The Interpretive Process for Learning the `Taken for Granteds':
From Stranger to Confidant and Back Again
Jack Haas
McMaster University
Introduction
Louis Wirth (1964) makes the claim that the most important
thing to understand about a group or society is what it takes for
granted. The "taken for granteds" of group life, the
"unspokens", take the form of a deeply internalized perspective
that a group collectively applies to its most basic problem(s).
These often unexpressed understandings go largely unexamined
because of their unquestioned nature and/or because they conceal
something the group is reluctant or is afraid to reveal. Though
denial is difficult to prove and "taken for granteds" are
difficult to "see", their unveiling is a basic, and
scientifically important, part of the interpretive process.
Participant observation is the obvious technique for getting at
hidden meanings and understandings, particularly as it logically
derives from the theoretical commitments of symbolic
interactionism. The interactionist emphasis on social process
and derived meanings gives primacy to three premises so
succinctly summarized by Herbert Blumer when he writes:
The first premise is that human beings act toward things on
the basis of the meanings that the things have for
them...the second premise is that meaning of such things is
derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that
one has with one's fellows. The third premise is that these
meanings are handled in, and modified through an interpretive
process used by the person in dealing with the things he
encounters (1969, p. 2).
The interpretive process exclusive to participant
observation involves the researcher's immersion over time on a
continuim between the dialectical roles of stranger and intimate.
The observer studying a group or society of which he lacks
familiarity initially experiences a "culture shock" which
typically makes prominent questions about why participants act
and/or believe the way they do. Bringing to the setting one's
own ideas and experiences provides a contrasting framework or
perspective for questioning how the group perceives, interprets
and adapts to their reality. Simultaneously, the
stranger-observer struggles to gain the confidence and acceptance
of participants. This process involves being sensitive to, and
adapting to, the group and its ways. This concomitant process
generally parallels the socialization experience of neophytes,
thus contributing to the researcher's ability to empathize and
share with others their perspective about the group's taken for
granted understandings about reality. The observer's initial
feelings of being different, marginal, and uncomfortable with
participants as a newcomer-stranger to the group serves to
heighten and promote the development of "sensitizing concepts"
(Blumer, 1969) in the search for a basis for interpreting,
analyzing, and adapting to the group's point of view. Thus the
participant observer enmeshed in a different culture begins to
learn and be socialized into the group's ways of interpreting
their situation.
This paper describes four important characteristics of
observer interaction and relationships with study participants
which make possible learning the group's taken for granted
assumptions about reality. First, the stranger role of the
researcher makes problematic, unusual, or seemingly inexplicable
what the group accepts without question. Secondly, socialization
into the group's ways provides the researcher the possibility of
learning about and interpreting situations from the participants'
point of view. Thirdly, the researcher may become a confidant
for members of the group and thus learn the deeply personal and
private meanings which participants find otherwise difficult to
share with fellow members. And finally, the continuity of the
research process helps ensure that important, but situationally
specific, "latent" and emerging perspectives will, over time,
reveal themselves. The extended research process and the
processual and dialectical nature of the researcher's roles
enhances the possibility for developing an holistic understanding
of group life.
The Stranger-Newcomer Role
The stranger phase of the participant observer role involves
experiencing problematics about group life. This estrangement is
important for bringing into question why participants believe and
act as they do. During the early phase of the research process
the alienation and estrangement as stranger produces a great deal
of personal discomfort, but at the same time some intense
learning about self and others. The questioning process is
heightened for the stranger when the beliefs and actions of
others are dramatic and profound. Garfinkel (1957, p. 37) points
out how estrangement is helpful for bringing into view the
background expectancies of participants. And, as Simmel (1950,
p. 405) makes clear, the stranger role carries with it a certain
objectivity where the researcher is not committed to the "unique
ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group". Some degree of
culture shock prompts the researcher to search for a conception
of how participants perceive and adapt to their environment. In
a very inductive way the field worker comes to formulate
questions about the relationship of their own personal
experiences, feelings, and adaptations to situations, and those
of the participants in the study.
Usually at an early stage (Geer, 1964) some questions or
problems become prominent to the observer, both those of personal
accommodation and the more sociological concerns about group
ways. As Geer points out, the early stages of the research often
present the most important and enduring questions of the research
process, namely, why do people believe and act as they do and how
do they interpret their situation so that it leads to these sets
of beliefs and actions? The answers to these early questions
become the main foci of the research effort and analysis. Most
importantly, these questions come to the fore because, as
strangers, we do not understand.
Participant observers, veterans and newcomers, also
typically share experiences of anxiety and uncertainty about how
best to facilitate their acceptance by group members. Observers
should be aware that their feelings are not unlike those
experienced by other newcomers, and thus changes in their
feelings and their struggles to cope and adapt may bear important
insights into the analogous process of neophyte socialization. In
my research with high steel ironworkers I describe these concerns
and feelings and how they led me to better understand the men on
the high steel (Haas, 1972, 1974 and 1977). In my initial role
as stranger to the workers and the work I found myself confounded
by the disparity between their actions and my fear while "running
the iron". Retrospectively interpreting my feelings and
behavior, I came to raise questions about their behavior and my
subsequent accommodations to danger, and found them to be
similar. They and I hid our fears and acted unafraid in a
perilous work environment. Similarly, in our research on
medical student socialization, Bill Shaffir and I were also
exposed at the beginning of the research to a form of "culture
shock" which heightened our sensitivities to the true nature of
professionalization. Our difficulty in making a bargain with the
medical school to do the research (Haas & Shaffir, 1980) raised
questions about the nature of the profession which we later began
to conceptualize as a secret society (Haas and Shaffir:1987).
Our "first days in the field" (Geer:op.cit.) also prompted our
most significant research question about the socialization of
medical students, the same question raised in the ironworker
study, what happens to change an obviously anxious and fearful
cohort of new apprentices and medical students to poised and
confident appearing journeymen ironworkers and graduate
physicians?
In my current research on addictions and recovery I am also
struck by the cheerful, optimistic and confident demeanor of
recovering twelve-step members and their relatively poised and
articulate presentations of self in social and public speaking
situations, even though their stories and past reflect fear,
insecurity, and lives of despair and ruin. Again my
preconceptions were challenged and how they developed such a
serene and confident demeanor became an important research
question (Haas, 1989, 1990 and 1991).
The Outsider-Intimate Role
The stranger role, which characterizes the beginning of
field research, ideally changes through processes of
socialization and rapport building towards its dialectic extreme
of confidant in some researcher-participant relationships.
Though the researcher is viewed as an outsider, an individual who
has no stake in becoming a fully participating group member, the
role does offer participants someone with whom they can share
perceptions and feelings that are difficult, if not impossible,
to share with members of the group.
The group being studied is initially wary of the
stranger-researcher but over time this uneasiness, as with
similar social situations, changes. Analogous to the
socialization of newcomers to the group, the researcher faces
tests which, although they may preclude tests of loyalty and
identification which neophyte group members must pass, emphasize
similar concerns about trust. The researcher who successfully
meets group expectations about trust is in an unique situation
and role which may provide insights and understandings about
participant feelings, meanings, and adaptations. Moreover,
the researcher is able, because of the distinctive outsider role,
to ask questions and elicit data about the most personal aspects
of group participation and identification.
This and later phases of the research process puts a premium
on the quality, and trustworthiness, of observer-participant
relationships. Study participants are more likely to reveal
themselves to those they trust and trust is gained through
sharing and a perceived sense of honesty, open mindedness, and
sincerity, where the researcher is seen as not bound by some
professional facade or project.
A second important facilitating condition for developing an
intimate and trusting relationship with research participants
involves empathy. The researcher's attempts to understand and
identify with others communicates the idea that they have value.
Attempts to view another's world view without judging it gives
the researcher the prospect of true and deep sharing,
understanding, and acceptance. This phase also involves some
additive responsibilities and commitments to those observed. To
get the measure of trust necessary to understand others'
perceptions and meanings, the observer must also demonstrate
commitment. David Matza expresses it well when he writes:
Appreciating a phenomenon is a fateful decision for it
eventually entails a commitment-to the phenomenon and to
those exemplifying it - to render it with fidelity and
without violating its integrity. Entering the phenomenon is
a radical and drastic method of appreciation (1969, p. 24).
The Outsider-Confidant Role
During the course of fieldwork observers have the potential
to become the "safe" confidants and even serve a
quasi-therapeutic role. Unable to share some matters with other
members of the group because of the sensitive or potentially
disruptive nature of their concerns, the researcher-confidant
plays a natural role for members who wish to share secrets and
intimacies. The skillful participant observer then is also able
to get at the sharedness of meanings and understandings which the
group itself may be unaware or reluctant to reveal.
In my research on high steel ironworkers and medical
students I found this phase of the research role and process
emotionally and intellectually satisfying. It was at this time
that role-taking was most complete as I came to empathize with
the dilemmas, contradictions, pains, and rewards of participant
lives. Increasingly, I found myself as a person who some
participants were willing to share very intimate parts of their
lives. Some of this sharing involved, as well, a willingness on
my part, as one who also was trusting enough, to reveal my own
fears, problems and humanity. In the process of self-revelation
there develops the possibility of temporary bonding which moves
the stranger-researcher-outsider into the new role of confidant
and friend. Some methodologists have been concerned with the
problem of over-rapport (Miller, 1952) which this kind of
intimacy surely suggests. I don't share a concern that somehow
the researcher over-identifies and will lose the obligatory
"objectivity" that characterizes and sterilizes so much "social
scientific" research. Several protections exist. The development
of intimacy with research participants is temporary. Often during
the very same day the requirements of data recording requires a
physical, intellectual and emotional separation. Indeed, while
participating in emotive sharing with research participants, the
researcher often operates from the scientist part of self
simultaneously considering important and probing questions to
ask, connections to make, ideas to consider, etc. The process
does, however, humanize the researcher and the research process
and contributes to a deeper and richer understanding of the lives
of those we ultimately purport to know.
Latent Perspectives
Another distinct advantage of participant observation for
the learning of a group's taken for granteds is the fact that the
researcher remains in the field for an extended period of time.
The extensive and intensive nature of the research enhances the
possibility that the researcher will not miss important
understandings, that may only reveal themselves over time or when
the group is in crisis. The group's taken for granteds may
become focal points of interest early in the study or lie dormant
depending upon an unique situation or crisis prompting their
recall and reemergence as operative perspectives.
The value of extended participation in the field for
learning latent perspectives was highlighted in my research on
high steel ironworkers. Through most of the research the
relationship between contractors and their representatives and
the workers could only be characterized as cooperative. Although
I had anticipated these relationships would be inherently
antagonistic, I found contractors in a dependent situation and
therefore continually making efforts to keep the workers
satisfied. The scarce supply of labor and the high demand for
ironworker services during the time of the research made
contractors' efforts quite understandable and contractors
frequently gave the workers perks including: the use of
contractor equipment (pickup trucks and welding machines) for
their after work use; hourly pay rates that exceeded the
union-contractor agreement; pay advances; overtime work and pay;
inside work during inclement weather, etc. These patterns were
directly related to the advantage and control workers had because
of the demand for skilled ironworkers in the local area.
It was very much in the contractors' interest to be
considerate of the workers. Ironworkers meet together often, in
and out of work, and much of their conversation involves their
opinions of different contractors. The following statement by a
journeyman points out the importance to the contractor of
establishing a favorable reputation and acting cooperatively.
A good contractor will, or course, lend out money. You see
the word gets around pretty quick on these guys, and if you're
not cooperative, and are a bitch to work for, you're going to
have trouble. I know of cases where this union has actually
bailed out contractors who were in deep trouble. Fellows were
willing to work overtime for them, and on Saturday and Sunday,
and not put it on the books. And they save the contractor that
way.
The turnabout in the relations of workers and contractors
and the emergence of the workers' latent perspective was quite
dramatic. The surprise came one morning when I walked on the job
site and noticed that there were no workers on the structure.
Many of the workers were in nearby restaurants or standing around
the perimeter of the work site. I subsequently found that they
had walked out in sympathy with the operating engineers who
believed that their contract had been violated by the
contractor's hiring of a laborer to run a machine that was within
the operating engineers' jurisdiction. A journeyman ironworker
describes the contractor's actions and his opinion of those
actions:
Those bastards, you give them an inch and they take a mile.
I'm glad those operating engineers struck. It serves those
bastards right. They go and take a common laborer to run
the machines, so they can pay them a dollar fifty. The
operating engineers get over five an hour you know. I'm
sticking right with them.
The journeyman indicates quite strongly his support for the
walkout and later he and another journeyman describe their
reason:
Abe says, "They [operating engineers] have a good point.
You have to stick together for things like this. For
Christs sake, the goddamned union better stick with them, or
it'll be our ass next". Tom replies, "You're right. They
could take a man off the street and put him up there, make them
ironworkers. That's why we have to stick with the union".
Ironworkers viewed the contractor's action as a threat to
their interests, as well as the interests of the operating
engineers. They believed that they had to act together or face
the possibility that contractors would act in similar ways
towards them. The lesson ironworkers learn and to which they
intermittently refer is to not take contractors for granted.
Workers, they believe, must keep their guard up or contractors
will take advantage of them. These attempts to control their
relationship with contractors is reflected in their unwillingness
to commit themselves to any long-term employment with a single
contractor. Workers are frequently encouraged to "drag up" or
"pull the pin" and thereby force contractors to compete among
themselves for workers. The latent perspective reemerges at
times when contractors' actions are defined by ironworkers as
self-seeking and to the disadvantage of the workers. A
contractor's hiring of a lowly paid laborer to do a highly paid
job is one such situation. Another obvious situation is during
the period of contract negotiations, when workers seek more
money and better benefits. The disagreement between union and
contractors as to what constitutes a fair contract again brings
forth the latent perspective. This latent perspective lies
dormant unless contractors act in ways which stimulate the
workers to reassert the lessons of the past. Some event or
sequence of events precipitates the reemergence of the
perspective. When such a crisis develops, workers reaffirm and
reenact the perspective. The latent perspective or taken for
granted that becomes manifest in present circumstances is similar
to the ideology of the past as expressed in the Ironworker
Constitution written in the 1890s: It being a self-evident
fact, plainly demonstrated by past experience, that
centralization and unity of action among the craftsmen,
mechanics, specialists, skilled workmen and all workers in
the iron and steel industry of this country is necessary in
order to successfully deal with the ever-growing
encroachments of organized capital and the many grievances
to which our trade is subjected which require speedy adjustments,
and upon the satisfactory settlement of which may hinge the
welfare of all brothers in our craft, therefore, believing
that this may best be obtained by united action and effort,
thus forming a solid representative organization, each
pledged to carry into effect the immortal injunction that an
injury to one is the concern of all, we pledge ourselves to
make any reasonable sacrifice in order to uphold these
principles and to advance and perpetuate the Union
(Constitution of the International Association of Bridge,
Structural, and Ornamental Iron Workers, 1960, p. 1).
Thus field research serves, because of its longitudinal
nature, to increase the likelihood of discovering background,
hidden perspectives, or taken for granteds. When the extended
research process is coupled with opportunities to view a variety
of participants in different contexts and settings the
possibility of developing an holistic understanding of their
culture, including the basic underpinnings of their perceptions
and understandings, becomes more likely.
Conclusion
In this paper I take, as my premise, Louis Wirth's idea that
the most important thing we can know about a group is what it
takes for granted. The hidden nature of a group's secrets, taboos
and denials requires a methodology which lifts shrouds and
mystifications and uncovers basic truths which the group itself
may be unaware. The methodology best suited to such discovery is
that of participant observation and its advantages in a variety
of researcher roles are, at least, four-fold: as stranger;
outsider-intimate; confidant; and, as researcher immersed with a
variety of participants, over time and across situations.
Participant observers often study groups with which they
lack familiarity and their estrangement as strangers and their
alienation from the group they study provides them a certain
objectivity wherein they do not assume or take for granted what
the group has already resolved. The alienation inherent in the
stranger role and the "culture shock" which accompanies contact
with behavior which is different and unknown creates problems for
the observer who seeks both understanding of the participants'
ways and acceptance as an outsider whom they will draw into their
confidence. The socialization process of the researcher itself
parallels in some important and instructive ways the
socialization of newcomers to the group.
During the course of participant observation the observer
ideally is able to move the relationship to one who has passed
tests of trustworthiness, and is entrusted as confidant. The
distinctive nature of this research phase and role places the
researcher in a special category which, when successfully
enacted, allows opportunities for sharing important and intimate
aspects of participant lives. In this relationship the observer
plays a role not unlike that of a therapist who is sought out
because s/he is trusted. Another distinct advantage of
participant observation for learning the taken for granteds
relates to the simple fact that the observer participates with a
variety of group members in different situations for an extended
period of time. This aspect of the method enhances the
possibility that significant understandings which might not
otherwise develop may emerge. It is because of a continuing
presence in the field that observers might fortuitously learn
about shared understandings or perspectives. The participant
observer then is uniquely suited to learn the most fundamental
perceptions, meanings and adaptations of a group and the
unveiling of these is our most important task. The methodology
involves processes of demystification where the researcher
unveils the secrets, shrouds, unspokens, etc., which the group
may even hide from itself. The observer may be reassured that
s/he has learned the taken for granteds when the people of study
read or listen to the analysis and reflect the "aha" phenomenon.
When they express their excitement and support for the
inductively derived model or analysis the researcher may feel
comforted that s/he has grasped and learned what is most
fundamental for understanding the group of study, what its
members take for granted.
Notes
1. The distinction of latent and manifest has been made
regarding other sociological concepts. See Alvin W.
Gouldner, "Cosmopolitans and Locals: Toward An Analysis of
Latent social Roles - I, Administrative Science Quarterly, II,
(1957), pp. 281-306, for a discussion of roles which are
relevant or irrelevant in particular contexts. Howard S.
Becker and Blanche Geer, "Latent Culture: A Note on the
Theory of Latent Social Roles", Administrative Science
Quarterly, V, (1960), pp. 304-13, make a similar
distinction, suggesting that participants in a setting may bring
a common culture to that setting which may or may not
furnish a basis for acting in the new setting.
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