Examines the concept of performance in ethnographic studies, focusing on the issues surrounding the performances of race, and cultural and environmental identities. It considers interaction theory, and re-examines the spectatorial gaze in fictional approaches to the portrayal of the past.

David Maines (Special Partial Issue): Symbolic interaction and communication - NCA spotlight on the contributions of David R. Maines, (A.P. Bochner, Shing-Ling S. Chen); The idea of structure and communication in David Maines' work. (B.E. Gronbeck); The Maines-stream - a pragmatist perspective on social organization and policy production, (P.M. Hall); Framing norms - the culture of expectations and explanations, (G.A. Fine); Telling stories of David R. Maines: an admiring friend's sampler, (W.K. Rawlins); Musing and thrashing around at the intersection of symbolic interactionism and communication studies, (D.R. Maines). Race, Culture and Identity: Identity, displacement, and memory, (D. Cotanda); The Sid Cartwright incident - an African American male's interpretive narrative of interracial encounters at the University of Chicago, (R. Buford-May). Identity, TV, and cultural critique, (J. Pierce). Biracial lived experience - from encapsulated to constructive self, (M. Hardesty). Ethnographic Performances: Salt fever - an ethnographic narrative in four sections, (A. Fontana); Absence as presence, (L. Richardson); Hurricanes - a narrative of conflict cycles in a distressed marriage, (E. Foster); Feeling the field - tracking shifts in ethnographic research, (P.R. Ibarra, M. Kusenbach); Stockyards boyhood, (N. Wiley). Interpretive Developments: The greening of identity - three environmental paths, (S. Gottschalk); On reconciling past and future - imaginary conversations as actual negotiations, (R. Hewitt); Revisiting the spectatorial gaze in film, (E. Tseelon).