On Maynard and Wilson's "On the Reification of Social Structure" (1980) BY Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.

ON MAYNARD AND WILSON'S "ON THE REIFICATION OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE" (1980)                                                                  

Wayne Martin Mellinger, PhD.

In returning to the foundational texts of the Santa Barbara School, I have begun a systematic re-reading of the classic works—West & Zimmerman’s “Doing Gender,” Molotch & Boden’s “Talking Social Structure,” Maynard & Zimmerman’s observational studies, Boden & Zimmerman’s workplace analyses, West & Fenstermaker’s intersectional elaborations, and Duneier & Molotch’s urban ethnographies. What emerges from reading these works together is a shared commitment to dismantling the sedimented habits of structuralist thinking in sociology—habits that treat “social structure” as an object-like entity with causal force independent of the practices that sustain it.

This intellectual project—already present in Zimmerman’s early insistence that institutional structures are locally produced within the ongoing work of interaction and West & Zimmerman’s demonstration that gender is “a situated accomplishment”—finds its earliest and most complete theoretical statement in Maynard & Wilson’s 1980 essay “On the Reification of Social Structure.”

Their intervention is best understood as the Santa Barbara School’s attempt to shift the discipline from a structuralist imaginary to a praxeological one, showing that what sociology treats as macro-structures are in fact members’ methods, reflexively produced in and through sequences of talk.

The Structuralist Bias They Confronted

In the late 1970s, sociological theory remained dominated by what Maynard & Wilson describe as a “structuralist orientation” that understands social order as a system of external forces. They summarize this tradition as treating social structure as:

“that object which is analytically independent of the series of events which it is posited to govern.” (p. 287)

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In this model, “structure” acquires metaphysical independence: a supra-individual entity that constrains, shapes, and produces local social life. The result is what they call reification—“the treatment of abstractions as though they were the very real substances of social life” (pp. 284–285)

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This way of thinking, they argue, is not merely conceptually mistaken; it blunts our ability to see the local work through which society is brought off. It also traps sociology in its own categories, confusing analytic constructs with the lived realities they attempt to describe. As they write:

“Reification is the positing of ‘social facts’ as independent causal forces when they are instead the accomplishments of situated actors.” (p. 286)

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This is the target of their critique.

Their Theoretical Intervention: Structure as an Accomplishment

Maynard and Wilson turn to ethnomethodology not simply as an alternative method but as a philosophical corrective. They argue that sociological abstractions—class, state, gender role, bureaucracy—must be respecified through the study of “the interpretive work by which actors assemble the recognizable features of their social world” (p. 287)

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In their words:

“Social structure is locally produced in interactional episodes, not imposed from without.” (p. 296)

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Or even more forcefully:

“The apparent externality of social structure is the sedimented effect of members’ practices, not the source of them.” (p. 293)

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This directly anticipates Anthony Giddens’s later formulation of structuration theory and the “duality of structure.” In fact, Maynard & Wilson’s phrasing is remarkably close to Giddens:

• Giddens: structure is both the medium and outcome of practices.
• Maynard & Wilson: structure appears as external only because practices reflexively generate that appearance.

Both traditions reject “top-down” models in favor of constitutive ones.

The parallel extends also to Molotch & Boden’s “Talking Social Structure,” where they show that “macro” phenomena like bureaucracy, markets, and authority are observable only in and through the minute details of turn-taking, repair, and categorization.

The Santa Barbara School, taken as a whole, was building a consistent and sweeping critique: social structures are not things—they are doings.

How Social Structures Become Reified: Turn-Taking as the Engine

One of the strongest contributions of the 1980 article is the demonstration that turn-taking practices are the mechanism by which abstract social categories are reasserted, solidified, and naturalized in situ.

Case Study: The Courtroom Sequence

(See pp. 300–305 of the PDF.)

Maynard & Wilson examine a courtroom conversation where the “P.D.” (public defender), judge, and defendant move through a tightly organized sequence that invokes the category “GTA” (grand theft auto). The transcript fragment shows:

• the judge’s call for the charge,
• the P.D.’s recitation of the statutory language,
• the defendant’s acceptance,
• the procedural progression into sentencing.

What matters is not the legal category in the abstract but how it is brought to life in the sequential order:

“The social organization of talk provides the machinery for transforming an abstract category into the operative reality of the present case.” (p. 304)

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They emphasize that:

“Reification occurs as a step-by-step process embedded within the turn-taking system.” (p. 300)

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The courtroom does not apply structure; it reproduces it by enacting it turn by turn.

The same logic appears in their discussion of categorization:

“Membership categorization devices supply the local resources by which institutional identities are established and sustained.” (p. 302)

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Abstract social facts become real at the exact moment they are invoked, ratified, and oriented-to in the turns.

Empirical Implications

Maynard & Wilson conclude by showing that ethnomethodology does not deny the existence of social structure; rather, it respecifies it.

“The problem is not that sociologists cannot speak of social structure, but that they must locate it in the practical reasoning of participants.” (p. 310)

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This implies that:

1. Macro/micro is a false dichotomy.
   Macro-order is the sedimented outcome of innumerable micro-sequences.
2. Causality must be rethought.
   Structure is not a cause but a product that appears as cause because of its reflexive use in interaction.
3. Institutions are collections of reproducible interactional formats.
   A courtroom, a psychiatric intake, a welfare office, a police encounter—these are assemblages of predictable sequences.
4. Power must be located in turn-taking and categorization.
   The judge’s access to next-turn position is institutional power.

Their argument opens the door for later Santa Barbara School work:

• West & Zimmerman’s “doing gender”
• West & Fenstermaker’s “doing difference”
• Maynard’s studies of plea bargains and autism diagnosis
• Boden’s The Business of Talk
• Molotch & Boden’s “Talking Social Structure”
• Zimmerman’s institutional/organizational analyses

Why This Matters for My Project

My systematic review of the early Santa Barbara corpus positions On the Reification of Social Structure as the foundational theoretical pivot of the entire tradition. It is the piece that explicitly identifies—and dismantles—the structuralist bias that the rest of the UCSB scholars then spend a decade empirically reworking through studies of:

• gender,
• urban order,
• race and inequality,
• organizational talk,
• police interactions,
• institutional decision-making.

This article gives a clear theoretical spine: the Santa Barbara School’s core claim is that structure is not a prior fact; it is an ongoing accomplishment.