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Guarding Your Personal Bus Space
November/December 2012
by Jennifer Kaylin
Have you ever placed a bag on the seat beside you on
the bus, to discourage would-be seatmates? Even feigned sleep, so nobody would
ask you to move it?
Esther Kim ’12PhD recently studied how far people
will go to ward off company on a bus. Over two and a half years, she took many
long Greyhound trips, taking notes and talking with other riders. She found
that the silent, seemingly passive passengers were making a constant, active
effort “to avoid others by privatizing public spaces.” Kim named this effort
“nonsocial transient behavior.”
In the journal Symbolic Interaction, Kim
details “how strategic and calculating people are” in using “their bodies and
belongings to form a barrier.” She observed some people who tried to make the
seat next to them look occupied, some who pretended to sleep, others who
avoided eye contact, and still others who pretended to be talking on their cell
phones. Some riders even feigned mental instability. One woman told Kim, “If I
have to pretend to be crazy for five minutes to get the row to myself, it’s
worth it.”
When a bus starts to fill and riders are told to make
all seats available, Kim notes, “the new goal becomes sitting next to a
‘normal’ person.” The important concerns for avoiding discomfort were personal
traits such as hygiene and personality. Interestingly, to this end, race,
class, gender, and other such identifiers didn’t matter.  |
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