Reflections of Self from Missing Things

Abstract

When people fail to locate a personal belonging, it often evokes disturbing reflections of self that they will seek to overcome. While ethnomethodology once manufactured breaches in the taken-for-granted order to reveal the implicit rules of social life, this article explores how people try to recover from such breaches occurring naturally in their material environment. Drawing on a database of about five hundred cases of naturally occurring losses collected through several ethnographic techniques, this article demonstrates how people get back to life as usual through four unique paths. Through each, individuals resolve or avoid the disturbances caused when their taken-for-granted sense of what objects are immediately available to them breaks down.