A01=Peter Bearman
anxiety
Author_Peter Bearman
boredom
Category=JBS
complex relationship
crossing the line
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
hotel business
industries
informal relationships
interpersonal closeness
interviews
kinky sex
new yorkers
observation
occupational roles
professions
psychology
residential lobby
service industry
serving time
social exchanges
socially distant
societal norms
sociology
status displays
stress
survey information
tenants
Product details
- ISBN 9780226039701
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 17 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2005
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Little fascinates New Yorkers more than doormen, who know far more about tenants than tenants know about them. Doormen know what their tenants eat, what kind of movies they watch, whom they spend time with, whether they drink too much, and whether they have kinky sex. But if doormen are unusually familiar with their tenants, they are also socially very distant. In "Doormen," Peter Bearman untangles this unusual dynamic to reveal the many ways that tenants and doormen negotiate their complex relationship. Combining observation, interviews, and survey information, "Doormen" provides a deep and enduring ethnography of the occupational role of doormen, the dynamics of the residential lobby, and the mundane features of highly consequential social exchanges between doormen and tenants. Here, Bearman explains why doormen find their jobs both boring and stressful, why tenants feel anxious about how much of a Christmas bonus their neighbors give, and how everyday transactions small and large affect tenants' professional and informal relationships with doormen.
In the daily life of the doorman resides the profound, and this book provides a brilliant account of how tenants and doormen interact within the complex world of the lobby.
Peter Bearman is chair of the Department of Sociology and director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University.
