WELCOME TO THE DRAMA OF SOCIAL LIFE: ESSAYS IN CRITICAL DRAMATURGY....TR Young

THE DRAMA OF SOCIAL LIFE

Essays in CRITICAL DRAMATURGY
March, 1989

DEDICATION

and

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

                  This book is about how drama fits into 
                 the runs of everyday life.  It is about 
                 the drama of love, and death, and work, 
                and sports.  Above all it is about religion
                 ...how people fit themselves together in 
                 the drama of life.  Linda Bowman fit me 
                 into her life at a time when the drama of
               death all but extinguished my spirit. It is 
              to Linda that I dedicate this book...I regret 
              to say that Linda loved the theatre more than 
                she could love me.  Still, I owe her much.

                                        T. R. Y.

                             ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

     John Welsh has worked and shaped my thinking on critical
dimensions in dramaturgical analysis for the past seven years.  He
is the author of a series of articles too long neglected in the
discipline.  Welsh has read and critiqued every article I have
written in the area as well.  Our ideas and works are too much
entwined easily to sort out.  To John I owe much that is in this
book.

     Garth Massey has been a colleague, friend and coauthor for
almost 15 years.  His contribution to the essay on the
Dramaturgical Society is substantial.  It is no great tragedy that
he turned his attention away from social psychology since his work
in the past ten years; an analysis of the problems of socialist
development, is far to important to the 21st century to discount in
any calculus of scholarly endeavor.  I do miss his wide ranging
knowledge and the added dimensions he brought to this work,
however.

     Much of the work on the structure of self in this collection
of essays was written against Louis Zurcher...yet written for him. 
Zurcher wrote his book, The Mutable Self, in the effort to
stimulate discussion and debate.  In private correspondence, Lou
said that he was interested in the renewal of social psychology and
that he was very much pleased that I had responded to his book with
my article, 'The Structure of Self in Mass Society: Against
Zurcher.'..that it was his idea that lively debate would renew
social psychology.   A most gracious and useful rejoinder from a
good and decent human being...he is sorely missed in the politics
and policies of social...and I mean social...psychology.

     Valerie Malhotra has contributed greatly to my understanding
of the works of Kenneth Burke and has added her great scholarship
to this volume.

     My wife, Dorothy (d. 1981), gave me unstinted support and love
over most of the years of this work.  I loved her greatly and miss
her sorely yet today.  My second wife, Nancy Maxson, helped me to
think about the Buddhist structure of self and how it differs
greatly from yet resonates with the kind of authentic self we would
like to see develop in a good and decent society.

     I am greatly indebted to those in England who work in the area
of cultural marxism.  They helped me to get to know the literature
and the research in that field when I was on sabbatical at the
University of Exeter.  Barry Turner of the sociology department at
Exeter was most helpful to my work.  

     The Red Feather Institute has continued to support my research
and work over the past 20 years.

     Larry Reynolds, Alice Littlefield and the Sociology-
Anthropology Faculty at Central Michigan University gave me safe
harbor in a time of troubles.  With this book, I give my thanks to
all of these good people.                

January 30, 1989