Worlds of Common Sense: Equality, Identity, and Two Modes of Impulse Management [Hardcover]

This book explores the construction and maintenance of alternative worlds of common sense. Employing a comparative approach, Dr. Pepinsky monitors events in Norway and the United States over several decades, treating these countries as prototypes of societies that are classifiable as modern Western democracies, but which exhibit marked contrasts in size and cultural homogeneity. She examines the conditions under which different social realities are generated, the assumptions that they presuppose, and the practices that sustain them. She then goes on to analyze the methods by which continuity is maintained and the grounds upon which changes are legitimized over time.

Pepinsky directs her book at an interdisciplinary audience. She addresses problems of increasing concern in the social sciences and in the world at large. Cultural differences in modal perspective affect the formulation of public policies and also contribute to intergroup tensions, as interpersonal relations are simultaneously becoming intercultural encounters within many contemporary societies. Researchers and students in social and cross-cultural psychology, ethnography, sociology, and political science will find this work of considerable interest.

PAULINE NICHOLS PEPINSKY is a Senior Research Associate in Social Science, Mershon Center, The Ohio State University. She has published previously on related topics in the areas of interracial relations, counseling psychology, and experimental social psychology.

Introduction and Overview: Linking Self and Society in Belief and Action
Alternative Definitions of Equality
Alternative Threats to Personal Identity: Discovery and Anonymity
The Management of Impulse and Two Normalizing Modes of Action
Modal Variations and Immanent Definitions of Deviance
Mixed Modes of the Sixties: Making and Remaking the American Scene
The Shaping of Change and the Process of Modal Symbiosis
Norway in the Eighties: The Oil Era and its Aftermath