The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential Address

Abstract

A presidential address faces one set of requirements, an article in a scholarly journal quite another. It turns out, then, that ASR's policy of publishing each year's ASA address provides the editor with an annual breather. Once a year the lead space can be allocated to a known name and the editor is quit of responsibility for standards that submissions rarely sustain: originality, logical development, readability, reasonable length. For in theory, a presidential address, whatever its character, must have some significance for the profession, even if only a sad one. More important, readers who were unable or unwilling to make the trip have an opportunity to participate vicariously in what can be read as the culmination of the meeting they missed. Not the best of warrants. My expectation, then, was not to publish this talk but to limit it to the precincts in which it was delivered. But in fact, I wasn't there either. What I offer the reader then is vicarious participation in something that did not itself take place. A podium performance, but only readers in the seats. A dubious offering. But something would have been dubious anyway. After all, like almost all other presidential addresses, this one was drafted and typed well before it was to be delivered (and before I knew it wasn't to be), and the delivery was to be made by reading from typescript not by extemporizing. So although the text was written as if in response to a particular social occasion, little of it could have been generated by what transpired there. And later, any publication that resulted would have employed a text modified in various ways after the actual delivery.