Considering Essays: The Social Construction of Subcultural Value

Scott Grills

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.13.4.03

Authors

Scott Grills Brandon University, Canada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.13.4.03

Keywords:

Social Process, Value, Meaning, Grading, Symbolic Interaction

Abstract

The article examines the social processes that accompany the social construction of value within subcultural settings. Taking the evaluation of university essays as the case-at-hand, this paper argues for the importance of attending to the generic social process of assigning evaluative meaning. Specifically, this article locates these processes relative to the themes of: 1) socialization of new academics, 2) contextualizing the essay pedagogically and pragmatically, 3) grades as currency, 4) recipes of action and meaning-making, 5) assigning grades, and 6) managing troublesome cases. The collective work that we do to rank, sort, evaluate, and determine the relative worth of social objects reflects a set of processes that are to be found in multiple settings. This article contributes to our understanding of these rather central everyday life activities.

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Author Biography

Scott Grills, Brandon University, Canada

Scott Grills is a Professor of Sociology at Brandon University, Manitoba, Canada. He is the co-editor of Kleine Geheimnisse: Alltagssoziologische Einsichten (Trans. Little Secrets: Everyday Sociological Insights) (Springer 2015) and the co-editor of Die Welt als Drama: Schlüsselwerke Symbolischen Interaktion (Trans. The World as Drama: Key Works in Symbolic Interaction) (Springer 2016). Grills served as the President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in 2010/11 and as Vice-President in 2007/08. Earlier publications include those in the areas of interactionist theory, sociology of music, political processes, and the sociology of doubt. His current research attends to the development of an interactionist research agenda for the study of management processes.

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