“One of the ways in which we adapt to social life is by learning our culture’s stock of situational definitions. By the time we grow to adulthood in a given society, most of us have unconsciously mastered the broad outlines of many, if not most, of our society’s definitions of situations. To be improperly socialized is to, in part, to be unable to negotiate successfully the demands of various situations. The worker who acts like a colleague to his or her boss, the person who tells jokes at a funeral or starts a poker game at a wedding reception— these people are either unable to grasp the situational definitions or perhaps so keenly aware of them that they feel they must constantly challenge them.”
Joshua Meyerowitz, No Sense of Place, 1985 (p. 25). (via alicetiara)
