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This article examines the experience and meaning of boredom in modem society. Boredom is understood as an experience of a lack of momentum or flow in a person's life. Boredom is conceptualized as an interactional phenomenon that is inextricably connected to social rhythm. The communication of boredom is examined with respect to its consequences in self and motive presentation. The article also describes those features of contemporary American life that appear to facilitate the experience and Communication of boredom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores critically some of the implications of Health Fascism, an emerging movement, as of September 1990, aimed at exercising increasing vigilance and control over what people put into their bodies and what they put their bodies into. Also, this paper offers some reflections about the movement's direction, meaning, and ultimate ends. Just as the Third Reich motored through Europe a piece at a time, Health Nazis are rapidly creating a certain kind of proprietary fascism in the name of health. Just as German National Socialism sought an Aryan social order that would stand for a 1,000 years, the new Health Nazis seek a kind of organic utopia where health, morality and well-being may live undaunted by the resident dangers of life. This paper argues that there is surely nothing inherently wrong with the pursuit of either health or virtue. But to equate morality with health as a way of facilitating conformity to certain moral values is, at the same time, to obscure the very moral consequences of such conformity. Both the ends and means of that shared ideology known as healthism are frought with troubling questions about what will have to be done in order to achieve that which is, according to the paper, an unachievable goal.

Despite the ubiquity of pauses in the personal and social fabric of everyday life, sociological analysis of this phenomenon has been limited in both scope and concern. In this article it is argued that pausing should not be relegated to the status of a residual category nor should pauses merely be conceptualized as breaks in action or periods of inactivity. Rather, it is suggested that pauses are an essential element of the social rhythm that demonstrates degrees of personal and community well-being and vitality. As well, pausing may be an important, perhaps even necessary, part of the process of commitment and self-esteem. A typology of pauses is offered and the implications of pausing in establishing the rhythm of human behavior are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]