I have the benefit of having facts about the knowledge and strategies of action of
the individual being studied within an environment, in a way that was not influenced by
my presence—as social researcher—that is, in the ordinary act of carrying on my
everyday activities, as anyone else, these are the insights into modes and avenues of
communication, as well as the constituents and implications of interactions/interactants
that are available for analysis. They are tools for expanding social theory to encompass
more of the lived experience of disability (and other social categories used for exclusion),
as well as for pragmatic purposes (as the Baby-Boomer generation ages, it becomes even
more important to consider the implications so elegantly expressed by so many scholars
of disability studies—that to distance society from disability, is to deprive us all of the
resources necessary to maximize our potentials, that is, the knowledge to live with
disabilities and be receptive to what alternative states of being have to offer us all, rather
than living in fear). I am obviously influenced in an immeasurable way by Irving K.
Zola, and desire to bring the voice he introduced to so many of us into the mainstream of
sociological conversation.
I investigate the dynamics of interaction that contribute to patterns of participation
in social life by individuals with disabilities. Via Stigma and Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life, Goffman located the responsibility with individuals with disabilities to
adjust themselves to others, to become acceptable in that sense, in order to merit their
inclusion. In the interaction seminar I took as a graduate student, I developed the idea
that “acting natural” could entail acting as an agent, as in a way that is aligned with what
one would do/think in the absence of others. So, not necessarily a fictive or fake
behavior of trying to conform to a social expectation, but in a way that is not in
Convention