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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Lost! The Social Psychology of Missing Possessions Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1rn7b11p Author Berry, Brandon Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Lost! The Social Psychology of Missing Possessions A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology by Brandon Lee Berry 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Lost! The Social Psychology of Missing Possessions by Brandon Lee Berry Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor Jack Katz, Chair For most, the loss of a material possession is an infrequent occurrence usually prevented through a variety of vaguely noticed practices and routines. For the sociologist, the occasion offers a natural experiment in how individuals deal with a sudden threat to the order, expectations, and material scaffolding sustaining their usual way of life. Drawing on 600 naturally-occurring cases of loss collected through observations around lost and found booths and counters, interviews with individuals recruited through lost and found websites, and guided journaling by college undergraduates about their everyday misplacements, this dissertation explores the social impact of a missing possession. Tracing losses from the moment of their discovery, I show how losing parties must carve out space from their ongoing biographies if a loss is to gain foothold as a social matter. In taking up the theme of ‘a loss’ as a matter to resolve, individuals will act to ensure that their immediate activities will go on as planned, that they will maintain untroubled ii relations with others, or that they will feel “complete.” Yet a central paradox is that the object’s loss may disturb them even while they concede its dispensability. They find that what they have lost is not something with an undeniable sentimental meaning or something that allows for some practical ability, but rather something whose absence reveals a breakdown in the self’s absorption in the world. It is not that an object has been lost, but rather they have. Until they change their measures of safekeeping, get their memory checked by a doctor, get rid of extraneous possessions, etc. they cannot let go of the loss and assume that they are properly immersed in the world. It is the loss itself, not a particular object’s absence that unsettles. In other chapters, the dissertation explores losses as revelatory agents, providing the grounding on which individuals reflect on others, the place of the mishap, and the meaning of the object itself. As a lens pointed away from self, losses sometimes distil social relations down to basic concerns of trust and respect. Individuals know that what they might understand as a fluke or rare occurrence within their own biography could get misinterpreted by those not privy to a more longitudinal perspective on their life. They sense that their ‘rare occurrence’ may, for another, complete the gestalt of a “screw-up.” In orienting outward toward the world of adventitious finders, they conduct experiments on the sympathy of groups like “the French” and places like “Harvard Square,” hoping that unknown others who stumble upon the lost object adopt their meaning that it is a ‘loss’ rather than a ‘gain.’ They learn that to be understood as competent and trustworthy by others, they must demonstrate a facility for treating certain features of the inanimate world as part of their physical body. Each loss occasions an existential reflection on ease of movement through life, not as an abstract exercise removed from ongoing life, but within the dramas they currently find themselves. This is a study of how loss events and their objects are given meaning within the situations and biographies in which they unexpectedly occur. iii The dissertation of Brandon Lee Berry is approved. Stefan Timmermans Robert Emerson Jason Throop Jack Katz, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2012 iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Literature Methodology 1 – It Begins and Ends with Shifts in Commitment 18 2 – On Telling and Not Telling Others 53 3 – Creating a Mythology around It 82 4 – Discerning Immediate Cause 102 5 – Seeing Public Places through It 124 6 – Finding Meaning in the Object 143 7 – Orienting to It as a Future Possibility 165 Conclusion 189 Appendix – Methodological Reflections 192 Bibliography 202 v List of Figures Figure 1. Ways of Committing and Moving On Diagram 18 Figure 2. William James Model: A Reduction of Self 20 Figure 3. Reduction in Practical Paths 20 Figure 4. Practical Potential Undiminished in Loss 21 Figure 5. Normal and Disturbed Relations 54 Figure 6. Seeing Self through Loss 82 Figure 7. Post-loss Modification of Keeping Practices 166 vi VITA 2003 MA, UCLA 2000 BA, Occidental College Publications Berry, Brandon. 2012. “Reflections of Self from Missing Things: How People Move on from Losing Possessions.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 642: 228-243. Berry, Brandon (2000). Review of the book Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics and the Culture of Sport . Journal of Men’s Studies. 9, 2. Conference Presentations and Invited Talks 6/12 “Turning Points in Commitment to a Loss,” Invited Lecture, Self and Society Course, Jack Katz, UCLA 6/11 “Misremembering and Misplacement,” Invited Ethnography Conference Presentation, Elijah Anderson, Yale University. 3/11 “Subjective Experiences of Memory,” Invited Lecture, Self and Society Course, Jack Katz, UCLA. 11/10 “How Objects Become ‘Lost’: A Naturalistic Social Psychology,” Yale University Ethnography Conference, Invited by Elijah Anderson. 8/08 “When Things Go Astray: Social Psychological Experiences of Misplacement and Misremembering,” ASA Annual Meeting, Boston. 4/05 “Animated Modeling of Social Psychological Processes.” University of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia Ethnography Project. Grants, Fellowships, Awards 2005-06 Institute of Industrial Relations, Research Grant, UCLA 2005-06 Graduate Research Mentorship Award, UCLA 2004 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship Award (Spanish), UCLA vii 2004 Summer Mentorship Award, UCLA 2002 Summer Mentorship Award, UCLA 2001-02 University of California Graduate Fellowship, UCLA 1999-00 Theodore and Ellen Stearns Trustee Scholarship (Merit-based Tuition Waiver), Occidental College viii Introduction When people cannot find a material possession, it may or may not be a cause for concern. If it is to stir them to any kind of action, they will see the absence as some kind of hindrance. They will act to ensure that their immediate activities will go on as planned, that they will maintain untroubled relations with others, or that they will feel “put together” or “complete.” They will discover that in order to sustain their usual way of living, or the activities and relations to which they have already committed, they need certain things around. They will discover how their personal identity and social obligations are supported by inanimate features of the material environment; they will experience the interrelation of self and thing. Yet a central paradox is that the object’s loss may disturb them even while they concede its dispensability. They find that what they have lost is not something with rare provenance, an undeniable sentimental meaning, or something that allows for some practical ability, but rather something whose absence reveals a breakdown in the self’s absorption in the world. It is not that an object has been lost, but rather they have. Until they change their measures of safekeeping, get their memory checked by a doctor, get rid of extraneous possessions, etc. they cannot let go of the loss and assume that they are properly immersed in the world. It is the loss itself, not a particular object’s absence that unsettles. The unexpected separation of self and thing in various social contexts and at various locations in a biography (such as a honeymoon, a first job, after living through hurricane Katrina, etc.) may stir them to articulate a personal mythology, or story of self, accounting for the loss’s occurrence in their life at this moment. Read like the psychologist’s ink-blot, individuals may find in the events of the loss versions of self caught up in great struggles, ill-conceived adventures, hopeless relationships, and at times, mundane setbacks that only raise an eyebrow. 1 They see the loss as a revelatory agent, revealing the logical manifestations of occasional bouts of carelessness, ongoing character flaws or psychic conflicts, or the workings of karmic law. And then sometimes, they see it as a random event with no real bearing on their lives. As a lens pointed away from self, losses sometimes distil social relations down to basic concerns of trust and respect. Individuals know that what they might understand as a fluke or rare occurrence within their own biography could get misinterpreted by those not privy to a more longitudinal perspective on their life. They sense that their ‘rare occurrence’ may, for another, complete the gestalt of a “screw-up.” In orienting outward toward the world of adventitious finders, they conduct experiments on the sympathy of groups like “the French” and places like “Harvard Square,” hoping that unknown others who stumble upon the lost object adopt their meaning that it is a ‘loss’ rather than a ‘gain.’ They learn that to be understood as competent and trustworthy by others, they must demonstrate a facility for treating certain features of the inanimate world as part of their physical body. Throughout this study, the reader will learn of a basic tension underlying the relationship between people and their possessions. While they want the lifestyle afforded by certain material things, they do not always want to be burdened by the work or worry that possessing them entails. They want their ongoing concerns of spending time with friends and family, holding down a job, being a good parent, making ends meet, etc., to remain in the foreground and their concerns of object management to remain in the background.