II. SEVEN SOCIABLE CONVENTIONS - Identity Maintenance

Sociability is largely a process of selective association. The host chooses the guests to invite, and the participants choose others who will be appropriate partners for conversation. In so doing, the participants select various attributes and identifications that will be appropriate for the particular partner and occasion. These are the aspects of identity that will be confirmed.

Parties are often given to celebrate identity-relevant occasions. The young child begins with birthday parties, and later there will be parties to celebrate engagements, weddings, graduations, and even deaths. Similarly, parties are given to mark the significant points in collective life. Parties are given when someone is leaving, and when someone new arrives. They are given to celebrate completion of one phase of work or school, or in celebration of national or religious holidays.

Pleasure in identity maintenance is heightened at points of transition, when it may be necessary for persons to catch up on what has happened to one another during a period of absence, or to prepare for the continuation or cessation of a relationship in a future that will be changed.

Most of the identity-maintaining conversation that we saw moved along comfortably, without any particular effort to be creative. The image of sociable interaction as a form of behavior calling for skillful management did not seem to exist, as it might do under the conventions of thoughtful appraisal or festivity. Talk seldom violated prevailing norms. Rather, it explored the range of perspective that was normative for the set of people assembled.

We found three motive-styles that contributed to the maintenance of identity, each in a different way.

© 2008 Jeanne Watson Eisenstadt. All Rights Reserved
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