Everyday Troubles

The Micro-Politics of Interpersonal Conflict

Robert M. Emerson

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Jahr: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780226238135
• Thema: Social Sciences
• Thema: Sociology

From roommate disputes to family arguments, trouble is inevitable in interpersonal relationships. In Everyday Troubles, Robert M. Emerson explores the beginnings and development of the conflicts that occur in our relationships with the people we regularly encounter—family members, intimate partners, coworkers, and others—and the common responses to such troubles.
To examine these issues, Emerson draws on interviews with college roommates, diaries documenting a wide range of irritation with others, conversations with people caring for family members suffering from Alzheimer's, studies of family interactions, neighborly disputes, and other personal accounts. He considers how people respond to everyday troubles: in non-confrontational fashion, by making low-visibility, often secretive, changes in the relationship; more openly by directly complaining to the other person; or by involving a third party, such as friends or family. He then examines how some relational troubles escalate toward extreme and even violent responses, in some cases leading to the involvement of outside authorities like the police or mental health specialists.
By calling attention to the range of possible reactions to conflicts in interpersonal relationships, Emerson also reminds us that extreme, even criminal actions often result when people fail to find ways to deal with trouble in moderate, non-confrontational ways. Innovative and insightful, Everyday Troubles is an illuminating look at how we deal with discord in our relationships.

Index

accusations, 30, 163, 167–79

defined, 168

complaints accenting moral wrongdoing

by casting self as victim, 175

by creating rules and agreements, 175–77

by discrediting motives and character, 171–75

through explicit formulations, 168–69

by framing behavior as heinous/intolerable, 169–71

by highlighting deceit and denial, 177–78

incompatibilities with joint efforts at correction, 166, 178–79

See also extreme responses; “moralizing” troubles

“action sets,” 135n1, 151–53

Åkerström, Malin, 65, 255

Alzheimer family caregiving interviews, 20

apologies, 116, 119, 120

arguments, 93–95, 96, 179n15

asymmetrical intervention, 226, 227 (fig. 2), 230

Attannuci, J., 88

Aubert, Vilhelm, 32, 205, 226

Austin, J. L., 58n11, 171

authoritative intervention in troubles

contrasts with informal intervention, 159n10, 206

“in-house” authoritative third parties, 207, 257

legal and professional third parties, 207

proactive vs. reactive intervention, 207

and the transformation of troubles, 206–7, 247–48

See also informal intervention; police intervention; psychiatric emergency teams

Baumgartner, M. P., 87, 87n9, 157–58, 160–61, 160n11, 180–81

Becker, Howard S., xxvi, 30, 213n3, 251, 251n2

Bittner, Egon, ix, 87, 209, 215, 215n4

Black, Donald, 30, 71n2, 85–86, 122, 131, 135n1, 138, 160–61, 160n11, 208n1, 209–10, 212, 215, 218, 223–24, 223n11, 226–29, 228n13

Blum, Nancy S., 79, 121–22, 1...