Generic Social Process and the Problem of Success-Claiming: Defining Success on the Margins of Canadian Federal Politics

Scott Grills

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.18.3.02

Authors

Scott Grills Brandon University, Canada https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2596-2068

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.18.3.02

Keywords:

Generic Social Process, Political Activities, Success, Symbolic Interaction, Qualitative Sociology

Abstract

Envisioning success and its pursuit as an enduring feature of human group life, this paper examines success as a humanly constructed and realized social process. As framed herein, success represents the attribution by some audience of qualities associated with achievement, attainment, and/or accomplishment to social act(s) and/or social objects. Consistent with symbolic interactionist approaches to the study of deviance, success is not a quality of the situation at hand, but rather is audience-dependent. Therefore, while the social construction of success may be evidence-based, what is defined as successful outcomes and what constitutes evidence of success is subculturally located. Drawing on extended ethnographic research, an application of alternate definitions of success is examined in the context of those participating in an electorally unsuccessful political party—the Christian Heritage Party of Canada. Specifically, this paper examines the definition of success in terms of political influence, providing political alternatives and demonstrations of religious faithfulness as strategies of success-claiming. Framing success in process terms, this paper examines the trans-contextual and trans-historical qualities of “doing success” as a feature of everyday life.

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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-author of Management Motifs: An Interactionist Approach for the Study of Organizational Interchange (2019) and co-editor of Kleine Geheimnisse: Alltagssoziologische Einsichten [Little Secrets: Everyday Sociological Insights] (2015). He 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 symbolic interactionist theory, the sociology of management, deviant behavior, the sociology of music, political processes, and the sociology of doubt.

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