitcher or consult with a player, or when a player wants to dispute the decision of an umpire. Once time out has been called, the rules of the game that require nine men to be on the field in specified locations are suspended and the players may move to other areas of the field or leave it altogether. The rules requiring that the players in the field attend to the activities of the pitcher and the batter are similarly suspended and players may chat with one another, close their eyes, squat, or wave to friends in the stadium. Thus, unlike the game proper, time out may be unserious, since it can be assumed to have neither the consequential implications of the game nor the consequential implications of ordinary life.
Analogous to the time-out period of the game, the unseriousness found in public settings where consequentiality is suspended should lessen the constraint and respect required within the setting and thereby generate a modification of the public order typically found in a variety of more serious settings, such as restaurants, hospitals, train stations, concert halls, department stores, and city streets. To the extent that the expectancy of unseriousness emancipates the here and now from the there and later, the foreseeable future need not automatically exert any control over the immediate present. The persons present in this sense may be granted the right of indifference by having been absolved of the consequences that would require concern and what can be made of the moment by them may be quite loosely defined. Thus the informality and occasional licentiousness of such unserious settings may be characteristic of no

more than the relative freedom of behavior that becomes an open possibility in the absence of consequentiality. When, for example, contact among the unacquainted can be assumed to entail a variety of consequences beyond the more or less immediate moment, whether this be a sustained show of interest, a proper display of deference, or a tentatively established relationship, such contact cannot be treated as a matter of indifference. Thus what we typically find in serious life is an order of propriety that both manages the possible consequences entailed and expresses our awareness of them. In this sense, Erving Goffman writes of engagements among the unacquainted:

When an individual is visibly intoxicated, or dressed in costume, or engaged in an unserious sport, he may be accosted almost at will and joked with, presumably on the assumption that the self projected through these activities is one from which the individual can easily dissociate himself and hence need not be jealous or careful with. Similarly ... the first persons in America to drive Volkswagens laid themselves open to face en. gagements from all and sundry, since they did not seem to be seriously Presenting themselves in the role of driver, at least a driver of a serious car.[11]

If in such unserious settings as beaches, resorts, cruise ships, and carnivals those present can be defined as mutually accessible and be willing as well to act upon that definition, it is because they can assume that such contact among the unacquainted will not carry with it consequences that go beyond the immediate moment--that neither will it commit them to any Particular course of action here and now nor will it commit them to any particular course of action at some later time or in some other place.
If the assumption that consequentiality will be suspended in unserious settings can permit contact between strangers to

be treated with less concern, so too can it permit relationships
and selves to be accorded some measure of indifference. If what occurs in unserious settings is assumed to be exempt from counting, there is no immediate necessity to acknowledge or maintain any preexisting relationship or acknowledge or maintain any particular preexisting self. A certain amount of liberty may be taken with both. Thus relationships may be attended to or they may be disregarded altogether, with the understanding that the indifference displayed here and now will not be considered at a later time or in another place. Similarly, with the understanding that the events that take place are not to be treated seriously, not automatically to become an item of one's biography, the gamut of conduct that can be engaged in by those present in unserious settings need be limited by no more than personal preference or momentary fancy.
It must be clearly pointed out, however, that while the public drinking place may be expected to be an unserious setting, this fact does not necessarily preclude the entrance of persons with serious purposes. The expectancy of unseriousness merely establishes the conditions that can be assumed to exist within the setting and hence the nature of the proprieties involved. Whatever one's purposes at hand, what is required in the first instance is that these proprieties be attended to within the setting, in form if not in spirit.

Format

As an introduction, the following chapter provides a general description of the public drinking places in one community (San Francisco, California) as well as an overview of the legal and moral status attributed to such settings. The purpose of this chapter is to define the public drinking place as a conventional setting apart from the standing patterns of behavior associated with it. In this sense, the legal and moral status of the public

drinking place will be treated as a feature of the setting per se, although it will become apparent that at least in part the nature of the legal and moral status attributed to the setting is not unrelated to the nature of the standing behavior patterns associated with it.
Part II focuses on the characteristic features of behavior in public drinking places that are more or less general in all establishments. Here the concern will be with the activity that takes place as a matter of course and without question in the setting and the kinds of obligations that those present take on by virtue of their presence in the setting. The specific features to be addressed are the ways time is spent, space managed, involvement allocated, events interpreted, and patrons and their encounters treated.
In Part III the types of public drinking places generated when the accent is placed on a particular kind of activity within the setting are considered. While there are a variety of uses to which such settings may be put as a matter of course and without question, for some establishments one use (or occasionally two) may become salient. The differences in use are in themselves a part of the common-sense knowledge about such settings. When people talk about public drinking places, they frequently refer to them in terms of the way they are used They say of such settings,

I took my car into the shop and this was the closest place to get a drink.
The K_____ is my bar.
D_____'s is a convenient place for a drink after the show.
When I want to meet a girl I usually go to the L_____.
Have you seen the show at the S_____?
I've been going there for eight years. It's like a second home.
You can buy bennies at the C_____.
So-and-so is playing at the J_____ now.

Four general types of public drinking places have been distinguished by their special uses. The first is official or manifest use: the public drinking place as a setting to obtain a drink, as a setting that may be used as a kind of social convenience. The second is that of amusement; public drinking places may be used primarily as a setting for entertainment. They may also be used as though they were private places similar to one's residence or club, and in this way one can speak of the "home territory" [12] use of the setting. Finally, public drinking places may be used for the exchange of various types of commodities, as if they were a kind of market place.
Although these differences in the special use of the setting will be the primary focus of the final section, they will be brought up on occasion in the second section as well, to the extent that they affect certain routine variations in the general features of the standing behavior patterns.

Methodological Note

From the spring of 1962 through the early part of 1965 participant-observation data were gathered in approximately one hundred bars in San Francisco. The observation periods in each bar ranged in length from a half hour to three hours and covered the lawful bar day as well as the entire week. I attempted to visit a number of establishments during a variety of times on a variety of days, although some establishments were visited only once and others as many as ten or twelve times.
The establishments chosen for observation were selected in

a number of ways. Some of the home territory bars were in the immediate vicinity of my residence, and this in part permitted me to patronize them, at least the first time, as might anyone else who lived in the neighborhood. Two of these were homosexual bars, and for my initial observations in them I was escorted by a homosexual acquaintance (who was one of the few people within the bar setting who knew that my concern was one of research). Later, however, I visited these establishments without him.
Some establishments were selected because they were located in an area of the city of particular interest, such as the civic center, the financial district, the downtown shopping area, and the tenderloin, although the actual choice of bars within this area was frequently just a matter of convenience. I visited a large number of places because they had been mentioned in conversations either with patrons in some Other bar or with acquaintances outside the bar setting. Some bars were visited because information was available about some change in them With respect to either the management or the patronage, and other bars were chosen because they had a "reputation" of one sort or another.
I visited all establishments in the guise of a "typical patron," attempting to be indistinguishable from other patrons present.[13] The fact that the public drinking place is a setting open to all members of the community who have reached their majority made it unnecessary to justify my Presence as a patron to those Present and in this sense actually facilitated the use of participant observation, although this need not always be the case in conventional settings. But at the same time, being a female in what is customarily a male setting made some difference. In the first place, there were bars from which I was categorically

excluded, bars with a standing rule that they are open to males only. in the second place, some bars that are open to both males and females are typically patronized only by males, and in such establishments it would have been awkward, if not suspicion-arousing, for me to enter alone. In both cases I was dependent on male assistance, either completely in the first situation, or in terms of an escort in the second situation.
The actual recording of participant-observation data was, with one notable exception, not done on the premises. During the course of any given observation period occasional trips to the rest-room provided an area shielded from the observation of the others present where I could jot down brief notes. Immediately after leaving an establishment, I expanded these notes in more detail and I wrote up the actual field notes at the first opportunity. The exception to this procedure was in busy night spots where the physical arrangement of the premises and the dominating focus of attention of the show provided a conventional shield which frequently allowed me to write down the events as they occurred while I stayed at the table, without concern that my activities would be "seen" by anyone else.
The general activities of both patrons and nonpatrons within the public drinking place provided the main source of participant-observation data. Attention was directed to the features of behavior per se within any given establishment and with respect to a given category of behavior; for example, in considering seating, attention was directed to such features of this activity as location, spacing, manner, posture, and movement to and away from seats.
Attention was focused on three general categories of activities: seating and spatial distribution, internal movement, and face-to-face interaction. My concern was with the stable, reproducible features of behavior which could be taken as the standing behavior patterns of the public drinking place. The actual decision as to whether or not any particular item of behavior was to be taken as part of the standing behavior pattern

was based upon two inter-related criteria: frequency of occurrence and the way the item fitted into ongoing events. Thus if an activity which occurred in a variety of different establishments or in one establishment on a variety of occasions was not followed by evidence of sanction, either tacit or direct, or did not disrupt the flow of events, the activity in question was taken to be one that was "normal" or, in other terms, expected within the setting. If an activity was infrequent or if sanction or apparent behavioral disorganization followed, the acceptability of the activity in question was held problematic. For some activities, such as physical fights, clear-cut decisions were not always possible, either because the activity was infrequent or because when it was observed, a variety of different consequences ensued. Generalizations about such activities are hence very tentative.
The possibility exists, of course, of what might be called "normal trouble," which is to say, improper activities that are frequent enough to be simply shrugged off or ignored.[14] The criteria for deciding whether or not some activity was to be considered a part of the standing behavior pattern does not permit the differentiation of such "normal trouble" from "normal nontrouble." Hence the former is treated as though it were the same as any other feature of the standing behavior patterns, as in a sense it is, insofar as it may be a taken-for-granted aspect of the public drinking place.
Bar conversations provided a second important source of Participant-observer data. In the beginning, the conversations tended to be random, and little effort was made to select either Persons or subject matter. However, as the problems of the study became more clearly defined and the nature of any particular bar setting . became better understood, I attempted to

control the interaction in order to glean some systematic information.
Clearly, just as the entire panorama of activity in every bar could not fall within visual range at all times, so too was it impossible to engage every patron in every establishment in conversation. This was for two reasons. In the first place, even if overtures were proffered to every patron present, not everyone would respond to them in a way that allowed an encounter of any duration to be established, whatever their reason for doing so might be. In the second place, in establishments where the numbers present were small enough to make anyone's activity visible to everyone else, to run from encounter to encounter within the establishment could have discredited my role as mere "Patron"; whatever other role might be used to label my conduct might in this sense alter the nature of the information obtained. Thus the basic procedure used to engage other patrons in conversational encounters was to limit myself in any given observation period to those who made the first overture of sociability to me and those who were within the proper distance (which will be specified later) for me to make the first overture to them.
Once any conversation began, two basic areas of conversation became (from my standpoint) the focal points of the encounter. rne first was the general character of the interaction--what would be talked about and what was the nature of the conversation when the patron had control of the course of the encounter.[15] While these data were available also from patron-patron conversations that could be monitored, they generally constituted the first part of encounters that were begun by other patrons, if for no other reason than a sense of social courtesy that prevented me from immediately attempting to take over the course of the conversation for other purposes.

In most cases where the initial overture was made by me to a patron, as well as in the later parts of patron-instigated conversations, the second general area of concern was the patron's perceptions and expectations of the present bar, and bars in general. In most cases, unless the patron himself brought it up, this was begun by asking simply, "Do you come here often?" and from there the bar (and subsequently all bars) became the topic under discussion. Within the setting of the public drinking place bars are a frequent and legitimate topic of conversation, and most of the time there was no question about the legitimacy of my raising the topic in the role of patron; I could expect generally not only that questions posed by me would be answered, but that my posing them would in no way discredit my role.
But it was not always the case that such data could be obtained in the course of an encounter. Not all patrons had opinions or could verbalize them, and not all patrons were willing to verbalize their opinions there and then. Those who were reticent because of the first two reasons would form, in a general survey study, the "don't knows." But the latter group, those who would not answer, were not in all cases simple refusers. To the extent that the questions were put to them with no more authority behind them than that of another patron, and to the extent that they were enmeshed in the type of encounter called a "conversation," I was at times unable to control the course of the encounter and my queries were met by merely token responses. From the standpoint of a researcher, the token responses were inadequate, although from the standpoint of a legitimate patron, they could have been taken as a part of the general course of the encounter.
Within the conversations with bar patrons my own ignorance of bar taboos also upon occasion resulted in my asking questions that I had no right to ask, and hence questions that patrons had the right to rebuff me for asking. Sometimes, although not frequently, this would result in the termination

of the encounter; but whether it did or did not, the response to such questions provided another area of information. Tabooed topics were not explored in any systematic way--that is, I rarely brought them up deliberately--simply because there is a limit to the extent to which anyone in the role of researcher is willing to take the part of a fool. Once one has learned from experience the kind of response a particular question will elicit, anticipation of the response makes one reluctant to pose it again.
The same thing was true of extensive probing in certain areas. Thus, for example, a patron might tell me that it was his or her first time in a particular establishment or tell me that he was "a business man from out of town." Even though upon occasion I doubted the truth of the statement, it was apparent that, since there is no requirement within the bar setting that the biographies put forth be valid, I had no right within the encounter to question him about the "real" state of his affairs.
The use of encounters as a source of data carried with it one basic difficulty with the method of observer-as-participant. Since my concern with the setting and with the events within it was oriented toward the problem of data collection, to allow every encounter to run its natural course to a point of termination would have in many cases taken more time than I felt I could afford. That is, each observation period and each encounter during it was taken by me as nothing more than a time during which the course of events could be noted, to be analyzed in a particular way at a later time, and I was concerned to maximize the observation of events. Any given conversation required that to a certain extent my attention be focused only on the encounter, both in order to note the events of the conversation itself and in order to show some degree of involvement in the encounter at hand. Once I bad secured the desired data from the encounter, always allowing it to continue to a mutually agreed-upon ending would have

been costly for my purposes, in terms of not being able to attend to other events. Thus in some conversations, I was faced with the problem of terminating them when I was satisfied, irrespective of the feeling of the other. The difficulty which this generated revolved around finding ways to terminate that would minimize the extent to which I offended the other, and just as there were times when I could not control the course of the conversation, so too were there times when I could not terminate an encounter when I was done with it--or, if I could terminate it, there were times when I would offend the other. Thus some observation periods resulted in one long (and from my standpoint) fruitless encounter and other observation periods resulted in my leaving a variety of social offenses in my wake.
In addition to my own observations in the setting, data on the legitimacy of asking bartenders about the availability of female companionship and data on the course of encounters with B-girls were collected by two male field workers posing as out-of-town patrons.
Finally, focused interviews were done with a few key informants, people either knowledgeable about public drinking places in the city or about groups known to patronize such settings.

[1] Roger Barker and Herbert Wright, Midwest and Its Children (Evanston, I11.:Row, Peterson), pp. 7, 45-83.

[2] Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, I (The Haque: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), p. 7.

[3] Ibid, pp. 9-10.

[4] Erving Goffman, Behaviour in Public Places (New York: The Free Press, 1963), p. 43: "A main involvement is one that absorbs the major part of an individual's attention and interest, visibly forming the principle current determinant of his actions. A side involvement is an activity that an individual can carry on in an abstracted fashion without threatening or confusing simultaneous maintenance of a main involvement."

[5] Harold Garfinkel notes, for example, that when students were assigned the tasks of bargaining for standard-priced merchandise "many students reported that they had learned to their 'surprise' that one could bargain in standard price settings with some realistic chance of an advantageous outcome and planned to do so in the future, particulary for costly merchandise." ("Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities", Sozial Problems, 11 [1964], p. 245.)

[6] See Schutz, op. cit. pp. 34-37, and Aaron V. Cicourel, Method and Measurement in Sociology (New York: The Free Press, 1964), particularly pp. 60-61. The problem is analogous to that of constructing an "ideal type" of public drinking place (which, as Weber says, is an analytic construct that cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality, but which is objectively possible) that would be adequate to describe the public drinking place which is subjectively known to the actor. see Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: The Free Press, 1949). pp. 49-112

[7] Garfinkel, op. cit., p. 249.

[8] J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), p. 28.

[9] Ibid., p. 8.

[10] This point is developed in detail in loan P. Emerson, Social Functions of Humor in a Hospital Setting (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1963).

[11] Goffman, op. cit., pp. 126-27.

[12] "Territory" or "home territory" is used in the field of animal behavior to refer to the preferential treatment of an area by members of a given species, often (although not necessarily) including defense of that area upon invasion of others of the same species. (See W. C. Alee et al., Principles of Animal Ecology [Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1950], p. 412.) The term is used more loosely here.

[13] That is, to be an "Observer-as-participant." See Raymond L. Gold, "Roles in Sociological Field Observations." Social Forces, 21 (1958); and Nicholas Babehuck, "Participant Observation in the Field Situation"; Human Organisation, 21 (1962).

[14] "Normal troubles" are like "normal crimes" in two respects: they are specific to time and Place and they are routinely encountered, See David Sudnow, "Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender Office," Social Problems, 12 (1965), pp. 225-276.

[15] See Tom Burns, "The Forms of Conduct," American Journal of Sociology, 64 (1955), pp. 137-152.

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