From roommate disputes to family arguments, trouble is inevitable in interpersonal relationships. In Everyday Troubles, Robert M Emerson explores the beginnings and development of the conflicts that occur in our relationships with the people we regularly encounter-family members, intimate partners, coworkers, and others-and the common responses to such troubles. To examine these issues, Emerson draws on interviews with college roommates, diaries documenting a wide range of irritation with others, conversations with people caring for family members suffering from Alzheimer's, studies of family interactions, neighborly disputes, and other personal accounts. He considers how people respond to everyday troubles: in non-confrontational fashion, by making low-visibility, often secretive, changes in the relationship; more openly by directly complaining to the other person; or by involving a third party, such as friends or family. He then examines how some relational troubles escalate toward extreme and even violent responses, in some cases leading to the involvement of outside authorities like the police or mental health specialists. By calling attention to the range of possible reactions to conflicts in interpersonal relationships, Emerson also reminds us that extreme, even criminal actions often result when people fail to find ways to deal with trouble in moderate, non-confrontational ways. Innovative and insightful, Everyday Troubles is an illuminating look at how we deal with discord in our relationships.

About the Author
Robert M. Emerson is professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Judging Delinquents: Context and Process in Juvenile Court, editor of Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations, and coauthor of Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes.

Reviews
"Emerson has written his magnum opus-a pathbreaking work destined to be a classic because it offers fresh insights into relationship troubles in everyday life that are enduring universal concerns. This achievement is the culmination of a career devoted to exploring many kinds of interpersonal relationships and the differences and similarities between them. When brought together, as Emerson does here, the insights he offers go far beyond other scholarship." (Diane Vaughan, Columbia University)



Book Information
ISBN 9780226237947
Author Robert M. Emerson
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 17mm * 2mm