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Interactionist analyses of social organization stimulate examination of how social situations and collective activity are shaped. Meta-power, the creation and control of distal situations, and organization as a structuration of meta-power are used as tools for exploring the shaping of situations Five meta-power processes are presented: strategic agency, rules and conventions, structuring situations. Culture construction, and empowering delegates. These processes illustrate how situations are created or altered. This paper offers a view of social organization that emphasizes relations among situations, linkages between consequences and conditions, and networks of collective activity across space and time. The conclusion calls for additional research to make more explicit the nature of social organization and its social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper social pasts are considered to be foundations of everyday interpersonal life, including everyday situated action. We distinguish social paste from culture by noting that the former involves recognition of specific joint acts and social placements while the latter involves recognition of ties to acts and placements in general. We further distinguish shared pasts--which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements that interactors constructed together--from common pasts--which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements that interactors constructed with others. We assess the Importance of using either common or shared paste in the course of completing and simplifying complex and everyday transactions so as to create an appearance of routineness in relation 10 constructing these acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]