Interaction Preludes to Role Setting: Exploratory Local Action

In most settings, roles are givens and role behavior is a salient ideal for retaining status. Yet in settings that admit only like actors, coveted roles often can only be acquired through interaction. During the interaction prelude to role setting, claiming a coveted role through unilateral role behavior is strategically vulnerable. A distinct action ideal, called local action, is needed to avoid role claims until there is evidence a claimed role will be conferred. Ironically, local action suppresses role differentiation when used by both sides in interaction. The exchange of local actions yields a self-perpetuating prelude, or stable balance, between actors who each seek coveted roles that would put the other in less desirable complementary roles. Local action thereby provides an explanation for balanced reciprocity and casts new light on balance as a purely local phenomenon. No longer must generalized role behavior (i.e., the norm of reciprocity) be invoked where roles are not given. The coexistence of two salient ideals (local action and role behavior) should alert us to discontinuities in behavior as settings and ideals change, as well as to the pockets of ambiguity that are a part of larger role structures.