Seeing and Being Seen

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of the ordinary and the extraordinary in everyday life by focusing on a particular type of public-place encounter: the celebrity sighting. Data from celebrity sighting narratives reveal a distinctive set of micropolitical troubles for interactants that centers on the question of how to treat the interaction. Is it an ordinary public-place encounter between strangers? Or an extraordinary encounter with a uniquely known other of special status? Through the interactional strategies of “recognition work” and “response work,” seers construct an emergent set of norms for these interactions that form the basis for a moral order of celebrity sightings.

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