Professor Karp’s career-long research work is both motivated by and advances “symbolic interaction theory,” sociology’s distinctive version of social psychology.
His diverse writings are animated and united by the core “social constructionist” question, “How do people make sense of complicated life circumstances and how are their behaviors, emotions, and attitudes linked to such interpretive processes?” Over the course of more than 40 years he has explored a variety of topics.
In the early 1980s Professor Karp wrote a series of path-breaking papers on the social and emotional lives of people in their fifties, at that point a neglected moment in the life course.
Like many of his journal articles, his classic study with William C. Yoels entitled “The College Classroom: Some Observations on the Nature of Student Participation” has been reprinted multiple times.
This book reveals Karp’s status as a methodological craftsperson who artfully combines in-depth interviewing, personal experience, and cogent analysis.
Based on 60 interviews with the family and friends of persons with depression, manic-depression, or schizophrenia, this book shows how caregivers negotiate enormously complicated boundaries of obligation.