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In this paper, I discuss the invaluable role played by William Shaffir, my mentor and doc­toral supervisor, who shaped my approach to interpretive fieldwork and deepened my understanding of symbolic interactionist theory. Known affectionately as Billy to his colleagues and students, Shaffir is a gifted educator and one of the finest ethnographic researchers of his generation. My focus is on how the scholarly tradition that flows from Georg Simmel through Robert Park, Herbert Blumer, and Everett C. Hughes, passed from Billy on to me, is illustrative of what Low and Bowden (2013) conceptualize as the Chicago School Diaspora. This concept does not refer to the scattering of a people, but rather to how key ideas and symbolic representations of key figures associated with the Chicago School have been tak­en up by those who themselves are not directly affiliated with the University of Chicago. In this regard, while not a key figure of the Chicago School himself, Shaffir stands at the boundary between the Chica­go School of sociology and scholars with no official relationship to the School. As such he is a principal interpreter of the Chicago School Diaspora in Canadian Sociology.

A response to Helmes-Hayes and Milne's article, 'The Institutionalization of Symbolic Interactionism in Canadian Sociology.'

A number of sociologists and other researchers have focused on the role of third parties since Simmel's seminal conceptualization of the social organization of the triad. However, less attention has been given to third party presence in qualitative interviews, despite the fact that third party participation in interviews with people with chronic illness and/or disability occurs frequently. Here too it is assumed that third party presence promotes conflict, ignoring the role of third parties as facilitators who enable informants to articulate their perspectives. Therefore, I focus on Simmel's concept of the triad, concluding that the role of facilitator must be added to the types he describes.

"Sociology of the Body: A Reader brings together forty-two essays exploring the multitude of ways in which human bodies shape and are shaped by society. Revised to reflect the current state of the field, this second edition now incorporates an overarching intersectional approach to conceptualizing the body--both in relation to social processes, such as medicalization and reproduction, and social relationships, such as the construction of difference. The volume has therefore been carefully updated and re-organized not only to illuminate how bodies are used, shaped, presented, understood, and managed in society, but also to show how complex interactions of gender, sexuality, nationhood, ability and other social categories work together in the creation of inequality. This second edition also enhances theoretical and historical foundations of the book, helping students to better comprehend historical continuities and discontinuities of the social treatment and understanding of the body. Detailed, thought-provoking, and altogether current, this collection remains an essential introduction to the theories, issues, and perspectives informing a sociological understanding of the body today."--

Symbolic interactionism continues to be criticized from both inside and outside of interactionist circles by those who claim that the perspective does not address issues of social structure and fails to recognize constraints on human agency. In this paper, we critically address these claims and defend Blumerian symbolic interactionism from three versions of the charge of astructural bias and demonstrate how the perspective accounts for social structural forces. In doing so, we make reference to the classical roots of the perspective. We conclude with an illustrative and didactic example that demonstrates how even the most micro-oriented of interactionist research can still take account of social structural issues.

In 2010 Jacqueline Low was invited to become an editorial board member of the then new online open-access journal Societies. In that same year, Claudia Malacrida was approached to organize a session on the sociology of the body at the 2012 International Sociological Association (ISA) meetings in Buenos Aries. When the call came in 2011 from Societies for editorial board members to propose topics for special issues of the journal, it was a natural and fortuitous timing of events and we undertook to co-edit this special issue based, in part, on papers from the conference. Because of our shared history of writing about social aspects of the body, we were convinced that both the conference and the journal papers would produce interesting and important advancements in a sub-discipline that is making exciting contributions beyond its borders to social theory and empirical sociological work.

When the University of Chicago was founded in 1892 it established the first sociology department in the United States. The department grew rapidly in reputation and influence and by the 1920s graduates of its program were heading newly formed sociology programs across the country and determining the direction of the discipline and its future research. Their way of thinking about social relations revolutionized the social sciences by emphasizing an empirical approach to research, instead of the more philosophical "armchair" perspective that previously prevailed in American sociology. The Chicago School Diaspora presents work by Canadian and international scholars who identify with what they understand as the "Chicago School tradition." Broadly speaking, many of the scholars affiliated with sociology at Chicago understood human behaviour to be determined by social structures and environmental factors, rather than personal and biological characteristics. Contributors highlight key thinkers and epistemological issues associated with the Chicago School, as well as contemporary empirical research. Offering innovative theoretical explanations for the diversity and breadth of its scholarly traditions, The Chicago School Diaspora offers a fresh approach to ideas, topics, and approaches associated with the origins of North American sociology. Contributors include Michael Adorjan (University of Hong Kong, China), Gary Bowden (University of New Brunswick), Jeffrey Brown (University of New Brunswick), Tony Christensen (Wilfrid Laurier University), Luis Cisneros (postdoctoral scholar, University of Arizona), Gary A. Cook (Beloit College), Mary Jo Deegan (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Scott Grills (Brandon University), Mervyn Horgan (Acadia University), Mark Hutter (Rowan University), Benjamin Kelly (Nipissing University), Rolf Lindner (Humboldt University & HafenCity University, Germany), Jacqueline Low (University of New Brunswick), Mourad Mjahed (Peace Corps, Rabat, Morocco), DeMond S. Miller (Rowan University), Edward Nell (New School for Social Research), David A. Nock (Lakehead University), and Defne Over (PhD candidate, Cornell University). Contributors also include George Park (Memorial University), Thomas K. Park (University of Arizona), Dorothy Pawluch (McMaster University), Robert Prus (University of Waterloo), Antony J. Puddephatt (Lakehead University), Isher-Paul Sahni (Concordia University), Roger A. Salerno (Pace University), William Shaffir (McMaster University), Greg Smith (University of Salford, UK), Robert A. Stebbins (University of Calgary), Izabela Wagner (Warsaw University, Poland and CEMS EHESS - School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, France), and Yves Winkin (ENS Lyon, France). --Provided by publisher.

This paper is based on an analysis of representations of seniors in the media. In particular, we examine images of the bodies of seniors in the advertising campaigns promoting a product called Geezerade sold in Circle K convenience stores in the Atlantic provinces of Canada in the summer of 2011. We contrast these with images of seniors in the Canadian magazine Zoomer, formally CARP magazine, a magazine published by the Canadian Association of Retired People, a seniors advocacy organization. Following Goffman's arguments in his seminal presidential address to the American Sociological Association, "the Interaction Order", we take the position in this analysis that the body does not determine social practices but none-the-less the body is the sign vesicle that enables interaction. Concomitant however, while the images of bodies we see in the media do not determine the signs given and given off via bodily presentation, they none-the-less provide us with the categories by which we interpret those signs. We conclude that the images in the Geezerade campaign and Zoomer magazine represent a binary model of images of seniors that reflects ageist and classist assumptions about the bodies of seniors. Such a model limits the categories through which we understand the aging body and fails to account for the diversity of seniors' bodies in society.