{"id":12940,"date":"2011-04-27T12:12:02","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T17:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=12940"},"modified":"2017-09-17T01:28:35","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T06:28:35","slug":"secretarys-day-and-social-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/04\/27\/secretarys-day-and-social-control\/","title":{"rendered":"“Secretary’s Day” And Social Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

How does “culture” control us?\u00a0 In her book Talk of Love<\/a><\/em>, Ann Swidler argues that culture has the power to shape our behavior even when we do not internalize the cultural narratives to which we are exposed.\u00a0 She uses Secretary’s Day, or Administrative Professional’s Day if you’re being politically correct, as an example.<\/p>\n

Secretary’s Day is a rather recent faux-holiday that conveniently (for florists, card makers, and candy and cookie bakers) falls between Easter and Mother’s day and mostly serves to bolster capitalist cashflow.\u00a0 Need a product to show your appreciation?\u00a0 We’ve got ’em! From cakes to gift baskets to greeting cards.<\/p>\n

Like Mother’s Day cards suggest that families would fall apart without mothers to do EVERYTHING, Secretary’s Day cards suggest that\u00a0an office would be helpless without its administrative assistants:<\/p>\n

The holiday is meaningful, of course, only because (like with mothers) we take-for-granted and devalue what adminstrative assistants do everyday<\/span> every day.\u00a0 In that sense, the holiday is disingenous and actually exposes that which it claims to resolve.\u00a0 So there are good reasons for administrative assistants to think it’s bunk, too.<\/p>\n

Let’s say that you had a secretary, but you thought that Secretary’s Day was stupid.\u00a0 Would you still mark the day?<\/p>\n

Swidler says you would.<\/p>\n

You would if Secretary’s Day was being so ubiquitously advertised and promoted that everyone knew it was Secretary’s Day.\u00a0 And, if everyone knew that it was, including your administrative assistant, then it makes a statement NOT to mark the day.\u00a0 Marking the day is the path of least resistance.\u00a0 Not\u00a0“showing your appreciation” tells a story about you (you’re not a very nice person) or your adminstrative assistant (who must suck and be a crappy employee).\u00a0 And there’s nothing you can do about that.<\/p>\n

Here’s how Swidler tells it:<\/p>\n

…the difficulty is that even the most skeptical, who recognize the trumped up, commercial origins of the occasion, may find themselves trapped by the wide publicity of the code.\u00a0 If one\u2019s boss won\u2019t even spend a few dollars, does that signal that he or she doesn\u2019t \u2018care?\u00a0 Both bosses and secretaries, however distasteful they may find the holiday, may nonetheless worry about the signal their actions will send.\u00a0 Indeed, that is the key to semiotic constraints on action.\u00a0 One is constrained not by internal motives but by knowledge of how one\u2019s actions may be interpreted by others (p. 163).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We don’t just get to act according to what we think and feel.\u00a0 We have to make decisions about how to act based on how others will interpret our behaviors.\u00a0 And, often, it’s easier to go along and make the right moves than it is to buck the system that gives our choices meaning.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How does “culture” control us?\u00a0 In her book Talk of Love, Ann Swidler argues that culture has the power to shape our behavior even when we do not internalize the cultural narratives to which we are exposed.\u00a0 She uses Secretary’s Day, or Administrative Professional’s Day if you’re being politically correct, as an example. Secretary’s Day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[254,293,37],"class_list":["post-12940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-holidays","tag-social-construction","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12940"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71349,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12940\/revisions\/71349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}