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The Production of Reality: Essays and Readings on Social Interaction. 3d ed. Jodi O'Brien and Peter Kollock. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. 2001. 599 pages. $41.95.
According to the authors, The Production of Reality was compiled to "provide our students with a social psychology text that was useful and relevant to their everyday lives." In the first edition, they wanted to "ground social psychology in the experiences of our students." In the second edition, they took the matter further, by asserting the "self as a product of interaction and of conflict and contradiction." In the third edition, the authors take a serious look at contemporary social theory questions as they relate to "how people make sense of themselves and others" in a constantly changing social world, and attempt to provide a "theoretical framework for making sense of the apparent contradiction between stability and change" (p. XVIII).
At the same time, these authors present a theory that "people create their own stability through interaction," and that people participate in this "as a way of establishing social...